What I’m Reading, 2026, High Fury

The book is as much about horse and cowboy culture as it is about character growth. The main character has captured a wild mustang that is undoubtedly the fastest horse and most difficult to tame in the region. But the girl, who is the regional ranch head's willful and beautiful daughter recently turned 18, has a talent for horse management and the horse named Wildfire submits to her.

The dude who captured Wildfire is lured into putting Wildfire into a big-deal horse race where the local indians and every other rancher compete for cowboy bragging rights.

Etc, etc.

Yes, he gets the girl, and they own the horse together, but only she can ride Wildfire.

What I'm Reading, 2026: Theo of Golden

 

What I’m Reading, 2024, Cultish

What I'm Reading 2023: A Gentleman In Moscow

 

This was a fascinating read. Clever, clever, clever writing! 

Towles is a master of words and character and plot development. I was left with a great respect and compassion for this very believable, realistic man named Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov. He was a member of a prominent Russian family, firmly embedded in the aristocracy of the old pre-revolution Russia. The Count strikes me as similar to the TV series' Inspector Hercule Poirot, if only in appearance and demeanor.

We are fully instructed in the nuances of the child's family through numerous remembrances and reflections of stories from his past.

As far as the plot goes, the story begins when in 1917 The Count is arrested on a return from living as a young man in Paris. He is identified as a Significant Person. He could have been executed, but having a anti-Tsarist poem attributed (incorrectly) to him, he was placed under house arrest. And so the Count spends the next forty years of his life living in The Hotel Metropol, working as a waiter, and working with the same staff members for years, learning to win them as friends and win their trust. 

The Count's adventures explore and illustrate what it means for a man of privilege who is now faced with upheavals of his beloved country and its government. How can he reconsider his existence? How can he continue to live with dignity and to care for people in his orbit? The Count's upbringing as an upper-class gentleman has imbued him with a sense of generosity, good faith, politeness and the necessity of giving attention to the utmost detail pertaining to human behavior and preference. 

His work as a waiter in the Hotel Metropol's top dining room provides the anchor point for an ongoing adventure through the rapidly changing political and cultural life during Russia in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. An immensely satisfying ending, with several laugh-out-loud moments along the way.

Anand Giridharas - True American Book Club Excerpts

https://the.ink/p/thetrueamerican1

https://the.ink/p/thetrueamerican2

https://the.ink/p/thetrueamerican3

https://the.ink/p/thetrueamerican4

https://the.ink/p/thetrueamerican5

https://the.ink/p/thetrueamerican6

https://the.ink/p/thetrueamerican7

What I'm Reading 2019: Kay Tur, Unbelievable

What I'm Reading 2019: Donna Brazile, Hacks

What I'm Reading 2019: Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom

What I'm Reading 2019: Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers

The remarkable documentary about Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, two American patriots who were key movers in the Eisenhower era. Together they were instrumental in inspiring and enacting the American foreign policy of intervention, bullying and deposing of governments in developing countries. The overt policies of Foster Dulles who was Secretary of State worked hand in hand with the top-secret tactics of brother Allen. Remarkably, using the over-inflated threat of world communist takeover as the rationale, they blatantly intervened to influence political people and events in countries with which they deemed the USA had significant business interests. 

The book goes into intimate details about campaigns, over and covert, to overthrow and blatantly push for American outcomes in Guatemala, Iran, Congo, Indonesia, Cuba. 

Tactics included buying political allegiance with millions of dollars approved by Eisenhower, all top secret; supporting alternate leaders with money, false news stories and actual false content; manipulating the local playing field in whatever way possible; and ultimately participating in the direct assassination of a leader (Congo's Lumumba).

By playing upon and building up the fears of the people and members of congress with regard to communism, and with Eisenhower in agreement directing this secret choir of bullies, the Dulles brothers were given billions of dollars in resources to play their weird game of chess.

What I'm Reading In 2019: Joshua Safran, Free Spirit

An incredible story of a boy whose childhood consisted of being dragged around the US midwest by his single mom, living in off-grid communes, hippie farms, and new-age wacko towns. It shows how the mom's sincere but sincerely wrong belief can lead to a wasted life and needless self-inflicted grief. She had been raised with strong anti-government bias, and spent too much energy trying to escape from the clutches of what she believed was the evils of government, corruption and capitalism in "the system." 

The book tells the story of the boy Josh watching his mother being abused by a shyster father figure who came into their lives and basically destroyed what was a peaceful coexistence with his mom. It reflects on Josh's coming of age and his increasing self-awareness of how life actually is. Josh ultimately has more courage within him than he originally believes and he finally takes matters into his own hands and chases the asshole out the door. The story also shows the brutality and bully instincts of school kids who have absolutely no class, and reveals a Lord Of The Flies world of violence, classism, and potential murder which exists closer to each of us than we think. Ultimately the book is a story of triumph and extremely inspiring to me. 

What I'm Reading in 2019: Richard Wagamese, Indian Horse

Sad, instructive. Important that I read this story and realize once again that my country has been guilty of cultural genocide since its inception. 

"Nothing about us without us."

What I'm Reading Now: Growing Pains by Gwynne Dyer

A good companion to my earlier reading choice, "The Industries of the Future". Dyer makes a good case for the necessity of humanity figuring out a way to close the income gap in developed countries to avoid excessive anger and frustration from upsetting the delicate balance of democracy.

Here's What I'm Reading Today: The Amateurs

Set in dystopian Hamilton, where a band of 40 survivors are the only ones left in the city. A strange technology has introduced "ports" into households around the world, promoted by a multinational corporation called PINA. The ports have a strange, alluring power and people are being drawn into them under the guise of entertaining themselves with time travel. Problem is, they never come back. They are gone into the multiverse, and nobody knows why they aren't returning.

Fought my way through it to the end. Disappointing and wishy-washy. 

What The Heck Am I Reading Now? - Summer 2018 Medicine Walk

Very worthwhile. I've reserved other books by this same author from the library. This is my own journey of reconciliation. I need to try and understand the way things are, the way things were, and the way things ought to be. I need to hear these stories and understand the struggles and injustice that were done. I need to see and learn the value of the indigenous culture which I have only been given little bits of.

What the Heck Am I Reading Now? Summer 2018 - I Married the Klondike

This book is a Thrift Store find. I picked it up at the Owen Sound Salvation Army Thrift Shop. Brenda, Olivia, and I popped in there last week. It was a good visit. We picked up a few nick knacks including a Pyrex pie plate for me to get crazy with when fresh fruit or chicken comes along.

Laura Beatrice Berton is the mother of famed Canadian journalist, writer, and historian Pierre Berton. In Pierre's introduction we learn that he hiked up the Chilkoot Pass with two of his seven children in 1971, and then the next year he published a book called Drifting Home along with a number of special features in McLean's magazine in which he drifted from down the Yukon River to Dawson City with his wife and all seven of his children to re-live the journey he had taken as a boy.

Pierre Berton was born in Whitehorse and grew up in Dawson City. His mother, while always a writer, did not at first think that the life and times of Dawson City in the early 1900s was anything worth writing about. But of course it was. The pioneers of the gold rush from 1896 - 1898 were still around, and the city had kept all of its culture and trappings while the population declined from 8000 at its peak to 800 in 1932 when the family left. Berton arrived in 1906 and the city was already in decline. 

Lots of stories of the lives of courageous men and women who basically carved out a life based on a dream. Tales of survival, adventure, raising kids in the sparest of conditions, wilderness boating on wild rivers, and cultural anomalies in an isolated city that was cut off in the winter from all supply lines.

What the Heck Am I Reading Now? Summer 2018 - The Last Neanderthal

Interesting as a thought experiment, about how a female neanderthal would live in the years of the species' decline just before extinction. Neanderthals are a thing, scientifically speaking. Not made up. Human DNA has a large chunk of chromosomes that are the same as neanderthal DNA. Which indicates that humans and neanderthals are two separate species originating from a common ancestor, but that they also co-existed on earth and that they inter-bred.

The book illustrates the idea of how a human child could be found, adopted, and raised by a neanderthal family, and tries to explore how the neanderthals were different. Their bodies were more in-tune with the environment in terms of smell and sensing what was going on in the air. The author creates a theory that the family unit sleeps and dreams together and exchanges information from their ancestors through dreams. The body of knowledge of the family unit is the life force that keeps them going.

The young human who has been adopted by the family ends up running away when he sees the landscape pointing to his homeland. It is across the prairie where the neanderthals would never go. The boy tries to explain to the woman that she needs to follow him to survive and give birth to her baby, but she can't make herself go. 

The buries herself in an underground den to survive the winter. She gives birth to a baby which doesn't survive. She keeps a bone from the baby's fore-arm and wears it around her waist.

The modern connection is the woman archeologist who has discovered two skeletons in a cave in France. They are a neanderthal and a human, obviously buried facing each other, or perhaps they died in that position of looking into each other's eyes. A small human arm bone is found beside the skeleton of the neanderthal woman.

We are left to image how this might have come to be, and the book tells an interesting and informative story to help us along the way. It also helps illuminate and describe the feelings and physical forces that take over when a woman is pregnant, and how the demands of being pregnant and producing a baby, giving birth, caring for it, all fall on the woman no matter what walk of life she is from. There is that place of commonality for every woman, even across the line separating neanderthal females and human females.

Interesting. I would recommend it.

What I'm Reading - Feb 2016

Title: The Industries of the Future

Author:  Alec Ross

The book explores how technological developments and global shifts and trends will create our future, whether we like it or not. 

Key idea: "Societies that do not overcome their negative cultural legacies regarding the treatment of women will founder in the next wave of innovation."

1. Here Come The Robots

LIASMA - This is my acronym for LIfe ASsist MAchine. As it turns out, aging populations in many developed countries will not have enough people available to care for them. The answer is already being developed in Japan, where research and development of assistive robots is underway. How do you feel about a robot brushing your mom's teeth, or helping her get out of bed? 

The combination of cultural, demographic, and technological factors means that we will get our first glimpse of a world full of robots in East Asia.

2. Genetics and Genomics: The Future of the Human Machine

Many of the most powerful Chinese leaders believe that genomics is the next trillion-dollar industry, and they are determined to be its leader.

Summer Reading 2010 - Shogun, James Clavell

A powerful and enthralling story. It really helps you understand some of the depth and richness of Japanese culture and history. After reading this book I went and rented the movie, which I think did the book justice. The Samurai warrior is not made up. Just to realize that there was actually honour in dying well and in a way that didn't bring shame upon yourself was worth the read.

Summer Reading 2010 - Whirlwind, James Clavell

When my dad gave this to me to read, I hesitated at first because of the sheer size of the book, over a thousand pages in small type. But his excitement won me over, and I picked it up back in March. I finally finished it two months later, and have been please to discover how impressive James Clavell is (was) as a story teller. He takes time and care to build a vast cast of characters, and combines their personalities into an action filled story that is plausible, historically and culturally accurate, and thoroughly entertaining.

The story is set during the Iranian Revolution of the late 1970's, and tells the imaginary story of how a British helicopter company extricated itself, its equipment and all of its expatriate staff from Iran as the country was seized by radical Islam. The story paints a believable picture of how brutal legalism, tribalism, family loyalties, hypocrisy, various cultural beliefs, traditions and ultimately, love, courage and devotion, are all forces that can shape, inspire and also destroy people's lives