Good books to read

“Midnight in Chernobyl” by Adam Higgenbotham. Couldn’t put it down. “Shadow Divers” and “Blind Mans Bluff” are excellent reads.
 
"These Truths" Jill Lepore
"Blind Man's Bluff" Sontag & Drew
"Candy Bombers" Andrei Cherny
"Shadow Divers" Robert Kurson
"The Doomsday Machine" Daniel Ellsberg
"The Gulag Archipelago" Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"12 Rules for Life" Jordan Peterson
"Fearless" Eric Blehm

All fantastic books and you get to learn something as a bonus
Just started 12 Rules for Life yesterday.
 
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History John M. Barry Read this and learn so much about flu and viruses in a LONG detailed book and you can impress your friends, and know when the talking heads are just spewing.

The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age Steve Olson very detailed history here. WA history in Hanford 1943+ Amazing. Plenty of information I knew nothing about.
 
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Benzadmiral: thank you for the suggestions sir 🇺🇸👍
You're welcome. I forgot to mention one of my other favorite mystery writers, Rex Stout. His Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin private eye series I discovered when I was 12, and I reread at least 2 or 3 of his novels every year, even when I remember who the murderer is. Now that's writing.

Look for Murder By the Book, Too Many Women, and Might As Well Be Dead, all from the 1950s.
 
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Excellent account of the Manhattan Project beginning with the early experiments with atomic fission ,Germany in the thirties, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Hanford, Trinity Site and much historical information.
 
I am just finishing Mary Trump's clinical analysis of her family. Not political, if that's what you are looking for.
I found it well written, again from a clinical standpoint. Your results may vary...
 
Dark Eagle by Ben Rich (Successor to Kelly Johnson). The info and humor about various projects is cool. Like the time he rolled up the blueprints to THE F-117A Nighthawk, put them in his overcoat and went to the hospital where Kelly Johnson was. This wouldn't happen in today's world. Blood on the risers about the story in Vietnam is an intense but good one.
 
I'm going to re-read A Sand County Almanac by legendary conservationist Aldo Leopold. It's all about developing a land ethic - appreciating and practicing good principles regarding the land from which everything we do is tied to. It's not over the top. Just simple, plain ideas that we have become distanced from in our modern ways. I imagine it appeals to people that already spend time outdoors hiking, fishing, hunting, camping, photography, etc..

Thanks Pablo! - Listening to John Denver's To the Wild Country as I wrote this. Good Monday morning all - have a great week.
 
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I'd like to see this thread keep going. There's too many to just keep listing so I'll stick to my most recent read for now.

I just finished "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

To me, it was very much a novel about self definition and figuring out who you are and what you expect from life and the world around you. It was a different perspective, for me, on a lot of commonalities of growing up, not just as children but in adulthood as well, and I could relate to a lot of the ideas and themes throughout.

I thought it was great and I'd recommend to just about anyone.
 
Recently reread The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth. Excellent book, highly recommended if you like history-based fiction. As with many of his books, it's hard to tell where the history ends and the fiction begins.

As well, I'm not sure whether anyone has mentioned Martin Caidin yet. His aerospace novels are top-notch, as is his military history. Black Thursday, a non-fiction account of the disastrous October 1943 Schweinfurt raid by the USAAF, is absolutely gripping.
 
I don't know if you get into fiction, but the Chronicles of Narnia series was pretty good. Each individual book isn't 500 pages, so that was nice. There is another shorter novel by Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Grey. It was good literature, kind of philosophical reflection on human nature. Sherlock Holmes stories were my introduction to detective fiction. If you want something longer, you could try Raymond Chandler & Dashiel Hammet, who wrote stories that a lot of those old 1940s detective movies featuring Bogart were based on. If you are into racier detective stories, the James Bond series of novels by Ian Fleming was pretty good, Diamonds are Forever is probably my fav of his novels. If you are into politics, you might enjoy 1984.

After years of insisting that I didn't like reading ebooks, I bought a Kindle Fire tablet and have read several on it. At some point in the next year it will have paid for itself--archive.org has an ebook lending library that only requires a login, no paid subscription at all, usually give you 14 days to finish an ebook.
I reread the Narnia books regularly - it seems that the more I read them, the more I see things I'd missed previously. Lewis was a brilliant writer.
 
biography, history, aviation. I’ll read anything except romance stuff LOL!

Military history: The Longest Day...At Dawn We Slept...A Bridge Too Far
Science fiction: Dune...Dune Messiah...Children of Dune...anything by Issac Asimov but especially the Foundation Trilogy.
 
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