Favorite Reading
Endurance by Alfred Lansing. Written in 1959, this is the true story of Sir Ernest Shackleton's attempt in 1914 to walk across Antarctica, and of his ship becoming trapped in ice, and of his heroic measures to rescue himself and his men. A fantastic adventure. You'll be glad you weren't there.
Son of the Morning Star by Evan S. Connell. A reexamination of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, where it was George Custer's hard luck to trip upon the largest encampment of hostile Indians in American history. Gripping, even though we know the outcome. You'll be glad you weren't there.
The Godfather by Mario Puzo. Ranks with Gone with the Wind as the great American novels.
A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman. This history by the Pulitzer Prize winner is about England and France in the 14th Century, where the bubonic plague, the papal schism, and the Hundred Years War made life hell but fascinating. This is lively, anecdotal history for the layman. You'll be glad you weren't there.
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel takes place in the Old West but is not a genre western. The reader wishes it were twice as long.
Peter the Great by Peter Maas. Endlessly engrossing history of one of the world's great political and military leaders.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. With this work, Capote invented the true crime genre, and his book has never been surpassed. It chronicles the murder of the Cutter family in Kansas. You'll be glad you weren't there.
Master and Commander and its sequels, by Patrick O'Brian. These novels about a Royal Navy captain and his ship's surgeon who is also an intelligence agent are observant, educated, witty, and exciting.
A Soldier of the Great War, by Mark Helprin. Funny and poignant. Helprin invents beautiful and lyrical phrases. An old man, an Italian, looks back on his life, particularly the Great War. The reader veers back and forth between out-loud laughter and misty eyes.
The Journeyer by Gary Jennings. A fictionalized account of Marco Polo's trip from Italy to China in the 1200s. One fantastic, bewildering, life-or-death adventure after antoher, and the reader's eyes shine with wonderment at the passing sights and cultures.
Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and And a Fistful of Fig Newtons by Jean Shepherd. Hilarious reminiscences of growing up in the 1940s in an Indiana steel town.
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth, a terrific lesson in how to write a thriller.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Cyberpunk thriller about the disjointed, fallen-apart wired world in the not-too distant future.
Hyperion and its three sequels, by Dan Simmons. The universe as it may be a thousand years from now, an astonishing leap of the imagination.
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