red scare – Cannonball Read 17

“What I say is that I am innocent… I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian…”

Doomed: Sacco, Vanzetti, & the End of the American Dream by John Florio and Ouisie Shapiro

May 29, 2024 by faintingviolet Leave a Comment

The Read Harder Challenge strikes again. Task 15 for this year was to read a YA non-fiction work, and that is an area of my to read list that is stunningly small. I thought I had a book picked out, but it turned out to not be YA (but, The Art and Life of HIlma af Klint was still an enjoyable read). I went back to the Arlington, VA Public library list of books you might have missed in 2023 to produce some additional ideas […]

April 2024 Leftovers

X = : Poems by Stephen Berg

Charcoal Joe by Walter Mosley

A Game of Lies by Clare Mackintosh

The Hurricane Blonde by Halley Sutton

Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

L.A. Requiem by Robert Crais

Watch It Burn by Kristen Bird

Sleep With Strangers by Dolores Hitchens

The Fixer: Moguls, Mobsters, Movie Stars, and Marilyn by Josh Young

One of Us Is Wrong by Sam Holt

The Fade Out by Ed Brubaker

The Second Murderer by Denise Mina

Blackmailer by George Axelrod

The Darkest Glare: A Story of Murder, Blackmail, and Real Estate Greed in 1979 Los Angeles by Chip Jacobs

Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith

May 6, 2024 by Jake Leave a Comment

Happy April, y’all! X = : Poems**** This is why library book bingos are necessary. I only checked this one out because I needed to read a book of poems and I wanted to check the nettlesome “X” off the A-Z reading list. A convoluted reason to begin with and this wasn’t even the book I thought I was getting! I thought I’d get a different X by a different author. I’m glad I got this one. Some of these really spoke to me, including […]

To Bomb Atomically

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

July 28, 2023 by Jake Leave a Comment

One of my all-time favorite movies is The Hunt for Red October. I can never get over one of those opening scenes where the Red October’s political officer is reading from a book owned by ship captain Marko Raimius, played by Sean Connery. The officer reads the line “I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.” I still recall their exchange, with Connery doing his parts in his typical gravelly patrician tone: Connery: It was said by an American. PO: American? Connery: Mmmhmm. He invented the atomic […]

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