Winter Reading

[3dogs]

I just want to say thanks for this thread.  I have been scratching for semething new to read and now I have a dozen titles.

I just finished two by John Krakauer:

Into the Wild - also a movie about the young man who ditches society and ends up starving to death in Alaska

Into Thin Air - It is an account of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.  Just fascinating.  

Also: Open Country Mule Deer - Dwight Schuh.  Excellent book on spot and stalk.  

Brian

[dirtdog]

While researching my possible endeavor into sheep and boarder collies, I came across some books by Jon Katz. So far this month I have read; “The Dogs of Bedlam Farm”, “Dog Days”, “A Good Dog” and I am in the middle of “A Dog Year”. Next up is “Katz on Dogs” followed by “The New Work of Dogs”. They are easy reads and pretty entertaining. What really caught my attention was that his farm is named Bedlam Farm, which was the name of my horse farm and kennel with my ex-wife.

I need to get some GBE stuff. I haven’t read anything by him and have been wanting to.

Jay

[Uplander]

I think I'll rekindle a tradition from childhood. I always used to read the Hardy Boys    "The Mystery at Cabin Island" every christmas when I was young. I dug it out last night.....the best Hardy Boys ever.  

Now that brings back some memories!  I have the entire set (the blue, hardcover 1970s editions) still on the shelf at the Old Homestead.  I think there's around 60 or 70 of them, along with the Detective Handbook.  I used to read and reread them when I was a kid.  Maybe I'll take a few off the shelf this coming Christmas vacation....

You nerd.

I have all the "blue one's" too.  

Cabin Island is the one where they visit an island on their ice boats......stay in a cabin there and catch some bad guys. It's very christmasy. I even made my own ice boat when I was like 13 or so........it had ski's and a tarp for a sail. Alas ....it didn't work well but there is a picture somewhere with me sitting on it with a huge proud smile on my face.

OK I am the nerd.

[Brad Eden]

Recently read:

The Wingless Crow by Charles Fergus (sent to me as a gift from jmooney). Charles Fergus is by far my favorite essayist.

Firelight by Burton Spiller. Hey its Spiller--not his best but a good read.

Touch of Wildness by Lew Dietz. (Found it in a dusty old used book store) A compilation of Maine essays by a Maine author I hadn't read before. I am gonna look for more of his stuff--very good.

Now reading American Buffalo by Steven Rinella. Very good so far--filled with the detailed history of the demise and return of the bison--built around a buffalo hunt in remote Alaska.

[shorebird]

Two books that are next on my list are "The Upland Shooting Life" by none other than GBE and "The Upland Equation" By Chuck Fergus. These two should get me through the rest of the season but The Upland Shooting Life looks like I will be picking it up from time to time and selecting certain pages for quick reads.

[Guest]

Starting Harrison's "Returning to Earth," and then next in the stack will be Datus Proper's "Pheasants of the Mind."

Recently got my hands on a couple old Charley Waterman books - "Hunting Upland Birds" and "Field Days." Both are great, classic reads.

[Don Steese]

In view of what's happened to my retirement nestegg during the past year, I've started reading the help wanted ads!  

[Mike Connally]

I'm halfway through "Kerplunk" by Pat McManus.  I love all his books.

[Guest]

I have been in a bit of a tropical mood lately.  I just finished Enchanted Vagabonds by Dana Lamb.  It is the story of the trip he and his wife took in a 16' boat from San Diego to Panama.  The boat looked like a wood sunfish.  The early part of the book was fun because it talked about places I frequented in my misguided youth and the later part talked about places my grandfather had told me about and showed me pictures of from his days collecting for the San Diego Zoo about the same time the events in the book took place, 1930s.  The book is full of excitement including several shoot outs with the local natives, the good old days.

The next book is the Lost Amazon by Wade Davis.  The same author wrote One River and both books are about Richard Evans Schultes adventures collecting in the Amazon.  The Lost Amazon is like a coffee table book of Schultes personal photos with a generous amount of text.  If you are unfamiliar with Schultes he is an interesting guy who was way ahead of Albert Hoffman.

The book that I haven't been able to put down since I found it in a used book store the other day is A Journey in Brazil by Louis Agassiz.  The copy I found is the third edition printed in 1868.  Agassiz was probably the greatest scientific mind of his century.  These days he is a bit out of favor because of his racial theories.  However, that aside, he was a great thinker and he was the first to articulate the idea of ice ages and many other scientific firsts.  The great thing about this book is that it is the original, without modern commentary.  The reader can see for himself Agassiz's skills of observation and reasoning unfiltered.  He made many great leaps of reasoning and many have stood the test of time.

Dave

[Steve Hunts]

Rereading Turgenev's "Sketches from A Hunter's Album" because it is so good.  After that it will be rereading another favorite- Tolstoy's classic, "The Cossacks".

[quailguy]

Rereading Turgenev's "Sketches from A Hunter's Album" because it is so good.  After that it will be rereading another favorite- Tolstoy's classic, "The Cossacks".

Those are good ideas; last read them a 100 years ago at UT.

I just finished the "Brotherhood of War" series by WEB Griffen. Really very enjoyable and authentic series about life and action in the Army, covers from 1940 to the 1960s.

Am working on 2 books currently, "Stories of the Old Duck Hunters" by Gordon MacQuarrie and "Vintage Guns" by Dig Hadoke.

"Bob White" by Dr Fred Guthery is next on the list, then maybe a little Turgenev- he was really into hunting in 19th century Russia and for all the right reasons.

Best,

Quailguy

[frak]

Got on a history kick and jumped into Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow.

I'm plowing through that now.  I read Chernow's bio on JP Morgan a while ago.  One of the neat things was trying to figure out how, in the days before spreadsheets etc., they valued the huge, integrated companies that were emerging in the economy.  I recall a passage having to do with purchases of steel mills on Carnagie's behalf, based on tonnage prices etc., suggesting the use of revenue and earnings multiples.  How did they determine an acceptable hurdle rate?  

Interesting, too, was Morgan's characterization of investors in the capital market as a school of fish that could be scared back into the murky depths during a panic.  A much more illuminating and useful analogy than the misleadingly mechanistic views of the economy we are getting today!  (e.g. "pump priming" the economy).  

Another for history buffs is "Six Frigates", the story of the USS Constitution and its sister ships that formed the U.S. Navy.   They got the wood for the Constitution from Jeckyll Island, in Georgia.  They tramped through those noxious swamps to fell 100+ year-old oaks covered with spanish moss, snakes, and who knows what else.  These oaks provided frame & cladding that cannon shot bounced off of.

I'm ordering "Outliers" from Amazon.  It discusses those on the tails of the statistical distribution.  It'll probably be a one-trick pony of a read, but economist Thomas Sowell recommended it.

I always enjoy this "what are you reading" thread and have gotten some great ideas from people!

[Gunnah]

Some titles that I've enjoyed.

The Bird Dog Book, George Bird Evans

Men Who Shot, George Bird Evans

The Upland Gunners Book, George Bird Evans

Fields of Glory, Everitt Skehan

Field Trials, History, Management and Judging Standards, William F. Brown

National Field Trial Champions 1896-1955, Wm. Brown, Nash Buckingham

National Field Trial Champions 1956-1966, Wm. Brown

Wing and Shot, Robert Wehle

Snakefoot, Robert Wehle

New England Grouse Shooting, William Harnden Foster

Brag Dog and Other Stories, The Best of Vereen Bell

The Modern Pointer, Albert F. Hochwalt

The Modern Setter, Albert F. Hochwalt

Best Way to Train Your Gun Dog, The Delmar Smith Method, Bill Tarrant

For a Handful of Feathers, Guy de la Valdene

Dumb-Bell of Brookfield, Pocono Shot and other Great Dog Stories, John Taintor Foote

Bird Dog Days, Wingshooting Ways, Archibald Rutledge

Tears and Laughter, Gene Hill

The Best of Cory Ford, Cory Ford, edited by Jack Sampson

For the Love of a Dog , A Selection of Classic Bird Dog Stories, edited by Darren Brown

[Old Colonel]

I shall re-read the "American Boys Handy Book" by Dan Beard, peruse the always wonderful stories by Gene Hill, and once again sit spellbound reading Jim Corbett's "Maneater."  Then, perhaps a bit of Peter Hathaway Capstick as I am off to Malawi end of January on a trip.

[Jeff Kimball]

I just finished two by John Krakauer:

Into the Wild - also a movie about the young man who ditches society and ends up starving to death in Alaska

Into Thin Air - It is an account of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.  Just fascinating.  

Funny.. I just read these over the Christmas break.. Into thin Air was great... Into the Wild had me cursing at the book.. not a big fan of glamorizing that tragedy of loose sanity...

Just finished:

Anthony Bourdain "Cooks Tour" NYC Cook goes around the world in search of the perfect meal...Great!

A.J. Jacobs "A year of living biblically" Secular, Jewish bred, Esquire writer examines the fundamentalist aesthetic by trying to live by the rules of the bible as literally as possible while meeting and talking to others who do the same. He keeps it pretty light...I Liked it.. might not be for everybody...