Tom's Book Picks
our coach's favorite reads...list one of two
When you get to a certain point you have accumulated pretty much everything you need, most of what you want and even some of the things you covet. The last thing you need is another piece of cute crap or more ties. So, I ask for books, sometimes I see things I find interesting, sometimes Molly gets books for me or for herself and then I steal them. I have two brothers-in-law (not Frank) who delight in getting me challenging books. The easy ones get read pretty quickly and the hard ones accumulate. With my retirement I have the time to dig in to the backlog. So here is what I have been reading in the last few months plus some additions from the last few years that are especially interesting. Some were audiobooks.
Jim Henson, by Brian Jay Jones and Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. Brilliant innovators, leaders of large organizations and both died too young. Beyond that they could not be more different.
What It Means to Be Moral, by Phil Zuckerman and Who Needs God, by Harold Kushner (on the pending list). God and faith are either the key to a moral and fulfilled life or unnecessary and a hindrance to same.
Furious Hours, by Casey Cep and In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote. The bizarre story of a true crime and the book that Harper Lee never wrote and the bizarre story of a true crime she helped Capote write about.
Things That Bother Me, by Galen Strawson and The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner. Time to put on your big reader pants! The first is a series of essays by a philosopher at the University of Texas, the second a groundbreaking work of fiction, and both reward the hard work.
Empty Mansions, by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr and American Fire, by Monica Hesse. The story of an heiress who becomes a hermit in her own mansion while maintaining other properties she never visits and the story of a couple losers who burn down old abandoned houses. Bizarro both.
Shanghai Diary, by Ursula Bacon. It turns out that thousands of Jews escaping Germany in the 1930s ended up in Shanghai.