The Official Non Fiction Book Thread.
CaptShazam_Jr
Posts: 100
This is a companion thread to go along with the offical novel thread.
I read a lot and I track everthing I read. I have been tracking my comics reading since Oct 2014 and my non comics reading since March 2015.
To get the thread going, I will start it off with my 2021 non fiction list:
1. A World Undone: The Story of the Great War 1914 to 1918 by G.J. Meyer (finished on 11 Feb)
2. A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial by James Reston Jr. (finished on 16 Feb)
3. The World According to Dutch by Dutch Mantell (finished on 21 Feb)
4. The WrestleCrap Book of Lists by RD Reynolds (finished on 22 Feb)
5. 95 Theses by Martin Luther (finished on 24 Feb)
6. Sisterhood of the Squared Circle: The history and Rise of Women's Wrestling by Pat Laprade and Dan Murphy (finished on 28 Feb)
7. Talking as Fast as I can: From Gilmore to Gilmore by Laura Graham (finished on 1 March)
8. Coffee at Luke's: An unauthorized Gilmore Girls gabfast by Jennifer Cruise (finished on 1 Mar)
9. 1911: The First 100 Years by Patrick Sweeney (finished on 16 March)
10. Truman by David McCullough
Comments
The World of Star Trek by David Gerrold (1984 version) finished on 5/22/21
I was looking through your nonfiction list. I read through the 95 Theses back either my senior year in highschool or first year in college.
@mwhitt80 I read it the first time in college as well. Probably in 98 or 99. I was a history major and my advisor specialized in reformation history so it was pretty much required.
Lobotomy The Dee Dee Ramone "Bio"
Got this as a gift for Xmas and it just got stuck in a box until a month ago. Decent read. But really nothing in it I hadn't heard before in interviews/other books. Not that much info on the band or all that. But lots of stories of Dee Dee trying to score dope.
@dubbat138
Did you read Please Kill Me Now by Legs McNeill? It was about the history of punk rock.
I feel at least half of that was about herion use.
I got to get a copy of that.
It's really good.
Right after I finished it I met Richard Hell from the band Television on my one and only visit to the university of Michigan. We got to talking and I brought up I just finished Please Kill Me Now. He said something like "Some people's jobs are doctors and lawyers. I was rockstar; our job was to do drugs and party".
Founding Brothers, The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph Ellis.
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg by James McPherson
The Texas Aggie Bonfire: Tradition and Tragedy at Texas A&M by Irwin A. Tang.
I went with a high class poetry for the my non-fiction reading assignment.
Wrestling with Ryhme by Leaping Lanny Poffo. It's about $3.00 on the Amazon Kindle and I feel that it was well worth the money.
ABout 2/3rds of the way through the Roger Corman bio. Really good stuff if you are into indie cinema.
For 2021 so far....
Rick Steves' Europe's Top 100 Masterpieces by Rick Steves and Gene Openshaw (2019)
The Art Detective: Fake, Frauds, and Finds and the Search for Lost Treasures by Philip Mould (2010)
(R)evolution: Gary Numan The Autobiography (2020)
Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario (2014 edition)
From 2020.....
Tintin: Hergé and his Creation by Harry Thompson (1991)
Chrissie Hynde: Reckless: My Life as a Pretender (2015)
Truth & Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelites and the Old Masters (2018)
Pre-Raphaelite Women by Jan Marsh (1987/1994)
The Museum of Scandals: Art that Shocked the World by Éléa Baucheron and Diane Routex (2013)
Mucha by Jiri Mucha, Marina Henderson, and Aaron Scharf (1971/1976)
The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill LePore (2014)
My Captain America by Megan Marguilies (2020)
Mac Raboy: Master of the Comics by Roger Hill (2019)
Fright Favorites by David J. Skal (2020)
Halloween: Lore and Legend by Kirk Kimball (2017)
Halloween: An American Holiday, an American History by Lesley Pratt Bannatyne (1990)
The Outer Limits at 50 by David J. Schow (2014)
Halloween: The History of America's Darkest Holiday by David J. Skal (2016)
Christmas in the Movies by Jeremy Arnold (2018)
Holly Jolly by Mark Voger (2020)
Master of the Ring - The biography of Nature Boy Buddy Rogers.
Good book if you are interested in pro wrestling history.
I've got the buddy Rogers book on my shelf; I guess I need to pull it down.
I read this about a month ago Slaughter in the Streets: When Boston Became Boxing's Murder Capital by Don Stradley.
An interesting book about Boston's boxing scene from the early 1910s through the 70s and how so many of the fighters got involved with crime. Here's a hint it doesn't end well for most of the former boxers
Mat Memories - by John Anthony Arezzi
John has lived many lives. He started photographing wrestling and the freddie Blaise fan club. Managed Patty loveless before she made it big. Had one of the first radio shows talking about wrestling, got Vince Russo into the business (and asked to be forgiven making Russo), went back to the country music business, and now back to wrestling.
It's a really good read.
And his family was "connected".
Star Trek: The Fifty Year Mission - the first 25 years and the next 25 years (2 vols)
An oral history of Star Trek told largely from the perspective of the writers and producers. The first book covers the TOS crew era (including movies) and the 2nd book covers TNG thru the pre release hype for Star Trek Beyond.
In basic, everybody overall respected Gene Roddenberry but hated him on a day to day basis. TOS era writers hated that he heavily rewrote their stuff and the TNG era hated that he (and later Rick Berman) enforced a rigid view of what Star Trek was supposed to be.
TNG is the only show where all the cast actually liked each other and are even still close friends today. The writers had a miserable experience and there was large turnover turning the first few seasons.
Voyager seems like the worst of the shows to have worked on. Kate Mulgrew attempted to “out Shatner” Shatner and was a monster the last 4 seasons as she hated the introduction of the Seven of 9 character and took it out on the actress Jeri Ryan. Nearly everyone says they hated coming to work. The actor who played Chakotay hated everything about the show except the pay check and he has no problem burying it every chance he gets.
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent. A good book about the 18th amendment that banned the production, transport, and sale of most alcohol for 13 years (along with all the crime that came with it).
Do What You Want AKA The Bad Religion Book- Finally got a copy of this in a week ago this past Friday.
There was plenty of info in the book that was new to me. Plus lots of gaps in my knowledge about the band got filled in.
Started on This Music Leaves Stains AKA The Misfits book 2 days ago.
Currently reading I'm Staying with My Boys: The Heroic Life of Sgt John Basilone, USMC by Jim Proser (with Basilone's nephew Jerry Cutter credited). Alas, while purported to be the authorized (by his family) biography of Basilone, it's a pretty poorly constructed work that was clearly intended to be shopped as a script for a movie. It takes some pretty significant liberties, including being structured as a first person narrative (including the day that Basilone died) and describes conversations between Basilone and Chesty Puller where no one else was present and with no attributions. He's at least consistent about that. There are occasional "scene breaks" where the broader perspective of the War in the Pacific is described with a level of detail and style that very much feels too scholarly to have been written by the same author.
Were it not a favorite historical figure of my departed father, a book inherited from his library, and perchance an opportunity to better understand how his distorted worldview came to pass, I would have put this one in File 13.
Zero stars, would not recommend.
Recent Books:
National Wrestling Alliance by Tim Hornbaker - a history of the early days of territorial non WWF/E wrestling. Kind of dry but a must read if this type of interests you. Hornbaker is one of the better wrestling history writers out there.
A Country of Vast Designs by Robert W. Merry - The history of the presidency of James K. Polk and the Mexican War to add Texas to the nation.
Last Men Out: The True Story of America's Heroic Final Hours in Vietnam by Bob Drury and Tom Calvin - This is the story of the Marine security detachments who guarded the US embassies in Vietnam and the goings on during the fall of Saigon. A very good book.
31 Days: Gerald Ford, the Nixon Pardon and a Government in Crisis by Barry Werth - The story of Gerald Ford's first month in office after Nixon resigned and the decision to issue Nixon a pardon.
Top Gun Days - The middle book in a 3 book autobiography series about the military career of Dave Baranek who was a naval aviator and one of the consultants on the original Top Gun movie.
Live Long and.... by William Shatner. Shatner talks about what he has learned in his long life. He was around 87 when this book came out and as of 6/28/22 he is 91 years old. Not a great read except for maybe the last chapter in which Shatner talks about his fear of death. Most of it is exactly what you would expect from Shatner.
If you want to read a fun book about the history of star trek 50 Year Mission by Edward Gross & Mark Altman.
@mwhitt80 I read those 50 Year Mission books last year. They are excellent. It was really interesting to learn how much backstage contention there was on all the shows with the production staffs.
I saw Anne Frank on the google home page a few days ago so I had to start reading Diary of a Young Girl. A friend says this means I'm "susceptible to digital neurological enticement".