• Cyburbia is a friendly big tent, where we share our experiences and thoughts about urban planning practice, the built environment, planning adjacent topics, and anything else that comes to mind. No ads, no spam, and it's free. It's easy to join!

Book club 📖 What are we reading right now? (Planning related or not)

It's been a couple of years .....started up on "The Fellowship of the Ring" last night.
 
Picked up Murder in Retribution from the library. Anne Cleeland's second Scotland Yard series - I have high hopes for this one!
 
from my library coop
Game of thrones, on and off again , skimming to the best parts :-$

just started and its not too scholarly but well researched by Kara Cooney - The woman who would be king / Hatshepsuts rise to power in ancient egypt

and Landscaping for Wildlife Minn DNR ......rushes reeds and sedges oh my!
 
I picked up Walkable City by Jeff Speck awhile ago and am finally allotting myself enough time to read through it. I also have been leafing through The Job of the Practicing Planner by Albert Solnit, which is understandably dated at this point and shows it a bit. Still, some useful information at times.

I've got a substantial backlog of books on my shelf that I hope to work on soon, fingers crossed. Most of my reading lately has been work-related, the above work-relevant books, and comics.
 
Greg Heller, Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building of Modern Philadelphia. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)

So far enjoying it, doesn't move as slow as The Power Broker and interesting to hear about a different approach to urban renewal.

Forgot that his son is Kevin Bacon...
 
Masswich said:
Greg Heller, Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building of Modern Philadelphia. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)

So far enjoying it, doesn't move as slow as The Power Broker and interesting to hear about a different approach to urban renewal.

Forgot that his son is Kevin Bacon...
Click to expand...

So he is, like, only one degree from Kevin Bacon. :D

Does he call making love "Makin' Bacon"?
 
Dead Wake by Erik Larson

About the last voyage and sinking of the RMS Lusitania and the submarine that torpedoed her.

Worth the read. :)
 
Finished Heartless and started Timeless, the last of the series. Gail Carriger does snarky, supernatural, steampunk-light very well, and makes my lunchtime reading time whizz by.

Can't really get into Murder in Retribution. I think my hopes were too high and it's just not as good as the first book. But I will slog on, because it's not unusual for one book in a series to be not as good as the others. Since the third one in the series is out now, I want to get this one done.
 
Went to a wedding last weekend in Fairhope Al, needed a pocket book for the trip.

something to distract while in the air, and being somewhat of a fan of sailor stories i found it in - 100th anniversary edition of Sea Wolf, Jack London.

5 pages left to go, and :-c:-c:-c

must add to bookshelf!

The wedding was great :h: , love love that area, single tax community 99 year leases? wtf but JUBILEE!
 
Just finished "Whatever Happened to the Metric System?" by John Bemelmans Marciano, who is the grandson of the author of the "Madeleine" books and wrote a few of them himself. A good overview of what has succeeded and failed in universal measurements, and how the decision to use them is ultimately a political and policy decision. While he seems somewhat against metric measurements, his points that (1) the USA has done a lot more to "metricate" than you think and (2) with computers and technology we actually are essentially already using metric, with a lot of instant conversions to English measurements done on the fly. Also, he raises an interesting point that the metric calendar and time efforts generally fell flat everywhere.

Finally, for those who think the USA is a bunch of dumbasses who can't even be bothered to learn more than one language, he points out that we are somewhat bilingual when it comes to measurements, and that's fairly unique in the world.
 
Read 3 books on vacation

History -
Pacific Payback:The Carrier Aviators Who Avenged Pearl Harbor at the Battle of Midway by Stephen L. Moore
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pacific-payback-stephen-l-moore/1118326599?ean=9780451465528

The pilot and gunner of a Dauntless dive-bomber are RUGGED!


The Long Beach Island Reader Edited by Margaret Thomas Buchholz
http://www.down-the-shore.com/reader.html


Military Fiction -
Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War by P. W. Singer, August Cole
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ghost-fleet-p-w-singer/1119983074?ean=9780544142848
 
Guilty summer reading:

The Hot Zone and Siren's Call, both by Jayne Anne Krentz. Paranormal romance at its finest.

To redeem myself, I started a plan at the beginning of summer to read one classic a month. Books that I should have read in high school or college, but either they weren't assigned or I was unaware of them. So I'll vary those to keep from getting bored.
 
"The Alienist" by Caleb Carr. A crime novel set in NYC during Teddy Roosevelt's time as reform-minded Police Commissioner
 
Harvest Home, by Thomas Tryon. Weird folks do weird things in an isolated New England community.Corn is very important to these people.
 
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
 
I just finished reading a short book of essays called "Why This Work Matters." It's a collection of essays written by planners, managers, and other similarly employed government officials that basically serves as a "you are not alone" reminder. I picked it up when I was going through a bit of a rough time at work, and I recommend it for anyone in the public sector (or private sector even) that is in need of a pep talk for this kind of work.
 
Lowland said:
I just finished reading a short book of essays called "Why This Work Matters." It's a collection of essays written by planners, managers, and other similarly employed government officials that basically serves as a "you are not alone" reminder. I picked it up when I was going through a bit of a rough time at work, and I recommend it for anyone in the public sector (or private sector even) that is in need of a pep talk for this kind of work.
Click to expand...

Thanks - glad it worked for you! :h:;)
 
The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths: How Smart Growth Will Harm American Cities by R. O'Toole
 
The House I Loved by Tatiana De Rosnay

An interesting historical fiction about the transformation of Paris in the mid 19th century. Good from a planning or preservationist point of view.
 
Just finished Peter Bowen's Coyote Wind, the first of the Gabriel Du Pré detective series. It is set in Montana with a main character who is a metis (half Indian-half white).
 
22BREATHED-master675.jpg


FROM ARTICLE: When Harper Lee, of ‘Mockingbird,’ Corresponded With Opus the Penguin’s Creator
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/books/harper-lee-and-berkeley-breathed.html?_r=0
 
Zoning Goddess said:
Erik Larson, Dead Wake about the Lusitania; could not put it down. Fabulous book.
Click to expand...

I got this for my husband and am in line to read it

I finished Food by Jim Gaffigan over the weekend and it is so funny

Then I finished Find Her by Lisa Gardner

Working on Descent by Tim Johnston
 
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

Anthony Marra

Prizewinning first novel about the two wars in Chechnya in the '90's.
 
Back
Top