Book suggestions...
Cross posted from the lit group.
Both me and my father love a good book and every Christmas I try my best to get him a few great books. But it seems to get harder every year to find something new in a vein he likes. He has a personal library of some 2000+ book, not that he's read anywhere near all of them but it just goes to show how much he enjoys books.
His main areas of interest would be literature, history ( especially Asia and Europe, but the key thing is they have to be engrossingly written, he's not a historical "fact" reader), Asian studies and experience (we lived in Asia for over 4 years and he taught and speaks fluent Chinese), biography. The main thing he does for, as well as myself, is amazing style in prose. So not just a page turner, or a good yarn but something really artfully written. I posted something similar in a previous year here on DU and got a number of very good suggestions leading to a purchase of a book on the history of Africa "King Leopold's Ghost", sorry I can't remember who this was.
Other books I've gotten for him in the past that he has really enjoyed include "The Emperor of all Maladies", "The brief wondrous life of oscar wao", "Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles", "Maximum City", and others.
His favorite fiction author is probably "Philip Roth" but he loves anything with amazing style.
I list all of this hopping someone will twig to one of these books and can recommend something along one of these veins. Of course I love reading too so this is a list as much for myself as for looking for a present.
= new reply since forum marked as read
If not, I recommend #3 from his series, "HMS Surprise" (they made a movie out of the tenth book, "Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World"
. It's a great way to get hooked.
superb I'd call him a Rothian writer. Regardless, I've never read such brilliantly insightful descriptions of the the psychology among mothers and their children, and how they all move on, or don't, from the both the personal and the political sins of the ancestors.
I'd also highly recommend 'The Swerve: How the World Became Modern' by Stephen Greenblatt. It's a real page turner about how one monk literally saves from destruction by the Catholic Church one of the most important books of Golden Age Greece.
