Slashdot Asks: What Are Some Books You Liked Reading This Year? 112
What are some books that you read this year that you enjoyed reading? Doesn't have to be those that released this year -- though if possible, mention any recently published books.
Further reading: Ask Slashdot: What's a 2021 Movie or TV Show That You Enjoyed Watching?
Further reading: Ask Slashdot: What's a 2021 Movie or TV Show That You Enjoyed Watching?
The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Rel (Score:2)
THE BIBLE (Score:2, Funny)
the federalist papers (Score:3)
The federalist papers are jaw dropping. You just would not believe how smart these guys were and hiw they laid out the problem and how they threaded the needle solving it. The most amazing thing is how they foreclosed each edge case except for one . There was one edge case they fully admit they have no solution for. Unfortunately it seems we are in the grips of that right now. Here's a few tidbits, tinier that 3/5ths compromise on slavery everyone looks at as racist. Well it might be that too but at the
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Windup Girl is great!
Recommendation (Score:2)
Read the anti-federalist papers too. It's good to see both sides of the debates our founders had. There were wise men on both sides of many of the debated issues and both sides got things right [and wrong].
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Read the anti-federalist papers too. It's good to see both sides of the debates our founders had. There were wise men on both sides of many of the debated issues and both sides got things right [and wrong].
Yep.
As I recall, it was the anti-federalists demands that got Madison to write and add the Bill of Rights to the Constitution.
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People forget that the Federalists mostly lost the argument.
And the people who advocate for the Federalist Papers today are mostly extreme anti-Federalists by their policies. They don't actually read them, they just heard that's what makes the case for the right-wingers so they recommend it blindly. In the same way they advocate 1984.
There are some good parts to the Federalist Papers, though.
Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government.
From Federalist #1
Genre and historical fiction (Score:2)
I'll add a few more really satisfying fiction series:
If you enjoy Jeeves and Wooster as channeled by Hugh Laurie and steven fry then the book on tapes written by Ben Schott are exquisite . Jeeves and the king of clubs is the first and has the best narrator voicing it . There's lots of imitators and homages to that famous set of books but this author really nails the verbal wit , characters and door slamming farce of the originals. It might even be better than the originals .
Two books by graham Moore, unr
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Small world syndrome? I've been reading Wodehouse and Holmes pastiche novels over the last year. Or are you talking about the continuation novels of Jeeves? Which reminds me of the continuation novels of Nero Wolfe. Some of the continuations aren't too bad, though most have been kind of disappointing.
Re: Genre and historical fiction (Score:2)
In the Sherlock Holmes vein I enjoyed Andy weirs novelette called prof moriarty, consulting criminal. An amusing reversal of the usual point of view. What shelockiana or Wodehouse continuations did you enjoy?
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I only know of two Wodehouse continuations because I stumbled over them at a local library, but I haven't read them yet. Let me dig it up... Must be Ben Schott? You mentioned him, too. Deeper dig came up with nothing else in English, but a couple translations of some sort of miscellany?
Digging further, I discovered that Jeeves and Wooster is a specific reference and there is one copy available at a different library (so I bookmarked the link for now). The CGI gateway is closed again, so it would take too
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I plan to read this soon! Thanks.
Project Hail Mary (Score:5, Interesting)
Ending up reading most of it in one weekend. I wouldn't say it's as good as The Martian, but it's up there.
Re:Project Hail Mary [SLIGHT SPOILERS] (Score:2)
A good dose of nerd crack.
I read it too, also quickly. Very fun, also agree it's not as good as The Martian. Ending was a bit trite, I guess structurally, the near-end final "unexpected" disaster is fine, but made the structure near enough identical to The Martian.
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In some ways a bit disappointing, in others pretty good. Definitely hard science mixed with a nice story. I would say it is well worth the read.
Re: Project Hail Mary (Score:2)
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The Premonition (Score:4)
Michael Lewis' real life story of how a dozen or so bright people planned for and reacted to a pandemic, and how the US's governments and fragmented public health system let us all down.
Interesting read. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but these folks were planning for a pandemic long before 2019.
Lewis is the author of Moneyball, The Big Short and others.
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Everything he writes has been excellent. But I get them from the libraries and that one hasn't become available yet. (At least not in English.)
Hero of Two Worlds by Mike Duncan (Score:4, Interesting)
A biography of the marquis de Lafayette. Four chapters in and loving it.
Re:Hero of Two Worlds by Mike Duncan (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought it was good but not nearly as good as his other book, "The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic", but that might just be because of my specific interests.
Re: Hero of Two Worlds by Mike Duncan (Score:2)
I'll have to go back and reread that. It's been a while.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Score:2)
The author of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
Re: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Score:2)
Fantasy and history (Score:3)
Fantasy:
* The Cradle series by Will Wight is fantastic. It starts a little slow, but by halfway through the first book it picks up nicely. Currently at 10 books.
History:
* A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is more a history of science, but is still excellent
* The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire by Kyle Harper
* Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization by Lars Brownworth
* Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages by Dan Jones
Biography:
* The Storyteller by Dave Grohl is really good if you are a punk / grunge / Nirvana / Foo Fighters fan.
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Second, though I think his germs and guns book was probably better.
The Culture series (Score:5, Interesting)
I read The Culture Series by Iain M Banks
Found it enjoyable and worth the time
Have a Neal Stephenson novel still in package from Amazon to read after start of the year
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The Culture series is exceptional. Too bad there will not be any more entries.
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Yes, I have wondered how deeply I want to read into the rest of Banks' other works to get some more of the good stuff
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Yes, I have wondered how deeply I want to read into the rest of Banks' other works to get some more of the good stuff
Difficult to say. His other stuff was a mixed bag for me: Some good, some ok, some not my thing. Nothing really on "Culture" level though.
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You might try "The Hydrogen Sonata", the last of the Culture series. I found it hilarious with all the dialog between the AI ships. Also recommend "The Algebraist" as a non-culture space sci-fi from Iain M. Banks. I'm not a fan of horror, and Mr. Banks included that in some of the Culture books to their detriment.
I'm currently reading "The Apocalypse Factory" by Steve Olson. The semi-definitive atomic bomb history by Richard Rhodes is very East-coast / U235 centric. Steve Olsen's book gives a better
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Another second on the late and much lamented Iain M Banks. Transitions was a partial exception as a non-Culture SF book he wrote, but I didn't think that one was as good as the Culture stuff.
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lol thanks for your critic, I have round-filed them as being completely worthless
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Why are you feeding the troll? I think that some of them are motivated by the attention.
(Yeah, I know it's hard to believe anyone can be that sincerely stupid or profoundly ignorant, but I find it harder to believe that so many of them are getting paid to fake it, so the mental illness hypothesis seems more Occamic. But what if it's contagious insanity?)
Beware of Chicken (Score:2)
Beware of Chicken, on Royal Road. By synopsis it's a standard Isekai (a person reborn in another world), Cultivation (eastern-themed fantasy novel based around Qi) novel. In reality it's a subversion of almost every trope in the genre. It's well-written and one of the best things I've read online in years.
For a more traditional novel, I really enjoyed The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune. Very reminiscent of a better written Harry Potter.
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Beware of Chicken is awesome! on Royal Road, I am also enjoying He Who Fights With Monsters
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I liked He Who Fights when it first started, and I'm still reading it, but the further on it gets the more it seems to tell, rather than show. I'm thoroughly enjoying Dungeon Crawler Carl though.
Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism (Score:5, Interesting)
by Joshua Muravchik. Published about 20 years ago so definitely not new. I happened to see Mr Muravchik on an old PBS talk show called "Think Tank" years back and made a mental note to read the book someday. With the pandemic going on, I finally got around to it.
On the talk show the author said he'd been a 'Red Diaper Baby', that is, raised by socialist/communist oriented parents. He was 'turned' you might say, in the way that Darth Vader told the Emperor that Luke Skywalker might be 'turned' (am I remembering that scene right?). Anyway, he's critical of socialism but sort of sympathetic at the same time, which is a refreshing perspective on the subject.
2 for different reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter. Not a great book, but it did provide some fodder for how being able to see anything at any time (figuratively and literally) might affect society. The idea that any crime could be discovered, that all the backroom secrets of corporations and governments would be known, is an interesting prospect. In addition, being able to go to any point in space and at any time and observe what took place would bolster science.
Fair Game by Valerie Plame Wilson. It was interesting to read her own words about how she got involved in the CIA, some (very broad) outlines of things she did, and then how the Bush administration revealed her while being an undercover CIA agent for political purposes, and what she went through during that time.
However, what I found hilarious were all the redactions. For obvious reasons she wasn't allowed to disclose certain names, locations or what she was doing, but when you come across two to three entire pages fully redacted, you have to wonder how the word 'the' or 'and' could possibly disclose a national secret or reveal sources. Fortunately, the publisher put in an appendix of some of the material which was redacted so you could get a more full picture what she was talking about.
Neuromancer by William Gibson. While moderately intersting, I'm apparently missing something as it wasn't as great as many have made it out. Maybe I wasn't in the correct frame of mind or just didn't understand all the concepts.
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The most interesting idea in The Light Of Other Days was being able to see into the past, to resolve all those otherwise unsolvable mysteries. What happened to Amelia Earhart, who shot JFK, who D.B. Cooper is and what happened to him.
For months afterwards I was feeling the chilling effect of potential future viewers watching me in the past, but I did a bit of research and the tech is probably BS so no need to worry. Anyway, I'm not that interesting compared to all the other people they could be spying on.
Th
Re:2 for different reasons (Score:4, Interesting)
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I think you are just too late for Neuromancer. It broke new ground at the time. I have not gone back to re-read it.
I just started it for the second time recently (lost my place in the e-book due to an unsynced device, derp).
I'm only partway through it, but what's the neatest to me is seeing where so much of the genre basically "originated".
I don't think it's possible to be "too late" for Neuromancer, you just have to go into it realizing that the reason it might feel derivative is because so much of what's out there in the genre actually came after it took their cues from it.
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Forgotten in Death (Score:2)
Under a Graveyard Sky by John Ringo (Score:2)
Intended to be a zombie novel with plausible science, the first part is eerily similar to the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
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Only John Ringo book I read was "The Last Centurion".
John Ringo is clearly a skilled writer: his command of voice is very good. The action is clear and well paced.
On the other hand...
After our hero trundles across Iraq solving it in the process with the help of Fox News, a global pandemic hits and LIBERALS DIE because they're LIBERALS haha suck it VEGETARIAN LIBERALS! Subtle.
Oh and the protagonist has a thing for, well, not yet legal age girls. And he gets some handed to him in the form of a collection of p
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I should add:
Did I enjoy it? well... not exactly, but I did finish, and it's quite memorable and it's not boring. He's a good writer as I mentioned and many of the scenes are very compelling. Though my reading was accompanied with many chuckles and exasperated head shakes. So there you go.
Would I read another John Ringo? Probably not, but I wouldn't rule it out.
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The "wifely edits" were great.
There was some thoughtful commentary about high-trust societies as well.
And the disaster that follows when the socialists send city people out to farm in the name of equality has historical basis in the Soviet Union. During the last election wasn't it Bloomberg who said farming is easy, you just put seeds in the ground and they come up? Proved he was an imbecile really quick.
And I'll correct your sig,
The American right despises California is because they refuse to admit when th
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The American right despises California is because they refuse to admit when their policies have failed, and then try to export their failures to other locations that are doing just fine.
The richest state is a failure because waahh
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California attracts the people who can afford to live there because it has the nicest weather, with the possible exception of the even more expensive Hawaii. People live there in spite of the social and economic policies, not because of them.
Oh I see, the vast array of social and political issues don't exist, it's just "the weather". Cool.
Mortal Engines (Score:2)
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I have to admit I got stuck pretty early one on these. May just not be for everyone.
The Enigma of Reason (Score:3)
The Enigma of Reason by Mercier and Sperber was probably the best one I've seen this year. Let me see if I can dig up a capsule review...
Worth a capsule summary here, along with a strange application to solving the mystery of Twitter's continued existence. Their basic thesis is that we mostly act (and speak) without thinking and without reason, but when questioned we immediately and effortlessly explain why--and most of the reasons are just rationalizations, but with a "my-side" bias because "my" habitual or thoughtless actions must have been "fitting and proper". One of the most interesting research results reported in the book was that we tend to be much more skeptical about the same reasons if someone else uses them. Intellectual honesty is a one-way street? But their heavy conclusion is that in dialog we can negotiate good reasons and even find the best solutions for complicated problems. So does that explain why Twitter still exists? If you look at the global view of Twitter, it's a cesspool, but maybe, among some small groups of mutual followers, it actually creates value? "Come now, let us reason together [on Twitter]." (Apologies to King James or gawd?) But just don't try to explain all the reasons for every step that applied to leaving your chair and opening that door...
In lighter news, I just wrote a trivial comparative quasi-review of Penguin Highway with Version Zero and Of Ants and Dinosaurs (though not sure I'd go so far as to recommend any of them).
https://wt.social/post/good-bo... [wt.social]
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Thanks for the reference, though I almost missed your low-visibility comment. No karma bonus and short? Unfortunately it doesn't appear to be available in any of the local public libraries, even in translation.
Calling Bullshit (Score:2)
https://www.callingbullshit.or... [callingbullshit.org]
It's a bit terse sometimes, but still a good read.
Three come to mind (Score:4, Interesting)
Blink - how the human mind is able to make snap decisions based on very limited information, and still be right
Inside of a Dog - OK, I have had dogs most of my life, so that drew me to the book. It takes a look at the very different "umwelt" of a dog (compared to us) and how their senses drive their actions in ways that we humans would not immediately recognize
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Don't recognize the first one, but if you're recommending Malcolm Gladwell, all of his books that I've read have been worth the time. Don't always fully agree with him. Most recently I read The Bomber Mafia about the shift to carpet firebombing.
Evolution: A Developmental Approach (Score:2)
Super Pumped, Billion Dollar Loser, An Ugly Truth (Score:2)
Top Nonfiction Tech Reads for 2020: 1. Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber [amazon.com] (pub. 2019), 2. Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork [amazon.com] (pub. 2020), and 3. An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination [amazon.com] (pub. 2021).
Both scifi and non-scifi I've read this year (Score:2)
While they are currently ongoing series - I've really enjoyed Marko Kloos' Frontlines and Palladium Wars books. I just wish it wasn't a year between releases...
On the non-scifi side of things, I also found Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See quite compelling.
Oh, and I found Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time a very interesting/informative look at Elanor and Franklin Roosevelt's life while he was president.
I enjoyed reading the Seth material (Score:1)
I enjoyed reading the Seth material from Jane Roberts.
Seth material from Jane Roberts
https://sethcenter.com/ [sethcenter.com]
Happy holidays :-)
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You might also enjoy:
* The Law of One, Book One: By Ra an Humble Messenger ... Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires
* Bashar
* Dolores Cannon's The Convoluted Universe series
* Abraham Hicks' Law of Attraction books. e.g. The Vortex: Where the Law of Attraction Assembles All Cooperative Relationships
* Kryon
* Ram Dass' classic Be Here Now
* Robert Monroe's classic Journeys Out of the Body. The technical follow up by Thomas Campbell is My Big Toe: A Trilogy Unifying Philosophy, Physics, and Met
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Thank you UnknownSoldier, I also read books from/about Law of One (I think it is good but perhaps a bit distorted), Bashar, Abraham Hicks (the most crisp/clear in my opinion), and Robert Monroe, but I will look into Dolores Cannon, Kryon and Ram Dass, I don't know those :-)
The books from Michael Newton are also excellent. https://www.newtoninstitute.or... [newtoninstitute.org]
And for those who like to do cleanses, I recommend this liver and gallbladder cleanse book from Andreas Moritz, I did it 48 times in the last 10 years, it
Macbook Pro. (Score:1)
And its spinoff, Macbook Air.
The Grapes Of Wrath (Score:2)
also a made into a move by the same name starring HenryFonda
There were a lot, but... (Score:3)
Thunder Below! by Eugene B. Fluckey.
Fascinating to read how he revolutionized submarine combat and performed some of the most spectacular tours of WW2 by any submarine.
The Mistborn Series (Score:1)
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State of Terror by Clinton and Penney (Score:2)
Hidden Library series (Score:2)
Probably best of the year for me.
Others are
- "A Deadly Education" and "The Last Graduate": Pretty nice fantasy with a good main character and a new setting. (Well somewhat new...)
- The last "murderbot" book (don't remember the title)
Unfortunately, I also read or tried to read quite a few books that were not so good.
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Who's the author on Hidden Library? Doesn't seem to be available locally. Skipping over the fantasy, I did manage to find two of the Martha Welles books in English in semi-local libraries.
Cozy mysteries (Score:2)
Kindred (Rebecca Wragg Sykes) (Score:2)
When Narcissism Comes to Church (Score:2)
Command and Control, by Eric Schlosser (Score:1)
The Light Ages (Score:1)
The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins (Score:2)
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I read it long ago, but I mentioned recently reading a later book by the same author on the same topic. (But now I can't recall the title.)
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (Score:3)
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Came here to say this. Best series I've read in quite a while.
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It is really good, But she should write something else now before it turns meh. Because it's heading there.
Exodus - Dennis Prager (Score:2)
You do not have to be particularly religious to find value in a better understanding of one of the documents that underpins the foundations of Western Civilization. Prager is not some evangelical Christian preacher shouting about hell or grinding an ideological axe; he's a Jewish guy with a deep understanding of his subject, and the book is a commentary (the text, broken into chunks with relevant, explanatory text) on one particularly important book of the Old Testament of the Bible (also one of the books o
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Speaking of, the OG Exodus is well worth a read. It's far odder and more perverse than I remembered from many endless passovers.
Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson (Score:2)
Cast Under an Alien Sun (Score:2)
Unconquerable Sun (Score:1)
By Kate Elliott. Really good sci-fi. Reminiscent of Iain M. Banks works. Best I read since he died.
Other good sci-fi. in no particular order.
The great symmetry - James R. Wells
Machine - Elizabeth Bear
And an oldie that recently became a tv-show: Foundation. And I'm sad that the creators had so little faith in the source material. To say that the show is based on the book is something in between a right out lie and a bad joke. The special effects are fine but why oh why did they think this story is better?
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I haven't watched the show yet, but my understanding was that it was supposed to cover stuff that mostly wasn't in the books. Particularly how the Foundation got started. It's been a few decades since I read the books but I seem to remember that how the Foundation gets going is largely glossed over, with maybe a chapter or two explaining Harry Seldon.
J.S. Dewes the Last Watch (Score:2)
And the Exiled Fleet, good old fashioned sci-fi and a stunning debut from the author.
I tore through these on the road this year, really good!
Weaveworld (Score:3)
I am very late to the Clive Barker party but I read Weaveworld in 2021 and thought it was great. An unusual fantasy tale centred on Liverpool. I was surprised to find Barker a better writer than Stephen King.
Series windups (Score:2)
Gideon the Ninth (Score:2)
I've really enjoyed Gideon the Ninth (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42036538-gideon-the-ninth). I think it was Gizmodo that suggested it, characterizing it as "Lesbian Necromancers in Space." It's hyper-gothic, and the protagonist is delightful.
Clive Cussler - Dirk Pitt series (Score:1)
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My only regret in having read the Dirk Pitt series is that I can't read it again for the first time.
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Hmm... I read one of them and didn't like it too much.
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Agreed. The Dirk Pitt novels are highly entertaining.
A few I've enjoyed (Score:1)
The Day By Day Armageddon series and Tomorrow War (not the novel of the movie) by J. L. Bourne.
Five Roads To Texas, multiple authors, Phalanx Press
The Mountain Man series, Keith Blackmore
The Terminal List, Jack Carr