The dog stars
"Hig is a survivor. He has survived the sickness that claimed his wife and family, and the trout he loved to fish. He is coping, just, in the new wilderness of post-apocalyptic America, because he has three things to live for - his dog, Jasper, his neighbour, Bangley, and his Cessna plane. But Hig's loneliness is becoming unbearable. When he picks up the distorted voice of another human on his radio, he is unable to shake the thought that there might be someone else out there. He knows he should resist looking - the journey will be risky and there will not be enough fuel to fly back - but he cannot. And so, one bleak day, he flies over the horizon in search of the truth..." --Publisher description.
Stats for nerds
7recommend
19mentions
9people
2013–2026years
79% recommend21% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I lately I’ve been reading three books at once:
- Fiction: Pure entertainment, with no shame, although I do enjoy working in a mix of slop and more high-brow works. I generally go through one of these every 5-10 days.
- Non-fiction: Big, meaty, interesting book. These take me forever to finish but I really enjoy them. I get through like 100 pages in a good month.
- Children’s: I have been reading to my son, which is entirely for me as he’s only ~5mo old. But I have a stack of lovely children’s classics that I have greatly enjoyed going through.
Here’s what I’m currently reading and some recommendations on previous stuff I’ve read.
Fiction
Right now I’m finishing up The Kremlin’s Candidate. Not great, the series has been going a bit downhill. Some recent hits:
- The Dog Stars (Heller): Awful movie, incredible book. Highly recommended.
- True Grit (Portis): For everyone recommending Lonesome Dove, definitely get a copy of True Grit. A fantastically fun masterpiece. A real achievement.
- The Force (Winslow): The first 80 pages are deep cringe but it picks up into a really compelling and fast crime novel. Pulp for sure but fun.
- All the Pretty Horses (McCarthy): Incredible book. I could read it 100 times.
Nonfiction
- The Politics of Heroin (McCoy): Dense but very very good. First hand reporting of the CIA’s role in the global drug trade and how it has, to a surprising degree, shaped the modern world.
Children’s
- The Last Unicorn (Beagle): Surprisingly nice. Some rough edges but I’m enjoying it. If my son was able to understand more than just that he’s spending time with me and that I’m making comforting noises I think he’s enjoy it.
- The Wind in the Willows (Grahame): Stop everything you’re doing and go read this. Aloud, your kids if you have them but as a treat to yourself if you don’t. What a joy this is.
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Some things I haven’t read that are on the shelf thaf I really want to dig in to:
- Challenger: History of the tragic NASA accident.
- First Casualty: Inside the CIA’s paramilitary ops and the early days of the Afghanistan war.
- The Great Game: Historic book on the power struggles of the British and Russian empire in Afghanistan.
- Lonesome Dove: I love westerns, I have this whole series on the shelf, and am kind of just waiting and keeping it in my back pocket for a rainy day.
- Power of the Dog series: I just know I’m going to love this. Cartel/DEA saga spanning decades.
- McCloskey’s CIA series: It’s slop, and the tradecraft is dated to the point that what is happening in the field now is completely unrecognizable from the dead drops and SDRs and such of the cold war, but… it’s fun!
- On a thread like this a long time ago, somebody recommended The Dog Stars to me and I read it and then a year later re-read it (it's one of three books I've ever read a second time).
For some reason I never read anything else by Heller until this year. Over the summer I read Burn, Celine, and The Orchard. All excellent. I think Heller is my favorite active writer and it surprises me because all of his books (that I've read) have a strong outdoorsman-type vibe and that's not me at all.
Of the four books, The Orchard really hooked me. I wish it was twice as long.
I just added Station Eleven to my to-read list yesterday. I read the first chapter online and it starts out great.
- Yeah, The Dog Stars is a favorite. I'm afraid to see the film, as the reviews aren't great and the previews make it look like a quite different story from the book.
- The Postman by David Brin
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Anything by Dalton Fury (RIP)
One Second After by William Forstchen
Black Autumn by Jeff Kirkham
- Usually special operations/espionage/post-apocalypse type fiction. Some recent examples:
- The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (I've re-read this a number of times)
- The Postman by David Brin (Again, re-read this many times). Nothing like the movie.
- Sapiens
- The book series by Dalton Fury (RIP). His fiction is great, and if you do a little OSINT on the places in the book, you can see that he's describing these places from first-hand experience. Extremely realistic and you get the sense that many of these events really happened and are fictionalized to bypass censorship. I've re-read his book series at least 7 times. Easy reads.
- One Second After by William R. Forstchen. Although I have some minor issues with things in it, it's a fun post-apoc book.
- Anything by Derek Sivers. His writing is concise.
- The Terminal List by Jack Carr. Pretty good, not quite as good as Dalton Fury, but will read the next in the series.
- Bunches of tech books
I am very picky about the fiction I'll read but am open to unsolicited suggestions. Prefer post-apoc type stuff. Can't really get into fantasy. It needs to be an easy read because I have a house full of kids and no privacy.
- What novel have you read recently that you would recommend? I've asked that in the past here and was recommended The Dog Stars and The Goldfinch, both of which I enjoyed.
Probably the best books I read in 2020 are Norwegian Wood (Murakami) and Warlight: A Novel (Ondaatje).
