What BOOK(s) are you reading? ARCHIVE

I just finished Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson (he's a writer for the Washington Post) it is about the Battles of Siciliy and the march of the Allies to Rome. It is a pretty good book. It's a sequel to his other book called "An Army at Dawn" where he talked about the North African campaigns. Supposedly he has a book in the works about Normandy and beyond.

Next on my list is a book about Siberian Tiger, it's revenge and the conservation officer that has to hunt him.

I am starting NICKLE AND DIMED, a journalist tries to make it on shitty jobs. It reads like a HARPERS article, so I should devour this. Speaking of HARPERS they had a piece this month on trying to survive in Cuba using the ration system. Not easy.

I finished TIME, LOVE, AND MEMORY, which was OK. The author really likes quoting poets when talking biology though--that got tiresome.

Barbara Enrenreich (totally spelled wrong) writes a compelling tale. But shes kind of a dick too. Way more so if you read other things shes done. Still interesting stuff that's pretty enjoyable to read.

I also really dug the one she did after Nickle and Dimed about the world of corporate middle management and unemployment. Don't remember the title off hand though.

I'm still trying to find the time to read The Peace War. It's an old Vernor Vinge book and I'm trying to go back and read his earlier stuff since A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep are easily two of the best books ever.

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies.

Reinforces my prior belief that this book would've really sucked without zombie attacks.

I'm twenty pages into Walden and the SoB has me ready to quit my job already.

S.

Sagrilarus wrote:

I'm twenty pages into Walden and the SoB has me ready to quit my job already.

S.

It's funny you should mention Walden. I'm reading a book called "Super Sad True Love Story". It's set in the near future and shows the inevitable end result of this info overload sped up ridiculous lifestyle that us American's love so much.

Highlights include:

Fancy wireless gew-gaws that people have live 24/7 videoblogs on. These devices also project your Fuckablility and Credit Ratings to anyone in the area(of course the two scores have a direct correlation).

The Dollar is fading and the only the only currency worth anything is Chinese yuan-pegged dollars.

The American government is one party: The Bipartisan Party.

Your life is tied into your GlobalTeens account. (Read: Myspace, Facebook, and of course EVERYONE uses it, not just the teens set.)

As I read the first two chapters of this I thought of two things:

1: This story is frighteningly plausible.
2: My god, if Thoreau could see us now.

I tried reading Walden when I was 16 or so, and found it boring as hell. This robbed me of any back-to-nature utopian desires for the rest of my life. Somehow, people forget that if humanity had stuck to self supporting communes we'd never have had anything like book printing.

I you think that human existence is now hedonistic emptiness, try to get a feeling for aristocratic life in Imperial Rome or Ancien Regime France. Nothing new under the sun. Except that we have democraticised hedonism and bad taste. Which is a good thing. I can't wait for the wild uncivilised muslims taking over the planet from our degenerate, effeminate, spineless modern society so we can corrupt them (again).

Recently finished "The Last Kingdom," the first book in in Bernard Cornwell's Saxon cycle. Also finished "Ship of the Line", the 2nd book chronologically in the Hornblower series by C.S. Forester. Just started "Sharpe's Triumph", the 2nd book chronologically in the Sharpe series (also by Cornwell).

Finishing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies left me glad that I never read the original. My wife thought I'd have enjoyed it more if I'd done that, but I'm pretty sure not even zombies would make it enticing enough after reading it once.

I listened to (I listen to books on cd/tape when driving to and from work) Sword Song, which is I dunno, 2 or 3? in that saxon cycle. I picked it up simply because the library has a wierd selection of audio books,and I like cornwell's Sharpe books. I liked it, it made me want to go play Britannia again.

Actually reading thomas Asbridge's "The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land " in preparation for Kingdom of Heaven from MMP.

going on a roadtrip today from wyoming to the outer banks in NC, so I have 7 audiobooks of various types sitting in the truck right now.

In prep for Kingdom of Heaven I listened to The Crusades through Arab Eyes by Maalouf which was quite good and The Era of the Crusades from The Teaching Company which is an 18 hour lecture series.

Maalouf was the better of the two and brought some interesting insight into the fractured nature of the Muslim side of the conflicts. That was stuff I hadn't heard before, certainly not in detail. The TTC lectures were incredibly thorough focusing on the economic aspects as much as the military and I don't regret the time, but they covered so much ground that I almost felt like I was listening to Eurasian History rather than Crusades. If that's not your thing it may not be for you. The early lectures on the state of Byzantium prior to the first crusade were simply excellent.

S.

Just finished Vanilla Ride by Joe R. Lansdale yesterday. It's the latest installment in the adventures of Hap Collins & Leonard Pine. If AmeriTrash was a literary genre, this book would fit right in. Hap is a straight white redneck from East Texas. Leonard is a gay black redneck from East Texas. They are old Army buddies with some serious skill in martial arts and dirty brawling. When they encounter bad people (often drug dealers), they make fun of them and kick their asses. If I were to cast them in a movie, I think that Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans would be perfect. Well, Bruce might be a couple years too old, but otherwise yeah.

My favorite line from the book, from Leonard, talking about his ex-boyfriend who is trying to become straight:

"If you're ashamed of being gay, then I'm ashamed of you. Queer up, I say."

Taking a break from The Count of Monte Cristo for my annual reading of A Night in the Lonesome October.

For future reads, I'm looking at Iain M. Banks' Culture series. Any opinions on those? Or Banks in general? I've never read any of his stuff.

Currently I'm quicky re-reading Conversations with Professor Y, by Louis Ferdinand Celine (I say his whole name so no one mistakes him with the singer). It's a really cool book where he describes the where, why, and how of his particular writing style. Which is essentially all elipses and exclamation marks. No periods ever. I love this book and it has the cool feature of putting the original french on one page and the translated english on other. My French is just good enough that I get some use out of this.

More on the F:AT side though I'm just about to start this new Sc-Fi book I picked up on a whim... which I rarely do. It's called the Sheriff of Yrnameer and it's by Michael Rubens.

Anyone read this yet? I'm curious what opinions may be.

The story seems to be that he's some space rogue/smuggler running away from some big corporation to find his own planet. Or something like that. It's being compared with Douglas Adams (who I love) and Terry Pratchett (Who I don't love) so that may or may not be promising.