What BOOK(s) are you reading? ARCHIVE

Rliyen wrote:

Estragon wrote:

I have read about 40 WH40K novels in the past four months. The quality varies widely and is not great literature even for the best ones, but for some strange reason I keep on going.

Also reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity to have more background for playing Here I Stand (I have read Reformation already a couple of months ago).

If you read Farseer, what did you think of it?

I didn't even know it existed Eldar sound pretty good though, I have read some books by the same author and he is definitely one of the better ones. A concise style with strongly developed characters.

jay718 wrote:

I've been reading quite a bit of fantasy lately. The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie; Great series. Funny, savage, and no happy endings. Awesome stuff, really looking forward to more by this guy. Pretty sure I grabbed these books on a recommendation from here.

Be sure to check out his stand alones Best Served Cold and The Heroes (published this winter) for more glimpses into Abercrombie's twisted mind. Some secondary characters from the trilogy take the center stage in them, while you also get cameos from some majors. They take place a few years down the line so you also get to see a bit of the world's evolution (or lack of it). Best Served Cold also features an awesome and seldom-used type of character - a master poisoner.

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Great first novel of an infamous mages biography. retty cliche stuff, but it's done very well. Looking forward to the next installment.

The sequel will be published shortly as the entire manuscript is already handed in. Some of it we might have seen before, but Rothfuss is a talented wordsmith and his story is more about the deconstruction of the hero myth than anything else. I like the "present" parts of the story, where the now-shunned recluse hero tells his tale of how he became what he now is.

Gardens of the Moon; volume one of Malazan Book of the Fallen. This is an epic series in process, and it shows in this 1st volume as it feels like a 700 page setup or primer. Pretty entertaining though.

This is probably the most ambitious and wide in scope series out there. The tenth and final book (although he signed deals for two more trilogies in the world, along with his novellas and his colleague Ian C. Esslemont's additional novels) will be published soon this winter. Pretty deep and far-reaching world history and it's great entertainment. Everything is in shades of grey as you can't really tell that there are good or bad guys in here, despite the numerous factions/countries/empires/etc. Lots of things become clearer as you continue reading. Some really epic and tragic moments that keep on shining in my mind several years later. Erikson really comes into his own with books 2 and 3.

Just finished:

Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

By Robert Coram



AWESOME book! Best one I've read in at least a year. Extremely readable and very informative. If you have any interest in:

-The US Marine Corps
-20th Century military history
-The military industrial complex
-The US Constitution
-entertaining sea stories
-human drama

Get this book and read it. Most of the stuff I've read the past few months as been "meh". This one blew me away and gets my highest recommendation.

Jive Professor wrote:

I am extremely late to the Star Wars Expanded Universe bandwagon, but my students have been begging me to read a few and my wife picked up Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy at a used bookstore for a grand total of $3.00, so I made the leap.

Hey welcome to The Fort Professor! I read these a few years back. I found the expanded Universe far more interesting than the prequel/ clone wars stuff.


Columbob wrote:

jay718 wrote:

I've been reading quite a bit of fantasy lately. The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie; Great series. Funny, savage, and no happy endings. Awesome stuff, really looking forward to more by this guy. Pretty sure I grabbed these books on a recommendation from here.

Be sure to check out his stand alones Best Served Cold and The Heroes (published this winter) for more glimpses into Abercrombie's twisted mind. Some secondary characters from the trilogy take the center stage in them, while you also get cameos from some majors. They take place a few years down the line so you also get to see a bit of the world's evolution (or lack of it). Best Served Cold also features an awesome and seldom-used type of character - a master poisoner.

YAAAAAY! I didn't know about Heroes. I've been in a reading slump most of last year after reading BSC. This is by far the best Fantasy series for me.

Dr. Mabuse wrote:

YAAAAAY! I didn't know about Heroes. I've been in a reading slump most of last year after reading BSC. This is by far the best Fantasy series for me.

Here's the blurb:

The Heroes

“Unhappy the Land that is in Need of Heroes.” Bertolt Brecht
They say Black Dow’s killed more men than winter, and clawed his way to the throne of the North up a hill of skulls. The King of the Union, ever a jealous neighbour, is not about to stand smiling by while he claws his way any higher. The orders have been given and the armies are toiling through the northern mud. Thousands of men are converging on a forgotten ring of stones, on a worthless hill, in an unimportant valley, and they’ve brought a lot of sharpened metal with them.

Bremer dan Gorst, disgraced master swordsman, has sworn to reclaim his stolen honour on the battlefield. Obsessed with redemption and addicted to violence, he’s far past caring how much blood gets spilled in the attempt. Even if it’s his own.

Prince Calder isn’t interested in honour, and still less in getting himself killed. All he wants is power, and he’ll tell any lie, use any trick, and betray any friend to get it. Just as long as he doesn’t have to fight for it himself.

Curnden Craw, the last honest man in the North, has gained nothing from a life of warfare but swollen knees and frayed nerves. He hardly even cares who wins any more, he just wants to do the right thing. But can he even tell what that is with the world burning down around him?

Over three bloody days of battle, the fate of the North will be decided. But with both sides riddled by intrigues, follies, feuds and petty jealousies, it is unlikely to be the noblest hearts, or even the strongest arms that prevail…

Three men. One battle. No Heroes.

US Hardcover released Feb. 7


UK hardcover released Jan. 27

UK hardcover looks nicer --- I will pick this up on the 7th it looks like.

You know I don't generally post in this thread because I'm embarrassed about the dweeby-ass books that I read. But F:At is the damnedest place because I can mention a book about bronze age history or siege warfare tactics and invariably someone pipes up that they're actually interested or have read the book. So here it goes.

I'm reading A Splendid Exchange by Bernstein (available in the FortressAT bookstore) which is a view of how trade has shaped the history of the world. This guy is thorough -- he starts in 3000BC and moves forward and the early chapters were pretty dry largely due to there being so little information to work from. Now, this is dry on my scale, so most of you could use it as a sleep aid for the next 30 years without rereading but it's picked up now that he's moved into the Muslim control of the silk road and the wheeling and dealing they've done with the Genoese. It is just frikkin' unbelievable.

A thumbnail sketch:
1. Trade cannot happen unless both sides of the table have something to offer.
2. Islam had everything. They controlled trade with the East and everybody wanted stuff coming out of China, India and Indonesia.
3. OK, not quite everything -- Islam needed slaves. More to the point, they needed non-Muslim slaves because the supply dried up when Byzantium got big enough to be in the way of their supply in the Ukraine and Georgia.

Enter Genoa, those good Christian men who needed to earn a day's pay. They could get to the slaves. They had cut a deal to control the Bosporus and completely owned Black Sea trade. They purchased captured children in the Crimea (Christians mind you) then transported them to Egypt where the girls went into brothels and harems and the boys were conscripted as Mamluks into the Caliphate armies.

Converted to Islam, these no-longer-Christian Mamluk warriors fought against . . . Christians. These are the Crusade years, so these no-longer-Christians fought the still-currently-Christians with weapons sold to them by Christians (the Genoese again.) And where were these still-currently-Christians that needed to be fought? In the Holy Land.

I'll give you one guess who was transporting and supplying the still-currently-Christians in the Holy Land.

It's at this point in the book that you drop it on your lap and just blurt out "you gotta be frikkin' kidding me!" to anyone within earshot.

I mean fiction ain't got nuthin' on this stuff. No one would believe you if you wrote this in a novel. It would sound too far out to be believed.

"Here's the issue boys -- he has an army and wants to invade Egypt. No, really. I'm not kidding. He wants to pay us to take him there. God, honor, all that shit. That's a real problem; we have trade deals with Egypt. What are we going to do? We gotta protect our phoney-baloney jobs.

"Ooh ooh, I got it. How about this. Whattaya say we propose to him that we use his army to overthrow one of our fellow Christian kingdoms instead of going to Egypt, so that we can screw the Venetians out of the Black Sea and get rich off of slavery. Eh? How about that? You think he'll go for it? I mean there's a big-ass pile of gold in Byzantium. Let's just give it to him. Everybody wins in this one!"

In a lot of ways the book is depressing as hell. When a lion eats your head it sucks but you realize it's about the real thing -- a cat's gotta eat. But when the Genoese sell you into slavery they use the money to buy fashionable pointy shoes. They're doing it to transition from filthy rich to obscenely rich. You can't help but laugh at the absurdity. And it's real. This isn't some made-up story set on another planet.

$12 paperback. It's given me a lot of insight into the nature of trade and policy in the historic Muslim world as well as keen insight into the Christian delirium that bordered it. Much of it still applies today and I'm reading the headlines differently because of it. It's also made me reassess the Chinese positions which were actually much smaller than they've been given credit for. They were far less influential than India and the territories that are now Indonesia. In fact Indonesia is heavily Muslim specifically because of Islamic trade policy in the region between about 650 and 1400. Muslim traders made it financially attractive to convert, regardless of your personal opinions on faith. That's where I am now. Vasco de Gama is about to turn the corner of Africa so the next chapter is likely to be very different.

S.

Sag -- that sounds iteresting. A little like Guns, Germs, and Steel or The Ascent of Money -- both which I highly recommend.

Space Ghost wrote:

Sag -- that sounds iteresting. A little like Guns, Germs, and Steel or The Ascent of Money -- both which I highly recommend.

Yeah, count me interested as well. I read a lot of fiction, but I like the occasional non-fiction treatment as well.

It immediately reminded me of Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, which is by an apparently unrelated Bernstein, also an investment guy (aside from the minor problem of him recently dying). I had to do a quick check to make sure they weren't the same person or related.

Historical exploration of the growth of probability theory and its application to finance. I read it quite a few years ago. It's not exactly exhaustive, it was a relatively short read. Probably laughable to professionals like Mr. Ghost.

Oh, content. Add relevant content...

Um, currently reading John Crowley's The Solitudes, part one of his Ægypt books. I'm enjoying it, but it sure takes it's leisurely time in getting somewhere. You can tell it's meant to be a bit long, but the journey is worth it so far.

In a massive coincidence, a week after I started this Uba put his Engine Summer down as her all-time favorite SF book. I suppose I'll have to track that down. It's out of print by itself, but available in a "collected early novels" reprint or as the usual musty 80s paperback from random Amazon sellers.

Before that I read China Miéville's most recent book Kraken, which was quite good. Squid cults improve almost anything.

You're right, Sag. Truth is often stranger than fiction, which is why I don't read much fiction and a lot of history. so keep telling us about your books.

I must say that I had to reevaluate my view of the ancient world during a series of lectures in ancient economy when I was doing my phd. The Romans had pushed markets and occupational specialisation to levels unmatched till the coming of mercantile capitalism in the renaissance.

I later found that trade was actually quite advanced in the middle east several hundreds of years before that. Never underestimate the power of trade.

sounds like an excellent book. I'm anxious to know how this guy rates the Dutch as greeedy double dealing capitalist.

Thanks Sag, I'll be checking it out as I don't have much on that subject beyond medieval times.

Currently reading Michel Houellebecq's HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, his essay on Lovecraft's life and stories. Pretty interesting and it does bring up good points I hadn't necessarily thought of.

Just finished Sebastian Junger's War. It's an intense, brutally-honest grunt's-eye view of the war in Afghanistan (circa 2007). Really great read - Junger's an excellent writer (Perfect Storm was good too, about 10000 times better than the shitty movie), very immediate and real.

I just read Olen Steinhauer's The Tourist and the sequel The Nearest Exit.

Both books kept me up until 1-2 a.m. on a work day because I couldn't put them down. Great stuff.

Well decided to read a couple of 40K novels for a while. Starting with:

Horus Heresy 1: Horus Rising by Dan Abbott

This should appease the Lords of the Fortress for a while.