Which book are you currently reading?

[Caz]

Right now I'm reading the second book in Stephen King's The Dark Tower-cycle. It's the fourth time I'm going through the whole thing. Only this time around, it's eight books in stead of seven Haven't read the new one yet

My 3rd read through include book 4.5.

I loved this series,bit was skeptical on a book coming oit thats inbetween older books, but.it was done very well and was a good read.

 

[TouringDevotee]

Just finished a hilarious little book by John Scalzi, Fuzzy Nation, that deals with ethics and law in regard to the mining of a planet's resources when sentient life is discovered; well, a legally defined view of sentience (and one that lead me to the great sentience/sapience divide).

I don't know, I suppose that the whole idea of sapience in the book seems a bit haughty to me. "It is mine by right. Didn't you take notice of the narrowed view of life and thought that I've created in order to separate from and place myself above you, based exclusively on what I've determined you lack in comparison to me? Of course not, because your not sapient!"

And the more that I think about it, it really comes across as a long winded and ornamented argument that really only restates "by divine right" and to a lesser extent, "might makes right."

It might seem ironic that after finishing Fuzzy Nation and having those thoughts, that I've moved on to and am enjoying the second book in the Song of Ice and Fire series (A Clash of Kings), but I swear, I haven't taken a side based on, ummmm. Damn it!

Kidding, but I am reading the book.

 

[35mm]

...and am reading the 5-book boxed set of George R.R. Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire' on my Kindle (near the end of 'Game of Thrones').

So, yeah....

I'll not be reading anything else for a while, but I'm doing two at a time.

I think it took me about half an year to get through the whole A Song of Ice and Fire series. I also read two or three "lighter" books in the middle.

But "two at a time"? I do have to say that I'm impressed!

 

[FoolKiller]

But "two at a time"? I do have to say that I'm impressed!

I've always been able to do that. I always read for fun on top of school reading. Now with Audible I get a book in while driving and working and read another on my Kindle when I have a chance to just sit.

I could sync my Audible and Kindle and pay the extra for Whispersync, so my audio picks up where I stopped in my Kindle, and vice versa, but that's no fun and costs more.

 

[Brett]

I finished up the Thrawn trilogy last week (I think it was last week, may have been the week before). I have started reading:

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Michael Connelly's "The Gods of Guilt".

Murder, mystery and conspiracy. I quite literally read it in a single six-hour session - it was that good.

 

[TouringDevotee]

Two-thirds of the way through the 7th Dave Robicheaux novel, Dixie City Jam. Though its full of murder, ritual, neo-Nazis, klansmen, and your garden variety bigots, the most shocking part is the variety of characters in this novel that are reminiscent of folks I've taken no pleasure in meeting.

 

[Mike Rotch]

A very interesting read about the battle to break the landspeed record at Bonneville in the 60's; an era when people were basically building rocket cars in their garages. The parallels in some respects to F1 in the same decade are eerie.

 

[BobK]

The Arfons/Breedlove duel was fascinating, not least for its contrasts. Breedlove practically builds his car (err, motorcycle) in a research lab, Arfons simply gets his hands on the biggest jet engine he can and builds the thing in his garage.

I'm definitely going to have to check this book out -- can't quite make out the author's name, Samuel Hewley, is it?

 

[Mike Rotch]

The Arfons/Breedlove duel was fascinating, not least for its contrasts. Breedlove practically builds his car (err, motorcycle) in a research lab, Arfons simply gets his hands on the biggest jet engine he can and builds the thing in his garage.

I'm definitely going to have to check this book out -- can't quite make out the author's name, Samuel Hewley, is it?

Samual Hawley 👍

Spot on - it also goes into quite a lot of detail on the storyline behind some of the failed/ fatal attempts on the LSR that occurred before Breedlove and Arfons got their packages sorted - Athol Graham in "City of Salt Lake", Nathan Ostich in "Flying Caduceus' and Glenn Leasher in "Infinity" to name a few. It's a very good read, I'd heartily recommend it 👍

 

[BobK]

@Mike Rotch, so Amazon has it in print for $19.13 and the Kindle edition for $6.59. The choice for me comes down to the photographs or lack thereof: if copiously illustrated, especially with color pics, I'd go for the deadtree version. If there are only a handful of pics, Kindle. Which would you suggest?

 

[Mike Rotch]

@Mike Rotch, so Amazon has it in print for $19.13 and the Kindle edition for $6.59.

I have the kindle version and I can't find any illustrations or pics (no table of contents and nothing in the first 100 pages, nor references to any). What I have been doing is googling the cars as they enter the story, to understand what they looked like etc.

I'd be interested to her your views once you have gotten a copy and read it

 

[FiftyBelowZero]

Disney princess encyclopedia

 

[Doth1s]

I'm currently reading Kafka's "The Metamorphosis."

 

[photonrider]

Ten years too late . . . for the Best Book of the Year. And it seems like I have developed a sudden taste for European authors - at least in the way of fiction. Smilla, and her sense of snow, pretty much kept me up all night. And a whole new world of perception for me concerning the Danish/Greenlander connection.

 

[BobK]

I have the kindle version and I can't find any illustrations or pics (no table of contents and nothing in the first 100 pages, nor references to any). What I have been doing is googling the cars as they enter the story, to understand what they looked like etc.

I'd be interested to her your views once you have gotten a copy and read it

Finally bought the Kindle version tonight. Only two chapters into it right now but really liking it so far. Hawley's writing style is very readable.

And, holy crap -- seeing names I hadn't heard in, well, a long long time.

 

[kikie]

I bought a book in Juin 2007 and haven't started reading it. I think that I'm gonna this time.

It's called: Mindfulness

 

[Badasp5.0]

I couldn't agree more. For me, the Millennium series has such a lively and addictive quality with great moments of suspense, history, and security services' naughtiness mixed in.





I always enjoyed the earlier names for the war. Operation Enduring Freedom (damn that freedom) and —see Ari Fleischer's Press Briefings of March 24, 2003 and April 1, 2003,— Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL).

Operation Enduring Freedom is Afghanistan and was originally Operation Infinite Justice LOL.

 

[Caz]

Read through Jurrasic Park today. Was happy with it.

 

[zzz_pt]

The God Delusion

by Richard Dawkins

 

[prisonermonkeys]

"The October List" by Jeffrey Deaver.

Interesting concept: the book is told in reverse, with the last chapter first, and the first chapter last. Fortunately, as time goes backwards, the plot goes forwards. It is - deliberately - a little confusing at first, but as you stick with it, you start to figure things out, and it's actually quite fun.

The story is a little unpolished, which is probably a by-product of the reversed nature of the story; the last few chapters degenerate into a lot of exposition, explaining each of the sub-plots and the roles everyone played. It is, nevertheless, a clever experiment in a non-linear narrative. However, it does suffer from the biggest flaw in Deaver's style: his tendency to take things one step too far, and write extra twists into the story. Sometimes it works, but only when the author sets each of them up beforehand. He does not do that here, and while one twist ending would be alright, there is a twist ending to the twist ending, and there is no set-up work done for it, so the end result is that it feels like it was added in to explain the loose ends.

That said, I have always felt that the best mysteries are the ones where the reader can work things out a page before the characters do. I worked this one out in the middle of Chapter 4, just before all of the exposition. I didn't get every twist, but I got the main one (though that may be because of ny experience with the author and knowing how he likes to set things up). So I would say it is worth reading for the novelty of it alone.

 

[nursemorph]

Am currently 2/3 of the way through the 7th book of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Have owned the books for years but had only read to book 4 way back in 2005..finally decided to read all of them and am glad I did as they have been excellent and definitely King's best work to date. Noted that @OnlyMe has said there's now 8 books? I wasn't aware of there being another one released....rather annoying if it's between some of the earlier books given I've just read them!!

 

[Caz]

There is. It takes place after wizards and glass. But it is really a backstory and a fairy tale rolands mom used to tell him as a child. It doesnt change the mythos of the story at all.

 

[fatman_5050]

So far this month, I've:

Finished Wizard:the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla by Marc Seifer - a good, very in-depth look at one of the most important and influential inventors of the 20th Century.

After that, I breezed through John LeCarre's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. It was my first time picking up a LeCarre novel, and it won't be the last. I thought the writing had a good pace and pulled the reader into the story, and as a result, I couldn't put it down.

Finally, I read A Crack in the Edge of the World, a detailed look at the devastating 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, by Simon Winchester. As someone with a decent interest in geology (if it wouldn't have taken another 1-2 years of classes, I would have added geology as a second major), I thought it was not only well-researched, but also well-written. That's not the easiest thing to do with a ton of facts, but Winchester did it in a way that presents them without droning on and on and on.

As for my next read, I'm not sure. Most of my bookshelf is stacked two deep, with at least 29 books still to read. I may need to stay away from book sales for a while.

 

[DG_Silva]

It's funny how one of my Wikipedia hunts go.... I've gone from Gary Busey to Unconventional Warfare via Navy SEALs and MACV-SOG. So, I've started reading a book on Unrestricted Warfare, or how the US can no longer fight a winnable war because of victims fighting the US using non-technological methods.

Very intelligently written. No wonder the US hates the book.

 

[GTracer98]

I'm reading "A Brief History Of The Knights Templar"

Very interesting book, explains those mysterious soldiers' lives and purpose.

 

[Badasp5.0]

It's funny how one of my Wikipedia hunts go.... I've gone from Gary Busey to Unconventional Warfare via Navy SEALs and MACV-SOG. So, I've started reading a book on Unrestricted Warfare, or how the US can no longer fight a winnable war because of victims fighting the US using non-technological methods.

Very intelligently written. No wonder the US hates the book.

Unrestricted Warfare? as in Nation states or Counterinsurgency ?

 

[DG_Silva]

Nation states. Basically, the idea is not trying to fight a more powerful and better equiped army in a head-on battle, because you would always lose. Instead, you use more 'underhand' and deceptive techniques such as legal battles or blocking communication systems.

 

[ExigeEvan]

Having read 'Dead Men Risen - Story of the Welsh Guards in Afghanistan' I decided to pick up a few other modern accounts of British conflict.

Both have proven to be great reads of British soldiers on the front line.

 

[Solo]

@ExigeEvan Having read Sniper One myself you've made a great choice there. A great read indeed.