Which book are you reading now? Volume XIV

[Takhisis]

However, depending on how you define "PMC" one could say the Swiss Guard employed by the Vatican might be the first instance of an officially sanctioned PMC being employed by a government.

Or the Ten Thousand in the Anabasis. Well, they were traitors, but only because they lost.

 

[tjs282]

Hulk finish Tiamat's Wrath. Puny book. Only 500 page. Want more.

 

[Takhisis]

I approve of your penchant for reading about pentacephalous dracontissæ.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I started Greg Iles' Black Cross, but man alive, it was slow. Sheesh. I was shocked to notice that I'd gotten ¼ of the way through it, and basically nothing had happened. It was like the longest prologue I've ever seen. So I kicked it like a bad habit.

Instead, I picked up Blake Crouch's new one, Recursion. Now we're talkin'. Crouch's stories accelerate like drag-racers (and, like drag-racers, sometimes they crash and explode ). I don't want to spoil the plot, but it mirrors a lot of the movies and television shows I've been seeing lately. I didn't even know what it was about, when I picked it up. There's something in the zeitgiest, I guess.

 

[Socrates99]

Just started reading the fifth Xanth book, Ogre, Ogre, last night to my boys. Kind of excited I remember it being one of my favorites since its just a fun romp that follows an overpowered ogre wrestling dragons and stuff like that. It's a real change in the series since its the first book that is centered on a non human creature rather than Bink or his son Dor.

 

[Synobun]

Yes they are separated but trust me it's totally worth it. Amos is especially lit; that book is one of my favorites because of him in it.

I'm about 600 pages in (out of 1300) and this book has gotten crazy. I didn't want to stop reading last night before bed. I think I might just hunker down and power through the rest of the book today.

Super glad I didn't bail on it. Thanks for setting me straight.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Spoiler :

I usually hate whenever the cast goes ground-side but the parts with Amos on Earth are just...awesome.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I'm about 600 pages in (out of 1300) and this book has gotten crazy. I didn't want to stop reading last night before bed. I think I might just hunker down and power through the rest of the book today.

Super glad I didn't bail on it. Thanks for setting me straight.

Spoiler :

I usually hate whenever the cast goes ground-side but the parts with Amos on Earth are just...awesome.

I'm looking forward to seeing how they adapt the story for the Amazon Prime series.

 

[Kyriakos]

Can't say I like the Childhood's End book. And though part of it is because I know what will happen, that doesn't justify the actual writing.
At least Phillip K. Dick makes up for dry writing with interesting ideas.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Yesterday I finished reading:

The Iron Wyrm Affair

by

Lilith Saintcrow

which I enjoyed reading because I was in the strange mood for it.
I am not sure that many here would like it unless they are a true
aficianado for that sort of thing, steampunk, Victoria, magic.

 

[tjs282]

Acquired The Physics of Star Trek (Lawrence M. Krauss) a month or so back, from a box-of-books-to-be-chucked from my brother-in-law. Although the author is a self-described Trekkie, he really only uses the ST-series as a jumping-off point for discussing all sorts of cutting-edge concepts (circa 1995, anyway!), in relatively* simple terms. Just started reading it yesterday, and finding it pretty interesting so far (I'm about halfway through, 78/177 pages).

*Didja see wot I did there?

 

[dusters]

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23012627-cat-out-of-hell

Book about cats and communication with them. In a funny way.

 

[Synobun]

Finished Nemesis Games. This is by far my favourite of the series so far.

I'm going to quickly read the first book in the Percy Jackson series and then hope the next Expanse book is still available. Oddly, all the books post-Nemesis don't have any holds on them.

Actually, you know what? I'll just already borrow Babylon's Ashes. I have doubts that I'll finish The Lightning Thief anyways.

 

[Arakhor]

Acquired The Physics of Star Trek (Lawrence M. Krauss) a month or so back, from a box-of-books-to-be-chucked from my brother-in-law. Althoguh the author is a self-described Trekkie, he really only uses the ST-series as a jumping-off point for discussing all sorts of cutting-edge concepts (circa 1995, anyway!), in relatively* simple terms. Just started reading it yesterday, and finding it pretty interesting so far (I'm about halfway through, 78/177 pages).

I read that one, along with The Philosophy of Star Trek and The Biology of Star Trek. Krauss' book was the most interesting of the three.

 

[EnglishEdward]

To cheer me up, I have started to read:

The Zombie Survival Guide

by

Max Brooks

which I picked up in a second hand book shop last week.

 

[EgonSpengler]

To cheer me up, I have started to read:

The Zombie Survival Guide

by

Max Brooks

which I picked up in a second hand book shop last week.

I've heard that people who teach disaster preparedness use The Zombie Survival Guide, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek, because the parts of it that aren't specifically about fighting zombies are actually pretty solid. World War Z was also pretty good. Much better than the movie. The movie isn't really an adaptation of the book, incidentally, it just has the same name, so one could read the book whether one liked the movie or not.

If it were me, I'd do an adaptation of World War Z that mimicked an episode of a sober news-documentary show resembling Frontline. Use cell-phone video, news camera footage, police dashboard camera footage, "dramatic re-enactments" and so on. The guy who does the narrations for Frontline is also an actor, so I bet you could get him to do it.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Looking for a weighty book to while away the time whilst normal life is on hold I picked up a 2nd hand copy of The War That Never Was: The Fall of Soviet Empire 1985-1991 by David Pryce-Jones, only to discover the author is an editor of The National Review and his books tend to the polemical. I shall read it with interest and a degree of scepticism.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

One of Max Brook's books has been made mandatory reading at one of the military academies and as a result he's one of their scholars not-in-residence.

If you like audiobooks, check out World War Z. The cast is A-list actors and it's just phenomenal.

 

[Kyriakos]

He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fete; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm -- much of what has been seen in "Hernani." There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these the dreams -- writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away -- they have endured but an instant -- and a light half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many-tinted windows through which stream the rays of the tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven there are now none of the maskers who venture, for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery appalls; and to him whose foot falls on the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.

For the time being, only the simple clock reminds the revellers -the "dreams"- of death.

 

[Birdjaguar]

From GRRM blog site:

...For those of you who may be concerned for me personally… yes, I am aware that I am very much in the most vulnerable population, given my age and physical condition. But I feel fine at the moment, and we are taking all sensible precautions. I am off by myself in a remote isolated location, attended by one of my staff, and I’m not going in to town or seeing anyone. Truth be told, I am spending more time in Westeros than in the real world, writing every day. Things are pretty grim in the Seven Kingdoms… but maybe not as grim as they may become here.