What are you currently reading?
Anything you’re read recently that really blew you away?
Ideas, lookin’ for ideas…
Update: Oh, sorry, forgot: I’m currenly in the middle of “Decipher” by Stel Pavlou which is actually pretty good once I got all the characters straight in my head.
If you really like mind stretching stuff. I am reading The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. Its about string theory and the search for the theory of everything.
Comment by Jon — 20050531 @ 1412
Our ideas. dear Timmer, lie not in our peers, but in ourselves.
Comment by Kevin Connors — 20050531 @ 1421
If you like Sci-Fi try Bolo Rising by Kieth Laumer.
Right now— Citizen Soldier by Stephen Ambrose. Great first hand accounts.
Comment by chaz — 20050531 @ 1431
Have read 2 of Clive Clussers books and enjoyed both. Movie “Sahara” put me onto him. Very clean language and non-stop action. Just a suggestion! Also Brad DuBruel is good too.
Comment by debby — 20050531 @ 1434
I know Kevin, but I just hate having to admit I’m looking for a clue.
Comment by Timmer — 20050531 @ 1445
Try The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow. It’s a multi-character, multi year novel about drug trafficking in Mexico, California and Central America, from both sides of the law.
Comment by Matt — 20050531 @ 1549
Just finished Bernard Fall’s excellent Dien Bien Phu.
Short summary: It was hot. The French paratroopers fought really hard. So did the Viet Minh. The Reds weren’t all super motivated by nationalism and hardened vets, in fact a lot of them were squandered by Giap. Very few of the Legionaires were ex-SS men, though many were anti-commie Eastern Europeans. The Algerians Fought well. The Moroccans, not so much. The local tribesmen melted away. The French Generals were clueless. The French field grade, company grades, NCO’s and men were superb. Lyndon Johnson had a chance to sign off on a decisive, massed U.S. airstrike that would have wiped out Giap’s elite troops. He refused to do so. The SecState Dulles equivocated on whether the U.S. would help, with its readily available air power. France didn’t have lift and heavy bombers, because the NATO plans didn’t call for them to have such planes, so the U.S. refusal of lift and heavy bombers… well, we made a damned-if-you-do situation for the French and then gave them a Gallic shrug when they had to lie in the bed that we told them to make, which makes Gaullism (and Chiracism) more understandable. When the French lost the battle, the French Foreign minister said “ha ha, it’s America’s problem now. So LBJ basically got hit sideswiped by karma. Marcel Bigeard, ridiculed by the tranzis for his role in Algeria, may be the finest fighting officer I’ve ever read about, holy shit, we shoulda given him U.S. citizenship and made him a freakin’ general. The French didn’t surrender at Dien Bien Phu, they were beaten, big difference. More tanks might have changed the result of the battle. More troops, probably not. Never take the low ground and fortify, always start with the high ground – as in the hills around Khe Sanh! Hold them, and hold the airhead; lose the hills, lose the base. Dig your positions in at all times. Fall’s comment on the effects of the war and the prison camps on the young officer corps of France makes me wonder about our WOT – he says the up close experience with the reds turned many into fascists, willing to do anything to defeat the reds. Wonder if that will happen with us and the Islamacists. Finally, never forget, the VietMinh slaughtered or starved to death most (80%+) of the 8,000 or so prisoners they took when resistance ceased. Remember this when comparisons of Iraq & Abu Ghraib/Gitmo and VietNam come up.
You need to read the whole thing. It’s a profoundly smart read when you think about our LICs.
Comment by Blackavar — 20050531 @ 1636
The Knight Life by Peter David.
Comment by CplBlondie — 20050531 @ 1648
Oh, Jeezus, Timmer: Why not just parade through the streets proclaiming “I am totally vacuous?”
As for myself, I am only at a loss for words to suit my ideas.
In the future, can we keep these dilemmas in-house?
Comment by Kevin Connors — 20050531 @ 1648
I’m sorry, is it vacuous to show an interest in what our readers are reading? It was a throw-away, an attempt to stimulate some conversation. Jesus Christ on a Pogo Stick Connors get the stick out of YOUR ass.
Comment by Timmer — 20050531 @ 1755
“Old Man’s War” By John Scalzi, anything by Terry Pratchett, the Sector General novels of James White, and for a culture so far removed from ours that it might as well be SF, Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey & Maturin novels. (If you saw “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” you saw two of them very nicely blended together.)
That should hold you for a week or so. (grin)
J.
Comment by JLawson — 20050531 @ 1814
Timmer, Kevin, play nice or I’ll get Mom.
Comment by CplBlondie — 20050531 @ 1835
Eek! Not MOM!!! (sound of footsteps in the distance).
Comment by Kevin Connors — 20050531 @ 1859
UNIX Unleashed, Fourth Edition.
Remember, you asked…
Comment by DragonLady — 20050531 @ 1906
Ummm… I am reading B.J Olipant’s “Here’s to the Newly Dead”, “Stephen Ambrose’s “Band of Brothers” and “Albion’s Seed” by Hacket-Fisher.
Well, that’s just the top 6 inches of what’s on the bedside table…
Comment by Sgt. Mom — 20050531 @ 1911
But what is under the bedside table?
Comment by Kevin Connors — 20050531 @ 1916
A lot of dustmice, and possibly the dessicated corpse of my last lover… JOKE, people, a JOKE!
Comment by Sgt. Mom — 20050531 @ 1918
A lot of old ‘Analog’ science fiction magazines. Currently I’m going through the 1974 issues. Based on the stories and novels that were published, the early 1970s were a lot more depressing than I now recall them as being….
The letters to the editor are quite interesting. Curiously, folks back then were griping about a lot of the same issues we complain about today. One is forced to wonder why some problems appear to have persisted, essentially unchanged, for so many decades.
Comment by Mark Rosenbaum — 20050531 @ 1939
DragonLady,
Is that a Penguin in your pocket or are you just happy to see us?
Comment by Timmer — 20050531 @ 2042
If you’re interested in epic SF, I reccomend the exordium series by Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge. It’s a series of 5 novels starting with Pheonix in Flight about the last surviving heir to the galactic throne. It is a very fully realized setting, but it starts out fairly slowly. They realy think out the tactics of FTL combat. Well worth the time IMHO>
Comment by James Agenbroad — 20050531 @ 2126
“Gulag”, by Anne Applebaum is what I’m currently in. Someone had asked me what it was like. I said,”well, reading about the breaking of millions doesn’t make for laugh a minute reading, but its still quite a book.”
I just finished “Empires at War” by William M Fowler. An interesting look at the Seven Years’ War in North America.
Comment by Dr_Funk — 20050531 @ 2210
Anything by Charles Stross…
Just finished “The Hidden Family” but thought “The Atrocity Archive” was just great. Mix of Len Deighton and HP Lovecraft.
Oh, and all 3 of Richard Morgan’s novels are worth a read, “Altered Carbon,” “Broken Angels,” and “Market Forces.” Heh, Market forces has a bibliography that included Noam Chomsky and John Pilger. It’s a dystopia, oddly enough.
Comment by Leo — 20050531 @ 2215
If you haven’t read George McDonald Fraser’s “Flashman” series I would thoroughly recommend them - but start with Volume 1 and see how you get on as the later volumes tend to allude to previous adventures.
I also just finished David Mitchell’s Booker Prize-nominated “Cloud Atlas”, but it’s a bit of a triumph of style over content - very complex, well-constructed and beautifully written, but just not that great a read in my view. So a warning shot rather than a recommendation, really.
Finally, anything by Christopher Brookmyre makes me lose sleep; one of the very few authors I’ll stay up all night to finish a new book straight off the shelf.
Let us know what you’ve been reading…
Comment by Al — 20050601 @ 0225
Timmer, I’m just happy to see ya.
I guess I’m really showing my nerdy side this week, huh? However, in my defense, my reading lately has been for class. Hopefully, I will have my project paper done and turned in in 2 1/2 weeks and I can concentrate on The Spine of the World by R.A. Salvatore. Oh, but that doesn’t do anything to shed the nerd image does it?
Comment by DragonLady — 20050601 @ 0416
‘An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power’, by John Steel Gordon.
Sounds like a snoozer. It’s not. From the dust jacket;
“In this illuminating work of history, John Steel Gordon tells the extraordinary story of how the United States, a global power without precedent, became the first country to dominate the world through the creation of wealth.”
The man can write, and he seems to know his stuff.
Comment by Brian — 20050601 @ 0650
The First Crusade: A New History by Thomas Asbridge, also One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Comment by Robin — 20050601 @ 0722
Another Bolo book that’s very much worth the price of admission is “The Road To Damascus”, by John Ringo and Linda Evans.
In the non-fiction world, Thomas Sowell’s latest collection of essays, “Black Rednecks and White Liberals”, has some important observations.
For just a plain laff-riot hoot, try “Being Dead is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral”.
Comment by David Hecht — 20050601 @ 0847
Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson. True story of two men who located a German U boat 65 miles off the coast of New Jersey and their quest to dive and identify same. Absolutely engrossing.
Comment by Anne-Marie — 20050601 @ 0933
Green Eggs And Ham.
Comment by George W. Bush — 20050601 @ 1159
Running the country, winning the war on terror, and STILL he has time to read to lil kids. I DO love my Commander in Chief.
Comment by Timmer — 20050601 @ 1304
Hell, just look at my website to see what I’m reading… but I will recommend Sheri S. Tepper’s True Game books, though they’re hard to find. (It’s three short trilogies, and the middle one— or first if you’re not reading chronologically— has been published in an omnibus, but the other two haven’t, so you have to look used.)
Tepper gets strident on occasion, but not in these books. Good stuff.
Comment by B. Durbin — 20050601 @ 1627
Sgt Mom’s Memorial day quote reminded me of the book “Articles of War: A Collection of Poetry about World War II” ed by Leon Stokesbury. I highly recommend it, even for those who, like me, were turned off of poetry by schoolteachers in high school.
Comment by James Agenbroad — 20050601 @ 1720
Anything by Stephen Ambrose is certainly engrossing and worth your time. Band of Brothers left me weeping more than once.
I really should be spending more time working on my own novel about paramedics, “Lifesavers”, I have about 6 chapters to go and then looking for a publisher.
Lots of good answers here Timmer, I enjoyed reading all of the comments, and welcome to those who haven’t commented before, stick around and talk to us more often!
Comment by Joe Comer — 20050601 @ 1824
I’m reading a book on Delta Force that I read about in Men’s journal Magazine. =)
Comment by Nezahualcoyotl — 20050604 @ 0343