What are you reading right now?

[Kanastrous]

Tastes vary but I think Frederick Forsythe has it all over LeCarre. The Odessa File, The Dogs of War and The Day of the Jackal are all Great Stuff.

[Big Orange]

Mein Gott, Europe's Tragedy: A History of the Thirty Years War is so damn long (I've made it up to page 590) that the book seems almost as long as the conflict itself.

Anyway I've got Terry Pratchett's Moving Pictures and Ian Fleming's You Only Live Twice lined up to be read soon, while I'm also starting on Goldsworthy's Roman Warfare.

[JME2]

Even though I thought The DaVinci Code was one of the most overrated, over hyped books I've ever read, I checked out The Lost Symbol from the local library. Learned my lesson and I'm not picking up another Dan Brown novel again if I can help it.

[noncredible]

Star Wars: Republic Commando, True Colors

It's a good book. I've read the four other ones (Hard Contact, Triple Zero, Order 66, and 501st. These books have a bunch of main characters. There are two squads of Republic Commandos (Omega and Delta), six ARC troopers that were the first batch of clones created, two Jedi, and four training Sergeants (Skirata and Vau are the main ones, Gilamar and Tay'haai appear in the last two books). The books mainly focus on Ordo (one of the Null ARCs), and Darman and Etain's relationship.

[Phantasee]

I'm on to Sharpe's Revenge. Man, Cornwell writes antagonists that are so easy to hate. I can't recall a single instance in all the books so far where I've felt Sharpe wasn't wrong to do what he did. Although his wife Jane seems to be a grey (and shady) character.

[Aaron]

Wait for it, she gets a lot worse then that. Sharpe's revenge in Sharpe's Waterloo is my favourite part of the book.

[Phantasee]

Yeah, I'm disliking her quite a bit after the phaeton incident with Harper. Kind of unhappy Sharpe doesn't go to London to straighten them up at the end of Revenge.

I hope nothing happens to Sweet William. I've been wondering what happened to Lossow and the KGL but SW was a good friend for Sharpe. He was like him, except educated and not a mustang, so it was amusing watching him pull out foreign languages on Sharpe.

[weemadando]

Currently on Medic: Saving Lives from Dunkirk to Afghanistan. It's a really good oral history of the Royal Army Medical Corps over the past 70 years.

[Darth Tanner]

Finished In the Name of Rome: The Men Who Won the Roman Empire and moving onto Star Wars: Force Unleased. It reads exactly like playing a computer game, he simply kills everything in sight with nearly no effort so not holding much effort it'll get any better but its good enough not to give up.

In other news I've decided to go digital once the kindles are in stock again so now comes the time to sell off those huge stacks of dead trees.

[weemadando]

I tried to start Prow Beast by Robert Low but just couldn't get into it.

However, inspired by some of the sections from Medic, I've picked up 2 Falklands histories from the library as it's an area that has always been glossed over or missed entirely in my past readings/learnings.

[Broomstick]

Bullet by Laurel K. Hamilton, the most recent Anita Blake travesty.

This book is shit. The first ten chapters are the inner harem posing on couches and discussing who is going to fuck whom, with the men apologizing for being assholes when really their behavior is not just normal but bending over backwards to please the Supernatural Slut. On top of that, sex apparently consists of screaming and clawing. And that's the "good parts". Hamilton manages to make sex boring. Seriously. I've read better pornfanfic written by 14 year old virgins kept locked in a closet most of their lives. 14 year old virgins who don't know human anatomy. What the fuck? The author has had two husbands and produced an offspring, surely she has actually had actual sex at some point in her life? I'm beginning to think the conception was via turkey baster.

The bad guys literally phone it in. Who thought this should be published? How does this bitch get paid for this steaming pile of shit?

I wouldn't use this book for toilet paper for fear of my feces being offended.

[Phantasee]

So I haven't been able to secure a copy of Sharpe's Waterloo, and I saw Umberto Eco's In the Name of the Rose on a display shelf at school, so I'm on that now.

[Kanastrous]

Just The Name of the Rose, no "in."

If you find you enjoy it, The Island of the Day Before and Baudolino are also great fun (much lighter in tone).

Foucault's Pendulum is a bit of a difficult read by comparison but IMO well worth it. His essays are also good.

[Soontir C'boath]

Trying to finish several books. I am almost finished with a Witcher book, "The Blood of Elves", by Andrzej Sapkowski and I am quite enjoying its own different take of the usual elements in fantasy and his additions to it.

Reading the first thirty pages, Accelerando doesn't disappoint as it seems to smash many concepts together while having some interesting characters.

Legend of the Space Marines is kind of on hold as I've had a good fill of grim, dark, and constant war. It also doesn't help that some of the short stories I read so far are somewhat mediocre.

As for books shown on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, I just finished "Hot Time in the Old Town" that could've been shortened to 75 pages from the ~280 it is. This book about the 1896 heat wave during a candidate's presidential campaign kept repeating itself in several places as if to acknowledge people would only read a specific chapter. There were perhaps only two chapters I needed to read to get his points across.

Another I just borrowed from the library yesterday is Jimmy Carter's diary which provides insight to his thoughts and short snippets of what happened day-to-day in his presidency. I hope Obama is doing this as well as it would be interesting to know what Obama had to contend.

[darthdavid]

King David's Spaceship by Jerry Pournelle

[Phantasee]

Soontir: Read the Reagan Diaries as well. It's kind of long, of course. He wrote every single day of his two terms, except for a short break when he got shot. The published book abridges, of course--most days had nothing going on, or the material is still classified.

[JLTucker]

I'm currently reading The Lord of the Rings. I'm actually enjoying it at the moment. About seven years ago I attempted to read it but stopped after reaching Tom Bombadil; I am now in the same chapter where I quit.

[Kanastrous]

Let me know what happens. That's right about where I gave up.

[JLTucker]

Let me know what happens. That's right about where I gave up.

I'm sure I'll be fine. My reading habits have matured in those seven years: I'm reading stuff I never thought I'd read in high school, like court decisions. :p

I plan to move on to the complete Don Quixote text afterward, which I find is a pretty awesome story and wish a film would get made.

[Stark]

Just The Name of the Rose, no "in."

It's a special kind of person who can get the title of a book they are currently reading wrong.

Foucault's Pendulum is a bit of a difficult read by comparison but IMO well worth it. His essays are also good.

I actually find Pendulum far easier to read than Rose; Rose is full of giant, largely irrelevant infodumps placed there to deliberately discouraged readers. Pendulum is just changing timeframes all the time - it also has a more compelling style as the first-person narration is switching tone as well due to his declining mental state.

[Kanastrous]

I think it was the references within references stacked atop sub-references in Pendulum that made it a more intensive read. Every unfamiliar reference to this society or that conspiracy or whatever text sent me haring off to research so as to try and extract as much as possible from the juxtapositions Eco was making.

It definitely read smoother on the second go-round.

When I hit the chunks of Latin in Rose I just threw up my hands and skipped ahead to the next un-italicized paragraph...

...Stark, what did you think of the screen adaptation? I didn't much care for it at first viewing (with the exception of...well, I'm sure I don't need to mention which scene...) but it's really grown on me over time.

[Stark]

That's true; I didn't find much of The Plan particularly new, so it was easy to read.

Easier than 'an entire chapter describing the arch of a doorway', anyway.

[Phantasee]

Well, I'm "reading" it in the sense that I checked it out from the library yesterday and read a chapter while waiting for my ride. And left it on the counter since.

I did a similar thing with the Aubrey-Maturin and Sharpe novels earlier this summer--I'd come across some word or phrase I didn't understand on the first pass and I'd go look it up. Got easier towards the end of the first series, of course, and there wasn't nearly as much historical detail in the Sharpe series, or there was significant overlap with the O'Brian novels and since I'd already looked it up once, I knew it the second time round.

[spaceviking]

I'm currently reading The Lord of the Rings. I'm actually enjoying it at the moment. About seven years ago I attempted to read it but stopped after reaching Tom Bombadil; I am now in the same chapter where I quit.

Ya, thats the point where I stopped too. I think the excessive rhyming/singing is the biggest hurdle of the book.

[Broomstick]

The Good Women of China by Xinran, who is apparently a Chinese radio host. Many upsetting but interesting stories, many of which make me appreciate that my life overall hasn't been too bad.