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I'm currently reading Jeremy Scahill's book about Blackwater.

I've just burrowed Robert Zimmer's "A kapu újra nyílik" ("Das neue Philosophenportal"), which is a brief introductory to most philosophies around the world. So far, it starts out with Aristotle but I hope the author will take some time to visit Eastern philosophies as well.

[R_H] wrote:I'm currently reading Jeremy Scahill's book about Blackwater.

Any good? I might be looking for books about modern mercenary companies.

I am now reading The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley . After that I am going to read The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George-- the museum my husband works at is having a Cleopatra exhibit soon, so I am reading a few works about her, some fiction, some non.

Skin Trade by Laurell K. Hamilton, an "Anita Blake" novel. Remarkably, she didn't fuck anyone until 3/4 of the way through the book - the series started off interesting but post Obsidian Butterfly it descended into bad, boring fanfic-level porn requiring me to skip over half the pages in each novel to avoid nauseated boredom. I am hoping this heralds a return to what made the series interesting in the first place: woman who raises zombies for a living solving crime.

Finally tried out the Death Note manga (vol 1) and finished it while eating my dinner. (I gut curious after photographing a music based on it).
It's nice, Light's personality shifts waay to fast from "should I do this" to "mwahahaa! Kill the detectives!!!" even given the excuses for thereof (crazy arrogant, power of life and death, typical Japanese hero/protagonist/villian being the best at everything, same as Digimon season 2 ).

Now reading "The Photographer's Eye", National Geographic's "The Photographers" and the Ravenor Omnibus (WH40K by Dan Abnett), all picked up in the UK.
I read Ravenor aaaages ago so I skipped straight to volume 2 (after a quick skim). It's good, not as dense as Eisenhorn, but Abnett's prose is even more fun the later in his career he gets. Also, the foreword promises an Inquisitor short story anthology and a third, final trilogy .

Phantom over Vietnam by John Trotti, USMC. I've always liked the Phantom, and it's neat to read about it from a Marine's perspective as a bomber and Thud CAP.

Just finished Lord of the Rings, currently on How to Build a Dinosaur by Jack Horner and James Gorman.

Zixinus wrote:I've just burrowed Robert Zimmer's "A kapu újra nyílik" ("Das neue Philosophenportal"), which is a brief introductory to most philosophies around the world. So far, it starts out with Aristotle but I hope the author will take some time to visit Eastern philosophies as well.

[R_H] wrote:I'm currently reading Jeremy Scahill's book about Blackwater.

Any good? I might be looking for books about modern mercenary companies.

Another few interesting ones on the topic that I've read:

Boys From Baghdad - which is a mercs bio. It paints a pretty nasty picture.

The Circuit - again, written by a former merc. This focuses more on why the various companies wanted the war to keep going bad.

And I'm currently reading:

Imprimatur - which is fairly dense and can be a little tiring as it's translated and some idiom doesn't come through well.

Finished Magician and now I'm starting with Silverthorn. I've decided to reread the first Feist trilogy. After that...who knows.

Reading '1634:The Baltic War' by Eric Flint and David Weber. It's the 3rd in the 'Ring of Fire' series.

I am now reading The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley .

I had a severe "meh" reaction to that when reading it. While MZB does do some interesting stuff with the setting and magic, it just got very repetitive after a while, and wasn't helped by the need of the story to stay within the general boundaries of the Arthurian tale.

I finished reading the Sundering duology by Jacqueline Carey. It's basically Tolkien, except that the author deliberately does so in order to deconstruct the story and portray the Dark Lord equivalent and his followers as sympathetic, flawed beings struggling against a fate shaped by stronger enemies. The first book is actually pretty good, but the second book drags, and Carey really misses out on an interesting way to end the duology.

I'm almost done with Juan Cole's Engaging the Muslim World. It's pretty much your typical pop history, myth-debunking book looking at relations between America, "The West", and the Muslim World (meaning largely the Middle East, which is Cole's academic specialty). It's a good book, but aside from some stuff on Saudi Arabia it's really nothing I haven't read before, and the title is misleading since Cole really doesn't have much in the way of ideas or proposals for "engaging the muslim world".

I also just finished The Great Gamble, on the Soviet War in Afghanistan. The author is a journalist, and it shows - the best parts of the book are the personal accounts taken from interviews with many of the people involved, from officers to draftees who fought in the war as part of the Soviet military. The overarching points are not as well constructed and backed up, although he gets the outline right as far as I know.

In two days, I'll be reading The Gathering Storm, the first part of what was supposed to be the final book in the Wheel of Time series. I'm not sure what to expect - while he drew heavily on Robert Jordan's writings, notes, and family for the book, it's a Brandon Sanderson book (and I haven't read any of his stuff).

Up until two days ago, the only book I hadn't read in the house was Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.

I'm sorry about that. It really is a terrible book- whereas Da Vinci Code was a reasonably addictive plot-driven page-turner, Lost Symbol just drags on forever (no doubt a side-effect of Brown being able to fight back against editors). The cliff-hangers seem pretty forced, the characters are "meh" at best, and the pseudoscientific bullshit in the story is just omnipresent, along with dense droppings of Authorial Exposition.

Art and Crafts in the Middle Ages, a nice, chunky book from 1908. Using it for some extra detail in my own fantasy settings, though I wonder what our resident historians think of the text?

The Imperial Roman Army by Yann Le Bohec.

The Gulf Stream by Stan Ulanski. And will start Hate Thy Neighbor: How the Bible is Misused to Condemn Homosexuality by Linda Patterson, by this weekend maybe.

I finished the first chapter of The Odyssey. Telemachus is about to give his ultimatum to the suitors. This translation is pretty decent, I had to force myself to put the book down before I passed out. It's the Oxford World Classics edition.

I really need to sit down and spend some time reading again.

Just finished Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War by Stephen Cohen. An excellent book.

I just finished Imprimatur - which was enjoyable, despite being a slog at times.

I started "Dies the Fire" by S. M. Stirling, but his "change the laws of physics" to justify SCA wank BS is pissing me off and I'm only a chapter or five in.

I'm thinking I might start on my pile of books I got from a $1 sale at the local op-shop. Larry Bond's Cauldron is on top of that pile.

Reading and almost finished "A Darkness at Sethanon" by Feist, the last of the original Riftwar series.

After that...I don't know. I've got a Rogue Trooper novel by the name of Blood Relative for some really light reading, Clarksons latest book, Brethren by Robyn Young, Simon Scarrows 'Eagle' books, and the Peshawar Lancers by SM Stirling to read. Add in Standard of Power-The Royal Navy in the Twentieth Century by Dan Van Der Vat as well.

I'm reading the new Robert Jordan. 90 pages in and its not dragging.

CaptainChewbacca wrote:I'm reading the new Robert Jordan. 90 pages in and its not dragging.

I'm about 400 pages in, and it's very good. I don't know if I would rate it as my favorite WoT book (that belongs to Lord of Chaos), but it is much, much better than some of Jordan's more recent works in the series.

It's been a while since I read some of his books, so I don't really notice the stylistic difference.

Half way through The Stranger, by Camus. Very boring.

Finished up How to Build a Dinosaur and read Death from the Skies by Dr. Phil Plait. Also read the first 3 Dresden Files books and am currently reading The Hobbit.

I've generally got about 30 or so books that I'm reading, some with more application to the task than others.

What I'll finish first is the second of Harry Sidebottom's Warrior of Rome series.

Terry Pratchett's The Fifth Elephant and Alastair Reynold's The Prefect.

Zixinus wrote:

[R_H] wrote:I'm currently reading Jeremy Scahill's book about Blackwater.

Any good? I might be looking for books about modern mercenary companies.

I didn't really like it. I think it focused a bit too much on Erik Prince and not enough on Blackwater itself.

I want to read Robert Young Pelton's "Licensed to Kill, Hired Guns in the War on Terror". He's in a couple of documentaries about mercenaries in the GWOT, and although critical of the PMC business, he's not downright opposed to it.