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I've finished up Dogs of War by Forsyth and Lucifer's Hammer by Pournelle/Niven.

Dogs of War was a great technical thriller with a fantastic feeling of time. The amount of technical detail that Forsyth goes into makes it feel dated, but in a good way. It inhabits it's era well and reading it now, you go: "man, if they'd had mobiles and e-mail this book would be a quarter of it's size". I really enjoyed it though.

Lucifer's Hammer rates as one of the best "post-apocalyptic" books I've read. Which isn't saying much because when you put something next to Dies The Fire it's not hard to be better. That said, there's a lot going for it if you like teh post-apoc genre.

Famous Russian Aircraft: MiG-15 by Yefim Gordon

Just finished 'A Thousand Splendid Suns'. While some characters were too cartoonish, I could not put it down.

I'm working my way through The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin at the moment, a hard read but I'm starting to realize what a goddamn genius that man was

Also gearing up to buy a copy of War and Peace, and see how I can wrap my literate mind around it.

I just finished The Price of Everything by Eduardo Porter. Very interesting book, similar to Freakonomics in many ways.

I'm reading The Invisible Gorilla, by the same guys who did a rather famous psychology experiment on selective attention. It's been a very fascinating book so far, with them talking about our various cognitive and attention errors and biases.

I have given up on the Demon War trilogy by R. S. Salvatore because it’s just too dull and I was actually rooting for the demon to kill all the heroes just to end their hypocritical miserable lives.

Now onto Death Star, liking what I've read so far, especially an Empire focus which is something new to me other than the limited Thrawn perspectives.
My pile of unread warhammer books is still haunting my kindle obsessed reading list though.

"The Wise Man's Fear" (almost finished after 2 school filled days - Fantastic book), and "The Crippled God" [Malazan Books of the fallen].
After that i'll be moving onto a long delayed history glut ("The human story", A condensed version of Toynbee's history codas, and "The 12 Caesars").

I agree - Wise Man's Fear was pretty awesome (I just finished it last night). Although
Spoiler At some point, I may end up having a third go at Malazan, but today is not that day.

I've got Five Miles Away, A World Apart as my current project. It's a book about Nixon's affect on public schooling in the US.

Right now, I'm gorging on books that talk about the history of technological innovation, and particularly the economics side of it.

The Sea Watch, the sixth book in the Shadows of the Apt series, which I think I've mentioned here before. Books 1 - 3 were fantastic, 4 was okay, 5 was a little more on the meh side because it didn't feature many of the more interesting characters and #6 is again fantastic.

Compared to everything else, Tchaikovsky's "okay" is in the better reaches of good, though, so don't let that discourage you. In case you aren't familiar with this series yet, the first volume is titled Empire in Black and Gold.

so someone loaned me "Small Gods" and "Good Omens" which a promptly cut ahead of some other books in the que, (I still have a million murder mysteries to go throug hthanks to my parent's birthday gifts)

so any more Prachett suggestions?

I'm working through Good Omens at the moment having recently read Contact by Sagan and Wireless by Stross.

Apart from being basically in random mode, dipping into the stockpile of things bought but not perused to see if anything catches my eye well enough to follow through on, and a fair amount of rereading-
an interesting pair of books to read together; Evan Wright's "Generation Kill", and his namesake but not relative Stephen Wright's "Meditations in Green"- flipping back and forth, contrasting now(ish) and then. One from Vietnam, one from the Gulf. Trying to get a viewpoint on how different things have become.

This is purely a partial impression, and I make no claims to it's truth, but it seems as if the men have been streamlined; the worst haven't changed much, but the best men of the modern generation have answers for the big questions- they may not like them, may still bitch without end, but they are no longer at war with their own service, they no longer ask, they have a confidence that crushes restlessness. They may know more and think more about their own part of the job, they are a better fighting man for their country to have, but there is something of vision lost in the process.

(And when I go back to the likes of Goodbye, Darkness, and With the Old Breed, I think I glimpse what it is. The modern generation think like beings from the end of history- 'what's the point' is a tactical question, not a matter of importance. They do not think, and yet believe. The Vietnam era, they thought, and thinking what they thought ceased to believe. The generation before that thought, and thinking, believed. All opinion, all only half- informed opinion.)

Oh, and finally consolidated all the loose books by picking up the three collected volumes of the Hammer's Slammers series- the individual volumes can go for second- hand now.

I finished Patrick Rothfuss's newly released book, The Wise Man's Fear yesterday. I'm going to read it again tomorrow, because I had been waiting three years for it and found it enjoyable enough to deserve an immediate re-read.

Chronicle of the Popes (PG Maxwell-Stuart), Surface Detail (Iain M. Banks), and Masters and Commanders (Andrew Roberts).

I'm currently reading the Alex Rider series*, since I haven't read it in quite a while.

*Stormbreaker, Point Blank, Skeleton Key, Eagle Strike, Scorpia, Ark Angel, and Snakehead. There are also a few other books in the series, but I don't have them.

It's a fairly decent series (then again, I thought Star Trek Nemesis was decent, so it's not really my call), and while it is kinda unoriginal (boy's uncle is a spy, boy becomes a spy), it's a pretty good series.

Inside the Jihad, by Omar Nasin

Just finished The Gamble, by Thomas E. Ricks

Reading a couple Charlie Huston stories, I'm on Six Bad Things currently.

I'm going to line up Jay-Z's Decoded and Ken Follett's World With Out End after.

The Yosemite Bear wrote: so any more Prachett suggestions?

The Truth
Going Postal
Jingo
Thief of Time
Lords & ladies
And offcourse all the Watch novels

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. If you've never read Twain, you are seriously missing out.

Adam Tooze's "Ökonomie der Zerstörung" (The Wages of Destruction). I find my lack of economic education disturbing, but it's nevertheless very interesting to read.

By the way, can anyone recommend a good, but not too dry Napoleon I. biography ? I'm not loking for a biographical novel, but some readability would be good.

There are such books out there; unfortunately the overwhelming majority of them are simply going to be titled "Napoleon"- which might make asking for a particular one a touch tricky.

It's probably historiographically wildly obsolete by now but Vincent Cronin's take with, yes, the obvious title, might be your best bet for a human biography- the tagline is "I wanted to find a Napoleon I could picture as a living, breathing man." ISBN is 0-00-637521-9.

Currently reading Italian peruskielioppi (transl. Basic Italian Grammar). Figured I might as well get some studying done instead of picking up the next paperback fantasy novel. And it's interesting, since I happen to want to learn the language and I like learning the rules and mechanics since it makes it easier to understand text and speech. The examples are also good for expanding vocabulary.

Finished Tom Sawyer, moving on to To Kill a Mockingbird, which I'm also greatly enjoying in the early going. I think I'm going to do a little project here--I'm going to read through the "classics" without the pressure of having to write a report or take a test about them later.

RedImperator wrote:Finished Tom Sawyer, moving on to To Kill a Mockingbird, which I'm also greatly enjoying in the early going. I think I'm going to do a little project here--I'm going to read through the "classics" without the pressure of having to write a report or take a test about them later.

Aaah, reminds me of when I had to study To Kill a Mockingbird for my English GCSE...made up 70% of it and walked away with a B overall...

It's a brilliant book, and unflinching about reality, which I value highly in literature.

RedImperator wrote:Finished Tom Sawyer, moving on to To Kill a Mockingbird, which I'm also greatly enjoying in the early going. I think I'm going to do a little project here--I'm going to read through the "classics" without the pressure of having to write a report or take a test about them later.

You're a braver man than I am. I did read Tom Sawyer as a kid and I liked it, it was good. Tried Huck Finn and got nowhere with that, but one needs more perspective and understanding of 19th century America to appreciate it anyway. Most other classics I've had to read have been dead dull and boring. Especially Finnish classics, but that's a different story.