What are we reading?

Started by Martok, March 05, 2012, 01:13:59 PM

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bob48

His books on the Ardennes Offensive and Spanish Civil War are both are well worth reading if you have not already done so.
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mirth

I'm reading his Crete book currently. I also have the Spanish Civil War book. I started it but got sidetracked.

I read his Ardennes book a while back.
"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

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Gusington

I didn't know about his Spanish Civil War title until seeing it listed as in the Berlin book. Want to pick that up too.


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

Silent Disapproval Robot

I'm reading Instruments of Darkness by Alfred Price.  It took me a few years to track down a copy at a reasonable price but I finally got one a few months ago. 



It's about the history of electronic warfare from 1939-1945 and it focuses almost entirely on the night time air war between RAF Bomber Command and the Luftwaffe.   Lots of good tech stuff in there.  I find this stuff utterly fascinating.

mirth

"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

Gusington



слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

DoctorQuest

Started "Hidden Figures" after enjoying the movie. I've always been a space geek and it's an interesting view into the space program and the early '60s.
"Everything you read on the internet is true." - Benjamin Franklin

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jamus34

Working through Lev Grossman's The Magicians series. Not sure if I like it or not.

The characters are mostly unlikable. The book has a tendency to meander at times (although I am thinking it was written this way).

I'm reading it as the author decided to throw Holden Caulfield into Hogwarts and then to Narnia...I might be off base...but that's my take so far.
Insert witty comment here.

MetalDog

jamus, that was my experience as well.  I think I read the first two books and finally got tired of the whining, so I put it down.
And the One Song to Rule Them All is Gimme Shelter - Rolling Stones


"If its a Balrog, I don't think you get an option to not consent......." - bob

JasonPratt

Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on February 27, 2017, 03:40:35 PM
I'm reading Instruments of Darkness by Alfred Price.  It took me a few years to track down a copy at a reasonable price but I finally got one a few months ago.

Ooooooooooooh! Note to self, wishlist that thing. Hm, it goes back at least as far as 1967 in its original publication, with a new edition coming out this year. Wonder if it's updated with new RAF vs Luft material along the way?  ???

Also, I'm curious what if anything he has to write about the Foo Fighter phenomenon.  :coolsmiley:
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
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PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
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JasonPratt

#3520
In my continuing project of reading 5 pages of 'study' books to 1 page of 'purely entertainment' books, I have gotten around at last to burning through Book 5 of the original Magic: the Gathering novels as a reward for my efforts at cleaning out my ginormous backlog of unread material.

This one, The Cursed Land by Teri McLaren, started a tad weak: Teri got the idea from somewhere that she desperately needed to start books like this in the middle of an exotic action scene with no context at all and develop the context along the way. I'm about half convinced this was a late addition or emendation of an earlier more coherent draft, because her command of grammar is flawless throughout the book except at one run-on sentence in this prologue scene where she jumps point-of-view confusingly. That looks like an editing artifact to me from adjusting the scene to be more punchy out of the gate.

That said, despite the clompy opening which settles out well enough eventually, I was highly impressed with her plot and effective characterizations while briskly moving through a surprisingly epic story in just under 300 pages -- but then, this author cut her teeth writing for the Dragonlance expanded universe material (and credits Tracey Hickman NEURON FAIL Margaret Weis for inspiring and helping her to get into the business).

This is the first of the original novels not set in (what eventually by novel 4 came to be known as) the world of Dominaria, and that's fine -- the original setting hadn't really been fleshed out yet anyway except as a convenient hodgepodge for material. But it not only has no connection at all to the previous plots (also fine), it baaarrreeelllly counts as a MTG story. There are connections to Planeswalking and mana usage, and green magic (also blue less obviously; black is briefly mentioned). But that's it. The fantasy staples are pretty D&D. It feels a lot like a story Teri had already largely written that she retro-fitted to be close enough to MTG to count. Which again is fine, even interesting in a way, but anyone coming to the book expecting more of the fanservice from the first four books could be disappointed. Amusingly, the promotional department finally got on the ball and synched the back cover to the plot with "Equinox" and "Cursed Land" cards, the former of which I've seen before in other old decks, the latter of which I think I own a couple from ye olde dayes. Their role in the story is so different from their card operation that the similarities are limited to both being "Equinoxes" and "Cursed Lands", but whatev: at least there's a proper plot tie-in again of some sort!

Not to spoil a plot literally 22 years oMG THE AGE IT BURRNNNNSSS MEEEEEEE, but as I'm reading the early novels I'm tracking the efforts of Wizards of the Coast (the game's publisher) to connect the novels to new deck sets being released. Since the previous trilogy ended up tying in (albeit loosely) to the artifact war between the brothers Urza and Mishra, the next step would seem to be The Dark leading into The Ice Age. This books reads a lot like a limited prototype of the Dark (and maybe also the Ice Age), except (1) there's no connection at all to the Brothers and their war (especially in how the Dark happens); and (2) there are no clear reference to cards from those sets (that I could recognize anyway, though I'm far from entirely knowledgeable about those sets having rarely gotten any cards from them).

The plot then: a cataclysmic Dark/Ice Age event is set off by a greedy ex-wizard instigating a family feud to gain access to this world's only line of mana which, unfortunately for everyone, was keeping this world properly spinning. With the link largely shattered, the exiled broken wizard can't escape the plane and people across the island of not-Scottish-Irenotland ;) are sundered into competing clans while their world teeters on the edge of extinction for five hundred years. The plot resolves this situation with quite a few twists and turns even into the final twenty pages, and while the resolution was telegraphed prophetically from the beginning Teri did a good job both hinting along the way at the coming resolution and deflecting expectations of the resolution. I'm not sure how much of the connection to Christian morality about forgiveness and salvation of enemies was intentional (certainly no theology per se along that line), but I appreciated it anyway.  O:-)

I thoroughly enjoyed my literary vacation with the book, and I've built up enough of a 5:1 surfeit that I should be able to get another one (maybe another two by the time I'm done with the next one) before going back to non-fiction reading -- but I'm already pretty sure there won't be a connection later to this book (which is fine, Terri ties up all the plot threads and foreshows a happy ever after).
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Gusington



слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

BanzaiCat


Staggerwing

'Escaladed'- when she takes off with the pool boy in her sugar daddy's caddy SUV.
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OJsDad

Just finished 1632 by John Ringo and starting the second book in the Ring of Fire series, 1633.  I've both of these first two before.  I definitely is not as good as books like Forstchen's Lost Regiment series or his One Second After book.  David Webers Safehold books are also a lot better.  In 1632, there's no struggle just to get the basics up and running.  No having to make decisions on what gets priority over something else.
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