What are we reading?

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

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Greybriar

Quote from: bob48 on August 17, 2016, 12:59:29 PM
All the Catton books are worth reading, excellent indeed.

+1
Regardless of how good a PC game may be it will always have its detractors and no matter how bad a PC game may be it will always have its fans.

BanzaiCat

Hey all -  was just finishing up the first Honor Harrington book and went to Amazon to check out how much Book 2 was for the Kindle...and I see it's free. Book 1 is free too, if anyone's interested. I just grabbed Book 2.

Book One: On Basilisk Station

Book Two: The Honor of the Queen

mirth

Quote from: Banzai_Cat on August 18, 2016, 04:40:02 PM
Hey all -  was just finishing up the first Honor Harrington book and went to Amazon to check out how much Book 2 was for the Kindle...and I see it's free. Book 1 is free too, if anyone's interested. I just grabbed Book 2.

Book One: On Basilisk Station

Book Two: The Honor of the Queen

Sweet! Just grabbed book 2. Thx!
"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

bob48

Thanks B_C, I just grabbed book 1, but book 2 is not free in the UK atm.
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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

bob48

'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'

'Clip those corners'

Recombobulate the discombobulators!

bbmike

Thanks, BC! I grabbed book 2 as I already own book 1 in paperback and audiobook.  O0
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OJsDad

Um, you know you can download most of the Honorverse books for free.  When Storm From Shadows was released, there was a CD that had all of the previous books included on it.  There were other David Weber books on there also, like all four of his Starfire books, the first two 1632 books, ect.  I would also recommend Apocalypse Troll.   

Yes, this is legit.  The link to the site is on David Weber's web site. 

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/


This link will give you the order to read all of the stories and books up to Mission of Honor. 

http://www.davidweber.net/downloads/30-honorverse-timeline-3.html
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Gusington

Just began an oddball book I found on Amazon a while back, War Elephants by John M. Kistler.


слава Україна!

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Sir Slash

Is that about the University of Alabama Football team, Gus?  ;D
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Gusington



слава Україна!

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

-JudgeDredd

BanzaiCat

I had no idea the Honorverse books were free...thanks for the info, OJ.

I finished Book One but instead of moving on to Book Two, I found something else that caught my attention and was on sale (well, it was reasonable at about five bucks). It's called Hell Divers and has a ton of 5-star ratings. I'm early in the book but its premise is post-apocalyptic (which I'm generally a sucker for, if it's not old and retreaded). Earth was destroyed in some major war two and a half centuries before the book begins. Back then the U.S. military had invested in these large airships from which to launch their super-weapons; there were about 50 built IIRC. Now, there are two left, and they are home to the only humans left alive (perhaps 1,000 or so, judging from the compliment of the one where the book is set, which has 534 I think, all descendants from the original military crews and their families that escaped just before the war started). These airships are ancient and were never intended to become permanent homes; they wander around the planet looking for a safe piece of land, which they've obviously never found. (Considering it's been about 250 years they've been flying around up there, one's gotta wonder how they've not covered the whole planet by that point, but who knows.) Since they're ancient rigs running on early 21st-century technology, and they don't produce anything like that themselves, and everything is run-down, in disrepair, or is in danger of falling apart, it's a never-ending struggle with them to stay in the air; the planet is far too poisonous in parts, and large electrical storms dominate the atmosphere. This is where the 'Hell Divers' come in - they're men and women that parachute four miles to Earth through the lightning storms, into the radiation areas, to find fuel cells from old plants that used to manufacture the airships as well as other desperately-needed parts and supplies. It's a very interesting premise that I've not heard of before. The writing isn't too bad (I wouldn't gush over it the way some of these people do; the author and editor(s) missed an end quote in one of the character's dialogue which was a little confusing, and I hate finding little mistakes like that when I'm reading because it takes me right out of the story). I'm liking it's uniqueness, though.

besilarius

Just found this.

http://www.pacificamilitary.com/books/f-roadToBigWeek.html

Looks good and the writing is very readable.  Anyone know if this book has any new revelations?
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JasonPratt

#3193
Well, in a fit of nostalgia, since I'm having fun with the Shandalar campaign occasionally (and Magic Duels occasionally), I suddenly remembered that MtG used to have novels, so after a little research I've picked up the first 8 or 10 (I don't recall which), written back before Wizards of the Coast decided to go for epic long-running series. But I fully plan to get to those, too (at least as far as the end of the Phyrexian war, maybe also through the next large arc or a little farther, after which the quality largely tanked too much.)

Just finished Arena, the very first Magic: the Gathering novel, written by William R. Forstchen. I'm going into allllll of these with pretty low expectations, and this was a good start, if rather... hmm... not quite grimdark... but close. Grimgrime? The random repetitive cursing got distracting, and I'd bet a Coke that one in five pages either take place in a sewer or might as well. Of course it's a bad situation in a city (entirely set there, with a few scenes outside toward the end), so the super-grimy tone fit the setting enough. Harder core than the Dragonlance novels the original readers (who would have been me if I had cared at the time) would have been coming to the series from.

Back when these novels were released, continuity wasn't a concern because the cards themselves carried no real continuity, or faint wisps at most; which is why I didn't care to ever buy them or even borrow them from friends. Heck, I didn't know it at the time, but the Wheel of Time series was already running and I would have eaten that up like cake! (I got into it a few years later, just after college, when Lord of Chaos, Book 6, came out.)

But I'm feeling old, I guess, and just want something imaginative to chew on in between more serious research reading.

The author did a fair job working out the plot, and I felt emotional (in a good way) about the situations a few times. He didn't always have a handle on juggling the various character-secrets around, though, and especially in the first half (but even occasionally in the second half) there were times when the characters would ignorantly forget what they had just heard or even said themselves a few pages or minutes ago -- of course so-and-so suspects "X", YOU JUST HEARD HIM SAY SO WHY ARE YOU CONNIVING AS THOUGH THAT MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT BE A FACTOR!  :uglystupid2:

Still, he takes a Yojimbo/Fistful of Dollars plot, with a Gladiator structure added in (a few years before the Ridley Scott film as I recall), and manages to improve the basic source material quite far -- and I regard that as no small achievement.

Also, it's fun as a player of the game (especially back with old cards like this) making guesses as to what spells are supposed to be (or seeing them called out straight up), even if the mechanics of the game itself don't translate well to something-like-a-real-life situation and so have to be changed for the scenes to work. I grinned every time someone threw a "fissure", which in the card game destroys a lot of things that a real fissure wouldn't. As in the card game at the time, they're popular among the fighting characters, too! -- and then the author comes up with ways to make a fissure kill a swarm of flying bats for instance.

And it was fun seeing a bunch of core concepts being introduced to readers who might never have played the game, even though I knew the concepts would be changing later as various writers (and the game designers) worked out the milieu better. Often I'd ponder 'when' this was supposed to be happening in relation to the first major plot arc (clearly not later than that): during its multi-thousand year run, or sometime before it (but not too long before)? Well, that's why these books are in a state of semi-canon.

Anyway, more fun to be had soon along this line. Overall glad to have read it, and while I'd give it a 5/10 I'm just doing that to set a relative bar for other MtG books (some of which I've heard are much better, others much worse, although lots of readers seem to rank Arena up pretty high.)

Next up, The Whispering Woods.
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!

mirth

Currently reading The Generals by Thomas Ricks and Ardennes 1944 by Antony Beevor.
"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