CS Forrester's Hornblower books are some of my favorites. I really liked Ivanhoe as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by ray1970
almost finished with Richard Matheson's What Dreams May Come
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CS Forrester's Hornblower books are some of my favorites. I really liked Ivanhoe as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by ray1970
almost finished with Richard Matheson's What Dreams May Come
How many Odd Thomas books are there now? I think I've only read three.
Rawles has a new one out. I haven't read it, but his others are decent reads.
http://www.amazon.com/Land-Promise-C...eywords=rawles
to those interested, Matt Bracken has the "Enemies" series for free on Kindle through 12/4.
Everyone should re-read Fahrenheit 451 during these times.. Bradbury was a prophet:
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches."
There’s that saying: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. When it comes to censorship, one might say that the road to thought and speech control is paved by people trying to protect other people’s feelings. It’s important to realize that today, we have a media system paid by the page view and thus motivated with very real financial incentives to find things to be offended about—because offense and outrage are high-valence traffic triggers. We have another industry of people—some call them Social Justice Warriors—who, despite their sincerity of belief, have also managed to build huge platforms by inventing issues and conflicts which they then ride to prominence and influence. One might call both of these types Rage Profiteers. They get us riled up, they appeal to our notions of fairness and empathy—who likes to see someone else’s feelings hurt?—without any regard for what the consequences are." -- Ryan Holiday
I'm 220 pages into Atlas Shrugged. I thought I would really struggle getting into it, but by page 20, I was hooked. Now I'm wishing I had more time to read.
"A man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over a man who can't."
My daughter will be reading this in school this year!! Can't wait to discuss it with her.Quote:
Originally Posted by asmo
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"Seveneves" by Neal Stephenson, "A Call to Arms" by David Weber, "Hells Foundations Quiver" by David Weber, "Old Venus" ed. by George R. R. Martin and "Shaman" by Kim Stanley Robinson.
I just started volume 6 of the "going home" series by A. American, called "Enforcing Home". So far so good.
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A total of eight. Counting the short novella explaining the gypsy fortune teller.Quote:
Originally Posted by Irving
Is that the Bernie Sanders signed copy you've been bragging about in the PWT for weeks now?Quote:
Originally Posted by HoneyBadger
Thanks Sideshow, had no idea it was that many now.
Recently finished "Lights Out" - David Crawford. Enjoyed it. Will read more of his stuff.
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Almost forgot, reread "Swiss Family Robinson" before "Lights Out". Not as enjoyable as an adult as it was as a kid.
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Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall
by Kazuo Ishiguro
http://www.amazon.com/Nocturnes-Stor.../dp/0307455785
Definitely. It's rather too fanciful for an adult to take seriously.Quote:
Originally Posted by buffalobo
10 ring. They saw and did it all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Circuits
Still a classic though. Added it and "Treasure Island" to the minions reading list for January.
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Marko Kloos - his "Frontline" series is a pretty good military science fiction read.
Freehold by Michael Z Williamson. I'm sure some folks here have read it already, but it's a science fiction novel about a planet basically ran by libertarian ideals. Which of course pisses off the Earth "United Federation of Planets" statist government to no end, so they attack and try to hold the planet, since how dare anyone try to rule themselves! The war is fought with .. well, give it a read, I'm sure you'll love it. I just gave a copy to a member here as a Christmas gift.
Of course, this is book one in a series.
If anyone does the facebook thing, send a friend request to the author. He'll gladly respond, assuming he's not locked out of his account again for telling the FB admin nazi's what they can do with themselves with rusty farm implements, etc., all the while causing mayhem.
I've about a quarter of the way through 1984. I'm not sure how I've managed to go this long without having read it.
Finished "Lights Out" and "Patriots" recently.
Enjoyed both, particularly "Lights Out".
"Freehold" Chad mentioned above looks interesting.
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Welcome to the future [LOL]Quote:
Originally Posted by blacklabel
Just finished Go Set a Watchmanby Harper Lee
http://www.amazon.com/Go-Set-Watchma.../dp/0062409859
If you liked To Kill a Mockingbird you may or may not like this book. This is the original book Lee wrote in the 1950s. Her publisher, Lippencott, told her that the book had too many stories within stories and asked her to go back and write a book focused on one of Scout's recollections from her early childhood. While Mockingbird is a wonderful book, it seemed so myopic and contained an idealistic focus from the memory of a six year old Lee. Watchman IMO is a much better book. Told from the now 26 year old Scout's perspective and learning that not all is as she assumed it was. People are not perfect and they do not live in a perfect world. Real men must live to be useful in the community they serve and sometimes this means they do things they have to do but do not always agree with. There are ways of having principals even when faced with numerous evil choices.
I particularly liked the exchange between Scout and her Uncle Jack, who was trying to provide a framework of history for why the South is the way it is as compared to the rest of the nation in the 1950s. Uncle Jack's, also called Dr. Finch, explanation for the reason for the South's fighting the Civil War is one of the best, most succinct, I have read in literature. This was apparently Lee's opinion on the issue of segregation in 1954 after the Sup Court's opinion in Brown v Board of Education. Lee is probably not understood today by most of the people who reviewed the book and instantly seized upon the overused epithet "racism." Uncle Jack calls the issue of racism incidental to the Civil War and states that racism is equally incidental to the battle over Civil Rights in the 1950s. He points out that 95% of southerners did not own or could never have imagined owning a slave. They were fighting for the same reasons Angles, Saxons, and Celts had been fighting for thousands of years. They were individuals attempting to prevent someone from outside their culture from coming in to change their way of life. In the 1950s, the rest of the country's notion of federal government had far passed the original notion of national government envisioned in the Constitution. The South was again being forced to change to conform to the rest of the country and Uncle Jack opined that he hoped that this new civil war would be less bloody than the last one. Sixty years later, we can see the Civil Rights battle was much less bloody than the Civil War. IMO, sadly the one casualty of the national attitude towards government has been our Constitution.
History is linear. We may study the past to assist us in our present to attain the future. We can never repeat the past. Even when we try to recreate, we find we only have an echo of the past and often a poor one at that.
I'm two chapters into 'Extreme Ownership', by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, and love it. Great book on leadership and teams.
My wife got me "What If?" by Randall Munroe, and "I'm Just Here For the Food" by Alton Brown. I've been alternating between the two of them for the last couple days, as both are divided into short chapters that are relatively quick to read while I am watching my son go nuts in Jumping or waiting for my wife to come out of the Nordstrom Rack. I bought myself "The Art of the Con" by Anthony Amore, and I plan to read it on my next plane trip. It's a non-fiction book about the most successful forgers in the art world.
Finished Any Other Name by Craig Johnson, a Walt Longmire story on CD. Now reading The Survivor, a Mitch Rap/Vince Flynn novel by Kyle Mills. Also beginning One Year After by William Fortschen.
Just downloaded "Freehold" series book 1 for free.
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Is the Kyle Mills attempt at Mitch Rap any good?Quote:
Originally Posted by Hummer
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Quote:
Originally Posted by buffalobo
It's a little early to tell, I've been struggling with the start over the past week or so. Too busy over the holidays but should have more time now to dive beyond the first few chapters. So far the story is recounting the people and details from the last Flynn novel. Will update you....
Yeah, looks like if you have a Kindle, you can download Freehold for free now. That's pretty darn nice of Amazon...Quote:
Originally Posted by buffalobo
Always cool to catch a freebie with good reviews.Quote:
Originally Posted by ChadAmberg
Now will probably get hooked and have to pony up full price for rest of series.
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[emoji106] , cool.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hummer
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Anything by Stephen Pressfield
or, Bing West.
That's the boat I'm in. I really liked the first book and am fighting the urge to buy the rest.Quote:
Originally Posted by buffalobo
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Dont fight it, book 2 is worth the $7(I complain about buying any books I cannot put in my library).Quote:
Originally Posted by blacklabel
As discussed, got the free download, read "Freehold", liked it, paid for book 2 Thursday nite.[emoji33]
If I were not such a cheapskate, I would buy the hard bound edition of some of the books read last couple years and put them in my library.
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Wife rags me because I would probably get my money back for Amazon Prime subscription just in books over the course of the year.
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I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb
http://www.amazon.com/Am-Malala-Stoo.../dp/0316322407
Almost finished with:
Hero Tales
by Theodore Roosevelt
http://www.amazon.com/Hero-Tales-The.../dp/1414505043
Wrong thread
I'm reading the follow-up to Freehold, The Weapon. It's a fair bit different than Freehold but good in it's own right.
Pillar to the Sky by William Forstchen
http://www.amazon.com/Pillar-Sky-Wil.../dp/0765334380
Same author as One Second After
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wright-Bro.../dp/1476728747
At this point in my career, the only good thing I can say about travel is the ability to read or listen to a book. These were both good books and make a nice bookend, one fiction, the other biography non-fiction. Both involve inovation of new technology that most believed improbable. Any advancement requires risk and often results in death before success. Imagine a world where Lt. Thomas Selfridge did not die but the US government did not buy a Wright flyer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Selfridge
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ie=UTF8&btkr=1
The Harry Dresden books by Jim Butcher. Be warned - I have been accused of peddling literary crack by people who have listened to me and read them.