StarDestroyer.Net BBS

My reading of terrible genre fiction continues with 'The Walking Dead: The Road To Woodbury'. I hope it's as bad as the first one. It's actually worse, so far.

Beowulf wrote:My wife likes him far more than I would have expected.

Same here. She keeps taking my Ringo books to read on the subway during her work commute. I didn't even get to read Queen of Wands before she swiped it.

Flagg wrote:My reading of terrible genre fiction continues with 'The Walking Dead: The Road To Woodbury'. I hope it's as bad as the first one. It's actually worse, so far.

John Ringo. Ghost series. I think they set the benchmark for fiction that's so bad that it's awesome.

Just finished A Storm of Swords on the commute home from work.

Holy shit; no wonder fans were going crazy over the long release gap between this and A Feast for Crows.
Spoiler

Halo: Glasslands, and it turns out Karen Traviss is pretty good at mil-SF when she isn't raving about Mandalorians. Also Redshirts by John Scalzi.

I was reading No Easy Day. The writing style put me off enough that I couldn't finish.

Am now trying to decide between:
Evans's The Coming of the Third Reich
Rodgers's The Safeguard of the Sea
Heitz's The Dwarves

I'm leaning towards The Dwarves, primarily because I've been reading a lot of non-fiction lately.

Currently a few chapters into 'Trolls in the Hamptons' by Celia Jerome. Main character is a writer who imagined a troll which came to life in the streets of Manhattan by breaking some cosmic laws in the universe. She and an agent must then save the world and stop an evil guy in the Hamptons along the way. Didn't go too far into it yet, but so far it's pretty good.

Finished Anathem and just started on Reamde.

Questor wrote:I was reading No Easy Day. The writing style put me off enough that I couldn't finish.

Am now trying to decide between:
Evans's The Coming of the Third Reich
Rodgers's The Safeguard of the Sea
Heitz's The Dwarves

I'm leaning towards The Dwarves, primarily because I've been reading a lot of non-fiction lately.

It's kind of a slog. I won't say it's terrible, but if you aren't very excited about dwarves, you may not want to read it. I enjoyed it for the dwarves, but I like Warhammer fiction, so...

The sequel was pretty good in a baffling way.

Working my way through A Feast for Crows.
Spoiler

Bob the Gunslinger wrote:

Questor wrote:I'm leaning towards The Dwarves, primarily because I've been reading a lot of non-fiction lately.

It's kind of a slog. I won't say it's terrible, but if you aren't very excited about dwarves, you may not want to read it. I enjoyed it for the dwarves, but I like Warhammer fiction, so...

I'm noticing that, but there's enough of a "what's going on here" vibe to keep me interesting. I really do love figuring out the way the world really works with a character, and this looks like one of those stories. Unusually, the parts I have the least patience for at the moment are the politics, and I usually like that sort of thing.

Terry Pratchett Dodger..... Its a kid book but surprisingly deep and historical...........

Read and finished Adrian Dembsky Bowden's "Betrayer". (Horus Heresy 40K).
A fun read, but not his best work, a bit dissapointing. (though still a fun, worthwhile read).
Also, read and finished Steven Pinker's "The blank slate". Fantastic little book! (Recommended to me by a computational neuroscienctist).

I have plenty of things to read, but not sure what to. I'd like something in biology/popular science to replace trying to piece together lecture notes..

After reading Winner Lose All, I'm dropping the dough for the new Zahn SW novel.

Boom and Bust Banking: The Causes and Cures of the Great Recession

(This is of course in addition to all my work reading, which I'm sure nobody's interested in )

Star Wars + Ocean's 11 = "Scoundrels". Zahn clearly watched the movie a few dozen times before writing it.

Yes, it's a good one, but it's all about the caper.

Halo: The Thursday War

I didn't like it as much as Glasslands. Less novel and more of a history and politics background for Halo 4.

Tiger by the Tail Wherein our hero breaks more fingers, waterboards people, and collects more whores for his harem while killing a shitload of bad guys. John Ringo's books are more addictive than crack, and this one is no exception.

Zeph3r wrote:Halo: The Thursday War

I didn't like it as much as Glasslands. Less novel and more of a history and politics background for Halo 4.

Funnily enough I actually preferred it for that very reason! H4 makes alot more sense with it, thats for sure.

Bit of a reading binge since christmas. Finished James Lovegrove's 'Pantheon Trilogy' (Age of Ra, Age of Zeus, Age of Odin) have to say I liked Age of Zeus best.

Then 'Fear to Tread' and I now think I have a bit of a man-crush on the Blood Angels. Started a bit slow, but once the Angels breach the system it's a ride.

After that read the new David Weber Safehold book, Midst Toil and Tribulation. Decent, but am I the only one wondering why more people aren't freaking out that Charis went from "with triangle sails you can tack into the wind, and with carronades galleons can be warships" to "ironclad steamers with exploding shells" in just 5 years?

Am presently half-way through 'Witch and Wizard' by James Patterson. Much lighter read, for younger audiences than I'd thought. Eyeing the Foundation omnibus that's last on my reading list with trepidation.

Julian, by Gore Vidal. It's fucking fantastic.

Reading Glock: The rise of America's Gun.


Ultimately, this book is more about the company, it's practices and Gaston Glock than the handgun.

(The author writes for Businessweek and the WSJ)

The person and the company are shady as all hell. Some interesting tidbits.:

(1)Gaston Glock personally hates you and every other American in existence.

(2)GLOCK Inc used hookers and blow to ply LE officials who came to their headquarters while investigating replacement for old S&W .38 revolvers. I am not exaggerating in the least.

(3)Production costs were so low that GLOCK made a profit doing one-for-one replacements of Police Force revolvers for new Glocks. They would sell the police turn-ins to wholesellers. Within a year of the start of this practice .38 Revolvers became the most commonly used handgun used in crime in the US.

(4)The much lighter and shorter trigger pull of Glock handguns compared to S&W Revolvers led to police accidentally shooting a lot of people...including other cops. Before Glock handguns became widespread it was common in LE training to keep your finger on the trigger whenever the gun left the holster.

(5)One of GLOCKs executives hired a former French Foreign Legionnaire to kill Gaston Glock. He used a rubber mallet and the 70 year old Gaston Glock managed to withstand 7 blows to the head and knock his attacker out in the ensuring tussle.

(6)A year before the 1994 AWB began, GLOCK began to restrict market sales of 17rd magazines, and just built up a huge pile of "pre-ban" magazines, raising the magazine prices to around $100 each. After the ban started GLOCK introduced a slightly modified version of it's 9mm gun, and offered one-for-one replacement of it and it's mags to various police forces. In this way GLOCK continued to "produce" pre-ban mags for sale.

Recently finished On Bassalisk Station and the info dumps were noticable. As was the love or at least admiration nearly every single character felt for Honor Harrington. Enjoyable enough for the one book but I don't think I'll continue with the series.

Currently reading Simon R Green's The Man With Golden Torc which probably wins the award for 'most weirding things per chapter of any book I've read'. Seriously he keeps throwing everything in. Magic, mythology, science fiction, conspiracies into one big heap and see what sticks.

Finished 11/22/63 and The Shining, both were great. Loved the whole "harmonics" aspect in 11/22/63.

Just started Hyperion since I've heard so much about it. So far the language is kind of dry, but I think I like where it's heading.

Bought and read Zelazny's "Prince of Chaos" recently, all those references in Angband make much more sense now.

Currently, I'm reading The Constantine Affliction. I'm really enjoying the book so far.