What Are You Reading Right Now 2.0

[Ahriman238]

So the guy, Tor invents a new super-shield, and human flight within something like a month. After the first six, he's learned his best friend is secretly the heir to the continental kingdom, saved a city with a super-filter for their aquifer after their sewage system tainted all the water for miles around, and saved a major comte (essentially, the state of California) from drought by constructing, in a few weeks, a flying river that flows from the sea but is salt-filtered and purified. Plus magical water pumps, central air/heat, an amulet that keeps people comfortable whether hip-deep in snow or equatorial noonday sun, an earthmoving spell, a device for compacting earth into stone, a poison detector, and doubled the power of their conventional force and fire weapons while removing their energy/ammo constraints. He also creates an explosive weapon too powerful for general issue, then upgrades into a baby-nuke of which he only makes the one.

Aside from the flying river and the nuke, he takes care to make all of his magic extremely easy to duplicate. And makes more copies in a week than the richest merchant house's builder sweatshop can turn out in a year.

After his newfound connections and feats of magic straight out of legend, he is continually astonished that people know his name and that some people want to harm him. He also never wonders where the money from his patents (actually, in theory he gets the majority of the money, with those copying and selling his work taking a 12% cut) got to. Sheesh.

After the first year, he's added to his resume five more generations of super-shields, Not-flyers that let you hover at up to 40 mph but are easier to use than flyers and easier to mass-produce, a general healing device (all previous efforts being one-shots that work for one specific person), a lie-detector, magical mood-ring, a prosthetic arm real in every way save being a bit too strong and having limited sense of touch and a series of amulets to conjure forcefields in specific shapes: one to crate whatever outfit you can imagine, a configurable cabin, a two-story house, a miniature palace, a 50 ft. fishing boat and a 200 ft. yacht. His personal weapons now incorporate fire, force, lightning, high explosives, lasers and 3 settings unspecified, and if used on a shielded target will automatically cycle through settings until something works. Also has engaged to a princess for a while, it didn't work out, and has been named both a knight and ambassador pro tem to Afrak for whom he is designing a more massive version of the flying river. He also prevented a civil war, incited by Austran agents as a real shooting war has begun with them. Still clueless that anyone would wish him harm, still thinks one of his devices worth hundreds of gold is a fair trade for a loaf of bread.

Powers is also way too found of contrived character conflict.

[Broomstick]

It's very short and nonfiction - the Lake County Indiana police report report the incident on Sunday night. It's fucking hilarious. Best quote from the guy who was arrested: "I fucked up I came from [name of bar] I'm drunk and I started messing with the doors on the apartments and got hit with a shovel".

After his arrest he apparently fell asleep in the squad car. When they woke him up at the jail he didn't remember the incident and also didn't remember he was in a cop car. Surprise!

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Peter H. Wilson, Europe's Tragedy; a history of the Thirty Years War-
not entry level, presupposes a very active and retentive memory and a good deal of background knowledge of the period. Did contain a couple of blinding glimpses of the obvious- the six sieges period, for instance- and how much it was basically a Holy roman civil war that overlapped and gave fresh strategic opportunities to a number of ongoing existing conflicts, and how it rumbled to a long overdue end, paranoia fighting exhaustion to the last.

Michael Burleigh's Small Wars, Far Away Places; a history of decolonisation and it's blunders. Unhappy reading, but informative.

[Broomstick]

One Second After by William Forstchen. Basically a story about what happens to a small town in the US after America is hit by an electro-magnetic pulse. Amazon Kindle special for $2.99, so far (about about 1/4 through it) not too bad, at least as good on the writing as the TV show Jericho (what happens to a small town after the US is nuked).

[Ahriman238]

Now read Little Brother, about a kid falsely arrested by the DHS, who after his release starts telling people how to escape government surveillance.

[Broomstick]

My spouse pointed out the irony of me reading a book about the apocalypse resulting from an EMP attack that wipes out all electronics in e-book format on a kindle.

The book was OK. Not a deathless classic, but hard SF in the sense of projecting a scenario based on science (which hopefully will not become science reality). In some ways I wish it had been longer and gotten into more details, but it's not bad. I have a few quibbles with some of the details but it's more down to probabilities than science.

[Broomstick]

My spouse pointed out the irony of me reading a book about the apocalypse resulting from an EMP attack that wipes out all electronics in e-book format on a kindle.

The book was OK. Not a deathless classic, but hard SF in the sense of projecting a scenario based on science (which hopefully will not become science reality). In some ways I wish it had been longer and gotten into more details, but it's not bad. I have a few quibbles with some of the details but it's more down to probabilities or psychology/culture than science.

[JME2]

Currently working my way through the Hand of Thrawn duology.

I realized that I've never actually read both books all the way through; I've only skimmed parts.

It's interesting to go back to this point in the Expanded Universe -- to the pre-Yuuzhan Vong era and while Luke's New Jedi Order was so small.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Horror stories. Real, terrifying, stay up all night so the monsters don't come out in the dark, neurosis- generating horror stories.

Specifically, the revised edition of Paxman and Harris' A Higher Form of Killing, and Ken Alibek's Biohazard.

Screw the occult. For genuine existence- questioning, soul- rippling, paralysing dread, biological warfare is where it's at.

Good grief, I am getting to be a maudlin bastard these days- any suggestions for something happy and upbeat?

[FaxModem1]

Reading Lost Horizon by James Hilton. I'm a fan of the 1937 Frank Capra film. Not so much of the 1973 film. It's interesting how the lone female character has changed quite a bit in each version of the story, from a nun missionary in the book, to a prostitute dying of consumption in the 1937 film, to a drug addicted reporter in the 1973 film.

In each telling however, I find the premise engaging. Would one want to spend one lifetime being able to go around the world, experiencing the world and it's diversity, or several lifetimes in one place, having time to master everything you ever wanted to learn or enjoy over centuries.

[Broomstick]

Let's see, thanks to Project Gutenberg my kindle queue now has:

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett by Davy Crockett (yes, the guy with coonskin cap, Congressman, and guy at the Alamo Davy Crockett)
Le Mort d'Arthur, volumes 1 and 2 by sir Thomas Malory
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

When some women are depressed they go clothes shopping. This woman goes book shopping. Except I have no money this week. Yay, Gutenberg!

[Lord Pounder]

Let's see, thanks to Project Gutenberg my kindle queue now has:

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett by Davy Crockett (yes, the guy with coonskin cap, Congressman, and guy at the Alamo Davy Crockett)
Le Mort d'Arthur, volumes 1 and 2 by sir Thomas Malory
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

When some women are depressed they go clothes shopping. This woman goes book shopping. Except I have no money this week. Yay, Gutenberg!

I've always found that Amazon have a good selection of freedbies too, though I'm using Amazon.co.uk rather than .com

[Broomstick]

Freebies, $0.99, $1.99, and other cheap deals, too.

[dragon]

Reading David Weber Cauldron of Ghost, pretty decent so far he gets away from the space battles instead it's an adventure following two notorious spies one from Haven the other from Manticore

[Crazedwraith]

Reading Ashes of Victory. online. Ahem. And I CLAVDIVS in print format.

For the former I'm just impressed how everyone seems to casual banter to everyone else. Even when Honor is, say talking to the Queen of Manticore.

For the latter, well I watched quit a bit of the tv show when the repeated in on BBC 3 or 4 or something years ago but either I've forgotten a lot or the book's style make it seem very different. Or both of course. Pretty interesting read.

[Dalton]

I just finished the Sword & Laser Anthology. If you like Fantasy and Sci-Fi give it a shot. Edited by Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt of the Sword & Laser podcast.

[Broomstick]

Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. OK, now I begin to understand the popularity of the book/series/show. Unfortunately, despite this book being printed in 1996 or something it is still so popular I had to get on a waiting list to borrow it from the library and waiting 2 months for my turn. There is still a line waiting for it, so renewals are now allowed. Since I don't have a lot of time to read these days I'm just not going to be able to finish it before I have to return it.

The upshot is, since the rest of the series seems like the same doorstop volume length, I'm just not going to bother with the rest. Way too frustrating to read 3/4 of the novel then have to undergo a 2 month wait to finish the rest of the book.

[Elheru Aran]

Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. OK, now I begin to understand the popularity of the book/series/show. Unfortunately, despite this book being printed in 1996 or something it is still so popular I had to get on a waiting list to borrow it from the library and waiting 2 months for my turn. There is still a line waiting for it, so renewals are now allowed. Since I don't have a lot of time to read these days I'm just not going to be able to finish it before I have to return it.

The upshot is, since the rest of the series seems like the same doorstop volume length, I'm just not going to bother with the rest. Way too frustrating to read 3/4 of the novel then have to undergo a 2 month wait to finish the rest of the book.

Here in our library system you have the option of "renting" e-book versions. Think you might be able to do that? No returns on those!

[Broomstick]

I looked into it - I have borrowed e-books from my library. Unfortunately, my library hasn't bothered to purchase e-versions of the early part of the series. Perhaps the purchaser reasoned that since they already had a dozen or more copies of each of those books in circulation there was no need to buy more copies.

A friend has offered to lend me the books, but it was a remark in passing, not sure if she's actually willing to do that or not.

[Elheru Aran]

Well it won't hurt to drop her a note like "hey remember when you offered to lend me game of thrones, are you still up". Worst case, she'll say no and you'll be no worse off.

The e-book thing is kind of weird. You'd think libraries would have more of those available, but I guess most of their funding goes towards making sure they have dead trees in stock. That, and just surviving these days...

[Broomstick]

My library has LOTS of e-books. In the most popular genres: romance, mystery, and "best sellers". They are starting to get more SF and other genres but I can hardly blame them for going after the most popular categories first. They do provide remarkably good collections in SF (I think they have nearly every Doctor Who episode on DVD now) but they can't purchase everything all at once.

The other thing is that they seem limited in how many people are allowed to access their e-copies at one time, and yes, they do expire after a certain interval. I think in another few years the whole e-system will be much more streamlined, right now there are still bugs being worked out.

[Agent Fisher]

Currently reading Low Level Hell by Hugh Mills, a captivating read about OH-6 scout pilots in Vietnam. Mills retired as a Lieutenant Colonel with over 3300 combat flight hours, 3 Silver Stars, 4 Distinguished Flying Crosses, was shot down 16 times and wounded 3 times. He also pretty much wrote the book on scout helicopter flying for Vietnam.