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Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-08-27 03:10am
by Karza
D-Day: The Battle for Normandy (finnish translation). Got it as a birthday present. Also in the works are The Good Soldier Švejk books and Imperial Infatryman's Uplifting Primer :D .

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-08-27 04:47am
by The Grim Squeaker
Simplicius wrote:Presently between books; I rolled through Pratchett's Nation this morning, and Iain M. Banks's Matter is next up.
Am I the only one who didn't like Nation? It wasn't bad like "Monstrous regiment", but I ended up reading it only once, then sticking it under a pile of boxes.
Matter is great, I reread it a few weeks back. Have you read any of the Culture books?

Currently reading: The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks (overrated) and The penguin history of the world.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-08-27 06:33am
by Prannon
Currently working on Paradise Lost by John Milton. Not the easiest thing to read, and not exactly attention keeping either. I usually only read it when I'm on the subway in transit. Before that I read The Big Bang by Simon Singh. Now that was a good book...very interesting and insightful.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-08-27 12:45pm
by Alferd Packer
Now I'm chewing through (pun intended) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

It delivers on all three.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-08-27 02:46pm
by [R_H]
Alferd Packer wrote:Now I'm chewing through (pun intended) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

It delivers on all three.
Hopefully the zombies are an improvement.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-08-27 06:31pm
by The Yosemite Bear
Hey Darcy could go all Ash like....

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-08-27 11:02pm
by CmdrWilkens
So I'm on a Keegan kick lately and have moved on to A History of Warfare which if nothing else has been a very interesting dissertation on what Clausewitz got wrong (with examples :) ) and that is just the first chapter.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-08-27 11:09pm
by Stormin
For the past week I have been reading Pesticide Applicator Course for Agricultural Producers. Before that was a re-read of the Nights Dawn trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-08-29 12:30pm
by Memnon
[R_H] wrote:
Alferd Packer wrote:Now I'm chewing through (pun intended) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

It delivers on all three.
Hopefully the zombies are an improvement.
Yes, the zombies make the book at least ten times better.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-16 09:02am
by Broomstick
I am reading the Deepgate trilogy: Scar Night, Iron Angel, and The God of Clocks.

It's weird, a sort of steampunk fantasy.

It's also very, very dark. At one point I'm thinking "this is a very icky place, I wish they'd go back to X". Then I realize "X" is in hell. That's right, some spots are so awful you'd rather be in hell. Well, maybe not, but one character was waxing nostalgic for her time there at one point. As I said, very strange.

If you don't like fantasy/magic don't read it, but as I said, there's a definite steampunk aspect to this, and there are certainly not pretty fairies and unicorns in this one. In fact, the angels are pretty fucking scary and nasty, and they're the good guys.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-16 09:07am
by open_sketchbook
Just finished reading American Facists and this wonderful little novel entitled All You Need is Kill, which basically is basically the combat version of Groundhog Day. I'm rereading the Sprawl trilogy now, hoping to pick up on some new details.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-16 09:51am
by Knife
Meh, I've got to get kicking on Something Wicked this way Comes. Need to do a presentation on it in a month.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-16 10:11am
by loomer
Cigar Insider magazine and Classic Ships of Islam by Dionisius A. Agius.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-16 10:35am
by Lonestar
Struggle for the Middle Sea, which is about the Med during WW2.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-16 11:08am
by Raesene
'The Command of the Ocean' by N.A.M Rodger - got it and 'The Safeguard of the Sea' about a week ago and love every page both. I'm eagerly waiting for part 3 of his history of the Royal Navy.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-16 01:25pm
by Pick
I'm reading Ptolemy's Gate to finish out the Bartimaeus trilogy. So far they've been fun reads. I also have some kid's sci-fi to zip through.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-16 02:33pm
by Rye
I'm reading Nineteen Eighty-Four and re-watching Spaced.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-16 03:00pm
by The Grim Squeaker
Having finished "Toll the Hounds", I have now finished my total reread of all 8 Malazan books of the fallen (except for book 2). Over the past month and a bit, I have read almost a million words just in those series, now I just need to pick up "Dust of Dreams" when i'm in london :).
As for what I'm reading right now? Most of the comics and manga section of Iceland's national library, I just spent the past 5 hours there. Mostly rereads to be honest, but a lot of them :).

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-16 03:42pm
by Zixinus
Right now I'm juggling between:
- "Így éltek a lovagkorban" ("This is how they lived in the knight-age" or "age of knights") by Kulcsár Zsuzsanna, a fairly comprehensive effort from the part of a historian to give insight into the everyday lives of your average medieval person, let it be peasant, towny, priest or noble.
- "A természettudományokról mindenkinek" ("About the natural sciences for everybody") by John & Mary Gribbin. Haven't got far, but I hope to gain even more insight into the scientific method and try to cut the edges of my patches of ignorance here and there.
- "How to win friends & influence people" by Dale Carnegie, yes it may sound like a stupid self-help book but it actually contains stuff about social skills. It mostly gives fairly reasonable advice on how to deal with people and there is nothing like "reach into your inner self". The advice is the kind that sounds quite logical, the author tries to establish them the best he could without resorting to scientific hypothesises (for example, on the subject on asking people for things, he shows us a badly-thought out advertising letter and points out why he feels appalled after reading it).

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-16 03:48pm
by The Grim Squeaker
Zixinus wrote: - "How to win friends & influence people" by Dale Carnegie, yes it may sound like a stupid self-help book but it actually contains stuff about social skills. It mostly gives fairly reasonable advice on how to deal with people and there is nothing like "reach into your inner self". The advice is the kind that sounds quite logical, the author tries to establish them the best he could without resorting to scientific hypothesises (for example, on the subject on asking people for things, he shows us a badly-thought out advertising letter and points out why he feels appalled after reading it).
I liked it, even if it lacks technical detailed advice. Just don´t let Stark hear you.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-16 08:09pm
by Starglider
I just reread 'Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies' by Douglas Hofstadter and team. Primarily because I was checking the feasibility of implementing a version of Letter Spirit (classic AI program) on our engine as the next demo. Still a good book, but I was surprised how much my perception of it changed. When I first read it in 2003 it seemed incredibly insightful, now it seems very naive.

Last fiction book... probably The Dark Crusade, from the Dark Wing series? It's frankly pretty awful space opera, but I am compelled to read the series because it features anthropomorphic hawks as the main aliens (yeah, slight obsession there).

I have been meaning to continue the Discworld series (I am six books in), but I'm just too busy ATM.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-16 10:02pm
by Darth Yoshi
The Iliad. I liked The Odyssey, and I figured I might as well take a class that'll give me credit for something I wouldn't mind reading anyway.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-16 10:45pm
by The Yosemite Bear
Darkly Dreaming Dexter.

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-16 11:30pm
by Raw Shark
Finished Grapes of Wrath and blew through The Thin Man this week (which is fun and made for an interesting unintentional opposing bookend to the class issues of the 1930s... Labor issues and Communist revolution are mentioned once by an unnamed minor character at a cocktail party...).

Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2009-09-17 09:02am
by Pick
Finished the Bartimaeus Trilogy and was surprised, for a young adult book, how few of the characters survived. I enjoyed them greatly.