StarDestroyer.Net BBS

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-03-09 04:12pm 

OK I wrapped up Mass Casualties and was impressed, it's an excellent book if you want to get a soldier's eye view of how dysfunctional military life in Iraq could get. I'd be interested in hearing rebuttals/fallout from it as some events portrayed are remarkably shitty.

Then I did Aquariums of Pyongyang - Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag which is the autobiography of Chol Hwan-Kang who was sent to the gulags with the rest of his family at age 9. It's an interesting read, but nothing particularly revelatory if you're at all familiar with North Korea.

And now I'm on Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa by Jason Stearns, which seems to be a meticulous history of the region from 1994 onwards. It's equal parts fascinating and horrific, but without a doubt one of the best history books I've read recently as it is scrupulously impartial thus far. I've learned more in the first hundred pages of this book than I ever have from docos or newspaper/magazine reports.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-03-09 05:53pm 

I haven't started reading it yet, but I'm expecting classic sci-fi, which may seem a bit goofy in this day and age.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-03-09 06:26pm 

just finished St. Titrians the complete appaling mess.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-03-09 08:30pm 

All four of the John Carter series are available on Project Gutenberg for free, they are most definitely goofy and cheesy in the way classic scifi can only be.
I highly recommend the Lensmen series as a follow up in the same vein.

Just finished the Void Trilogy, couple of frebies from Amazon UK kindle store to go through - Apocalypse Earth and Vampyre Apocalypse - no high expectations but then they were free.
And then on to A Rising Thunder ... yes I know it's Honor Harrington .... what can I say? its a guilty pleasure.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-03-10 02:12am 

I've finished the main Dresden series today. Just have Side Jobs to finish.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-03-29 12:42pm 

Hey folks, the Kindle edition of Anathem is on sale for $2 for a limited time.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-03-29 03:18pm 

OK, that's motivating as I don't have to lug around an 800p hardcover tome from teh library if I want to read it.

Except, oh wait:

This title is not available for customers from:
Australia


God. I love this "connected world" in which we live.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-03-29 03:31pm 

Just finished The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, by Jon Gertner. It's an interesting read that mostly concentrates on some of the more accomplished sons of the labs and the products, inventions and innovations they made (along with a few missteps along the way).

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-03-29 04:34pm 

In my latest hop on a band wagon I started reading The Hunger Games, in preparation for reading it this weekend at the cinema. I've saw meme's criticising people reading it because of the movie. They can stick it up their well padded ass, anything that gets young people reading can only be a good thing.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-03-29 04:37pm 

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-04-01 03:10pm 

I never did read twilight, but my girlfriend tells me it's not as bad as was made out and they were actually a vast improvement on the movies.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-04-01 04:05pm 

Just finished Black Lotus, the sixth book in the Sano Ichiro series.

This has the largest time-skip of the series so far, picking up 2 years later instead of several weeks or months as with the other books. Nice to see a change in the status quo, with the birth of Reiko and Sano's son, Masahiro, as well as Sano and Chamberlain Yanagisawa having buried the hatchet (more or less) since The Samurai's Wife. The plot of Sano and Reiko going up against a cult is new for the series and was probably influenced by the then-recent Tokyo subway attacks.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-04-01 04:27pm 

I've just finished Orwell's Homage to Catalonia and I must say that it was an excellent read.

I am currently reading Kings of Infinite Space and The Devil's Waltz.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-04-15 08:13pm 

Finished A Rising Thunder, already since read Stanislaw Lems rather boring Solaris, Dan Worths Exiles & Renegades, Neal Stephenson The Diamond Age, Greg Bear Hull Zero Three, Stephen King Under The Dome and Charles Stross Glasshouse.
Currently reading Alistair Reynolds Blue Remembered Earth.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-04-15 09:09pm 

Powering my way through A Princess of Mars. Interesting classic.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-04-15 10:04pm 

Hmmm, well I think I mentioned somewhere I now have a big pile of Guard stories from PTerry to go through (I started with the stand alones)

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-04-15 11:02pm 

I finished Star Trek Kahless by Michael Jan Friedman.

What did you think of Under the Dome?

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-04-15 11:18pm 

I rather liked it, although it did lose some of its punch when the antagonists were revealed.
Kept thinking there's no way this could happen in any other smalltown america ... until about halfway through then I realised that it had been chosen deliberately and everyone was fucked.
On the whole a return to form for King, although I still harbour resentment over the abomination that was the final book in the Dark Tower series ....

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-04-16 03:21am 

"Void Hunter" WH40K by Adrien Dembsky Bowden,
And a bunch of articles/seminars. And started the new "Gotrek & Felix: Anthology", then I plan to buy a copy of "Blue Remembered Earth" by Alastair Reynolds.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-05-12 03:40pm 

Waded through a whole bunch of free kindle books from Amazon UK

Evermore Trilogy
Belarian Initiative
Apocalypse Earth
Vampire Apocalypse
Ice Caves of Mars
Lycandroid
Crystal Ruins
The Pleasure Tube
It's Always Spring Break Somewhere in the Galaxy
Acsension Conspiracy

.... in short don't. There just isn't enough brain bleach in the world to cope with this awful crap even if they are free.

On the flip side -

Voidhawk Jason Halstead - described as Spelljammer in space.
Brainstorm Gordon Kessler

and a couple of gems I highly recommend -

Heroine Addiction Jennifer Matarese - five years after burning her spandex costume and geting a real job Vera Noble gets dragged back into the world of superheroing.
Turing Evolved David Kitson - what do you do when the original Turing test doesn't cut the mustard anymore?

These may have been free for a limited time and I got lucky but they're still worth getting.

Also read The Complete Sherlock Holmes and currently reading Saturn's Children Charles Stross.

Just found out there's a new Laundry novel coming from Stross - The Apocalypse Codex but it's not out until 19th July
I didn't think there was going to ever be another Laundry novel, the trilogy seemed quite rounded off with the ending of The Fuller Memorandum but it seems Stross had other ideas ... so someone please invent a time machine I don't think I can take the strain of having to wait two whole months!

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-05-12 05:50pm 

Adrian Dembsky Bowden: "The Emperor's Gift" (Warhammer 40K).
And "Blue Remembered Earth", Alastair Reynolds.
The former is excellent and the later is good so far .

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-05-12 05:53pm 

Currently reading:
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies; by Jared Diamond.

Up next:
Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization; by Robert Zubrin

Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets and Planets; by John S. Lewis

Islands in the Sky: Bold New Ideas for Colonizing Space; edited by Stanley Schmidt and Robert Zubrin

...I got enthusiastic after the launch of Planetary Resources.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-05-12 06:57pm 

The Primarchs, an anthology of Horus Heresy stuff.

Really enjoyed both Emperors Gift and Void Stalker. EG made all the sweeter due to the foreword pretty much saying 'Fuck Matt Ward'

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-05-12 07:20pm 

Finally got done with The Count of Monte Cristo. Despite knowing the broad strokes, it was still enjoyable to read the definitive revenge story.

 Post subject: Re: What are you reading right now?

Posted: 2012-05-14 11:10am 

American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company by Byrce Hoffman. It's an interesting read on the many disasters (and comebacks) to befall the Ford Motor Company and how a former Boeing man was able to turn the company around. More importantly, he was able - at least for now - to correct the poisonous corporate culture that was Ford and turn it into something better. It feel like hagiography at times, but Mulally appears to be the real deal as a corporate leader (and one Boeing sorely missed for the 787 project).

747: Creating the World's First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation by Joe Sutter and Jay Spenser.

Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John D. Clark. This is a hilarious tale of rocket propellent science from its dawn until the 1970s and the ever-expanding attempts to get more performance.