What are you reading?

Joe

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Jul 7, 2006
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I'm back on a slight reading kick, and I'm looking for good recommendations.

Currently, I'm reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt [http://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Rex-Modern-Library-Paperbacks/dp/0812966007/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-7852620-9214517?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188575320&sr=8-1], mostly because Rex is just about his presidency and Rise was everything up to that point, so it feels like he's stretching things a bit to reach the same length. I'm just past the anthracite coal strike and about hip deep into the Panamanian revolution, which is pretty awesome.

Up next is Washington's Spies [http://www.amazon.com/Washingtons-Spies-Story-Americas-First/dp/0553383299/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-7852620-9214517?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188575471&sr=8-1], which is the story of the spy network George Washington employed during the Revolutionary War. I picked it up at Barnes & Noble based solely on the title.

Anyway, what's on you folks' bed stand?
 

Alex Karls

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Aug 27, 2007
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Cryptonomicon [http://www.amazon.com/Cryptonomicon-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0060512806/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-8976174-7012938?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188614276&sr=8-1], Neal Stephenson's modern day/WWII crypto story, the extraordinary long lead-up to his Baroque Cycle. When I say long, I mean long. It's 900 pages. Each page is about twice the word count of a normal book.

Screenwriting 434 [http://www.amazon.com/Making-Movies-Sidney-Lumet/dp/0679756604/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-8976174-7012938?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188614287&sr=8-1] are the other two books I'm reading. I've read 434 before, and it's an amazing little bible of screenwriting inspiration.

I can't seem to read less than three books at a time these days.
 

TomBeraha

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Jul 25, 2006
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Serious Books :
I re-read Fighter Wing, by Tom Clancy. It's an amazing book and story and assessment of modern air tactics. It's very thorough and an excellent read, but won't appeal to everyone.

Recently worked through Obama's "The Audacity of Hope", and Gore's "Assault on Reason". I highly recommend both, Though neither are light reading.

Fantasy Books :
I've just started reading the Wheel Of Time series, haven't formed an opinion on it yet. (just barely into the first book now)

If you haven't read them yet, I heartily recommend Wizards First Rule and it's sequels by Terry Goodkind.

Thriller Books :
I just finished The Bourne Identity which I found wholly satisfying in ways the movie wasn't. I'm working through Supremacy / Ultimatum and possibly Legacy.

Science Fiction :

I just read A Race Through Time by Piers Anthony and thought it was a little underdeveloped as compared with say the space tyrant series. But was an interesting idea and made a fun book.
 

Geoffrey42

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Aug 22, 2006
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@Alex Karls: Cryptonomicon I enjoyed quite a bit, though I heard through the grape vine from other friends that the Baroque Cycle was not nearly as good. If you haven't read Snow Crash, obviously, you should.

@TomBeraha: Save yourself the agony, and stay away from the Wheel of Time. There are lots of books, and I really enjoyed reading them all, but he's opened quite a few plotlines, and last I read, he's a little sickly, and unlikely to finish the series before he dies. I don't know about you, but I can't stand reading spin-off works by offspring or dedicated others based on "notes and research" done by the original author. I fear that my investment in that series is never going to pay off. Of the Piers Anthony stuff, I've only ever read the Incarnations of Immortality, whose books were of varying quality, but I enjoyed overall. Would you recommend anything else of his in particular? (From Wiki, it looks like a new book in the Incarnations series is due out end of this year, I'll need to keep an eye on that.)

Personally:
With the long Labor Day weekend, I picked up two books: The Cat Who Walks Through Walls - Robert A Heinlein, and A Secret Atlas - Michael A Stackpole. The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is fairly good, though I'm only halfway through. The Stackpole book I picked up just because I'd been eyeing it, and really enjoyed his Star Wars novels around Rogue Squadron. I'm hoping I enjoy him in his own universe as well.
 

Alex Karls

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Aug 27, 2007
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*nod* I've read Snow Crash and Diamond Age. Both were good. Both had Stephenson's trademark flaws, like their abrupt endings. For my money, his books are worth reading, but the end always sucks.

I can say I agree about Wheel of Time. I managed to work through book 8 before I stopped. That series will go on forever, and while well written, has an absurdly high number of fantasy cliches stamped all over it.
 

Andraste

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Nov 21, 2004
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TomBeraha said:
If you haven't read them yet, I heartily recommend Wizards First Rule and it's sequels by Terry Goodkind.
Second this. Am currently halfway through the sixth in the series, Faith of the Fallen, and they've all been equally good - unusual in these long series. Goodkind is a fan of Ayn Rand and those themes come through in the books, but don't beat you over the head, at least not so far.

Geoffrey - I've read some of Piers Anthony, and found the super popular Xanth books to be a little more tongue in cheek than I tend to prefer, but they are certainly light, quick reads, which is nice in summer. I prefer the Apprentice Adept series to the Xanth. They have an interesting premise, and are a mix of sci-fi and fantasy. I read only a couple of the Incarnations a while ago and don't remember really well, but they are kind of their own thing. Anthony's really all over the place.

I also just finished the last Harry Potter book. Yeah, I'll admit it. It was good.
 

krysalist

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Aug 22, 2007
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Aldous Huxley's Doors of Perception (by way of Terence McKenna) and re-reading the entirety of Transmetropolitan, for what my man Jeff would call the "feel-good straw-man gang-bang" effect.

Not reading but garnering a huge library fine on The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
 

Ajar

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Aug 21, 2006
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I'm currently reading Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky. I like it, though not quite as much as A Fire upon the Deep. I'm gradually working through the authors who were nominated for Hugos this year after being completely blown away by Peter Watts' Blindsight last Christmas. Charles Stross is up next after Vinge.
 

Landslide

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Jun 13, 2002
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I just finished Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton, and before that The Prince of Nothing Trilogy by R. Scott Bakker, which was incredible. I recommend both series'.
 

Alex Karls

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Aug 27, 2007
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While we're talking about books, I've got one that I recommend people not read.

Soon I Will Be Invincible [http://www.amazon.com/Soon-Will-Be-Invincible-Novel/dp/0375424865/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-8976174-7012938?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188683856&sr=8-1]

I bought it blind off of Amazon, and it was amazingly bad. I'm fairly certain that it wasn't even edited, given some of the basic issues with the book.

However, it does have one use. If you're going to be a writer, you need to read all the time, and that means being willing to read bad books so that you'll get a grasp of what not to do. I had a friend of mine that I write with read it, and his quote said it all.

"Alex, you hurt me in my brain-head. I only have the one."
 

Ajar

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Aug 21, 2006
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Hey, Landslide, I read The Darkness that Comes Before and didn't love it -- are the second and third books any different? Does at least one sympathetic character emerge from somewhere? :p
 

Cordelia

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Jun 1, 2007
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I recommend Sir Apropos of Nothing, by Peter David. Just keep your tongue firmly in your cheek as you go. The wordplay in it will have you positively groaning, but in a good way.
 

Andrew Armstrong

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Aug 21, 2007
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Still reading Catch-22 which I must finish, and have several Iain M. Banks to read and some other sci-fi to get to eventually.
 

TomBeraha

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Jul 25, 2006
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Geoffrey42 said:
@TomBeraha: Save yourself the agony, and stay away from the Wheel of Time. There are lots of books, and I really enjoyed reading them all, but he's opened quite a few plotlines, and last I read, he's a little sickly, and unlikely to finish the series before he dies. I don't know about you, but I can't stand reading spin-off works by offspring or dedicated others based on "notes and research" done by the original author. I fear that my investment in that series is never going to pay off. Of the Piers Anthony stuff, I've only ever read the Incarnations of Immortality, whose books were of varying quality, but I enjoyed overall. Would you recommend anything else of his in particular? (From Wiki, it looks like a new book in the Incarnations series is due out end of this year, I'll need to keep an eye on that.)
I recommend with reservations Bio of a Space Tyrant. It's a tough read (not in the hard to understand sense).. the story is .. graphic and really rough. none of the bad is pointless or even truly avoidable for where he takes the books, but don't read the first expecting to want more of the same in the second.

Another book recommendation to this group especially, the novels surrounding Krondor are actually quite a bit of fun. I liked Raymond Feist's Magician series too.
 

Goofonian

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Jul 14, 2006
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If your into fantasy, with lots of dragons and magic and stuff, I highly recommend the Andrakis trilogy by Tony Shillitoe. Could be a tough one to find, but well worth the effort.
 

bok

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Aug 25, 2007
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Not currently reading, but I finished the Da Vinci Code a month or so ago. I'm pretty new to reading so I went for it simply because of the hype... as usual hype equals something I shouldn't listern to as I hated the book.

Anyway I have a stack of Terry Pratchet books lying around, I've read one or two and I enjoy the odd humour but they never feel 'satisfying' to read through.
 

David Miscavidge

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Dec 13, 2006
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The Ghormenghast books by Mervyn Peake. (Very enchantingly subtle--not the proto-Book of the New Sun experience I was expecting them to be.)

Ajar, Deepness in the Sky is excellent. And I think you'll dig Charles Stross---You can get Accellerando online for free, and it's a great book. In some ways reminiscent of Schismatrix-era Bruce Sterling.

(I'll have to try that Peter Watts book when I get back to science fiction.)
 

Ajar

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Aug 21, 2006
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I've never been one to evangelize books, but I've gotten four or five friends to read Blindsight and every one has liked it. One said 'It kicked my ass" -- it's the hardest of hard SF, written by a PhD in marine biology with a 15-page referenced appendix at the end. It's also available free on Watts' website [http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm] (along with much of the rest of his body of work) under a Creative Commons license, in case you can't find a copy at a library or in a store.

I actually already own a copy of Accelerando, which I picked up along with A Deepness in the Sky. I finished the latter the day before yesterday and will probably start on Accelerando today. Added: I hear Vinge is writing a sequel to A Fire upon the Deep, too.

Another good book I read recently is Gates of Fire, which is a novelized retelling of the battle of Thermopylae. It's very different than the extremely mythologized (and historically inaccurate as far as we know) version portrayed in 300.

I've also started picking away at Robert Fisk's gigantic The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, but that one's going to take a while.
 

krysalist

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Aug 22, 2007
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@Logan

Mick Foley, my hero. One of only two wrestling luminaries to ever lecture at MIT. The Al Snow jokes never get old either.