Author Topic: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?  (Read 189742 times)

Offline Angry Ewok

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #720 on: July 20, 2009, 06:07 PM »
I'm gonna have to check that out, Matt. I've been wanting to read Lucifer's Hammer, Earth Abides, The Postman, and whatever other apocalyptic/SHTF books I can find. The Road got me into it. World War Z wasn't bad, either.

Offline Greg

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #721 on: July 20, 2009, 09:59 PM »
I'm currently working on The Road by Cormac McCarthy as well as The Accidental Guerilla by David Kilcullen. Next up are Public Enemies, Band of Brothers, and Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

Offline Nathan

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #722 on: July 21, 2009, 03:23 AM »


Read this when it originally came out in 2004, now rereading it. It's the author behind the alternate-history novels Lion's Blood and Zulu Heart, if anyone's familiar with those.

Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi strides-and soars and plots and duels-again in this stirring new addition to the Star Wars saga. Hugo nominee Barnes (Zulu Heart) picks Kenobi up in middle age during the Clone Wars between the good-guy Republic and the dastardly Confederacy, sending Kenobi's impetuous Jedi Padawan (apprentice) Anakin Skywalker offstage and Kenobi as ambassador to the remote planet Ord Cestus, now producing new bio-droids able to challenge the Jedi in combat. Accompanied by another Jedi Knight, tentacle-haired Nautolan Kit Fisto, five superbly bred and trained military trooper-clones, and a wondrously conceived giant slug who proves an inspired barrister, Kenobi plunges into Cestan intrigues, trying to avoid Cestus's destruction and sensing a sinister concealed threat in the nick of time.

Loaded with exotic offworlders and vicious baddies, mystical insights from the Force and a poignant love affair between Nate, a clone trooper whose Code demands that he die fighting for the Republic, and Sheeka Tull, a brave and brainy female pilot, this splendid adventure yarn offers a gut-wrenching surprise on nearly every page and a knock-the-socks-off ending nearly as thrilling as Luke Skywalker's original swoop through the Death Star's trench.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2009, 03:30 AM by Nathan »
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Offline Chris M

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #723 on: July 22, 2009, 11:17 AM »


My grandfather was a tank commander in the M10 and later the M36.  I'm thinking his unit patch, with the tiger crushing the tank, will be my next tattoo.  Good read if you're into WWII and some of the supporting cast in armored warfare.
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Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #724 on: July 25, 2009, 08:06 PM »
Finished Inferno. Now starting "Eric Brighteyes" by H. Rider Haggard.



The author of numerous romance-adventures in the 19th century tradition, Haggard turned his hand, at least once, to the older saga tradition of the northern peoples. The result may well have been his best work. Skillfully crafted, this tale proceeds at breakneck pace to unfold the saga-like adventures of the stout Icelandic yeoman, Eric Thorgrimurs' son (surnamed 'Brighteyes' for his most notable trait), as he struggles to win the hand of his beloved, Gudruda the Fair, despite the vigorous opposition of her half-sister, Swanhild the Fatherless (who seeks Eric for her own). Caught between these two beautiful women and faced with the need to overcome the opposition of Gudruda's father, Asmund the Priest (not the Christian sort) and his son, the greedy Bjorn (who would prefer to marry his sister off to a wealthy chieftain in lieu of a liaison with the farmer's son Eric), our hero must prove himself worthy of his destined bride while dodging the snares of those who would unman him. Conspiring with her mysterious mother, Groa the witchwife, Swanhild arranges to have Ospakar Blacktooth, a northern chieftain from Swinefells, pay Asmund's household a visit in order to see and woo Gudruda for himself. This Ospakar and Eric become immediate foes for Ospakar is as ugly and vile as Eric is handsome and honorable. And the tale only accelerates from here. From death-defying feats of derring-do to duels between deadly foemen to treachery and mayhem in blinding blizzards and on the high seas, this is an adventure which, once having grabbed you, will not let you go. Written in an archaic prose, mirroring the old nineteenth century translations of the original Icelandic sagas, and intended to simulate the voice of the old sagas themselves, the power of this narrative is compelling and unrelenting. And yet it is less exhausting than exhilirating as it unfolds the tale of Eric and the two women who loved him -- no matter what the cost. If the tale has a flaw at all it is that the characters are not real in any sense of that word but only larger-than-life actors who strut about upon the stage which Haggard has drawn for us here. At the same time the sensibility offered is one of pure and unmitigated adventure. But it's great fun and marvelous escapist fare. A must for lovers of Norse and viking times.
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Offline Nathan

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #725 on: July 26, 2009, 05:35 PM »
« Last Edit: July 26, 2009, 05:43 PM by Nathan »
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Offline Angry Ewok

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #726 on: July 28, 2009, 09:57 AM »
Finished Palahnuik's Diary and it sucked.
Finished Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic and it was pretty good.

Now I'm back to Shelby Foote's Civil War Narrative. I'm into Volume 2 - 150 or so pages down, another 800 to go!

Waiting on my shelf...

Civil War Narrative Volume 3
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Washington's Secret War: The Hidden History of Valley Forge
Boone: A Biography
LOTR The Hobbit
LOTR Fellowship of the Ring
LOTR The Two Towers
LOTR Return of the King
Rainbow Six
A Bridge Too Far


Offline Chris M

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #727 on: July 28, 2009, 11:37 PM »
Brad, you've got some good reading coming.

Washington's Secret War is an excellent read and is something I (as a trained historian) wished more people knew about.  Rainbox Six is awesome and very entertaining and the research from A Bridge Too Far formed the basis of my research topic and paper from when I got my degree.  Cornelius Ryan is a great, great writer.  Be sure to have a map out that can be written on when you read that book.  It will certainly help you keep track of things.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."  Ben franklin


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Offline Angry Ewok

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #728 on: July 29, 2009, 11:30 AM »
I hadn't had high hopes for Washington's Secret War, since I picked it up in a bargain bin - now I'm excited to read it. Gotta agree with your take on Cornelius Ryan - he's sort of like the Shelby Foote of WW2. I bought Longest Yard and Bridge Too Far years ago, dunno why I read one and not the other. May have burned myself out after reading Rommel and Patton's books.

Offline Nathan

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #729 on: July 31, 2009, 04:56 AM »


The same dude that wrote Shatterpoint, NJO: Traitor, and the Revenge of the Sith novelization.

Despite being packaged as fantasy, this adventure has a plot more familiar from virtual-reality gaming novels usually packaged as SF. Caine, a legendary hero/entertainer, has to re-enter the fantasy world that made him famous in order to rescue his estranged wife, whose own adventure entertainment has gone awry. The real enemy (no surprise) is the studio that's willing to endanger Actors' lives for ratings. But here the "fantasy" world is actually another dimension where magic works, and the human Actors are considered demons that cause chaos and death purely for entertainment's sake.
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Offline Angry Ewok

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #730 on: August 2, 2009, 11:02 AM »
Wow, that's one of the corniest looking SciFi covers I've ever seen.

Offline Nathan

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #731 on: August 2, 2009, 06:10 PM »
Yeah it's rather unfortunate.
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Offline JediJman

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #732 on: August 2, 2009, 08:35 PM »
I finally started Path of Destruction this week (First of the Darth Bane novels) and I cannot put it down.  I've read a lot of Star Wars EU and this is quickly becomming my favorite of the bunch.  Non-stop action, character building, just the right amount of background, and a really fun plot to see how a Sith academy is so different and yet strangely similar to the Jedi teachings.  IF anyone was on the fence about this book, I highly recommend picking it up (hope I don't change my mind by the end!).
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Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #733 on: August 3, 2009, 10:49 AM »
Now starting "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsiq.



In his now classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig brings us a literary chautauqua, a novel that is meant to both entertain and edify. It scores high on both counts.

Phaedrus, our narrator, takes a present-tense cross-country motorcycle trip with his son during which the maintenance of the motorcycle becomes an illustration of how we can unify the cold, rational realm of technology with the warm, imaginative realm of artistry. As in Zen, the trick is to become one with the activity, to engage in it fully, to see and appreciate all details--be it hiking in the woods, penning an essay, or tightening the chain on a motorcycle.

In his autobiographical first novel, Pirsig wrestles both with the ghost of his past and with the most important philosophical questions of the 20th century--why has technology alienated us from our world? what are the limits of rational analysis? if we can't define the good, how can we live it? Unfortunately, while exploring the defects of our philosophical heritage from Socrates and the Sophists to Hume and Kant, Pirsig inexplicably stops at the middle of the 19th century. With the exception of Poincaré, he ignores the more recent philosophers who have tackled his most urgent questions, thinkers such as Peirce, Nietzsche (to whom Phaedrus bears a passing resemblance), Heidegger, Whitehead, Dewey, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Kuhn. In the end, the narrator's claims to originality turn out to be overstated, his reasoning questionable, and his understanding of the history of Western thought sketchy. His solution to a synthesis of the rational and creative by elevating Quality to a metaphysical level simply repeats the mistakes of the premodern philosophers. But in contrast to most other philosophers, Pirsig writes a compelling story. And he is a true innovator in his attempt to popularize a reconciliation of Eastern mindfulness and nonrationalism with Western subject/object dualism. The magic of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance turns out to lie not in the answers it gives, but in the questions it raises and the way it raises them. Like a cross between The Razor's Edge and Sophie's World, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance takes us into "the high country of the mind" and opens our eyes to vistas of possibility.
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Offline Nathan

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #734 on: August 3, 2009, 01:28 PM »
@ Justin: yeah, PoD is on my to-read list. I actually tried reading it when it came out but I was having a busy semester and couldn't really get into it. Seemed good though. FYI, the third one is coming out this December.
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