Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[WT Sharpe]

Just finished reading The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass by Bill Maher. Very funny stuff, and from my perspective, mostly on target. I'd love to share some of the best and funniest passages but, this being Bill Maher, the best stuff is fodder for our opt-in Politics and Religion forum. Nonetheless, here are some of the less political offerings:

COMPUTER CRASH
New Rule: Instead of getting me the new steering-wheel desk for my birthday, save the $19.99 and just write “I hope you die” on a card.

New Rule: Don’t feel bad that the Taco Bell Chihuahua died. Yes, the Taco Bell Chihuahua has gone to his great reward in the ground. Oddly enough, the cause of death? Taco Bell. But don’t worry, fans. If you would like to visit the dog’s remains, just order a Burrito Grande.

New Rule: Stop calling bagpipes a musical instrument. They’re actually a Scottish Breathalyzer test. You blow into one end, and if the sound that comes out the other end doesn’t make you want to kill yourself—you’re not drunk enough.

New Rule: Someone has to make a mustard container that doesn’t squirt out yellow water before it gets to the actual mustard. I get all excited for lunch, and then Grey Poupon pees on my sandwich.

New Rule: Just because I’m in my underwear doesn’t mean I’m “parading around.” Why is it women always accuse men in their boxers of “parading around in their underwear”? There is no parade. I just happen to be not wearing pants. And if that bothers you so much, maybe you should get off and wait for the next elevator.

And all this talk about the “southern way of life” . . . please, I’ve been to the South. It’s the same way of life we have over here. You watch TV, you go to the mall, you eat a soft pretzel, and you go home. You just do it slower, that’s all.

I highlighted 82 passages in this book, ignored pages on end of humorous commentary because I hate making highlights that are nearly chapter length, and out of everything I highlighted, these are the only quotes I felt comfortable sharing outside of P&R on a "family-friendly/workplace-safe" forum. This was a most enjoyable reading experience. Highly recommended; a solid four out of five stars.

[Traye]

Originally Posted by benham

I like his Charlie Parker series.

One of my favourite crime/thriller series is that.

[MickeyC]

Just finished The Athena Project by Brad Thor

[dreams]

Originally Posted by shootingMaNs

Things have finally calmed down to the "hurry up and wait" stage around here, and I got a lot of reading done. I read and loved John Scalzi's Old Mans War, The Ghost Brigade, and The Last Colony. I then re-read The Forever War by Joe Haldeman(with an interesting forward by John Scalzi). I then moved on to Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein, and Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

<snip>

I have John Scalzi's book 1 and 3 in paper and haven't picked up book 2 yet. I loved the story and their "brain-pals". I am trying to wait and not read book 3 until I find The Ghost Brigade (in paper) and read it. Have you read Scalzi's Agent to the Stars?

I'm still finishing up the loaned-to-me paper version of Henning Mankell's The Fifth Woman, about 650 pages. It is a slowing moving thriller and I had trouble staying with it. I think if I had had more time for a length days, I would have really enjoyed the investigation by Swedish Inspector Wallander. It reminds me of the detective stories of Dutch author Baantjer and his books using Amsteram Police Detective-Inspector DeKok and his "side-kick" Vledder.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Fbone

An experiment next. Divergent by Veronica Roth. A sort of Hunger Games(-ish) YA novel. Dystopian world where 16 year olds have dangerous initiation competitions.

This is one of the highest rated books on Amazon and Goodreads. The 23 year old author has a 3-book deal with Harper Collins and has sold the movie rights. She needs a publicist to handle all the media attention.

14,000 people gave this book 5 stars proclaiming, "This is the best book ever!" Comparisons to Hunger Games abound.

I gave it 1 star [D]. The plot (from end flap) was interesting enough for me to borrow it from the library. But she didn't develop it enough. All very predictable for the most part. Lots of missing info. The first 350 pages were painful story building. It's listed as YA so it was a fast read. Don't worry there are no big words to slow down [read:educate] the 13 year olds.

It's unbelievable I wasted time on this. I need my head examined.

I don't even know what to read next.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Kevin8or

Amazon is selling the hardcover for $5.86 but the ebook for $9.99.

Wait, wasn't agency pricing supposed to prevent this?

BOb

[anjirlly]

Finished Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier. It should have been right up my alley -- a novel fleshing out the contributions of two female fossil enthusiasts in the early 19th century. Sadly, the author emphasized the regrets and jealousies of spinsterhood more than the satisfactions of developing knowledge and expertise.

[shootingMaNs]

Originally Posted by dreams

I have John Scalzi's book 1 and 3 in paper and haven't picked up book 2 yet. I loved the story and their "brain-pals". I am trying to wait and not read book 3 until I find The Ghost Brigade (in paper) and read it. Have you read Scalzi's Agent to the Stars?

I'm still finishing up the loaned-to-me paper version of Henning Mankell's The Fifth Woman, about 650 pages. It is a slowing moving thriller and I had trouble staying with it. I think if I had had more time for a length days, I would have really enjoyed the investigation by Swedish Inspector Wallander. It reminds me of the detective stories of Dutch author Baantjer and his books using Amsteram Police Detective-Inspector DeKok and his "side-kick" Vledder.

No, I haven't read Agent to the Stars. I still have Zoe's Tale, After the Coup, and Questions for a Soldier on my TBR pile. I'm going to TRY to not make anymore purchases until after Christmas, so I probably won't get to it until next year. But, it's certainly on my radar.

I really enjoy Mankell's Wallander series. The books are just as much about solving the mystery as they are about how Wallander deals with the things going on in his personal life.

[DMcCunney]

Current Paper Book Just Finished: Anatomy of Criticism, by Northrop Frye (What appears to be a decent electronic copy)

Frye is technically speaking about criticism of poetry, but his analysis applies to prose as well. (One of his complaints is that there is no literary term for a general work of prose fiction, with "novel" being inadequate for the task: lots of things are prose fiction that aren't novels.)

A splendid work, due for a re-read soon, as there is too much depth to catch in a single reading.

Current Paper Book in Progress: Mimesis: the representation of Reality in Western Literature, by Erich Auerbach (There does not seem to be an electronic version)

This is a deliberate follow on to Frye, and at least in the opening stages, equally impressive.

Current Paper Book Next Up: Language, Thought, and Reality, by Benjamin Lee Whorf (A re-read)

Whorf was co-creator of what is generally called the "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis", which holds that your language influences how you think and what you can think about. (If your language has no words to express it, can you have a particular concept?) This is a collection of his writings. Whorf got grief from the linguistics community because because his degree wasn't in linguistics, and he was therefore an amateur rather than a professional, but that might make the work even more compelling.

(The electronic copy linked above is at archive.org, but looks like it will take a bit of work to cleanup and properly reformat.)

Current eBook in Progress: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, by John Maynard Keynes (Electronic version from the University of Adelaide in Australia)

When people speak of "Keynsian" economics, this is the source document. Keynes was attempting to understand the aftermath of the Great Depression, and more specifically, why there wasn't full employment.

It's rather dry and technical, because Keynes was writing for other economists, and felt compelled to carefully define his terms and state his premises, as he was challenging established orthodoxy. (That largely derived from On The Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation by David Ricardo)

Next up in that stack is probably Karl Marx's Capital, Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3

Given the current fractious debate on the economy, it seemed wise to go to the original source documents and read what various economists actually said, rather than what people tossing their names around said they said. (The "said they saids" are generally wrong, and are likely relying on someone else's inaccurate idea of what they said...)

And because I don't just read non-fiction...
Other Paper Book Just Finished: How Firm a Foundation by David Weber

The fifth book in the Safehold Series. In the medium term future, humanity attains FTL travel capability, and expands into the galaxy, plating a number of colonies. They encounter the Gbaba, an alien species which apparently feels it should be the only intelligent species, and wages war against humanity. Human technology becomes equal to or a bit better than the Gbaba's, but the Gbaba have had an interstellar empire for thousands of years, and there are a lot of them. Over the course of 50 years, humanity is pushed back and its colonies destroyed one by one, till the Gbaba are poised to destroy Earth. A last ditch colonization effort is mounted, to find a planet far away where a remnant of humanity can rebuild.

The original plan is that mankind will refrain from using advanced technology for 300 years, as it was technology that provided the traces the Gbaba used to find the colonies. The bet is that after destroying Earth, 300 years will give the Gbaba time to decide they have exterminated humanity and stop looking. The leader of the colony expedition, Eric Langhorne, has other ideas. He has the colonists reprogrammed while in cold asleep. They awake on Safehold as Adams and Eves, with no memory of their former existence, and the crew of the expedition uses technology to appear to the newly awakened colonists as Angels and Archangels, revealing God's plan. The Archangel Langhorne intends that humanity should permanently abjure technology, restricting themselves to wind, water, and muscle power.

Not everyone on the expedition's crew agrees with Langhorne, and 900 years after the Creation, Lieutenant Commander Nimue Alban awakens in a cave on Safehold. Nimue herself is long dead, but a recording of her personality has been transferred to a PICA, a highly sophisticated android body. After learning of what happened since she was recorded, she alters her PICA to male form and ventures forth on Safehold to form resistance to the Archangels and the Church of God Awaiting, and to restore mankind to the path of technological progress. The Gbaba are still out there, and humanity must be prepared to meet them.
______
Dennis

[ATDrake]

So, a little earlier this week, I finished my 200th totally new never-before read book of the year, making me officially there and back again for the 100 books in 2011 reading challenge. The List, incidentally, is here, for the morbidly curious.

It happened to be Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's The Healer's War which quite deservedly won a Nebula Award and which I think I bought during Fictionwise's 60% off sale for last year's Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

Well, whatever I paid for it, it was money well spent.

The core of the story is that Kitty, a US military nurse stationed during the Vietnam War, acquires an unusual patient in her ward, and things go from there in a way that would thoroughly spoiler you if I described it.

Needless to say, it's a very moving story about the entire spectrum of human emotion, reason, and reaction between help and harm, and the way the war changes people on all sides for better or worse, and how they have to live with the choices they make, if they are able to make choices at all under the circumstances.

Very highly recommended, though I'll warn you that some portions can be upsetting due to subject matter, and can be very emotionally exhausting because, well, front-line nursing during a war. But it's a really good book that you should read if you're interested in this kind of story.

Also read a little prior to that Scarborough's short-story collection Scarborough Fair and Other Stories, which was another Fictionwise sale pickup. Clearly, her writing is much stronger in novel-length format.

Don't get me wrong, the stories are all decently written and some quite charming, but most of them are fairly light, insubstantial stuff in comparison. Certainly worth an initial read, but not necessarily a re-visit later on unless you really like fluffy humorous fantasy involving cats.

However, there were three standout stories which were of a noticeably higher quality: Worse Than The Curse, a really nice take on the usual fairy tale tropes of haughty royals learning what's truly important in life, Long Time Coming Home, a story of life for the veterans after the Vietnam War, and the titular Scarborough Fair, which had some nifty discussions of how to use modern technology to fulfill the "impossible challenge" conventions of true love's demands in folksongs ("a shirt without no seams nor needlework" and such).

Mild-to-medium recommend. If you already like Scarborough's writing, then this will be a pleasant collection to read; otherwise pretty much any of her novels will be a better introductory work.

[dreams]

Originally Posted by shootingMaNs

<snip>
I really enjoy Mankell's Wallander series. The books are just as much about solving the mystery as they are about how Wallander deals with the things going on in his personal life.

I do like it, but I think my stopping and starting for real life interfered with my ability to stay within the story.

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by alansplace

since finishing the star svensdotter trilogy i've read:

dead in the water, the 3rd kate shugak novel by dana stabenow
i, robot by isaac asimov
river marked, the 6th mercedes thompson novel by patricia briggs

i'm probably going to start reading black magic sanction the 8th the hollows novel by kim harrison later today

I finished reading Black Magic Sanction last night and immediately started reading James Potter and the Hall of Elders' Crossing by G. Norman Lippert. I only read the Prologue last night (it was after midnight) but it grabbed my interest right away and i'm looking forward to continuing this morning.

[tecweston]

Just Finished:

- Damned by Chuck Palahniuk

Currently reading:

- A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin (80%)

- The Land of Mist by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (42%)

- 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (33%)

- Analog Science Fiction and Fact Jan/Feb '12 (27%)

eBooks I will be reading as soon as I finish these:

- 11/22/63 by Stephen King

- The Night Eternal by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

- A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin

- God, No: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales by Penn Jillette

- The House of Silk: A Sherlock Holmes Novel by Anthony Horowitz

eBooks I'm on the waiting list for at my library:

- Plugged by Eoin Colfer

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by tecweston

Just Finished:

- Damned by Chuck Palahniuk

I can't speak for everybody, tecweston, but I know I would love to hear some thoughts/opinions/details about your "Just Finished" books, at the very least.

Although it's clear from the number of books you have going at the same time that you probably won't have a lot of free time for reviews anytime soon... but anything would be welcome.

[tecweston]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I can't speak for everybody, tecweston, but I know I would love to hear some thoughts/opinions/details about your "Just Finished" books, at the very least.

Although it's clear from the number of books you have going at the same time that you probably won't have a lot of free time for reviews anytime soon... but anything would be welcome.

Sure, no problem. Well, I'm not the biggest Chuck Palahniuk fan in the world, but I enjoy some of his earlier novels. I just think he kinda writes the same book over and over. But Damned interested me because it's a journey through Hell from the perspective of a thirteen-year-old girl and her new gang of dead friends, sort of Dante's Inferno meets The Breakfast Club.

It starts promising enough but quickly becomes tiresome as the premise wears thin. It's only 220 pages but I found I had trouble finishing it. The stuff in Hell is boring, but the flashbacks to the girl's previous life, and how she died, is where the interesting stuff happens. Then there's a twist at the end which makes very little sense and it ends abruptly.