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Kougar
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Wed Sep 17, 2014 1:40 am

Ditiris wrote:
I'm reading through the list of Hugo/Nebula joint winners. Just finished Dreamsnake and Paladin of Souls, currently on The Fountains of Paradise. I started reading the list because of Ender's Game.

The books so far have all been tremendous. They're obviously all well-written, but there's been at least one novel idea in all of them, something that will compel your imagination to embrace the world the author created.

I'm nearing the end of the novels, and I don't think the other categories will keep me for more than a few months. Are there any other joint award lists such as this one? I'd prefer sci-fi/fantasy, but if the books are on par with these I'll read pretty much anything. I tried a couple of google searches to no avail.


Okay, that was a brilliant idea that hadn't occurred to me, and I've been hunting more books. A lot of those novels are part of a larger series so that'll keep me entertained for a good while.

Given you like the genre you might try this series. Starhunt isn't completely consistent as it was a rewrite of a novel written several decades prior, but it isn't needed to enjoy the the series if that's an issue.
 
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Wed Sep 17, 2014 2:29 am

Cholesterol Clarity and Keto Clarity. Next: Big Fat Surprise.
 
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Wed Sep 17, 2014 12:18 pm

Slurry piping info :)
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Wed Sep 17, 2014 12:35 pm

anotherengineer wrote:
Slurry piping info :)
Use 3R ells instead of your usual 1½R "long radius" ells.
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Wed Sep 17, 2014 11:34 pm

Pez wrote:
Re-reading Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith (for about the 10th time). one of the best Sci-Fi books I've ever read and absolutely hilarious in places. Anyoe who hasn't read it I really recommend it.

just ordered it via amazon used books (hard cover), i hope it's as good as you say it is! :)
 
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Wed Sep 17, 2014 11:53 pm

Just finished Neal Stephenson's "REAMDE". A good read, though reading one of his books and not encountering Enoch Root did surprise me.
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Thu Sep 18, 2014 5:29 am

Captain Ned wrote:
Just finished Neal Stephenson's "REAMDE". A good read, though reading one of his books and not encountering Enoch Root did surprise me.

yar i liked that one as well... not as good as cryptonomicon, but entertaining nonetheless.
 
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Tue Oct 14, 2014 9:22 pm

Bram Stoker's Dracula, published 1897, in the public domain. Project Gutenberg offers several versions:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45839

Seasonable, and still a good, creepy read.

A favorite passage from the first chapter. Englishman Jonathan Harker makes his way in a coach (with other passengers bound elsewhere) to meet a servant of Castle Dracula who will take him the rest of the (long) way there to pursue estate business with the Count (Harker doesn't yet know the Count's true nature):

---

When it grew dark there seemed to be some excitement amongst the passengers, and they kept speaking to [the driver], one after the other, as though urging him to further speed. He lashed the horses unmercifully with his long whip, and with wild cries of encouragement urged them on to further exertions. Then through the darkness I could see a sort of patch of grey light ahead of us, as though there were a cleft in the hills. The excitement of the passengers grew greater; the crazy coach rocked on its great leather springs, and swayed like a boat tossed on a stormy sea. I had to hold on. The road grew more level, and we appeared to fly along. Then the mountains seemed to come nearer to us on each side and to frown down upon us; we were entering the Borgo Pass. One by one several of the passengers offered me gifts, which they pressed upon me with earnestness which would take no denial; these were certainly of an odd and varied kind, but each was given in simple good faith, with a kindly word, and a blessing, and that strange mixture of fear-meaning movements which I had seen outside the hotel at Bistritz—the sign of the cross and the guard against the evil eye. Then, as we flew along, the driver leaned forward, and on each side the passengers, craning over the edge of the coach, peered eagerly into the darkness. It was evident that something very exciting was either happening or expected, but though I asked each passenger, no one would give me the slightest explanation. This state of excitement kept on for some little time; and at last we saw before us the Pass opening out on the eastern side. There were dark, rolling clouds overhead, and in the air the heavy, oppressive sense of thunder. It seemed as though the mountain range had separated two atmospheres, and that now we had got into the thunderous one. I was now myself looking out for the conveyance which was to take me to the Count. Each moment I expected to see the glare of lamps through the blackness; but all was dark. The only light was the flickering rays of our own lamps, in which steam from our hard-driven horses rose in a white cloud. We could now see the sandy road lying white before us, but there was on it no sign of a vehicle. The passengers drew back with a sigh of gladness, which seemed to mock my own disappointment. I was already thinking what I had best do, when the driver, looking at his watch, said to the others something which I could hardly hear, it was spoken so quietly and in so low a tone; I thought it was, “An hour less than the time.” Then, turning to me, he said in German worse than my own:—

“There is no carriage here. The Herr is not expected, after all. He will now come on to Bukovina, and return to-morrow or the next day; better the next day.” Whilst he was speaking the horses began to neigh and snort and plunge wildly, so that the driver had to hold them up. Then, amongst a chorus of screams from the peasants and a universal crossing of themselves, a calèche, with four horses, drove up behind us, overtook us, and drew up beside the coach. I could see from the flash of our lamps, as the rays fell on them, that the horses were coal-black and splendid animals. They were driven by a tall man, with a long brown beard and a great black hat, which seemed to hide his face from us. I could only see the gleam of a pair of very bright eyes, which seemed red in the lamplight, as he turned to us. He said to the driver:—

“You are early to-night, my friend.” The man stammered in reply:—

“The English Herr was in a hurry,” to which the stranger replied:—

“That is why, I suppose, you wished him to go on to Bukovina. You cannot deceive me, my friend; I know too much, and my horses are swift.” As he spoke he smiled, and the lamplight fell on a hard-looking mouth, with very red lips and sharp-looking teeth, as white as ivory. One of my companions whispered to another the line from Burger’s “Lenore:”—

“Denn die Todten reiten schnell.”—
(“For the dead travel fast.”)

The strange driver evidently heard the words, for he looked up with a gleaming smile. The passenger turned his face away, at the same time putting out his two fingers and crossing himself. “Give me the Herr’s luggage,” said the driver; and with exceeding alacrity my bags were handed out and put in the calèche. Then I descended from the side of the coach, as the calèche was close alongside, the driver helping me with a hand which caught my arm in a grip of steel; his strength must have been prodigious. Without a word he shook his reins, the horses turned, and we swept into the darkness of the Pass. As I looked back I saw the steam from the horses of the coach by the light of the lamps, and projected against it the figures of my late companions crossing themselves. Then the driver cracked his whip and called to his horses, and off they swept on their way to Bukovina.

As they sank into the darkness I felt a strange chill, and a lonely feeling came over me; but a cloak was thrown over my shoulders, and a rug across my knees, and the driver said in excellent German:—

“The night is chill, mein Herr, and my master the Count bade me take all care of you. There is a flask of slivovitz underneath the seat, if you should require it.” I did not take any, but it was a comfort to know it was there, all the same. I felt a little strange, and not a little frightened. I think had there been any alternative I should have taken it, instead of prosecuting that unknown night journey.

---

Something fishy about this strange driver...
 
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Tue Oct 14, 2014 11:49 pm

Prince of Fools by Mark Lawrence. Set in the same world with a few of the same characters as his previous series The Broken Empire, but told from a different viewpoint. So far it's pretty good.
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:56 am

Thread necro!

Just started "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William L. Shirer

Now that I commute on public transit, I am getting back into reading in a big way, both fiction and non-fiction. I'm also working my way through the collected short stories of Arthur C. Clarke, in chronological order.
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:26 am

Halfway through the 8-book saga known as Worldwar by Harry Turtledove.

It's easy reading, practically trash-novel actually, but it's a fun alternative history set towards the end of WWII where aliens invade with the intent to colonise and enslave mankind.

I have already exhausted all the obvious sci-fi sources (Ian M Banks, Asimov, Frank Herbert, Arthur C Clarke and read all the sci-fi must-reads from HG Wells, Ray Bradbury, Alduous Huxley, William Gibson) so Turtledove is filling a void that other fiction can't.

When I'm done with Worldwar, Can anyone comment on Gene Wolfe, Dan Simmons or Verner Vinge? They're all Hugo winners but a Hugo list can still be a bit hit-and-miss
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Hawkwing74
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:28 am

just brew it! wrote:
Just started "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William L. Shirer

I enjoyed that one a lot.

Reading Brandon Sanderson's latest which is "Shadows of Self." He is such a prolific author.

Re: Above - I enjoyed Hyperion and the Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

Also, I found this to be spellbinding:
The Inverted World by Christopher Priest.
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Last edited by Hawkwing74 on Tue Jan 19, 2016 11:03 am, edited 2 times in total.
 
Forge
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:32 am

The Expanse series by James S A Corey. If you're chewing through ACClarke, Expanse has a lot of that same really-real hard sci-fi going. Everyone is on fusion drives and plotting courses that take months and dealing with G force, it's really making me happy. Just as you're getting settled with that, there's some really great twists that take it in new directions, too.

The series is also very good, despite coming from Syfy-lous. I'm as shocked as anyone else.
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Voldenuit
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:55 am

Forge wrote:
The Expanse series by James S A Corey. If you're chewing through ACClarke, Expanse has a lot of that same really-real hard sci-fi going. Everyone is on fusion drives and plotting courses that take months and dealing with G force, it's really making me happy. Just as you're getting settled with that, there's some really great twists that take it in new directions, too.

The series is also very good, despite coming from Syfy-lous. I'm as shocked as anyone else.


Yeah, The Expanse was a good series, and the sixth book is coming out this year. I did get a bit bored in Book 3, where I thought they belabored setting up the protagonists and antagonist, but really enjoyed the rest of the series. I'm loving the SyFy show, too.

Currently reading Leena Krohn - Collected Fiction. Winner of the Finlandia Prize and a World Fantasy Award nominee, her writing is very abstract and promotes thinking about the story long after I've read it.
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Wed Jan 20, 2016 3:40 am

Re-reading Campbell's "Dreadnaught" of the Lost Fleet/Frontier series. Excellent military space opera with more physical and operational realism than is usual.
 
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Wed Jan 20, 2016 8:35 am

Currently reading:

Guts 'n Gunships, a memoir of a Vietnam War Huey pilot. Guy's got some good stories.
a collection of Robert Silverberg short stories from the earlier part of his career, in the '50s. Hadn't read him much before but I can see that I've missed out.
With the French Flying Corps by Carroll Dana Winslow. This one's a memoir of an American pilot flying for the French Air Force during the first world war, available on Project Gutenberg.

I tend to have a few books in progress at any one time.
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paulWTAMU
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Wed Jan 20, 2016 8:55 am

Windows 10 for Dummies :oops: That OS has been giving me fits.


Also working on "Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of WWII"
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Wed Jan 20, 2016 9:45 am

paulWTAMU wrote:
Also working on "Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of WWII"

Ahh, so you're essentially reading the sequel to what I'm reading now. Might need to check that out after I finish TRaFotTR.
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Sun Mar 20, 2016 10:37 pm

just brew it! wrote:
Just started "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William L. Shirer

Just finished it.

It's a long (but fascinating) read. Shirer was a journalist who lived through WWII as a foreign correspondent, and had access to the captured files of the Nazi regime after its fall.

It's amazing (and scary) how the social and political situation in Germany just a little less than a century ago allowed a demagogue and megalomaniac to (mis)lead an entire nation down a slippery slope, and over the brink into the abyss. You have to see how it unfolded, step by step, to believe it. Truly chilling.
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bthylafh
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Sun Mar 20, 2016 10:41 pm

Re-reading the Illuminatus! trilogy by Shea and Wilson.
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Mon Mar 21, 2016 1:27 am

Just finished up Ian W. Toll's the Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 and its sequel The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944. I can't wait for the third book to come out.

Just started up a reread of the Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James D. Hornfischer.
 
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Mon Mar 21, 2016 7:00 am

naql wrote:
Just started up a reread of the Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James D. Hornfischer.


I've read that a couple times myself. I first heard of the Battle off Samar as a kid while reading through Robert Leckie's Delivered from Evil where he spent a while talking about the Johnston's part in the battle.
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Hawkwing74
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Mon Mar 21, 2016 10:06 am

just brew it! wrote:
It's amazing (and scary) how the social and political situation in Germany just a little less than a century ago allowed a demagogue and megalomaniac to (mis)lead an entire nation down a slippery slope, and over the brink into the abyss. You have to see how it unfolded, step by step, to believe it. Truly chilling.

Yes, amazing book. And very scary how democracies can crumble like that.

When I started dating my now wife, and she said she read this book, I knew she was the one for me!

I'm reading Colors of the Mountain by Da Chen about growing up poor in the Cultural Revolution in China.
 
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Mon Mar 21, 2016 9:10 pm

Sight Alignment, Trigger Control and the Big Lie. It's a long-distance competition shooting book. It's good but not great. The author knows his stuff, but he has a tendency to inject "so I tried this technique and I won the UK championship for 600m shooting with it" tangents all over the place. A lot of it is only relevant to iron sights, which is useless to me. There definitely is some stuff to think about and I think it will help improve my scores. We'll see.
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Hawkwing74
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Tue Sep 19, 2017 10:27 am

I picked this up for $2 at the local Goodwill store.

The Dilbert Principle
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K3DPHQ6/re ... TF8&btkr=1

This book came out in 1996 but so many points are still relevant to corporate and cubicle life. Enjoying very much so far.

I found this one in a used book store on vacation recently:

Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations
https://www.amazon.com/Just-Unjust-Wars ... njust+wars

Fascinating reading though a bit dry at times. I do wish he had done more of a scorecard of how "just" were specific wars based on the theories espoused in the book.
 
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Tue Sep 19, 2017 11:40 am

Someone else's 24,000 lines of Python code (which I have now been tasked with modifying). Original author no longer works here.
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Voldenuit
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Tue Sep 19, 2017 12:09 pm

Just finished reading the second book of The Themis Files, a sci-fi series written in the style of World War Z (narrative pieced together from interviews, "historical" records, etc), except about giant robots instead of zombies.

Really enjoyed it. The structure of the "narrative" such as it is, takes engagement from the reader to reconstruct events and fill in gaps in the records.
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Tue Sep 19, 2017 5:50 pm

I'm re-reading Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings.
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Tue Sep 19, 2017 5:59 pm

Too many emails.

For books: A Dance of Blades by David Dalgish. Books 2 in the Shadowdance series.
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Re: What are you READING right now?

Wed Sep 20, 2017 12:57 pm

Just picked up Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. My first book of his, assuming I like it there's quite a few more I'll have to check out, in particular Doors of Perception.

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