What are you reading/last book you read

[MandaSaurus]

"Killing Reagan'' by Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard. Read all the previous 'Killing' books, & they have ALL been fantastic reads. NON-Fiction, dontcha know? Upon it's release, 'Reagan' went to #1 on Amazon's Best Seller list! I always make sure that I have the FIRST printing, with these books. The first printing of "Killing Lincoln" goes for a pretty penny these days, I understand...

Finally cracked it open, & now it's hard to put down...

[Noble Saber]

Seal Team Six: Hunt the Wolf by Don Mann.

Just finished this. It's a fairly good read. Some of the characters end up being shallow, the dialogue's unoriginal at parts, and the trek on K-2 seems to have been added in with no actual relevance to the plot (but not as stretched out as some reviews I've read have said), but it's a page-turner. I'll be looking forward to reading Mann's sequels.

[Jomei]

Paused on Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold to read my fresh copy of Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

[SoleMan]

In my vein of pretenious philosphy, I've started reading Macchiavelli's The Prince. After I gain a reasonable command of the Italian Language, I hope to read the book in its mother tongue.

[The One and Only]

SecondWorld by Jeremy Robinson.

[G2000]

Recently finished Monster Hunter Vendetta by Larry Corriea, the second in his MHI series. Like the first, it's a very light, fun read, with tons and tons of action. The gun porn seems to have gone down a bit from the original, but it's still there, to my pleasure. The monsters are ridiculously cool; we have armored zombie bears, armored zombie elephants,

Spoiler:

memory-eating insect demons, and a 200-foot tall light-eating eldritch tree-kaiju.

And that's not mentioning the Dread Overlord.

It's not very literary at all, and some may disagree with the author's libertarian views (not the main focus, but there), but if one wants a nice, fun read, I'd reccomend these.

[The One and Only]

PREDATOR:Incursion by Tim Lebbon.

I AM COWBOY (A Milos Vesley Thriller) by Jeremy Robinson.

[SoleMan]

Okay, so I finished the Prince. It was good, a legend for the ages, yeah yeah yeah.

I quickly breezed through Thomas Cleary's translation of Bushido Shoshingu, which was some kind of half-assed Bushido book he found. I don't know if it was his translation or just the way it was written, but it came off as very very American in its sensabilities. But hey, that's just me.

Per James Rofle's recomendation, I'm currently reading a biography called "I am Jackie Chan." I forget who the author is...

[Monster Zero]

The Shining- Stephen King

[Snake]

The Shining- Stephen King

Hey, so am I!

[SoleMan]

Now I'm going through Plato's Republic. Something tells me this is going to be a long read...

[The One and Only]

GOVERNMENT ZERO by Michael Savage.

[G2000]

Finished Neuromancer just a few minutes ago.

That was frigging great. Hard to believe that this was Gibson's first novel.

You should probably read this at some point in your life, for the sole reason that so much was inspired by it.

[3000]

Magicians Of The Gods by Graham Hancock.

He argues (with good evidence) that somewhat advanced civilizations existed long before originally thought and that that they were many lost advanced civilizations wiped out by massive flooding and ice ages. Interesting stuff

[Jory]

[SoleMan]

I recently finished the infamous, "Rise and Fall of The Third Reich." It was my New Year's Resoltion...Last year. It was hard as Hell, it was the longest book I've ever read...but I did it. Do I feel smarter? Nope. But I did it...

[Noble Saber]

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i167/ ... kmqpkx.jpg

Hey, I'm also reading a "Clancy" book as well. Commander in Chief, which is technically written by Mark Greaney, but it's got Clancy's name attached to it.

[Jory]

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i167/ ... kmqpkx.jpg

Hey, I'm also reading a "Clancy" book as well. Commander in Chief, which is technically written by Mark Greaney, but it's got Clancy's name attached to it.

That's quite a ways into my future, if I ever get that far. I'm still on book #1.

I've had several of the Jack Ryan books sitting on my shelf for a long time, but only recently was I inspired to finally get to work on them after I picked up and watched the five films on Blu-ray.

[G2000]

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein.

It was okay. As many others have said, it's primarily a vehicle for Heinlein's sociopolitical and military views. Action scenes are few and far between; the only good battle scene in the book is at the very beginning, when the Mobile Infantry conducts a small raid on a Skinny city. Note I said Skinnies, not Bugs - while the Bugs are the main enemies, battles with them are usually given minimal description, and when an actual battle against them is given a chapter at the end, (Operation Royalty), it's rather underwhelming.

In a more minor problem, Heinlein also has some...weird kinks with his writing. He absolutely refuses to have the characters swear, which leads to clunky, family-friendly swears that don't fit ("goshdarn" and such), or just outright print them as "redacted" right in the dialogue. Even in a epigraph.

In the book's credit, I can say, while I didn't agree with a good deal of the ideas espoused by Mr. Heinlein in this novel, they're at least interesting as a thought exercise of sorts, and aren't anywhere near as fascistic as they're often trumped up to be. As with a lot of Heinlein's work, the cast is extremely diverse, and in a way that isn't up in your face about it.

What the book has best going for it most is the only reason anyone ever picks it up anymore - it is THE work that put power armor in the science fiction main stream, not to mention being the novel that spawned the "Bug War" genre.

It really sucks that it hasn't gotten a proper adaptation yet. Yeah, there's the 1988 OVA and the 2012 CGI film, but aside from that, there hasn't been anything that's properly featured the power armor that was such a big part of the original work and the myriad of works it inspired. It's an important part of the military science fiction genre, and I do hope to see it properly rendered in a live-action film someday.

[Missingno.]

I'm reading a rare 1993 publication that is widely regarded as the "tornado bible." That is:



I paid good money for this, and being a tornado fanatic, I'm not regretting it.