Amph What book are you reading right now?

Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, James Hornfischer's account of WW2's Battle of Leyte Gulf, focusing primarily on the Americans who sailed 2,000 ton destroyers against Japan's 70,000 ton battleships. I'm about half through it now, and so far it has been detailed, personal, inspirational, horrifying, glorious, and heartbreaking.

 

Just finished "Shep's Army" by Jean Shepherd. Starting "Kenobi" by John Jackson Miller.

 

I was a great Jean Shepherd fan as a kid. Enjoyed his radio show and I still have a few of his books.

 

Almost done with Quinlan Vos Omnibus

 

Paradise Regained

 

So the kids in the GoT thread will stop being such bullies.

Plus I've been wanting to for quite some time.

 

A Tale of Two Cities.

 

Just finished Last Call for HMS Edinburgh, history of Royal Navy cruiser on the Russian convoy route during WW2. Pretty good, but not as good as Alistair MacLean's novel HMS Ulysses.

 

Finished of the Ethshar novel Night Of Madness. It's not bad but is certainly the least of the Ethshar books I have read. And now I turn to an old friend.

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The Companions R.A. Salvatore.

 

Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris.

The last Sookie Stackhouse book is turning out to be one of the best. The quality had been decreasing for quite some time.

 

I'm on the verge of abandoning The House of the Seven Gables, but I might give it a couple more pages.

However, I can recommend a non-fiction(ish) book I read in between gouging eyes out on Nathaniel Hawthorne, which was impressive enough for me to blow through its 400 pages in roughly 4 total hours:



Basically, this is the account of Ross Perot's clandestine mission into very-late-and-immediately-post-Shah Iran of 1979 to get two of his employees out of jail. I've not read any Follett to date, although I've got The Pillars of the Earth sitting on my to-read list. However, I've seen enough bits and pieces of The Man From St. Petersberg in other works to form the impression that Follett's firmly cut from the Bestselling Eighties Cold War Novelist mould.

That aside, it's a cracking good read, possibly because the flow of events has a natural pacing to it that puts most fictional bestsellers to shame. As to its historical accuracy, Follett stakes his integrity on this book, and stands by it as a true version of what took place. His research looks to have been extensive. He appends the end of a relevant court decision relating to the subject of the book to buttress this, and reading through the acknowledgments section one can see he's spoken to every medium to major player in the book that he describes events around -- the only real exceptions being former President Jimmy Carter, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and the Iranian magistrate who locked up Perot's two employees to begin with. That is, he cites Iranian government sources as well and gives them their side as well. Is it meant as a historical text? No, not exactly, but I've yet to see a historical text that doesn't have a bias one way or the other either. And unlike, say, your average Michael Moore "book", I've seen little competing material to say it's in any real way historically inaccurate other than from a single biased website whose "reviewer" had not actually read the book. It's well-written and solid, and it's heartily recommended for a book where truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

 

Wielding a Red Sword by Piers Anthony

 

You could've found that screencap anywhere!

 

I'm just about to finish Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and then I intend to start the sequel Children of God. I've read The Sparrow before but I had forgotten what a wonderful novel it is, telling the story of the discovery of a new civilisation on a distant planet. Above all, it's about the impact the existence of life on other planets would have on faith.

 

I've been wanting to read that!

Saintheart I haven't read that one, but I enjoyed Pillars of the Earth.

 

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

The new Discworld novel.

 

So far, it's started out more interesting than the 2nd & 3rd ones. Those dragged for the first 50 pages or so, or at least until the link to the first novel set in. In this one, War was pretty interesting from the start.

 

This thread.

 

it's the coffee-table variety, but it's still a book!

 

Lafayette, by Harlow Giles Unger. I was looking for a biography of Lafayette, who's a fascinating figure, and this was one of the best recent offerings; the pickings are disappointingly slim. Unger is a bit of a Lafayette fanboy at times, but that doesn't stop him from offering substantial criticism where relevant. I also wouldn't have argued with the book being a bit longer. But overall, it's a pretty good biography, presenting a thorough recounting of Lafayette's remarkable life as a pivotal figure in the American and French Revolutions. Not a great biography, but quite serviceable for anyone interested in the subject.

 

I recently read Frank Miller's Holy Terror.



Bag o' *****.

Avoid.

Ramza Edit: Have to star that out. But I agree.

 

Star Wars: The Old Republic: Annihilation

 

What does everyone think of the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth? I'm on Insurgent and like the books so far.

 

'A Feast for Crows', very different from the predecessors. I don't know if I am enjoying it as much but I still have a bit before I get the whole feel for it.