Amph What book are you reading right now?

I found them terribly annoying as I had about 10 questions that weren't answered. My dad said you got that in HG too but at least you knew WHY the Games were going on. With "Divergent" where are they? Why are they in factions, really? Why don't they trust each other and turn against their once family? Why are there no adults? What happened with the rest of the world?

I got so irritated I had my mom tell me the plot of the 3rd book.

 

Indiana Jones Omnibus: The Further Adventures, Volume 1. I absolutely love the Indiana Jones movies but had never really gotten into any of the spinoffs because there's not really a coherent EU (and they're not kept in print very well, compared to most other major franchises). With Dark Horse losing the Lucasfilm license, and their Omnibus collections of the Indy comics there, I figured it was time to snag them before they completely disappeared. I haven't been disappointed in my choice. This volume collects the comic adaptation of Raiders of the Lost Ark, plus the first twelve issues of The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones, a monthly comic that started in 1983, and they're all great retro fun. They do a great job of capturing the pulpy spirit of the franchise, and they have a surprisingly good handle on the little touches, like a moment when Indy works to throw a barrel of gunpowder down a mountain, only to realize he could have just pulled the fuse out and saved a lot of effort and danger, or an always-something-more action sequence in which Indy goes from menaced by a hippo to crocs to a boa constrictor to quicksand to Nazis to a panther to Atlantean tribesmen all in a few pages that captures the breakneck snowballing of the Indy films' action setpieces.

The main drawback is that the comics, as good as they are at little touches, aren't as good at the big picture; the plots are generally misguided. There's a lot of making up silly supernatural artifacts that aren't rooted in real religion and mythology and culture the way the Ark of the Covenant and Holy Grail are, and not much notice of the fact that Indy's usual adventures are implied to be more along the line of grabbing the idol at the start. When Indy's constantly facing supernatural nonsense like living gold statues, interdimensional ancient aliens leaving behind crystal communication artifacts (no, seriously, they did that one in the eighties -- it was just at Stonehenge instead of El Dorado), and an "Elizabethan madman" with an immortality elixir in Appalachia, it sort of devalues the Ark, and messes with the character's essential skepticism. They're just going out in too many weird directions, feeling too dependent on the "supernatural" hook rather than letting the treasure-hunting globetrotting adventure play out on its own terms. There are a few issues that actually avoid that trap -- not coincidentally, all plotted by the great Archie Goodwin -- and let Indy mess around with ordinary adventures. Both also pick up on interesting threads of the movie by noticing that Marion's still there with Indy, and that the idol Belloq took from Indy is still out there. It's a pity Goodwin didn't actually write for the series, and do so regularly.

David Michelinie, who eventually settled into duties as the main writer, though, does a solid job overall, and you can see the series coming together as Michelinie starts building some strands of continuity to develop recurring villains and bigger storylines, and gets less dependent on one-off goofy artifacts. And speaking of Marion still being there, after several issues, the series, which has been setting the stories after Raiders (to their detriment, I think -- there's something to be gained by being willing to hop around the timeline more), finally realizes that Indy was still with Marion at the end of the movie and brings her in as a recurring character and companion. It's part of bringing the series together, and it does work as far as making for a more coherent storyline goes, but it's also unnecessary to have her in every story, and concocting reasons for her to tag along get strained quickly.

Overall, though, the stories work great as pure pulp fun, and I really look forward to the rest of the volumes.

 

They aren't Harry Potter quality but I like them. Isn't the 3rd book really bad? From what I hear anyway. They are supposed to be in Chicago I think. No idea. In Dauntless once you can't do Dauntless stuff, you are factionless. The rest of the world burned I guess.
Also I find 4 and Tris together bland.

 

Divergent-It's better than I thought it would be

 

You do find out what happened. In the third book. Which is terrible.

I actually really enjoyed the first book and was looking forward to the others, but the second was meh, and the third was, as mentioned, terrible, so I tend to not recommend the series.

 

Finished reading Outward Odyssey: Into that Silent Sea. A bit lighter that I was expecting considering how in-depth Homesteading Space was, over all not bad. Schirra's Space by Wally Schirra is up next.

 

Indiana Jones Omnibus: The Further Adventures, Volume 2. I thought the comics were getting better as the series went on in the first volume, and this confirms it. The comics are getting tighter, with less emphasis on the supernatural -- even when the artifacts do end up supernatural, their supernaturalness doesn't dominate the story -- and more varied storytelling, while being just as fun and even more serial. There are still some misfires -- the issue with a dragon is terrible -- but the comics are definitely in a groove, with story arcs, some good use of Marion and some good restraint from using her, solid Brody, even an arc that features Jock and Captain Katanga and has Indy fighting pirates with a submarine and nothing supernatural at all. Tons of retro fun.

 

A Brief History of Time. It really is a fascinating read, even if some of Hawking's conclusions have since become outdated. I encourage everyone to read it!

 

Concurrently A book on the basics of Buddhism from a perspective of SW called "The Dharma of Star Wars," and "Shatterpoint."

 

I'm... rereading "The Joiner King"

 

Not reading it yet but I found it at the local bookstore this morning and I thought GrandAdmiralJello might be interested. There's a UK TV series called Horrible Histories that's basically an irreverent look at British history (especially the gory bits) and I try to catch it every week. Though aimed at kids, it's actually quite good and very funny. The author of the books, Terry Deary, has written a book in similar vein aimed at adults. It's called Dangerous Days in the Roman Empire and is out here in hardcover. I thumbed through it in the shop and decided it warranted further investigation so I picked it up. Not sure if Amazon US will have it but the UK site would.

 

The Last Raider by Douglas Reeman. Late in WW1, a German cargo ship is turned into a disguised merchant raider and roams the Atlantic, destroying Allied ships. I've read about two dozen books by Reeman, and he's the most formulaic author I read. But I like the formula and he writes it well.

 

I think I remember a friend telling me about a series of Horrible Histories books, and she thought they were brilliant.

 

Three chapters into Schirra's Space. It seems to be a pretty fast read. Its basically Wally Schirra telling stories about his life.

 

Indiana Jones Omnibus: The Further Adventures, Volume 3. Unfortunately, the series declines in its final volume. Linda Grant takes over from Michelinie as the main writer, and the stories just don't have the same zip (and Michelinie's final two-issue arc, included in the book, doesn't have the same zip, either). Grant sort of tosses out Michelinie's serialization (throwing Marion out of the comic hilariously abruptly) and replaces it with her own, but hers is dumb. Michelinie's storylines focused around a couple rival treasure hunters, Indy and Marion's relationship, and a stolen artifact getting the museum in trouble. Grant's storylines are about a museum trustee being a jerk to Indy for no reason, a girl he has no chemistry with occasionally showing up, an annoying kid, and seven evil sorcerers in towers who are going to destroy the world. The first three are dull; the fourth is just stupid, the series at its worst magic bull**** indulgence. The stories aren't terrible, but Grant just can't capture the high-octane pulp adventure magic the way Michelinie, even at his silliest, can.

 

Yep - same author. I've seen them in the kids' section in the local bookstore.

 

about 100 pages into game of thrones by that martin guy

YA HAPPY NOW Ender Sai?!?!?!?!?!??!

 

yes

 

With my independent study now wholly squared away, I've moved on to my summer reading. Ergo:

• Categories for the Working Mathematician - Saunders Mac Lane. CWM is a bit of an odd duck as math books go because it's a text written by one of the key figures of the theory it's about... but is actually good. Really good. My advisor described it as "Possibly the best math text book ever written," which made the choice of picking a category theory book to read from pretty easy to make. The first chapter is very well written considering how abstract its subject matter is. Always nice.
• Sheaves in Geometry and Logic: A First Introduction to Topos Theory - Saunders Mac Lane, Ieke Moerdijk. This is the target the first book is intended to attack. I've really only read the introduction, which was like "Go read CWM." So yeah.
• A Treatise of Human Nature - David Hume. Can he out-consume Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel? I intend to find out. Also this book was quoted by Frege. #HistoryOfLogicTriviaFax
• The Fantastic Four Omnibus Volume 2 - John Byrne. Because this list accidentally ended up looking really pretentious.

 

Indiana Jones Omnibus, Volume 1. I've now moved on to the collections of Dark Horse's nineties comics. The major difference is that rather than one monthly ongoing, Dark Horse put out miniseries whenever it felt like it, so the stories are grander attempts at big stories with a higher pagecount, but less overall narrative between them. Also, the art happens to be better. The three stories collected in this volume are Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Indiana Jones: Thunder in the Orient, and Indiana Jones and the Arms of Gold. Fate of Atlantis, an adaptation of the video game, has the best art and a fun vibe, but it suffers from being a video game adaptation, since the plot seems thin and slapdash, just sort of rumbling from thing to thing without a ton of coherence. Indy also doesn't have much chemistry with Sophia Hapgood. It's great to look at and a fun ride, but it's really not well-written. Thunder in the Orient, at six issues, is meaty. Sophia Hapgood's in it again and continues to be dull, but I like the central plot, as Indy searches for an ancient Buddhist text that the Japanese want to help unify Asia behind their expansionist empire, and also runs across bandits and a Chinese warlady. It's not amazingly written, but it's fun, and I like the way that the central artifact's importance isn't about made-up mumbo-jumbo, but about the power of reverence for history and the unifying power of an original text within a major world religion. Arms of Gold has an over-complicated plot that doesn't add up to much, but it does have some really nice art and it pairs Indy up with a Peruvian professor with whom he has interesting chemistry. That relationship ends up being kind of a mess by the end, but it's better than Sophia Hapgood.

 

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined I needed something to slow my descent into pure misanthropy. I've only read the first few chapters so far. Although I accept the premise, the evidence the author presents is strangely scattered and unconvincing. Maybe I'll change my mind as I go along.

 

ive seen lectures and debates with pinker. he seems like a nice guy. i dont know if its a good thing or a bad thing that that's the main thing i remember about him

 

"The Joiner King" wasn't too bad, until the end.

Now rereading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix[/b]

 

Just started The Abomination by Jonathan Holt, I'm about 5 chapters in.

I don't usually mind convoluted intrigue stories like this, but the author (an advertising man, apparently) is almost as annoying to read as Dan Brown or KJA. He's really shallow and dull, keeps describing people in terms of the fashion brands they're wearing, and does that Garth Marenghi thing where authors define the words they don't think their readers will understand.

I doubt I'm going to make it through another 5 chapters of this. Too frustrating - and it's the first of a trilogy.

Damn I need a good book.

 

Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi 15th Century Swordsmanship of Master Filippo Vadi. Just what it says on the cover, with period illustrations of his techniques. Mostly two-handed longsword, and clearly developed from the work of 14th century swordmaster Fiore dei Liberi.