Amph What book are you reading right now?

I'm on page 217. try and tell me the billionaire isn't going to try a bubbleworld with either the asteroid attached to Izzy or with all that newly exposed iron of the Moon's core.

 

Cushing's Admirer Awesome!

I've taken a break from LKH since I got a book from the library: Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff

 

I'm reading "A Time to Kill."

 

Lords of the North (The Saxon Stories, #3) by Bernard Cornwell

 

Reaper Man (Discworld).

 

At some point I shalt dive into Discworld. If there is one thing I feel i have missed it is that.

 

I've read quite a few of the later ones but not a lot of the earlier ones. I like the character of Death so I'm reading those earlier books.

 

I'm now reading The Firm.

 

Serena by Ron Rash

The movie sounded interesting but I wanted to read the novel before watching. I have no clue why it sounded interesting since this is not what I normally read. So far though, the story is decent.

 

Wyrd Sisters, Guards! Guards!,Mort and Witches Abroad are some of my favourites. I don't know if you've read them but they're good ones.

 

I've read Mort - that was pretty good. Haven't read the others so far.

 

Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell

 

I've been rereading the Vorkosigan Saga books by Lois McMaster Bujold. Next up - Borders of Infinity, I believe.

 

I continue my way through Hard Contact. I really do like it so far. I'm avoiding all the back lash crap talk about the RC series. I am intending to catch up on a lot of missed SW reading but it may take a while as RL comes first. Plus, I am striving to finally buckle down my Tribute to Sir which is of far greater importance than leisure reading.

 

I'm now on The Pelican Brief.

 

Dieppe: The Shame and the Glory by Terence Robertson. WW2 history of the 1942 Canadian amphibious attack on the French coast, resulting in thousands of Canadians killed and captured. I knew the bare facts, but this volume really drove home all the mistakes and bad luck that plagued the operation. Thankfully, the Allies learned how not to launch an invasion and the lessons learned were critical to the success of D-Day. If you think D-Day was rough, well, Dieppe was worse. Those Canucks took one for the team in some of the worst ways possible.

 

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief (2013) – Lawrence Wright



Lawrence Wright’s most famous work is The Looming Tower, a Pulitzer Prize winning & comprehensive history of Al-Qaeda leading up to 9/11. He’s now dedicated a book to an in-depth exploration of Scientology. It would be interesting to know which one he thinks is freakier. Anyway, I’ve always given Scientology a pass on their beliefs being weird or strange; I believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, after all, but it’s always seemed strange to me the efforts the Church of Scientology has gone toward keeping its central doctrines secret. I mean, you can go into any Christian church in the country and they’ll tell you flat out that they believe in the virgin birth, for example. It seems a strange dishonesty for a religion to have. But in this book Wright makes a compelling argument that the Church of Scientology is a dangerous & frightening organization with a pernicious and deadly effect on the world. Wright goes into great detail on the life of L. Ron Hubbard and the development of the doctrines of Scientology; then he studies the church as it relates to the world around it through courting celebrities, harassing critics, torturing dissidents and consolidating political and social power under the iron handed rule of Hubbard’s successor, David Miscavige. And, finally, he looks at the experiences that have led many to escape the Church, at great risk to their very lives, and he gives the Church the chance to speak it’s side of the story through a genuinely compelling spokesman, Anne Archer’s son Tommy Davis, himself a fascinating individual. It’s a book that hits every emotion in the spectrum; sometimes, it’s hilarious; other times, it’s genuinely horrifying; occasionally, as in one lengthy section dealing with the imprisonment and attempted escape of one of John Travolta’s celebrity handlers, it’s almost unbearably suspenseful; it’s often jaw-dropping and shocking, as in a lengthy section about Hubbard’s time spent as part of an occult group dedicated to impregnating an acolyte with the anti-christ; it’s routinely angering and frustrating. Anyway, I could go on and on. All I can say is that this really is a must read book; it’s densely written, but it’s as page-turning and engaging as a great novel – I found myself picking it up every time I had even a two minute window with nothing to do. It’s an absolute masterpiece. Highly recommended. 4 stars.

tl;dr – masterful expose of Scientology is riveting entertainment, deeply disturbing and wonderfully written; a masterpiece of reporting and story-telling. 4 stars.

More Book Reviews!

 

Nonfiction - How Star Wars Conquered the Universe by Chris Taylor. First six chapters are pretty interesting. Some of it I already knew from other sources but a lot is new to me.

 

I've heard of that.
It's good that you're learning new things and it's interesting.


I'm reading:
The Kingdom of the Sun and Moon by Lowell H. Press

 

I finished Seveneves, which is pronounced Seven Eves as in Adam and Eve for reason you'll find if/when you read it. It is a good book but did not need to be 800+ pages. It is essentially a very, very, very long info dump. I guess it qualifies as hard scifi? I have no idea how a space elevator works without being anchored tot he planet. So, it was very interesting but was not overall thrilling.

Moving on.



I made a slight mistake in picking up Evening's Empires by Paul McAuley as the blurp got my attention and I bought it on the spot. It is the 4th in a series. I googled a bit and apparently all 4 books can be read as stand alone. The history appears to be that people left Earth for the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and those that remained tried to fix the Earth as it was ravaged by climate change. The Earth folk decided they did not like the "Outers" having all that freedom and wind up pushing them to the moons of Uranus and Neptune. So I said to hell with it and i shall not seek out the previous 3 books.

 

I'm now on The Client.

 

Vuto by A. J. Walkley

 

Star Wars: A New Dawn

 

Sweet!


The Drifter by Kim Harrison. It's an ARC