Amph What book are you reading right now?

I'm physically reading The Clone Army Attacketh (which I'll finish tonight)
Listening to Battleship Earth by L. Ron Hubbard

 

Goliath by Richard Turner. An "action thriller" in the vein of Clive Cussler. It's not that bad, but it's not that good either. Characterization amounts to describing what the heroes' jobs were in elite military units before they joined their elite private security firm. Every noun is preceded by at least two adjectives when one is unnecessary. I won't be looking for anything else by this guy.

 

Started reading a knight of the seven kingdoms which follows ser Duncan the Tall and his squire “Egg”

Finished the first story about to read the second really enjoying it

 

Good to know! I got that when it came out but still haven't gotten around to it. Hope to read it (or at least start it) during a lengthy weekend before the summer.

 

Been a while since I read it/them, but I enjoyed KOTSK/Tales of Dunk & Egg. It manages to be it's own thing, yet feel very much like it's woven into the same fabric as A Song of Ice and Fire.

 

The Catholic all Year Compendium by Kendra Tierney

Gonna start 2019 with some new ways to bring my Catholicism into the home
And starting a “CathLit” challenge nice and early!

 

Die Trying

Lee Child's second novel with Jack Reacher. It's quite good. Fast and breezy read.

 

The Murderbot Diaries were fun.

Tommorrow Factory Collected Edition by Rich Larson

On your left, post-human hedonists on a distant space station bring diseases back in fashion, two scavengers find a super-powered parasite under the waves of Sunk Seattle, and a terminally-ill chemist orchestrates an asteroid prison break.

On your right, an alien optometrist spins illusions for irradiated survivors of the apocalypse, a high-tech grifter meets his match in near-future Thailand, and two teens use a blackmarket personality mod to get into the year’s wickedest, wildest party.

This collection of published and original fiction by award-winning writer Rich Larson will bring you from a Bujumbura cyberpunk junkyard to the icy depths of Europa, from the slick streets of future-noir Chicago to a tropical island of sapient robots. You'll explore a mysterious ghost ship in deep space, meet an android learning to dream, and fend off predatory alien fungi on a combat mission gone wrong.

Twenty-three futures, ranging from grimy cyberpunk to far-flung space opera, are waiting to blow you away.

 

Pirate: The Space Gypsy Chronicles, Book 1 by Eve Langlais.

Light space opera stuff by an author who is obviously lacking in understanding basic science, and a raving sex person. The 2 characters are well-drawn and have some snappy dialog, but it seems like half the book is about them both obsessing over sex. The man is a chauvinist pig, but he's also "hot" and knows how to charm her, and she seems to like being objectified, so I guess that makes it OK. I can't help but wonder how many readers would want to lynch the author if she were a man.

 

Yeah....that's why I don't really read modern sci-fi/fantasy these days.

 

Sarge, you got took.

See, anytime I look for anything on Amazon, like half the results are self-published Kindle trash, most of which appears to be terrible amateur erotica/“romance.” So based on your description, I had my suspicions, so I looked it up.

That’s some Canadian housewife-written “independently published” space-pirate-themed erotica you’ve got there, Sarge.

 

Fair assessment.

 

Just finished; The Lions of Lucerne by Brad Thor. This was Thor's first novel, and there are any number of rookie mistakes (some minor, some a bit more glaring) as a result. It's not nearly as polished and assured as the debuts of his contemporaries like Vince Flynn and Mark Greaney, but the seeds for a solid thriller series are there and I'll give book #2, Path of the Assassin, a go soon. - 7/10

Just started; Agent in Place (Gray man #7) by Mark Greaney. Greaney's Gray Man books have never failed to be anything but tight, white knuckle thrillers and so far Agent in Place looks to be keeping that streak in tact.

 

I've just finished Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb. I thought it was very good. I'll be moving on to the sequel next.

 

Just finished Michael Chricton's Dragon Teeth

On the positive side:
+ I really liked seeing the Marsh / Cope feud. I had no idea they were that antagonistic!
+ I was obsessed with dinosaurs as a kid (even more then your typical dinosaur-obsessed kid) so any book about paleontology I'll pretty much like by default
+ I like Chricton's adventure / sci-fi books so getting one last one was exciting
+ Been watching some Western movies and have started liking the genre. It's crazy even tho Westerns are archaic now, how many of today's lit and movies and games are inspired by them. So my point is, I enjoyed the Western setting and the sherrif/bandit/Indian Act of the book.
+ The book is easy to read.

On the negative side:
- The Marsh / Cope feud doesn't go anywhere. So much of the book sets up their feud, but Act III pretty much drops it and barely returns to it. I liked the book's length, but would've liked to see more of their rivalry post-adventure. I kept waiting for one last twist with them but it never happened. I was surprised the Brontosaurus skull being incorrectly placed wasn't a part of the book and was expecting that to the be the last twist lol.

The book blends paleontology with Western adventure, with more an emphasis on Western adventure.

My favorite Chricton books: Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Micro, Prey, Pirate Lattitudes.

Unfortunately he's had some duds.......

But I liked this. If you liked any of the above, you will like this one.

 

The Point of It All by Charles Krauthammer

 

Dracul by Dacre Stoker

The prequel to Dracula, inspired by notes and texts left behind by the author of the classic novel, Dracul is a supernatural thriller that reveals not only Dracula’s true origins but Bram Stoker’s—and the tale of the enigmatic woman who connects them.

It is 1868, and a twenty-one-year-old Bram Stoker waits in a desolate tower to face an indescribable evil. Armed only with crucifixes, holy water, and a rifle, he prays to survive a single night, the longest of his life. Desperate to record what he has witnessed, Bram scribbles down the events that led him here...

A sickly child, Bram spent his early days bedridden in his parents' Dublin home, tended to by his caretaker, a young woman named Ellen Crone. When a string of strange deaths occur in a nearby town, Bram and his sister Matilda detect a pattern of bizarre behavior by Ellen—a mystery that deepens chillingly until Ellen vanishes suddenly from their lives. Years later, Matilda returns from studying in Paris to tell Bram the news that she has seen Ellen—and that the nightmare they've thought long ended is only beginning.

The first book flipped the mythos of the original Stoker Dracula book and frankly pissed off a lot of people. But it was a hell of a fun read. I would have preferred a sequel rather than a prequel.

 

Grant, by Ron Chernow. Ulysses Grant has a complicated reputation — he’s known as the general who won the Civil War, but rather than treating him as a hero, the historiography has generally been more interested in tearing him down. He’s been criticized as a butcher who merely won through a brutish willingness to throw his manpower advantage into the meat grinder, and even the military historians who admire him generally dismiss his presidency as an embarrassing string of corruption scandals overseen by a lazy president. His string of business failures are cited as evidence of incompetence. Above all, he’s tarred as an incorrigible drunk. The overall portrait, if you listen to his many detractors, is of a dim, lazy, drunken, improvident brute who stumbled his way into success through pure aggression in the war.

Chernow, arguably America’s premier biographer, responds with a brilliant, thorough, and sympathetic portrait of Grant as an intelligent, thoughtful, and honorable man whose talented generalship and fierce commitment to protecting the rights of freed blacks make him a severely underrated figure, the great, consequential, and heroic figure of the Civil War and its aftermath. Chernow is not blind to his faults, citing his political inexperience as president, the incredible gullibility that allowed him to be taken advantage of by his associates both in business and administration, and other mistakes. But he finds them much less significant than the incredible accomplishments and moral vision Grant displayed as both general and president, which they’ve been allowed to outweigh. This is clearest in Chernow’s treatment of Grant’s drinking. He doesn’t deny that Grant suffered from alcoholism, but finds it much magnified in scurrilous rumors from military and political rivals, since such stories always found purchase based on the fact that Grant had been forced to leave the Army after resorting to alcohol amidst depression at being isolated from his family for years, stationed on a frontier fort in the middle of nowhere. Rather, the evidence supports that Grant was aware of and deeply regretted his problem with alcohol, and through fierce willpower and self-control restrained himself to very occasional binges when away from his support system and his responsibilities, until overcoming his urges almost entirely after the war. In short, Chernow finds Grant’s conscientious, willful, responsible, and ultimately triumphant struggle against the disease of alcoholism far more admirable than derogatory while still bluntly honest about it.

One of Chernow’s great skills is his ability to get inside the psyches of his subjects and bring out them to human, rounded life with great psychological insight and a clear narrative, while srill making room for the many complications and impenetrabilities of history. That’s on full display here, making another great biography for Chernow. He brings the famously impenetrable Grant to life as a man of tremendous character and military genius who secured victory in the Civil War and then did his utmost to secure the peace, being the fiercest and most significant proponent and protector of black rights during Reconstruction, a responsible and generally successful president who did heroic work attempting to integrate not only blacks but Native Americans and Jews as well into American life. A really tremendous read.

 

Best of Star Wars Insider: Heroes of the Light Side

So far, I'm unimpressed, especially given how fantastic Lords of the Sith was.

 

THRAWN!

I only read the first book in his legends trilogy and haven’t seen many of his Rebels episodes so I’m relatively new to the character.

So far so good!

 

Still on the Lee Child book. Haven't had a chance to go back to it since I got back to work.

 

The German Girl, by Armando Lucas Correa
Call it an impulse-read since I couldn't think of a new book I wanted and I just caught a glimpse of it while walking around the book section of my local Target. It's a historical fiction book that features a generational story between the family of a young girl in war-torn Germany who flees the country on the transatlantic liner, the St. Louis, to Cuba. I borrowed it from my library.

 

The Queen of Steel and Fire
by Steven B. South

 

The Red Fox Clan by John Flanagan, umpteenth book of his Ranger's Apprentice YA series. A little less imaginative than the earlier books, but it ends on a cliffhanger that makes me optimistic for the next book.

 

Thrawn and Pelleaon have always been extememly popular Imperials. Pelleaon went on to have a fairly big recurring role the EU novels. He signed the Bastion Accords with Princess Leia and even wound up Chief of State of the New Republic.