Amph What book are you reading right now?

I'm reading a biography of Joan Collins . it's good , she certainly had a good time and stuck up for herself.

 

Finished a re-reading of Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith by Darko Macan and art by Ramón F. Bachs

It's probably my favorite Star Wars comic honestly. With a wonderful fantasy like art style that fits the whole ultimate dark vs light theme very well and some of the best characterization in any Star Wars comic, with each character feeling memorable. Even the side character's like Torr, Lord Korpecz or Pernicar are all memorable character's despite having little screen time.

 

I had read it before, about 7 years ago I think, but I really enjoyed it. I was a little disappointed with how Vestara turned out but I'm not really surprised by it, these authors really enjoyed having sad endings for characters but honestly that's what makes these books so good, for me anyway.

 

Currently reading The Greatest Knight by Thomas Asbridge.

 

An outstanding book. One of my favorite biographies. William Marshal lived one heck of a life.

 

I actually started it last year but for some reason never finished it. Reading it now I'm rather baffled on why I didn't finish it as it's one of more readable and enjoyable medieval based biographies I've read.

 

La Vénus d'Ille by Prosper Mérimée, a chilling short story from 1837 which was anthologized in Demons of the Night, edited by Joan C. Kessler. In the Romantic tradition of a traveler as narrator as he absorbs exotic new surroundings (think Jonathan Harker in Dracula), the archaeologist narrator immerses himself in his country host's obsession with a 6 foot Roman bronze statue of Venus discovered recently and which now resides in Host's garden. Venus has a mean face. Narrator politely fields Host's convoluted and maybe inaccurate translation of words found on the bronze, has huge meals forced upon him by Hostess as she continuously apologizes for the "poor country fare not fit for a Parisian," and gets invited to the wedding of their son to a bride who's just inherited a fortune greater than his. Sonny shows greed and not much consideration for Bride, whom Narrator crushes on just a bit. Sonny pays dearly for this and other foolish actions.

The scary part is super scary, and subtle. I liked the emphasis on Narrator coming from Paris and being ever so polite to his hosts, yet implying a touch of superiority in his attitude towards them. The Romanticism movement emphasized Nature and sure glamorized the past of Ancient Greece and Rome, the Phoenicians, and Etruscans and these all get mentioned copiously. Since Pompeii, the Roman Empire and the Egyptian tombs mid-19th century held the allure that the Bermuda Triangle holds today, it's easy to see how a scary story about a mysterious statue entranced readers. The translation flows well thanks to Kessler and I'd recommend this story as a Halloween mood piece.

 

Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization, by Richard Miles. Carthage is remembered in history mostly as Rome’s greatest foe, the opponent against which it fought three wars and came of age as a Mediterranean power. By being reduced to a role as just a foil for Rome, however, Carthage tends to get little notice on its own account. Miles’s history sets out to wade through overwhelmingly Roman ancient sources and get at the story of Carthage. The result is a very readable, interesting history of an ancient civilization that played an important role as a Mediterranean power itself, from a badly neglected perspective. Very good.

 

When I Lay My Isaac Down: Unshakeable Faith in Unthinkable Circumstances (2004) – Carol J. Kent

In this book, Carol Kent describes the events surrounding the arrest of her only son for murder. It’s a book that’s essentially about how everything can be going great and then your life can be turned upside down in a moment and, as Kent describes, you begin to question everything about your life. The book focuses a lot on the struggle she faced in the area of her faith in God, so if you’re a Christian you’re the target audience here. But Kent is also refreshingly blunt about the extreme emotional trauma and the book is very raw in a way that distinguishes this book from other “Christian Self-Help” style books. Kent isn’t exactly a good prose stylist, but the book does pull you into her emotional world to the degree that you really do empathize with her and her husband as they struggle to hang together after this world shattering event. And while it isn’t a true-crime book or a mystery primarily, there is still some intrigue in the story; why would a young military man without any criminal record and about to leave for a dream post in Hawaii leave his wife and two young children and drive six hours in order to cold bloodedly shoot a man down in a restaurant parking lot? Still, this is primarily a didactic book about how to reframe the way you think about the tragedies in your life and then move forward with your soul intact. Your mileage, obviously, may vary. 2 ½ stars.

tl;dr – emotionally raw, if not very well-written, book is both a memoir and an exploration of how we best recover from tragedies. 2 ½ stars.

 

Going to start Warcross by Marie Lu today

 

To Fly and Fight: Memoirs of a Triple Ace by Colonel Bud Anderson
Chapter 1 is one of the most vivid and riveting accounts of a dogfight I've ever read. It's spring of '44 and Anderson is in his P-51 Mustang, dueling with a Luftwaffe Me-109, and I'm on the edge of my seat reading... even though the outcome is obvious since Anderson lived to write his memoirs.
There's the usual stuff about growing up in the 20's and 30's, learning to fly and training for war, and lots about life in war-time Britain, what it's like to belong to a fighter squadron, and his missions in WW2. There's also some test pilot stuff from the 50's that fascinated me. I knew he was a friend of Chuck Yeager, but never knew anything about his post-war career. It's a book that I just ate up, and after I finished, I went back and re-read chapter 1 cuz that dogfight puts the reader right there in the cockpit.

 

Paradise Lost by John Milton.

 

Magic The Gathering War Of The Spark Ravnica by Greg Weisman

 

I definitely recommend following it up with Paradise Regained which is much shorter and simpler, so if you get through PL you should have no issues getting through it, and it's interesting mostly as a companion piece.

 

Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy, by Jonah Goldberg. The core contention of Goldberg’s book is that the liberal, free-market political order of the modern world is deeply unnatural. Its principles — acceptance of others’ right to be “wrong,” the restraint of arbitrary power in government, openness to innovation, respect for the individual and rejection of class structures — run up against deeply ingrained elements of human nature. We stumbled into this order in the 1700s and human liberty and prosperity took off like a rocket, completely transforming the world from the status quo of time immemorial. Poverty, violence, slavery, and hunger have gone from constants of life to virtually vanished, by historical standards.

The problem, Goldberg says, is that we take it for granted. We act as if this tremendous historical aberration is a given, normal, and irreversible. In fact, we resent the liberal order for not doing more, not solving all of our problems faster. Our society, on both right and left, has forgotten what made itself possible, and is now in the process of turning against itself, embracing creeds like socialism and populist nationalism that offer seductive emotional reactions against the limitations of classical liberalism, but really represent a return to pre-Enlightenment, regressive ways of thinking — tribalism, anti-rationalism. Neutral liberal principles like free speech are being abandoned by both sides because we’ve forgotten the reason those principles were developed, and it’s unnatural and unsatisfying to let the other side speak when they’re so obviously wrong. Both sides cast this as progress — as fighting “hate speech” or “fake news” — but all it really is is a return to the days when the king determined what you could say without being punished, and people fought wars of religion over whose “truth” got to be enshrined by the state.

The only solution is the hard, unromantic work of keeping our society educated about our past and our values and why they matter, Goldberg suggests. This book, thoughtful and entertaining, is a pretty good effort in that direction.

 

"Man all this tribalism and nationalism sure is ruining America" says longtime National Review editor Jonah Goldberg. I'm looking forward to The Pot's next bestseller: Kettles: Why Are They So Black?

 

Edith's Diary by Patricia Highsmith .

I realised I'd never read any of her books , altho I've seen plenty of movies based on her work , so I'm putting that right.

 

Pandemic by Robin Cook. Been waiting awhile for this to come out in pb. Pretty good so far.

 

Batman: Birth of the Demon. This collects three Batman stories revolving around one of his most interesting and under-appreciated enemies, Ra’s al Ghul. The first, Son of the Demon, is a late-eighties story that has Batman teaming up with al Ghul (and marrying Talia) to fight an old enemy of al Ghul’s. It’s a fun enough story, but it’s most significant because it ends with Talia secretly having Batman’s son, which the lore would eventually come back around to. Bride of the Demon is a less distinguished story that has al Ghul involved in two parallel silly schemes: devastating the planet to save the ozone layer, and sticking some decrepit former movie star into a Lazarus Pit so she’ll have his kid. It’s just a goofy story. The last, Birth of the Demon, tells his origin story. It’s a decent collection, notable more for the significance of its stories than exceptional quality.

 

I mean, it's less that the lore "came back around" to Son of the Demon and more Grant Morrison deciding everything was canon, even every silver age story, even that one you don't like, yeah that one you can't stand, it's canon now. Canon.

 

I would like to consider the Rainbow Batman (Detective Comics #241, March 1957) canon, and now I may!

 

Resistance Women, by Jennifer Chiaverini
A historical fiction novel that takes place during WWII where a group of young women band together with underground forces to take down the Nazi surge once and for all.

 

Every. Silver Age. Story.