What book are you currently reading?

[Ojf]

Hey guys I just finished reading Fish:A Memoir of a boy in a Man's Prison and I highly recommend it

Check out the Authors Youtube and website:
http://www.youtube.com/user/tjparsell
http://www.tjparsell.com/

[Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh]

Plato's Republic and Dante's Inferno. Recently finished Il Principe by Machiavelli, and that was good too.

[Darth Ravenous]

Blood of my Blood.

[Henry of Grosmont]

I hope the next volume is out before I finish this one.

You intend to read it until this June? At leats, June

[vizi]

He is a slow reader. Gods know it took me forever to trudge through that horror that was A Game of Thrones.

[Henry of Grosmont]

He is a slow reader. Gods know it took me forever to trudge through that horror that was A Game of Thrones.

Wow. I'm no fantasy fan, but I do like A Song of Ice and Fire.

[vizi]

I love fantasy. And I thought it was boring. Until about 3/4 of the way through. Not enough to make it worth reading the rest of the series.

[Hardrada992]

Currently reading Stranger in a Strange Land By Robert Heinlein. Only about 40 pages in but it's quite interesting.

Just finished Arabian Nights (then I played BC for a few days), and also just finished Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It's a great Apocalypse themed book about the aftermath of a comet strike. Can anyone recommend any other Apocalypse themed books? Other than The Postman, which I've read, and I'm far more interested in realistic scenarios rather than biblical type stuff. Unless it's Zombies.

[therussian]

Just finished Conan Doyle's "The White Company"

Great book.

[Juvenal]

Can anyone recommend any other Apocalypse themed books?

There are hundreds of novels about the apocalypse, here are just a few that I have enjoyed...

Non-stop (1958) by Brian Aldiss. Aftermath of collapse of society in a generation star-ship. You might also try Greybeard (1964), a story of a future where everyone is sterile and the youngest couple left in the world are in their 50's, or Hothouse (1967) a story set after the virtual exinction of humanity where the survivors compete (poorly) with other animals in a world-girdling jungle.

A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) by Walter M Miller (won the Hugo) a story of rebuilding civilization after nuclear war.

The Forge of God (1987) by Greg Bear, an end-of-the-world story - don't trust aliens (it also has a sequel, Anvil of Stars).

Wolf and Iron (1990) by Gordon R Dickson, a detailed and gritty story of survival after society collapses in the USA.

Death of Grass (1956) by John Christopher, a plague has wiped out all grasses and cereals. Civilization is proved to be a thin veneer when people must fight to secure what little food remains.

Day of the Triffids (1951) by John Wyndham, when the population of the world is blinded, genetically-engineered mobile plants find themselves accidently in the ascendency.

The Chrysalids (1955) by John Wyndham, in an agrarian world recovering from nuclear war, mutant children try to hide their telepathic powers from a society that will kill them without mercy - a hint of Salem perhaps?

Farnham's Freehold (1964) by Robert Heinlein, an American family are catapulted into a post-nuclear society that highlights the assumptions and prejudices of 1950's America by inverting them.

Riddley Walker (1980) by Russell Hoban, 2000 years after the apocalypse in England. A strange anarchical society that lives in the ruins. The whole book is written in a dialect out of which the reader can pick the twisted remnants of concepts from our own time.

Dark Universe (1961) by Daniel F Galouye, post-apocalypse, people live underground in a medieval society. The most striking thing is that there is no light, people use their enhanced sense of hearing to echo-locate and the very concept of vision has been forgotten. But then outsiders break into the underground world...

Across Realtime (1991) by Vernor Vinge, a story that goes from the near future when the world-changing discovery of how to create stasis-fields is made, through apocalypse and on into the far future where a few survivors use their stasis-fields to skip through millions of years while they try to recreate humanity.

[Arto]

One of the greatest books of all time.

Kadir Abdolah =

[Muffer Nl]

I'm reading a few series ATM (Most of them are not completed yet so I still have to wait for the books to come out)

Sword of Truth series, Eragon series, Kingamker Kingbreaker series and Temerarire series.

[maxi90]

i have just finished reading 6 books in a row by Osvaldo Soriano (you may not know him, he is an argentinian writer with litle influence in foreing countries, but belive me when i tell you that ALL his books really worth the reading). before that i just readed the Illiad. And i am about to start Chronicles of Adriano (not sure that is it´s name in english), wich i have been told that is one of the greatest books of the last times, so we will see.
@muffer: if you like the hisrotic books (most presisly, in the classic era) you should try reading Gisbert Haefs. his novels about the clasic period are excelent, i specially loved Hannibal, but he also has two about Alexander the Great and one about Troy. he may have more but those are the ones i have readed so far.

[mrmouth]

Just finished Victory Point, the largely unknown story of Marine Corps operations in Eastern Afghanistan, in 2005.


Operation Red Wings was planned by senior Battalion (2/3) leadership in early June of 2005. The objective of the operation was to "disrupt anti-coalition militia operations that could potentially affect the upcoming national elections," Translation: the Marines along with local Afghan forces would interdict those responsible for the creation and employment of IEDs (improvised explosive devices, commonly referred to as 'roadside bombs'), mortar and rocket attacks, and ambushes that destabilized the remote Kunar Province.

The Marines used a slew of intelligence reports to pinpoint a small band of insurgents led by a man who went by the aliases of Muhammad Ismail, Ismail, and Ahmad Shah, among others. Shah and his group really weren't Taliban, but he was known to be associated with the infamous Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, who in 1977 founded Hizb-I Islami (HIG). More accurately, Shah's group was one of many who the battalion collectively termed ACM (anti coalition militia). While it is easy to denote ACM as "the Taliban" or "Al Qaeda," particularly for magazine articles where space is at a premium (and specific and accurate descriptions get edited out), Shah and his followers were never considered members of either group, although Shah certainly may have had indirect ties, primarily financial, to them.

The battalion identified approximately 22 distinct groups operating in the Kunar Province alone in 2005, and Shah's was just one of them. The bottom line is that the Marines set out to smash his operation so that the upcoming elections could proceed smoothly in this part of the Kunar Province (they did). When I asked the primary planner of Red Wings if the Marines sought a kill/capture of Shah, I was told that Marines very rarely plan an operation around killing / capturing one single person, as such a goal is nearly impossible and not particularly effective in the long run nor an efficient use of assets. 2/3 was simply going to wreck Shah's operation, and killing / capturing him would be a bonus.

A quick note on nomenclature: Typically, when a battalion comes in country, they decide on a unified naming method for their operations. In 2/3's case in Afghanistan, they would name their operations after hockey teams. Their first operation would be Operation Red Wings, after the Detroit Red Wings.

A disaster ensued, resulting in the greatest single-day loss of life for the SEALs as well as the aviation supporting element, the 160th SOAR(A), AKA the 'Nightstalkers.' Most of those involved don't know why the SEALs were asked to be a part of Red Wings. I was surprised when I found out; the reason involves the complex and often times tenuous relationships among conventional branches of the military and special operations units.

The initial phase of the operation had a Navy Special Operations team insert (via an MH-47D of the 160th) near the summit of Sawtalo Sar. The SEALs planned the specifics of this phase of the operation, and they chose to use a 4 man team. The four were to surveil 4 NAIs (named areas of interest) total, one around the village of Chichal in the Korangal Valley and three on the upper north ridge of Sawtalo Sar massif.

Just hours after the insert, in the morning of June 28th, they were 'soft compromised' by a goat herder (goat herders are common in this area, we ran across them all the time on operations in the Kunar Province). Minutes after the soft compromise, the team was hard compromised by a number of Shah's men (soft compromised means opposing forces have detected you, hard compromised means they're trying to kill you). Shah's guys killed three of the SEALs, and the sole survivor made his way to a village in the area, where he was taken in and protected, eventually to be rescued.

Operation Whalers saw the Marines hunt down Ahmad Shah's forces and successfully destroy his operation and chase him out of the region. A Marine of Fox Company actually shot him, but Shah didn't die. Instead, he and his followers fled to Pakistan, and then went south of the Kunar Province. Red Wings and Whalers represent an amazing drama of modern warfare--and one that has been virtually unreported, totally overshadowed in the media by the special operations disaster.

http://www.victorypoint.info/

[REQUIEM]

attila : the gathering of the storm.

[Innos]

I'm currently reading The King Of Thieves by Michael Jecks. It's from a brilliant series set in 14th Century England/France about a Keeper of the King's Peace (who is an ex-Knights Templar who escaped the arrests) and a bailiff. Good murder mystery books, especially if you're into mediaeval history

The next book I've got on the shelf is 'Have I got Views for You' by Boris Johnson, which should be a good read!

While I'm here, does anybody know any good old fashioned novel about the British Empire?

[PubliusKhannus]

Taiko.

[ciprianrusu]

The Battle: A New History of Waterloo by Alessandro Barbero

[dunker1]

im reading Tacitus Annals and The Jewish War - Joesphus....heavy stuff

[Niles Crane]

Currently reading Inside the Third Reich by Speer for the second time. It's been a while since I read it plus we're studying him in Modern History next term.