What are you reading?

[JCBoney]

Currently reading Marilyn Manson's autobiography The Long Hard Road Out of Hell. Not too far into it yet, but I've learned two things about him: 1) he's less than a year younger than I am, and 2) I would have hung out with him back then because we had a lot in common including being obsessed with D&D and heavy metal...

[JasonZavoda]

I have 41 discworld novels on kindle and decided to read through them in publication order. Ive read about 2 thirds of them before but stopped keeping up with him. I'm on book 14 Lords and Ladies and have enjoyed the previous 13 more than expected. Other than that Ive done a christmas reading of Wind in the Willows up to the end Dolce Domum for my Mom, some Longfellow and working through Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces.

[Flambeaux]

Jason, I love reading Dulce Domum to my kids at Christmas! We're big fans of The Wind In The Willows generally but that and the Piper at the Gate of Dawn are my 2 favorite of the stories.

[JasonZavoda]

Jason, I love reading Dulce Domum to my kids at Christmas! We're big fans of The Wind In The Willows generally but that and the Piper at the Gate of Dawn are my 2 favorite of the stories.

My Mom is 90 and I started reading to her a few years ago when her eyesight went. Graham wrote the Wind in the Willows for his son, but mainly the Toad stories. I find the first four chapters set the stage for Dulce Domum. Piper is a wonderful part of the book. Im not fond of the Toad stories.

[Flambeaux]

We're in agreement there. The only Toad story I really enjoy is the Return of Ulysses, although Like Summer Tempests Came His Tears is a close second. It's a shame so many of the abridgements focus on the adventures of Mr. Toad and omit Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

[benjoshua]

I finished the last book in the Lyonesse Trilogy, Madouc. I enjoyed all three books. Vance weaves together a number of different threads and pulls everything together in the last twenty pages or so for a dramatic conclusion. This is classic medieval fantasy with magic, monsters, castles and adventure. Madouc won the World Fantasy Award in 1990 and the first book in the series, Lyonesse, was nominated for the award in 1984. Highly recommended!

[gizmomathboy]

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage. Like 1 part comic that reminds me a lot of Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of ... series, 1 part anecdotes of Lovelace and Babbage, and 1 part history of the time.

I'm mostly just reading the comic parts and the foot notes (for the most part) and will get around to the extensive endnotes in a second reading. Then dig into the appendices.

The conceit is what if Babbage actually made his Analytical Engine and Ada Lovelace didn't die so young and wrote the programs for it, along with some alternate history/whimsy.

Art I like, bits of history, and a bit of whimsy. I have liked it so far.

[benjoshua]

Like 1 part comic that reminds me a lot of Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of ... series, 1 part anecdotes of Lovelace and Babbage, and 1 part history of the time.

I LOVE Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe series. They take the reader from the big bang up to modern history. These are funny and succinct but accurate in their history. The best thing about these books is how it helped me understand how all the different countries, events, and eras of history connected. It's history viewed from a wider-angle lens. Plus, my boys loved reading them...over and over!

[gizmomathboy]

Like 1 part comic that reminds me a lot of Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of ... series, 1 part anecdotes of Lovelace and Babbage, and 1 part history of the time.

I LOVE Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe series. They take the reader from the big bang up to modern history. These are funny and succinct but accurate in their history. The best thing about these books is how it helped me understand how all the different countries, events, and eras of history connected. It's history viewed from a wider-angle lens. Plus, my boys loved reading them...over and over!

Yeah, great non-linear story telling...well in the sense that there is a lot going on and he tries to connect everything.

He needs to do a cartoon history of china because the little he touches on it are very intriguing. Although it sounds like 3-4 volumes might be needed.

[benjoshua]

Upmost Savagery: The Three Days of Tarawa by Col. Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Ret.)

A fantastic study of the Battle of Tarawa. I’ve been a bit obsessed with this subject ever since I started playing D-Day at Tarawa (Decision Games), and the book helped me to realize two things:

First, the Battle of Tarawa was absolutely brutal. A terrifying, nightmarish situation, the cost of human life on this tiny island was staggering, both for Japanese and American forces. If a filmmaker ever wanted to make another fierce movie about a WWII amphibious operation aka Saving Private Ryan, this would be the fight to film.

Second, the game D-Day at Tarawa does a wonderful job of working the unique components of the fight into the game’s mechanics. From the troubles caused by the reef during the neap tide to the savage hand-to-hand combat to the rein-filtration of Japanese troops during the night, the game captured the historical accuracy and retain player agency. Great stuff.

- Wheggi

Thank you so much for recommending this book! I finished it last night, and was mesmerized and horrified over and over. What a story! It truly was one of the most brutal of battles in modern history. There's a part of me that hopes someone makes a movie about this and another part that thinks it would make most everyone in the theater throw up.

[benjoshua]

I read Distant Mirror a whole lot of years ago. I liked some of Tuchmans work previous to reading that one. Especially Guns of August.

Thank you for that recommendation. I finished Guns of August today, and it was excellent. She reveals everything as if it is happening now instead of a hundred years ago. This is the best kind of history writing in my opinion; readable with lots of information. It's one weakness was that it threw out French phrases occasionally without a translation or with a questionable translation. Fortunately, I speak excellent French so it wasn't much of an issue for me personally, but I could envision it being frustrating for most readers. This book won the Pulitzer Prize, and it's classified as one of the best war books ever written. Highly recommended!

[Joe Mohr]

I read Distant Mirror a whole lot of years ago. I liked some of Tuchmans work previous to reading that one. Especially Guns of August.

Thank you for that recommendation. I finished Guns of August today, and it was excellent. She reveals everything as if it is happening now instead of hundreds of years ago. This is the best kind of history writing in my opinion; readable with lots of information. It's one weakness was that it threw out French phrases occasionally without a translation or with a questionable translation. Fortunately, I speak excellent French so it wasn't much of an issue for me personally, but I could envision it being frustrating for most readers. This book won the Pulitzer Prize, and it's classified as one of the best war books ever written. Highly recommended!

I actually got the idea to read Guns of August from an interview I read from JFK. Apparently it was one of the favorite books that he read while in office. Later there was a movie/miniseries or something along those lines about the Cuban Missile Crisis called The Missiles of October or something along those lines.

While I am not a fan of JFK I would also point out that he, and his family, were very into one of the old box war games that were common at a lot of Dungeons and Dragons conventions in the 70s (and still at Gen Con and other big cons). They use to play Diplomacy which my original D&D group also used to play together (between campaigns). And of course...Diplomacy is also about World War One.

[grodog]

Just finished _DeathKnight_ by Andrew J. Offutt (of Thives World fame)—an enjoyable one-off fantasy novel set in a post-apocalyptic world. Interesting take on a knightly order, its role/mission in society, and an intricately plotted fantasy-suspense-mystery.

Fun, and definitely worth a used pb

Allan.

[DungeonMonkey]

I'm reading a collection of weird fiction by Algernon Blackwood.

I'm about a third of the way through. I'm a slow reader, but even by my standards this is going slow. When I hold this book in my hands, I feel like a bug stuck in resin.

I'm not sure whether it's the book or my present state of mind. Blackwood writes well in terms of the quality of the prose, but there's so much of it. It seems like there's three paragraphs where two sentences would do. And there's not a lot of action.

But I'm going to finish this book even if it kills me, and it might.

[Terrex]

Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Here's the cover of Omnibus #4:


Over the last couple of years I've read my way through the first 122 issues of Amazing Spider-Man (+Amazing Fantasy and some annuals). While I'm not finished with Omnibus 4, I feel like I reached a milestone in recently reading issues 121 and 122:

The death of Gwen Stacy in 121 and the death of the Green Goblin in 122

The series is remarkable in many ways: the art, the relatability, the ability to stay fresh over a10 year+ span, an often timeless quality, and its daring to execute on something like issues 121-122, a drug issue that didn't get the comics approval code, etc. I'd say better than 9/10 issues, so far, have been of a high quality. I knew I would enjoy this and had high expectations. I'd say it has actually exceeding expectations.

In going through it, I also read all the published letters (often taking longer than reading the book). Marvel truly had something special going with its readers and its refreshing to hear from a different type of scifi/fantasy/comic book fandom. One such letter really moved me. It was sent from a soldier from Vietnam and Marvel responded promising some freebies. In the letter section a few months later, we learn he was killed in action. Very sad.