What book are you reading now?

[cupper]

What I found interesting with Debt of Honour is that Clancy was somewhat prescient with the idea of a terrorist strike by flying an airliner into the Capitol.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

I....am only on page 564!  :blotto:

 

[Sythen]

After a number of false starts throughout the years, I finally buckeld down and read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

How is it? Like for casual reading type of thing. I bought the movie, but want to read the book first. Is it actually a good read?

 

[Allgunzblazing]

I finished reading "To War with Wellington" by Peter Snow a few days ago. I'm currently halfway through "Voices from Stalingrad" by Jonathan Bastable. Both these are very well written. Johanthan Bastable has written his book in the form of a collage - of dairy entries/ letters home/ memos from soldiers, war correspondents, junior officers, generals, etc.

On a sidenote - is there any one here who reads Commando Comics? http://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=commando+comics+&sprefix=commando+%2Caps%2C216&x=0&y=0

http://www.commandocomics.com/

 

[Journeyman]

How is it? Like for casual reading type of thing. I bought the movie, but want to read the book first. Is it actually a good read?

If you've never read Ayn Rand, or looked into her philosophy, The Fountainhead is probably a better starting point -- and not just because it's much shorter. Atlas Shrugged tells a better story, and develops her views much better, but for a good, casual read it may not be the best starting point.

Thucydides may weigh in with a more nuanced view.  ;D

 

[Fishbone Jones]

JM is right. This is not a novella for the faint of heart. It is long and drawn out. If the participants have a twenty minute conversation, you'll be treated to that whole twenty minutes of reading, word for word. There is no shortcuts here. Having said that, I found that when the conversation got long, skimming it provided the nuance it was meant to convey, without the wasted time of catching every participle of Dangy's (or other's) conversation.

Something like the way most of us guys hear what women have to say ;D

In fairness, once you have a hang of the dialogue, you'll find yourself skimming a lot of the casual conversation. However, it seems to be written where you know by instinct when you have to start reading word for word and paying attention to the text.

I can't say what society was like when the book was written, but it surely seems to be extremely relevent to today's society. Especially with the social engineering attempted by government(s) as opposed to the capitalist system of working for your worth.

Just my take on it though.

It took me, probably 20 years to tackle this book, once and for all. As a voracious reader, it fit and I liked it. It was thought provoking and topical (still).

I wasn't aware of The Fountainhead until I got very in depth with Atlas Shrugged. I might now have to stop the book I've started and read The Fountainhead instead.

 

[leroi]

Does anyone have any suggestions for reading about the history or politics of Saudi Arabia?

I teach females there and have read "Girls of Riyadh" and Jean Sasson's Princess Trilogy.

Thanks.

 

[Allgunzblazing]

leroi:

I highly recommend "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" by Lt. Col. T.E. Lawrence.

You could also show them the movie "Lawrence of Arabia".

 

[leroi]

Thanks AGB. The reading request is for myself.  I will look for that book.

We're very limited in what we can teach or show our students--no films, no music, no art, no phys. ed.

A very complicated country where everybody/everything seems to operate on two levels.

 

[dapaterson]

What I found interesting with Debt of Honour is that Clancy was somewhat prescient with the idea of a terrorist strike by flying an airliner into the Capitol.

Read up on Samuel Byck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Byck - it's not a new idea.


Then listen to the musical Assassins - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassins_(musical).

 

[cupper]

Read up on Samuel Byck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Byck - it's not a new idea.


Then listen to the musical Assassins - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassins_(musical).

I am aware of those as well.

I just found it annoying that after 9/11 the pundits kept saying "Who could have imagined someone would try and fly an airliner into the World Trade Center?"

 

[Char1991]

Currently reading two books.

Working my way through This Is Gonna Hurt, Music, Photography, and Life through the Distorted Lens by Nikki Sixx for fun.

And Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Lt-Gen (R) Romeo Dallaire, as it's been a while and I absolutely love the book.

 

[a_majoor]

How is it? Like for casual reading type of thing. I bought the movie, but want to read the book first. Is it actually a good read?

In terms of literary merit, the style is the sort of potboiler favoured in the 1940's coupled with some pretty massive expositions (if that isn't a word, it should be for this case). Rand was disappointed that her philosophical ideas expressed in previous books like "We the Living" and "The Fountainhead" were misunderstood, so used the novel "Atlas Shrugged" to send these ideas ramped up to "11". Looking at various forums discussing the book, it would seem that even using 30 page speeches embedded in a novel over 100 pages long failed to achieve Rand's aim.

The book does reward the determined reader who is willing to take the time to read the entire thing and reflect on what is being said, but I would suggest reading Rand's earlier works in terms of literary merit and brevity as a place to start your literary explorations.

WRT the movie, I havn't seen it yet, (it is projected to be filmed as a trilogy and Atlas Shrugged Part 2 is soon to be released), so it would be interesting to see your thoughts on the movie.

 

[AmmoTech90]

I recently finished The Fountainhead.  Very nicely written (with the exception of an overuse of "bromide").  I did, however, want to punch everyone of the characters in the throat (except Mike) for being a whiney little bastard.

 

[jollyjacktar]

I plan to read this one, saw a review in Macleans magazine.  Halifax Public Libraries have ordered it.

Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying:  Amazon books CDN$ 22.05

On a visit to the British National Archive in 2001, Sonke Neitzel made a remarkable discovery: reams of meticulously transcribed conversations among German POWs that had been covertly recorded and recently declassified. Netizel would later find another collection of transcriptions, twice as extensive, in the National Archive in Washington. These were discoveries that would provide a unique and profoundly important window into the true mentality of the soldiers in the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the German navy, and the military in general -- almost all of whom had insisted on their own honourable behaviour during the war.
   
Collaborating with renowned social psychologist Harald Welzer, Neitzel examines these conversations -- and the casual, pitiless brutality omnipresent in them -- from a historical and psychological perspective, and in reconstucting the frameworks and situations behind these conversations, they have created a powerful narrative of wartime experience.

About the Author
SOENKE NEITZEL is currently the Chair of Modern History at the University of Glasgow. He has previously taught Modern History at the University of Mainz and has also held posts at the universities of Karlsruhe, Bern, and Saarbrucken. He is currently the editor of the jounral German History in the 20th Century.

HARALD WELZER is head of the research group Interdisciplinary Memory Research at the KWI Essen. He teaches social psychology at the universities of Hanover and Witten-Herdecke.

 

[FJAG]

... If the participants have a twenty minute conversation, you'll be treated to that whole twenty minutes of reading, word for word. There is no shortcuts here. Having said that, I found that when the conversation got long, skimming it provided the nuance it was meant to convey, without the wasted time of catching every participle of Dangy's (or other's) conversation....

Haven't read Rand but thought I would considering there are candidates for high office in the States that seem to think she walked on water. The above comments clearly have me believing that whatever message there might be is hidden in tedious prose that will have me throwing the book across the room. I'm a firm believer in the axiom that axiom that 'brevity is the soul of wit'. Rand sounds like a fail.

That said am doing some research and am reading again Sean Naylor's 'Not a Good Day to Die' about Operation Anaconda, the US's first conventional battle in Afghanistan in 2002. Well written and very informative. Unfortunately it makes short shrift of any Task Force K-Bar activity and events after the incident on Takur Ghar (Robert's Ridge).

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Finished Tigers in the Mud. Interesting comments from the book, the PZ35T armour would shatter when hit by a large projectile. They preferred more ductile armour.The Tiger 1 was easy to drive and seemed well liked by it’s crews, the early commanders hatch was not well liked. Anti-rifles were a real pain even to the Tigers. He always traveled in pairs so the tanks could recover each other. Later he commanded Jagd tigers, almost all were lost due to inexperienced drivers breaking the final drives and no way to recover them. The JT gun was impressive. The author noted that Russian infantry must never be given a chance to dig in and was always impressed by their ability to fortify areas which even German engineers could not. He considered the Russians as far better combat soldiers than the Americans. 

 

[Danjanou]

Just finished


Brocks Railway
http://www.amazon.ca/Brocks-Railroad-Tom-Taylor/dp/098689611X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b
A Historical Novel set against the Battle of Queenstown Heights

It's the sequel to Brock's Agent, which I picked up and read earlier

http://www.amazon.ca/Brocks-Agent-Tom-Taylor/dp/0986896101
Which is centred on the Battle of Detroit

It appears to be a series set in the Wart of 1812, with the main character a sort of young Canadian Richard Sharpe. Not too bad, no major historical inaccuracies that I could see and not a bad way to pass an afternoon.

 

[FJAG]

Not so much reading as just finished writing.

I have just posted a Novella to Smashwords titled Allies: Anaconda which you can download for free. 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/246140

The story is a prequel to Allies: the Inquiry and has several of the main characters from that book engaged in the factual events of Operation ANACONDA: America’s first conventional battle against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the Shah-i-Kot valley of Afghanistan in 2002. The theme of the series in allies and as such characters in this book include ones from American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and German forces.

The book will also be posted on Amazon Kindle but because of pricing policies there it is set at their minimum price of $0.99. The Smashwords site offers both ePub and pdf formats so should do for most people.

 

[X Royal]

Just finished: The Outlaws by W.E.D. Griffin.

Just started: The Kingdom by Clive Cussler.