What are you reading?

Ubereil said:
I'm reading V for Vendetta. Hopefully I'll get further than 20 pages this time around (I started it about a month ago, got 15 pages and then never read it again. Restarted two days ago).

Übereil
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I like the song in the middle, shame it never made it into the film.
 
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I finally finished The Star Fraction by Ken McLeod. Ver-r-ry interesting read; the best new political fiction I've read in a long time. Puts Brave New World to shame IMO, even if it's not quite the level of George Orwell at his best. What's more, the guy actually manages to weave together a coherent anarcho-libertarian-Trotskyist political philosophy, *and* make it sound like the most natural thing in the world.

Between this guy and Iain M. Banks, I'm starting to feel that Communism might yet have a future. (Not sure if it's a future I want to be in, but still.)

OTOH, if you're not interested in political philosophy, this will probably be one huge WTF??? kind of experience. Gonna dig into The Stone Canal next.
 
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That's the one I dropped out of after about hundred pages or so. It wasn't that I felt it be boring or even that I found uninteresting but sort of made a conscious decision at that point that 'I couldn't be bothered' to finish it. I just don't have the literary patience to read science fiction over hundred twenty, hundred forty pages right now and am not striving for more. I'm interested in your opinion though as it's still resting on my bookshelf.
 
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We just finished our 'read aloud' on the 8-book 'Deltora Quest' series ... now we need to buy the 'Shadowlands' 3-book series. Great fun outside on a warm night. This is Harry Potter level stuff, better edited, pretty simple but fun fantasy stuff.
 
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Picked up John Adams by David McCullogh for some quick early American political background. Have the feeling it may turn out to be very much 'pop' history though--I'm only a few chapters into it so I guess we'll see.
 
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You should read Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville!
 
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Rithrandil said:
You should read Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville!
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Looked this one up and it sounds much more like what I had in mind--this John Adams thing is like watching a mini-series(which I guess it was) it's not bad, but very modern.

Thanks for the rec. I put it on my wishlist for next quarter's book allowance(along with Nixonland, Renegade, and some trashy novels. :) Christopher Buckley also has a book out about his dad which sounds interesting.
 
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Finished The Stone Canal. Wo-wee, straight from cyberpunk to space opera, and delightfully dystopian space opera at that.

There was also a great idea there for solving the Iranian nuke issue: free-market nuclear deterrence. Basically, anyone with nukes could sell contracts to anyone willing to pay for them, guaranteeing that they would respond with a nuclear strike on anyone dropping a nuke on the buyer.
 
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magerette said:
Looked this one up and it sounds much more like what I had in mind--this John Adams thing is like watching a mini-series(which I guess it was) it's not bad, but very modern.

Thanks for the rec. I put it on my wishlist for next quarter's book allowance(along with Nixonland, Renegade, and some trashy novels. :) Christopher Buckley also has a book out about his dad which sounds interesting.
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Democracy in America is in the public domain, now, so you can save a few bucks unless you want the physical sensation of the book in your hands. :D

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/tocqueville/alexis/democracy/
or http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/home.html

Nixonland is very good thus far - but I'm only a small way into the book so far. Nixon isn't even president yet :O
 
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Yesterday I was reading an old-fashioned mid-70s book about european castles I once bought on a flea market, second-hand. It wasn't as resourceful as I wished, but I learned some bits nevertheless.

I read it because I want to draw the floor plan of a castle I'm currently writing a story about.

Any help in that regard is appreciated (via PN). Because I have never drawn a floor plan so far. Not to speak of castles.
Unfortunately the "Campaign Cartographer" is very expensive, otherwise this would have been my "dream tool" for that, or rather one of its modules.


For today I have scheduled a book about African music (in general) I also bought on a flea market several years ago. Unfortunately it covers only the time until the early 90s.
 
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Thrasher said:
I am re-reading the "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" by H.P. Lovecraft.
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Blech, I couldn't stand Lovercraft trying to out-Dunsany Dunsany. Why d'you pick that one, and not, for example, At the Mountains of Madness or even The Case of Charles Dexter Ward?
 
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Hmm I just read the Mountains of Madness.

I like the descriptions better though in the Dream-Quest.

There also less overwrought emotional self-introspection in the Dream-Quest, and more on the environment and characters.
 
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Rithrandil said:
Democracy in America is in the public domain, now, so you can save a few bucks unless you want the physical sensation of the book in your hands. :D
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Thanks for the info, but I'm afraid I'm really bad with e-books. The only thing I ever finished reading online was one of Sapkowski's Witcher stories, and that taxed my patience to the max. I guess I'm conditioned to curling up in my pajamas with some chocolate if I seriously want to read. ;)
 
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magerette said:
Thanks for the info, but I'm afraid I'm really bad with e-books. The only thing I ever finished reading online was one of Sapkowski's Witcher stories, and that taxed my patience to the max. I guess I'm conditioned to curling up in my pajamas with some chocolate if I seriously want to read. ;)
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Tried a netbook? Reading e-books in bed is one of the primary functions of mine.
 
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Prime Junta said:
Blech, I couldn't stand Lovercraft trying to out-Dunsany Dunsany. Why d'you pick that one, and not, for example, At the Mountains of Madness or even The Case of Charles Dexter Ward?
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Ever see the film adaption of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward? It's called The Resurrected. Not an A+ movie by any stretch, but interesting enough if you like the story.
 
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Prime Junta said:
Tried a netbook? Reading e-books in bed is one of the primary functions of mine.
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I read heavily on my Dell Axim and iPod Touch, both with wonderful screens ... Kindle is also quite nice, but I have no use for a $400 dedicated book reader.
 
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JDR13 said:
Ever see the film adaption of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward? It's called The Resurrected. Not an A+ movie by any stretch, but interesting enough if you like the story.
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Nope, I haven't. I'll have to check it out; it's a good candidate for filming, that, since it doesn't require (easily corny) special effects. I wish somebody did a good film of At The Mountains of Madness, though -- it'd be quite easy to adapt to modern times, too.
 
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Guillermo del Toro wants to, but his schedule is filled until like 2017.
 
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