What are you reading?

[Walsingham]

 

Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 by Marcus Lutrell with Patrick Robinson

 

Four US Navy SEALS departed one clear night in early July 2005 for the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border for a reconnaissance mission. Their task was to document the activity of an al Qaeda leader rumored to be very close to Bin Laden with a small army in a Taliban stronghold. Five days later, only one of those Navy SEALS made it out alive.

 

 

Although you don't say if it's any good...

 

EDIT:

 

Doing some pre-bedtime tidying. Found an old copy of a book by Anais Nin (NSFW).

 

She's such a weird writer. In some senses her philosophy of life was quite interesting, yet in her writing there's so much pain and disillusionment. It's as if she hates intimacy as much as it fascinates her. As if she hungers for sensation and is starving on it in equal measure. Ultimately I found her quite scary and sad.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Walsingham

[kgambit]

 

 

Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 by Marcus Lutrell with Patrick Robinson

 

Four US Navy SEALS departed one clear night in early July 2005 for the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border for a reconnaissance mission. Their task was to document the activity of an al Qaeda leader rumored to be very close to Bin Laden with a small army in a Taliban stronghold. Five days later, only one of those Navy SEALS made it out alive.

 

 

Although you don't say if it's any good...

 

 

That's because I haven't finished it yet.     The first chapters are about Lutrell's background and his subsequent BUDs/Seal training.   Haven't gotten to the parts detailing the operation, but the first person perspective of the training is interesting.   

Edited November 14, 2013 by kgambit

[kgambit]

Wals, once you get past the training sections, the book starts getting into the rationale for the Op.  I think it's an interesting read.  The whole story hinges on one fateful decision that the team makes.    

 

Or you could bypass the book and just see the movie:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoLFk4JK_RM

Edited November 15, 2013 by kgambit

[Malcador]

Finished Reamde at last.  It'd make a good movie, decent characters - Sokolov and Zula are my favourites in it.  The game in the book, well, Stephenson sure had a fanciful view of what's possible.  His endings are meh as expected, this one wrapping up pretty fast and the antagonist gets it in a relatively anti-climactic way.

 

On to the Forever War.

[melkathi]

Forever War is a good book. Forever Free and Forever Peace you may want to skip though. They can be an incredibly tedious read.

[BruceVC]

Wals, once you get past the training sections, the book starts getting into the rationale for the Op.  I think it's an interesting read.  The whole story hinges on one fateful decision that the team makes.    

 

Or you could bypass the book and just see the movie:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoLFk4JK_RM

 

Geez that trailer looks amazing, I'll watch the movie and read the book. I find a book always offers a more detailed and insightful view to a particular event

[Guard Dog]

Just finished Cornwell's Sharpe's Eagle, it was my favorite of the series so far. I'm about half way through Wilderness by Lance Weller. This one got a lot of great reviews but I'm having a hard time getting into it.

[Malcador]

Almost done A Dance with Death - http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Death-Soviet-Airwomen-World/dp/1585441775

 

Fairly enjoyable read, just a story of women pilots for the Soviets in WW2 and it's done interview style where each lady says a little piece about herself, her service.  One lady cut hers short to catch a train to Latvia, heh, chuckled at the note about that in the book.

[melkathi]

Finished hte new Discworld book, Raising Steam. The first Pratchett book that took me over a week to finish.

[Kroney]

Colonel Blood. A book about the only man to successfully nick the crown jewels. At least, he got them out of the treasure house. He was an Irish revolutionary, spy for Charles II and a very distant ancestor of mine. It's a sort of historical biography. Very interesting.

[Tale]

William Gibson's Alien 3 script

 

Pretty good. Needs more Ripley.

[WDeranged]

Finished reading God Emperor of Dune yesterday, it's taken me a few weeks as the story just didn't grip me.  Getting inside the mind of a 3000 year old worm god is pretty interesting but that's all the story offered me, I was missing the intrigue and factions of the previous books.

 

Just as a curiosity I grabbed that concept book S as it's half price at the moment, it's a very cool physical item, dunno if the "story" will be any good but I couldn't resist the novelty

[Leferd]

THE PRINCESS AND THE QUEEN,

OR,

THE BLACKS AND THE GREENS

 

Being A History of the Causes, Origins, Battles, and Betrayals

of that Most Tragic Bloodletting Known as the Dance of the Dragons,

as set down by Archmaester Gyldayn of the Citadel of Oldtown

 

((here transcribed by GEORGE R.R. MARTIN))

 

It reads just how it was titled.

[Walsingham]

Finished reading God Emperor of Dune yesterday, it's taken me a few weeks as the story just didn't grip me.  Getting inside the mind of a 3000 year old worm god is pretty interesting but that's all the story offered me, I was missing the intrigue and factions of the previous books.

 

Just as a curiosity I grabbed that concept book S as it's half price at the moment, it's a very cool physical item, dunno if the "story" will be any good but I couldn't resist the novelty

 

Too true. All notions, and no plot.

[Pidesco]

Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. About how it was mostly environmental factors that led to the world as it is today.

[Kroney]

Finished reading God Emperor of Dune yesterday, it's taken me a few weeks as the story just didn't grip me.  Getting inside the mind of a 3000 year old worm god is pretty interesting but that's all the story offered me, I was missing the intrigue and factions of the previous books.

 

 

At the risk of igniting a nerd crusade against me, I found all of the Dune books beyond the original to be pretty daft. I'm like that with a lot of sci fi series. I loved Rendezvous with Rama, but the rest just left me cold.

[Raithe]

Well, I'd say Dune was a great book. Dune Messiah and Children of Dune are mostly good books with a little weirdness. The rest just go all wibbly-wobbly.

[melkathi]

The rest just go all wibbly-wobbly.

And that's the nice way of putting it

[aluminiumtrioxid]

At the risk of igniting a nerd crusade against me, I found all of the Dune books beyond the original to be pretty daft. I'm like that with a lot of sci fi series. I loved Rendezvous with Rama, but the rest just left me cold.

 

Pretty much this. Also, never understood the fascination with Asimov.

[Malcador]

Well, I'd say Dune was a great book. Dune Messiah and Children of Dune are mostly good books with a little weirdness. The rest just go all wibbly-wobbly.

 

Dune Messiah was a book ?  I found everything up and including God Emperor enjoyable to read, learn a bit more about the plan for humanity to live and the ghola's initial reactions were amusing.  Heretics and Chapterhouse do get really strange.  Still, nothing anywhere as loopy as the BH&KJA stuff.

[Walsingham]

 

At the risk of igniting a nerd crusade against me, I found all of the Dune books beyond the original to be pretty daft. I'm like that with a lot of sci fi series. I loved Rendezvous with Rama, but the rest just left me cold.

 

Pretty much this. Also, never understood the fascination with Asimov.

 

 

Oh thank God. I thought I was the only one!

[Woldan]

 

[Lexx]

The Stand, by Stephen King.

 

And it's the 1990 unedited 'special version' which teaches us the importance of editors.

 

I have such mixed feelings about Stephen King. On the one hand he's a towering genius. On the other, his obsession with over-wordy, insignificant Americana drives me to distraction.

 

The Stand is meant to be King's homage to TLotR, an American Gothic epic. Which it certainly is, Mama Abagail is a brilliant character.

 

Anyway, I'm about halfway through and recommend it as long as you know it's hard work.

Got the same feeling. On the one side he is really damn good, but on the other side sometimes I really wish to yell GOD DAMNIT, GET IT DONE ALREADY while reading his stuff.

 

I love the dark tower books, but seriously, I think they could be at least 1000 pages shorter.

[Walsingham]

 

 

 

Is it any good?

[Raithe]

William Gibson's Alien 3 script

 

Pretty good. Needs more Ripley.

Heh, did you know Michael Biehn refuses to watch Alien 3, because he felt that Hicks deserved a much better death sequence? Something along the lines that for all the effort he put into shaping the character in Aliens, there shouldn't have been some glossed over "panning shot of Hicks with chest exploded" as the end of that character.