What books are you reading?

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Vent Noir
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Re: What books are you reading?

Set The Assassin's Blade aside for now, and started on Demon Child, the next book in Kylie Chan's "Celestial Battle" series.
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SlowTurtle
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Re: What books are you reading?

Don't know if you would call them books but going through all six volumes of scott pilgrim series.
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Vent Noir
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Re: What books are you reading?

Demon Child was a good setup for the final book in the series (unless Chan decides to write another trilogy after this one).

Since then, I've read Vicky Peterwald: Target, set in the Kris Longknife universe - interesting to have an insider's look at how the Peterwald territories work.

Also, after hearing Sophia McDougall talk about her book Mars Evacuees at a panel at Worldcon, and seeing that it had a premise that intrigued me (a YA book about a group of kids and teenagers evacuated to Mars during an alien invasion), I decided to pick up a copy. Enjoyable all the way through, although I did feel things got wrapped up a little too neatly at the end (there's definitely room for a sequel, though).

Now I'm onto The Night Itself by Zoe Marriott. Just started, but liked the fact that the main character dresses as Rukia from Bleach for a fancy dress party (she's an ethnic Japanese born in Britain, and mentions that the only Japanese she knows is from kendo or anime. And while Bleach isn't that obscure, it's not a super-obvious pick, either)
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YokozunaBulldozer
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Re: What books are you reading?

X-Men Mutant Genesis by Jim Lee. Good to see the 1990s X-Men characters I grew up with.
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MCTDread
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Re: What books are you reading?

Gundam The Origin vol 1 by Yas.

Star Wars Republic Commando: Hard Contact by Karen Traviss.
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Re: What books are you reading?

I'm alternating between re-reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books and reading Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's translation of Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia.
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YokozunaBulldozer
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Re: What books are you reading?

SLAM DUNK. It is a good read. Heck you don't have to like basketball to like it. I will say it is the most bro-manga that works even without montages, guns, and mullets.
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phillosmaster
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Re: What books are you reading?

Just finished the new Moon Knight trade "From The Dead", which is the entire recent run by Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey. I'm gonna be honest and say Moon Knight was never really a character I liked, but I heard Ellis was writing him and I love his work so I figured I'd give it a shot.

I really liked this book. Shalvey's artwork really sells Ellis' new concept for the character. If they keep writing the character this way I may consider putting him Moon Knight in my pull list. Unfortunately the writer and artist changed after the first trade. Ellis never seems to stay on a mainstream comic for very long. I'm guessing he might be too expensive to keep on a title like Moon Knight.
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Re: What books are you reading?

Moved back to comics now with Jango Fett: Open Seasons
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Vent Noir
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Re: What books are you reading?

Finished Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, which was a bit of a slog to get through, but ultimately worth it, and I will probably pick up the sequel at some point. Currently reading Sword and Sorceress 28, which seems to be one of the better volumes so far.
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SlowTurtle
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Re: What books are you reading?

Reading book one and two of Jay Kristoff's lotus war. Half through Stormdancer an then its on to Kinslayer.
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BabyBrother3
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Re: What books are you reading?

Thanks for recommending the Demon Child book great character development and intriguing plot.

On the other hand i am a big fan of military sci-fi and recently finished reading a book called
The Ahmardian Corporation. All i can say is wow... for sure a must read for Mecha Fans. This book was like a mix between Gundam and Star wars, great delivery.

Apparently the Author worked at NASA-JPL and i can clearly see that inspiration in the book. :o
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Vent Noir
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Re: What books are you reading?

BabyBrother3 wrote:Thanks for recommending the Demon Child book great character development and intriguing plot.
Have you read Kylie Chan's previous books? That's the second book of the third trilogy of that universe.
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BabyBrother3
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Re: What books are you reading?

Vent Noir wrote:
BabyBrother3 wrote:Thanks for recommending the Demon Child book great character development and intriguing plot.
Have you read Kylie Chan's previous books? That's the second book of the third trilogy of that universe.
Yes, Dark Serpent was good, but i enjoyed the second book a bit more.
If you Chan's style of writing you should check out The Ahmardian Corporation, excellent writing and great action.
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QuessParaya
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Re: What books are you reading?

The last book I read was A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke.

I want to get Pep: Confidential, but it's only available on Kindle and...barf, e-books.
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Vent Noir
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Re: What books are you reading?

Just finished Hardship by Jean Johnson, and looking forward to starting the series finale, Damnation.

Started ing on Lawless by Jeffrey Salane.
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mcred23
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Re: What books are you reading?

Overdue catch up time, school is a killer...

Darth Plagueis, was excellent, one of the best Star Wars books I've read. The only issue I had with it, which was not at all the fault of the book, is I couldn't read it consistently, because of school...

...For which, I've had to read quite a bit over the last semester and a half. The first thing was Amelia Earhart: A Biography by Doris Rich, which was essentially a boring book for an equally boring class. It was informative, but very repetitive and sparse in its descriptions of nearly everything and lacked any sense of excitement, which you'd think a book about one of the most famous pilots in history might have even a little bit off (Particularly given all the crashes Earhart was in :roll:).

After that was Journey into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg, which was a much better book (For a much better class) about a woman going through Stalin's purges in the 30's. It was very well done, although I thought it really hit a drag about three-quarters through, and feels very incomplete (There is a sequel, which it refers to a few times, but we weren't assigned it). Still, for a book I was assigned to read, and from a history class, it was pretty good.

Somewhere in there between other school crap, I crawled through America's Game by Michael MacCambridge. It's a essentially a history of the NFL and how it came to be the massive force that it is, and really ought to be required reading for anyone who is a serious football fan (There is a reason the NFL Network named a series after it).

For the current semester, I had to race through Too Big To Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin in about three days, which is about the stuff that happened on Wall Street in 2008. It's a book that reads very well, very similar to many of the military history books I've read over the years, but the key difference is I have zero understanding of finance, so a far chunk of it can be confusing. It also utterly bombards you with names that weave in and out at an almost absurd pace that makes it hard to follow at points (Or requires constant checking of a multi-page list of people involved at the front of the book). It was interesting to an extent (I really don't care about finance), and would probably make more sense during a re-read, but I still don't think it'll be that much easier to follow if I ever do so.

After that, I breezed through another of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, Live and Let Die. Oddly like the movie, it came off as a bit dated, which I expected, and I was surprised at how many elements of it popped up in some of the movies over the years (Not necessarily the movie Live and Let Die, mind you), but it's second half was excellent and I pretty much flew through it rather than watch the Super Bowl where I was rooting for a colony drop or a Sum of All Fears scenario cause I hated those teams... but I digress... :mrgreen:

Anyway, with no school readings on deck for a couple of weeks, I'm back to working on my pleasure reading backlog, which includes two older titles I've been wanting to read for a while: Team Yankee by Harold Coyle and The Third World War: The Untold Story by General Sir John Hackett. The former I've heard about for years, since it's often recommended to people who liked Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising (Which is one of my favorite books, if not #1) since it has a similar subject matter and tone. However, it's based on the scenario from Hackett's book, and the issue I had is both seem to have been out of print for years and are difficult to find. Thankfully, I managed to find good copies of them on Amazon while getting my text books for this semester, so I'm going through Hackett's book first. I'm about 70 pages in and so far it's an interesting read. Thus far, it's mainly been an analysis of weapons and tactics, with a handful of narrative bits thrown in here and there. The only odd thing about it is the manner in which it was written is it can be very British in terms of phrasing and sentence structure at times, if that makes sense, but I'm really enjoying it so far.
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SlowTurtle
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Re: What books are you reading?

Currently reading Tarkin, I must say the relationship between Tarkin and Darth Vader is always a joy to read about. Then its back to the lotus war with book three.
"Someone once told me that time is a predator that stalks us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again."
--Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: Generations
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Vent Noir
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Re: What books are you reading?

Finished Lawless, I always enjoy a good heist story. Some elements were a bit farfetched, but I didn't mind.

Now onto Endsinger, the final book in the Lotus War series.
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Re: What books are you reading?

mcred23 wrote:Anyway, with no school readings on deck for a couple of weeks, I'm back to working on my pleasure reading backlog, which includes two older titles I've been wanting to read for a while: Team Yankee by Harold Coyle and The Third World War: The Untold Story by General Sir John Hackett. The former I've heard about for years, since it's often recommended to people who liked Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising (Which is one of my favorite books, if not #1) since it has a similar subject matter and tone. However, it's based on the scenario from Hackett's book, and the issue I had is both seem to have been out of print for years and are difficult to find. Thankfully, I managed to find good copies of them on Amazon while getting my text books for this semester, so I'm going through Hackett's book first. I'm about 70 pages in and so far it's an interesting read. Thus far, it's mainly been an analysis of weapons and tactics, with a handful of narrative bits thrown in here and there. The only odd thing about it is the manner in which it was written is it can be very British in terms of phrasing and sentence structure at times, if that makes sense, but I'm really enjoying it so far.
The Third World War and The Third World War: The Untold Story were the first books to take on the hypothetical NATO-WTO showdown in a dramatic format. As always where the European Allies are concerned, the Brits did it first and then the Yanks did it better. :) But without that book's success I am not sure if anyone would have put money down for The Hunt for Red October or Red Storm Rising. I first read them in the paperback format in my school days; the dramatic vignettes were the best, although the more abstract strategic situation got more interesting over the years. Hackett acknowledged the possibility of IRBMs and maybe even ICBMs flying, but decided to call it quits before the sore loser syndrome glazed Europe.

But what a difference a few years makes! When Hackett wrote his book NATO and the US Military had just begun to widely issue the first generation of guided munitions and deploy Challenger & Abrams tanks. Team Yankee picked up the scenario about last years of the Reagan presidency, and showed what might have happened on the sharp end of the ground war in the U.S. area of operations in West Germany. It was still a "best case" or "better case" scenario, but it took the Red Army's tactics into account, as well as the abundant training carried out by the U.S. Army to counter them.
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