What are you reading now?
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I cheated, and continued my dive into the Dune-iverse. Was gonna start Barr's book, but...well, you know how it goes.
Finished this today.
It jumps forward about 10K years from the other prequels (Sisterhood, Navigators, Mentats) and puts you about 30 years before the original book. The Harkonnen/Atreides feud continues.
There are 3 in the series, but I'll take a pause for a while.
Started this today. Kind of interesting reading this guy's remembrances of early East Germany and his parents' indoctrination into the Soviet line of thinking.
More on the author here:
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@jon-nyc the thing that gets me about these books is that they are all, well, boring.
I read Bolton's book, and I found it supremely uninteresting. It was one rant after another. It was about three times longer than it needed to be, in my opinion.
Hopefully Barr's won't fall to that standard.
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@George-K said in What are you reading now?:
Finished it this afternoon. Interesting tale, which is much more interesting in the first half than the second. His memories of his education in East Germany, his love affairs, and his recruitment by the KGB were really intriguing.
Some of the training he received (spending two years in Moscow learning English - with an American, not German, accent), his education on tradecraft, etc also made interesting reading. I found his first exposure to West Berlin ("Everything was so colorful, and the people smiled.") almost sad. He recounts going to a restaurant and ordering a beer. When he asked for a bottle opener, the waiter was dumbfounded, and twisted the cap off for him. Apparently twist-off caps were not a thing in East Berlin, and he realized that such simple ignorances of the culture could give away his identity as a foreigner.
I was disappointed that the book didn't get into what he was actually doing for the KGB in his years in New York. The only hint he gave is that when he worked for MetLife (insurance) he photographed some computer code and sent it to Moscow.
3/5 stars.
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@George-K said in What are you reading now?:
@george-k said in What are you reading now?:
So far, it's VERY James Bond-like. Interesting, perhaps unrelated opening, flashback to past missions, etc.
Oh, and it was written by someone I knew, back in another life.Yeah, it was okay.
Not "blow me away I want MOAR" away, but a pleasant-enough waste of a few hours where you don't feel like you wasted a few hours.
Nice twists in the last ¼ of the book.
I was going to start this (and got about 10% of the way through it), but got, well, not bored, but "I'm not ready for this again," so I gave up - for now.
I think I'll do some more Bosch instead.
Wait, I haven’t seen that. New series?
Me/rry/Christmas
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@LuFins-Dad said in What are you reading now?:
Wait, I haven’t seen that. New series?
THey're a lot of fun.
What I'm enjoying is how Herbert and Anderson are able to take the concepts of the original book and weave them into a pretty good tale.
Some of the stuff seems to be "filler," like popcorn.
But it's not bad popcorn.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@George-K that’s right, for whatever reason, I didn’t dig into those books. I’m sure they were fine, but I kind of felt like the prequel part was done with the Butlerian Jihad story. It laid the foundations for the guild, Bene Geserit, gholas, etc… That was all I needed… Same with the House books.
Me/rry/Christmas
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@LuFins-Dad said in What are you reading now?:
Same with the House books.
I did "House Atreides" this week. It was okay. It reminded me of the Flash Gordon (Buster Crabbe) shows - "Tune in next week to find out...."
Yeah, I don't really need that.
Still fun.
I think I might have to revisit Herbert's sequels, which I haven't read since the early 1980s.
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Really, REALLY, enjoying the Bosch books. There's just enough difference from the TV show to make them interesting (cf Honey Chandler), but similar enough to make everything feel familiar.
I'm about halfway through this mystery, and so far, Harry's a minor player. I'm sure that'll change.
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Thoroughly enjoyed the next Bosch book. Very typical and involved. Connelly does a great job of keeping you guessing until the last 10% of the book.
Fun.
Started Barr's book this afternoon. I'm going to skip through the "I grew up in..." shit and jump to the juicy parts. His education and early life (before becoming AG for Bush (the elder) are interesting.
The prologue (about his meeting with Trump in the wake of the 2020 election) is interesting.
This is gonna be one of those "let me read a bit and then put it aside until tomorrow" books. Interesting, but not engrossing, in the sense that you can't put it down.
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I'm about halfway through this right now. Enjoying it.
Amazon: "From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Residence and First Women—also a New York Times bestseller—comes a poignant, news-making look at the lives of the five former presidents in the wake of their White House years, including the surprising friendships they have formed through shared perspective and empathy.
"Team of Five takes us inside the exclusive world of these powerful men and their families, . . . this insightful, illuminating book overflows with anecdotes . . . "
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Here's one I liked from Dubya.
George W. said the most surprising moment during the early days of his presidency came directly after the inaugural parade, when it sank in that he was indeed president. "I decided to go into the Oval Office to see what it felt like," he recalled. "Unbenownst to me [chief of staff] Andy Card had called upstairs in the residence and asked Dad to come in so I was sitting in the Oval Office at the desk there kind of just taking it all in, and in walks my dad, and I said, 'Welcome, Mr. President,' and he said, 'Thank you, Mr. President'. Barbara Bush was decidedly less sentimental. 'Get your feet off the Jeffersonian table,' she told him. -
More "Dune-iverse."
I'm plowing through the first (the first-written, not the first chronological) three books by Brian Herbert (Frank's son) and Kevin Anderson. I really enjoyed the books set in an earlier time (the "Schools" books and the "Jihad" trilogy).
The first in this trilogy was "House Atreides." It was fun enough, but it really felt like a set-up for books to come. Yeah, I know, it's a trilogy.
I finished the second, "House Harkonnen," yesterday. What a disaster. It was totally boring, and really added little to the Dune-iverse. I suppose I'll finish the third book, "House Corrino," in the near-ish future, but I am not at all enthused by it.
Meanwhile, back to The Expanse. Two novellas on the agenda. Today, I finished "Auberon." Good enough story, but not really "Expanse-ey." The story could have been set in any other world, including mid-20th century Chicago without losing anything. I'm halfway through the final novella, "Sins of The Father." Much better fit with the entire Expanse world. Totally enjoying it, so far.
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ive always been a sucker for all things maritime, maybe in a previous life i was a naval officer somewhere...anyway my latest naval adventure is this...
i was a bit familiar with the story of the naval engagement at actium, enough that in the past I looked at google maps to see the area from a birds eye view and even landed at actium airport in flight simulator a ways back.
so...true story, was on one of many of my (real, not sim) flights on the TLV-Milano route on a clear day glancing out the window, i see us flying over the corinthian canal (a geographical landmark impossible to miss) into the gulf of corinth heading north west and sure enough there it was....the ambracian gulf, actium, (the airport runway on the tip of thesouthern cape just like in FS) and i thought wow, thats the place where ocatvian defeated marc antony and cleopatra. Im such a nerd. this is the view from one of space shuttles, looking west to east
And for the truly nerdy, here is a nice video of landing at the airport at actium which shows the geography well, this approach flies west to east and turns over the gulf to land east to west on runway 25.
Link to videoOk u can’t have landing without a takeoff. This one leaves on the same runway 25 and turns right (north) over the Ionian Sea giving a great view of the entrance channel to the gulf.
Link to videoMaritime history. The absolute best thing in the world.
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@bachophile Cool story and map!!
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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KV1MH7C?
Krav Maga brings together skills and training from many martial arts, ranging from jiujitsu to judo to boxing. It shares with is students critical lessons in maintaining awareness and making each strike count in self-defense. In its instructional and updated edition, Krav Maga: Use Your Body as a Weapon teaches athletes about their own anatomy and muscles to help them avoid injury.
From the Look Inside: "Throughout history, law enforcement has been successful in curbing crime, but never in completely destroying it. In modern democracies, though adult citizens have the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness, any day could still turn into a life or death confrontation in an instant. Just as individuals have the right to vote, they should also have the right to control their fate . . . While we rely on trained professionals in many aspects of our lives, we should also be able to resort to the basics if everything else fails. This book shows readers how to use their bodies in a physical confrontation.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^While I have no intention of pursuing this (I mean, please), I'll enjoy reading about it, I think.
