What are we Reading Now: Conan the Librarian

[Daryk]

Dune Messiah is pretty slow, but if that's what you're looking for...

[ActionButler]

That’s what I’ve heard, which is a major concern for me since I am the slowest reader in all of human history.

[NightSarge]

Now reanding Warrior: En Garde

[Euphonium]

Finally getting around to reading the first edition of Shrapnel

[ISD]

On Prince of Havoc now, the previous one ("Shadows of War") was almost as much of a slog as I remembered.
I think I'll read something else than BT for a couple of books after I'm done rereading the TotC set

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Ooh, Twilight of the Clans definitely felt like it was being dragged out by book five or six.

[Prospernia]

I'm reading the Decline and Fall of the Roman-Empire; no, not the one by Edward Gibbon, that every history-professor dreams about having a copy of, this one is by James W. Ermatinger.  In the opening chapter, he quotes from the movie, Gladiator; I don't know how to feel about that.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Sounds iffy for a history book unless the author was specifically drawing a contrast between Hollywood and the actual Roman Empire.

[PsihoKekec]

Or if it is a book version of Unbiased History of Rome.

[GRUD]

Or if it is a book version of Unbiased History of Rome.

Welease Wodewick!


(I saw it in a documentary, Honest!  )

[GRUD]

Almost halfway through Maia here at home, and recently started Watership Down at work, both by Richard Adams.

[Prospernia]

I only hope so.  It just feels, um, cheap to use Gladiator. Could have been worse; could have used Starz's Spartacus.

[Ruger]

Patricia Briggs’s newest Mercy Thompson series novel,  Winter Lost.

Ruger

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

I'm reading it too.  I'm hoping that in a novel or two we'll see Zee finally decide to throw down on Count Chocula.

[Ruger]

I'm reading it too.  I'm hoping that in a novel or two we'll see Zee finally decide to throw down on Count Chocula.

Oh yeah.

After this, I have a lot to catch up on. I’ve got Without Question  for BattleTech (which is most likely to be next), but also the new Spelljammer novel, Memory’s Wake, Kim Harrison’s Three Kinds of Lucky, and several Conan (both old ones and the newest hardcovers that completed my collection of having at least one version of every printed Conan story of which I’m aware), and a couple of the old Red Sonja novels I acquired to complete that sextant of novels.

Ruger

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

The fact that I had to go to work was the only thing that stopped me from reading Without Question in a single sitting.

[ISD]

I decided to take a break from CBT (non-stop from Thunder Rift to Falcon Rising) and started on A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge. Barely started so no thoughts on it yet.

The funny thing is that it was published in 1999 and noticing that I thought it's a very new thing. Except that it's been 25 years and that made me feel slightly old for a brief moment

[Lorcan Nagle]

I read it a few years ago and loved it.

[Grognard]

Just finished up "The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life (1847)" by Francis Parkman Jr.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Trail:_Sketches_of_Prairie_and_Rocky-Mountain_Life
He wrote what he experienced during his exploration: the descriptive written detail is amazing and the casual racism (of various tribes of Indians, settlers, soldiers, Mormons, Frenchmen, Mexicans ... pretty much EVERYONE) is breathtaking.
 
--- in modern literature---
I'm re-reading the Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor.
Really is excellent.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

So I finished Winter Lost and... honestly I felt like this novel was something of a let down.  Mercy (and consequently the reader) never really get enough info to figure out what's actually happening until the very end and it really felt like Mercy really didn't do that much.  This was more of an interlude than an actual story.

[Prospernia]

I'm also reading, What If?, a book about alternate-history, written by historians. Yeah, I can go to alternate-history forum, and read a lot of ideas, but I like reading alt-history from published authors, especially historians.   My mind is very impressionable, and the first alternate-history I read was online about how if only The Germans went into Moscow, in '42 and that stuck with me to this day. 

I also use Alt-history, when running historical-games, well, historical-based, like World of Darkness games, that, I base it on, that, while all the supernatural stuff is going on, something unexpected happens in that particular timeline. 

I read a scenario in which the Spanish-Armada followed their original plan and the Dutch-Spanish forces were able to land in Kent, and advance, with little resistance (other than untrained militia) to London.  The author, pulled up another work of alt-hist., in which Queen Elizabeth was assassinated just prior to the siege of London.

Edit: and the scenario if the Arminius' trap failed in Germany, AD 9 was rather bland.  Most of the chapter was about the events leading up, and, in the end, Varius just didn't fall for his trap. Yeah. 

[Top Sergeant]

Mortar Gunner on the Eastern Front volume 2.

[Prospernia]

Dune Messiah is pretty slow, but if that's what you're looking for...

I've never read Frank Herbert's Dune, but I read a few of the stuff his son put out.  While reading the Machine-Crusade prequels, I never wanted to run a Renegade Legion game so much.  Just gave me so many RPG-game ideas.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Been working on Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed, by Ben Rich, who headed the famous division of Lockheed Martin from 1975 to 1991 and oversaw the development of the F-117A Nighthawk.

[Prospernia]

I'll be reading a lot less; they closed the local-library for, "Renovations", until next year. :(

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Been working on Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed, by Ben Rich, who headed the famous division of Lockheed Martin from 1975 to 1991 and oversaw the development of the F-117A Nighthawk.

Well, I finished this, and it was interesting to read about the development of the F-117, as well as the U-2, SR-71, and several of Skunk Works's failed projects, it was honestly pretty silly reading the "vision of the future" from Rich and some of the other people consulted for the book that's 30 years in the past now.

[Dave Talley]

I'll be reading a lot less; they closed the local-library for, "Renovations", until next year. :(

Consider freebooksy
https://www.freebooksy.com/featured-books/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=FBY_Daily_Email&utm_campaign=Email_HeaderLink
Emails with free kindle books, yeah generally most may not be what you are looking for but you should be able to find a decent read every week, there are other services that do it fo specific publishers etc
I now have a backlog of a hundred books
Or if audio books are your thing due to work etc
Try the librivox app, it's mostly older books, but I have listened to almost every Conan and Barsoom book plus all of H Beam Pipers stuff and a ton of Andre Norton stuff this year

[Triptych]

The Dispossessed by Ursula K LeGuin- I like to read the old classic sci-fi versus the recent stuff coming out, and this one was highly touted since it won the Hugo and Nebula awards back then. However, I found it hard to get into and keep my short attention span going.

Its about two planets in the same system, and theyre inhabited by humans or beings that resembles them. One planet is anarchistic, while the other one is dominated by two superpowers which are analogous to the US-Soviet Cold War of the mid to late 20th century. Shevek is a scientist from this anarchist world who has a brilliant idea and since he cant get any funding in his planet to build his invention, decides to go to the other world to try and convince them to fund it, but then ends up in a political quagmire.

The issue here is that theres not much that happens in the story. Its more of a long-winded tale of Shevek's upbringing and relationships with others that forms the core of the plot. When it comes to reading sci-fi I usually hope to be either dazzled with a new idea, or discover something profound about the human condition. The problem is I failed to find anything of either in this book. Maybe if I find the time and patience to reread it sometime in the future my thoughts about it might change, but for now, this is a rare miss. Rating: 4/10

[Prospernia]

Consider freebooksy
https://www.freebooksy.com/featured-books/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=FBY_Daily_Email&utm_campaign=Email_HeaderLink
Emails with free kindle books, yeah generally most may not be what you are looking for but you should be able to find a decent read every week, there are other services that do it fo specific publishers etc
I now have a backlog of a hundred books
Or if audio books are your thing due to work etc
Try the librivox app, it's mostly older books, but I have listened to almost every Conan and Barsoom book plus all of H Beam Pipers stuff and a ton of Andre Norton stuff this year

I have a tablet for all the RPG .PDFs I can't find at the local gaming-shop, (there's still one left where I am), but, I like going to a library, finding a good-book and reading it in bed.

[elf25s]

ok i normally dont re read things i must had read close to 10k over 45 years and most thankfully were forgrttable
finished a book of one of our members cant mention them or their book because i would get spanked with rule violation but needless to say i really enjoyed it

was looking through and cleaning up when i came across a box filled with books my dead friend left me...
came across a set of area 51 by robert doherty
read them i think 2005,,,so 20 years i think ill re read them...what sucks i read an averge paperback 200pages in about 6 hours