What BOOK(s) are you reading?

I've been reading a history of the 21st Connecticut Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War.

Not really a book of wide interest and not really a history. More of a recollection of the regiments role in the war by one soldier with speeches given at reunions, poems, and character sketches of some of the officers.

This was the unit my Grandfather's Grandfather served with so I find it fascinating. Especially the snippets of things they did when they weren't in combat.

They saw their fair share of the war though, they were set to assault Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg just as the final attack was called off, they fought at Drewry's Bluff in '64, at Cold Harbor and the Siege of Richmond.

I am currently reading Kill City Blues, by Richard Kadrey. It's the latest book in the Sandman Slim series, which I would describe as the World of Darkness as re-imagined by Clive Barker and Vin Diesel. Lots of gory action, some interesting ideas, but more of a guilty pleasure than a great read. This particular book features a huge abandoned shopping mall overrun with homeless, freaks, and and several packs worth of supernatural monsters.

Army at Dawn did a great job of showing the weak hand that Eisenhower started the war with, and I think it did a pretty good job of showing how he culled his hand, retired non-combat-qualified generals from the ranks. North Africa was really basic training for the Army's command and control structures.

I'm rereading The Killer Angels for this first time in decades, and the generals are all younger than me now. Brings a different perspective. I ha forgotten how hard Shaara was on Lee, and I don't think I fully understood the complexity of the Confederate's position in the battle. They were really in a trap they had built around themselves.

S.

Finished Army at Dawn, and my admiration remains for exactly the same reason. It's going to make me want to puke next time I read more WWII trimphalism, knowing that this book exists---giving an equal shrift to the incompetence, atrocity, confusion, AS WELL AS any heroism of US soldiers. Moving into the next book immediately.

Also reading Mountains of California by John Muir. I like it, but I must say I vastly prefer Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, who writes a similar book about the desert. I don't find Muir's moralizing and position of authority writing consistently compelling, though his bit on the various trees of the Sierra is outstanding.

I finished the Song of Ice & Fire / Game of Thrones books a while ago. They're good -- enough so that I read all five -- but George R. R. Martin's writing style can be really wearisome in places. Ever meet someone who can talk for a half-hour and say nothing of interest or relevance? Martin can write that way. He also apparently just loves to invent shit because random-ass characters pop up in the later books and suddenly become important. If you started the first book but aren't sure whether to continue then just stick to the HBO series. It also really irritated me that the 4th and 5th books were originally written as one huge tome but then split in such a way that the timelines were concurrent. Total brain reset to finish the 4th book and then reset the timeline to the end of the 3rd book so that the 5th book was sequenced properly. I also get the impression that Martin sometimes doesn't know how to wrap up a storyline and chooses killing off a character as the easy way out. That being said I hope the HBO series doesn't deviate too far from the books; there's some good stuff in there.

Then I read The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson, which is short book in the Mistborn universe set centuries later in an Old West era. It's quick and easy to read. Sanderson's writing style is refreshing and really seems to flow well after reading Martin's books.

Now I'm about halfway through Elantris, also by Sanderson. I really liked the Mistborn Trilogy, The Alloy of Law slightly less so, and while I'm less invested in the Elantris setting it's still an enjoyable read.

I am currently re-reading Let's Put the Future Behind Us, by Jack Womack. Though Womack has written plenty of science-fiction, this particular book is just regular fiction, set in the post-communist Russia of the early '90s. The protagonist Max is a former bureaucrat turned businessman/criminal, and he charges though a wide variety of challenging situations armed only with wit and bribery. It's a savagely funny critique of a modern Russia mired in corruption, vodka, and incompetence.

I've been reading Golazo! by Andreas Campomar.

The subtitle is "The Beautiful Game from the Aztecs to the World Cup: The Complete History of How Soccer Shaped Latin America", so that's what it's about...

It's a good precursor to the minor roundball-related activity that's soon to happen in Brazil.

It's pretty good at about halfway through (I'm up to about the 1940s). I'll be the first to admit that my South American history is a little patchy even without soccer involved, so it's interesting to see how the rise and fall of various countries, club teams, and players happen alongside major local and world events.

I can't help but feel the book could use the Ken Burns treatment, as it's hard to keep multiple teams worth of names in mind, and the descriptions of some plays could benefit from any existing photos or video.

Still, very entertaining. The notion that a team in the Olympics was able to get away with overturning a sending off by holding the ref's arms down amazes me in this day, as well as the numerous accounts of a player punching an opponent or even the referee himself.

The writing is a bit scattered, but he's trying to cover a lot of ground in very few pages sometimes, and the sources are pretty scattered (but footnoted for the dutiful).

The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard.

His flesh has become one with the earth. He knows its every tremor and convulsion. His thoughts roam the plenum, his mind is a cloud that encompasses our world. His blood is the marrow of time. Centuries flow through him, leaving behind a residue that he incorporates into his being. Is it any wonder he controls our lives and knows our fates?

A collection of short stories set in the mythical Carbonales Valley, but otherwise on an Earth exactly similar to our own, concerning a 6,000 foot long dragon who lays paralyzed in the valley due to the effect of a wizard's spell meant to kill him. All that is left is the dragon's tonnage of hate as it influences the lives of people in the town the grow up, literally, in its shadow.

I love the stories about each one is set further and further a long in the time line yet references the stories of how the dragon came to be. Each one deals with the question of free will and each character wrestling with wither or not they were fully in control or just a pawn in Griaule's enigmatic plans.

Is it just me or have other people had the experience that any book, ANY book, that they were forced to read in grade school they hated. Not because of the book but because of being forced to pick it up?

This is how I felt all the way through college. But then, over the long years I have gone back when my own interest led me there to pick up some of these books and re-read them and really appreciate them.

Fahrenheit 451 is one such book. Holy Mother of God, how I love Ray Bradbury. I remember despising this book as a teen in high school and I am shocked at how good, how outstanding it really is.

Sometimes you read science fiction and you think "Hey, I could write something as good as this." and then you read a guy like Bradbury and you think "I should just stick to writing on the wall with my red crayon." He's so good that he's a dream squasher.

In other news, I have started Red Harvest by Daishall Hammett. I'm a huge fan of Film Noir and sort of surprised I never read this classic before.

Yes. I completely understand why they do it, but assigning works that have "simple" language in early grades is a huge disservice to the books themselves. One that comes to mind is Hemingway. Lots of books assign Hemingway extremely early---in my school like 8th grade. The reason is that the language is technically easy to read. But how the fuck is an eight grader going to appreciate anything going on in a Hemingway book? Unless you think that Hemingway's mentality is that of an eighth grader, but that's a different argument entirely.

My wife got me a collector's edition of The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King. I have not read this in almost 25 years. I still say it's probably my favourite book of all time, it's the most I've ever enjoyed reading a book. I was worried that reading it now would be like rewatching Tron or Last Starfighter. Great memories as a kid, but man are they sub-par now.

Anyway, it's living up to expectations so far. I really like this book but it's clearly written for a child I think.

After this I want to reread Flowers for Algernon and then I think I'll attack book one of Game of Thrones for the first time.

I had quite the opposite experience to repo. My English teacher had us read Wuthering Heights in grade 9. I loved it so much I kept the book (still have it) and I fell in love with non-fantasy literature because of it.

I haven't reread the book since then but it's kind of a moot point as I'm an avid reader because of it.

Did you guys have those Scholastic Book Catalogs that they would pass around and you could order books at, what I assume, were cheap prices?

Man did I love that day! That's how I got my first copy of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Watership Down too.

The day those books showed up was like Christmas. Ah...the memories.

You're talking about book fairs. Man, I loved 'em. I remember getting a "How to Breakdance" book at one once. You'd get that catalog and then when the book fair came to your school, what you ordered would be there and you could buy more stuff. I'd drop $20-$30 at them. Come home with paper airplane books, whatever SF/fantasy stuff they had, drawing books, etc.

They still have them, my kids do it at their school during Thanksgiving. Last year we didn't get much, a couple of Sofia the First and Power Rangers books and some LEGO stuff.

I just finished Eric Flint and Charles Gannon's 1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies. If you like your characters with extra Mary Sue/Marty Stu flavor, like alternative history, or like Age of Sail warfare, I'd recommend it. However, I think even my dumb ass has come to the realization that this isn't a series with an ending, and isn't meant to have one.

I've now picked up Rick Atkinson's An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943. I might have picked up the recommendation for that series here, but I don't remember. I'm not very far into it, but so far so good.