TSF Book Club

Paekakboyz

Reading the March Upcountry series (Empire of Man) by David Weber and John Ringo. Really digging my military sci-fi at the moment. I'm a big Iain Banks, Peter Hamilton, Greg Bear fan but I enjoy military themed writers. 
 
Weber writes the Honor Harrington space opera series and Ringo also wrote the Posleen war series (among others). If you like space opera I'd recommend the Harrington books. Posleen war is more high-tech trench warfare (and enjoyable).

Sneakdefreak

The Night Eternal - the final installment of the Strain books. Enjoy a violent vampire series and doesn't involve sparkling in the fucken daylight. All up it was a great series to read and the ending was not what I was expecting (I was expecting the obvious).

Cactus Jack

Just finished Conqueror , the last in the Conqueror series by Conn Igguldon . Every bit as good as the rest of the series . This guy is rapidly becomming my favourite writer .

booboo

[i]Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin [/i]by Frank Bailey 
 
Written by a disaffected insider. Thought it was a fascinating - if obviously biased - insight. Became campaign director in her run for Governor of Alaska, and was often assumed to be her Chief of Staff when she made Gov. 
 
Bailey was at the centre of Troopergate where Palin and her family (particularly hubby Todd) went after an ex-brother-in-law. He was caught on tape trying to pressure somebody to fire said Trooper (Tropper Wooten). It all blew up when Palin fire the director of the Department of Public Safety (i.e., the head of police and emergency services Departments) for no other apparent reason. Palin pretty much hung him (Baily) out to dry when the shit hit the fan giving it the "I didn't know about it. It was my staff without my knowledge" line. 
 
Basically he seems to have fallen head-over-heels with, if not Pailin herself, her ideals, and the ideals of her early campaign, but over the years found himself falling into a pattern of petty vendettas and unethical manipulations of the media, and was constantly covering for her. Apparently he eventually lost faith in Palin as she got sucked into the cult of celebrity that surround her post-VP campaign. 
 
Painted a picture of her being very petty and concentrating on attacking perceived slights rather than actual governing. 
 
Seemed quite happy to expose (at least some) of his own failings during that time. 
 
Coindicentally when I was reading it the movie-doco [i]Sarah Palin: You Betcha[/i] was shown on tele - which painted pretty much the same picture of Palin while only mentioned Bailey in passing (mentioning that they couldn't get an interview with him because he was about to publish his own book), and making him look like quite the villain in the Troopergate saga. Interesting therefore that they shoul come ot the same conclusions. 
 
I find it fascinating that someone with the obvious failings of Palin could make it to be firstly the mayor of Wasilla (pop 10K), let alone Governor of a state, let alone be anywhere near being selected to run for VP. (Apparently the whole selection/vetting process by the McCain team took about two and a half days - so they missed a bit ...). 
 
The Sarkozy phone call was brilliant.

taniwharugby

finally finished A Feast for Crows (had an exam to study for in there somewhere) 
 
Was good in some ways, but not in others given it just introduced a raft of new characters, I will be suprised if the TV Series makes it this far. 
 
I have A Dance with Dragons locked and loaded (along with Emperor; The Gates of Rome) and plenty of spare time coming up (a long haul return flight to the UK) to get stuck in. 
 
Was good to see one character appear like they are getting their well deserved come uppance at the end though!

red terror

Re-reading "The Murder of Captain Cook" by Richard Hough, it's the book Hunter S. Thompson used as his inspiration and resource for "The Curse of Lono." A good fast read. It continues to remind me a lot of "The Man Who Would Be King." Lots of good stuff about William Bligh. One of these days I'm going to tackle the journals from the individual officers. I've read probably over 40 books about the Captain, and I've never really gotten a sense of how brutal the retaliation against the native Hawaiians was. Hough doesn't have a lot of kind things to say about the Maoris, but then nearly every volume written about Cook mentions how the Poms were a lot more scared of them than other Polynesians and American native peoples & tribes.

taniwharugby

started A Dance with Dragons on the weekend... 
 
[spoiler]was quite a surprise to see it basically runs concurrent to A Feast for Crows as opposed to consecutive like most books, and from what I've read so far, doesnt seem alot will be going on.[/spoiler]

Cactus Jack

A lot does happen TR .

Cactus Jack

Just finished The Guns Of Navarone . Great book , quite a bit different to and way better than the movie.

Chris B.

Haven't read it for years, but Force 10 from Navarone is pretty good, as well. Starts immediately after "Guns" with the same characters.

Cactus Jack

[quote name='Chris B.' timestamp='1344399642' post='303006'] 
Haven't read it for years, but Force 10 from Navarone is pretty good, as well. Starts immediately after "Guns" with the same characters. 
[/quote]I will keep an eye out . I thought the movie was a step down from The Guns Of Navarone but one thing I have learned over the years is that movies are often not even close to the books .

dogmeat

[quote name='Sneakdefreak' timestamp='1332188878' post='276055'] 
Finished The Fall and now reading the final part of the Strain trilogy - The Night Eternal. The books are playing out like a Guillermo del Toro movie which is not surprising since he co-wrote it. 
 
The Fall - 7/10 - Didn't like the ending that much but to be fair it was simply just building up for The Night Eternal. 
[/quote] 
 
Started reading The Strain last night in response to this. Am only 105 of the way in but it's turning out to be a real page turner so thanks. 
 
Also read Metro 2033 on your recommendation, which was .... interesting. I found it very Russian. I thoroughly enjoyed the first 2/3, found it very well written but eventually the demythologising of every moral and political concept known became a bit tedious as it seemed the sole purpose of the book. The internal monologues subsumed the plot which was frustrating. Still glad I read it though so a 2nd thanks. 
 
Also read The Conqueror series in response to this thread so keep it coming guys.

taniwharugby

despite me planning on doing some reading on holiday, I didnt do much, so only just finished Gates of Rome. 
 
Good book, didnt quite grip me as the Conqueror series, but still good, want to read the rest of the series now, although stil have book 5 of the Conqueror series, which became available at my library while away on holiday!! 
 
Still trucking on Dance with Dragons too, good book, alot of stuff going on, hope he is gonna be able ot tie everything up before he dies <img src='http://www.daimenhutchison.com/rugby/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';)' />

NTA

Been getting into some of Bernie Cornwellâ€™s gear lately - like the historical fiction stuff. 
 
Kindle rocks. 
 
 
 
--------------------- 
Sent from my Nexus 7 which is more awesome than the All Blacks and the All Whites put together

BartMan

NTA, I am a big fan of Cornwell, love his books. the Sharpe's rifles ones for shits 'n'giggles, and his other ones are a bit more involved, the King Author / merlin etc series. 
 
Currently re reading the harry potter books, up to book 5. Once re read I'll then do the DVD marathon....

taniwharugby

I have a bunch of Cornwalls book for my iPad, just need to find the time to read them

NTA

Got a Nexus 7 as a gift and downloaded the Kindle app for it. Works nicely but needs more charging than the Kindle I have all my books on. 
 
The Warlord series by Cornwell was pretty hardcore to start with. Grail Quest was heaps easier to get into.

JC

For anyone inspired by the fight over on the super-trawler thread, I'd suggest reading "Four Fish" by Paul Greenberg. He focusses on four fish species (apparently as a species in our food production we have almost always settled on four main options of each food type) and examines why we prefer certain types of fish to others, and how they get onto our table. The conclusions he comes to are pretty interesting, and he's very even-handed in his treatment of fishermen, fish farmers and environmentalists. I was actually pretty positive when I finished it, certainly not all doom and gloom, even if there are some things that have to change like the amount of fish that goes into animal and pet food. 
 
I also recommend "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan. I got onto this via Greenberg. Pollan's an investigative journalist, with no particular agenda to push apart from the fact that we should maybe know more about what we eat and why. It's inevitably US focussed, but an easy read - stylistically like Bill Bryson. He's particularly interested in why some things get categorised as good things to eat while others are bad things, and what realistic alternatives there are in a growing world full of hungry mouths. One of the things that surprised me was how often what we end up getting offered by food retailers is influenced by things like diet fads (Atkins etc) and fashion as much as sometimes dubious public policy. 
 
A typical quote "[font=JoannaMT][size=3]A country with a stable culture of food would not shell out millions for the quackery (or common sense) of a new diet book every January. It would not be susceptible to the pendulum swings of food scares or fads, to the apotheosis every few years of one newly discovered nutri[/size][/font][font=JoannaMT][size=3]ent and the demonization of another. It would not be apt to confuse protein bars or food supplements with meals or breakfast cereals with medicines. It probably would not eat a fifth of its meals in cars or feed fully a third of its children at a fast-food outlet every day. And it surely would not be nearly so fat." [/size][/font] 
 
Good reads both of them, both available for Kindle.

booboo

"The Meaning of Sport" by Simon Barnes 
 
Enjoyable for the most part - even if he lost me in his flowery prose every second or third chapter when he set out to prove he's a writer who follows sport and reads a bit and is a well rounded intellectual rather than a sports fan who writes about it (which he is). 
 
Still, some really interesting anecdotes and analysis - unfortunately I can't share with you as I've had to take it back to the library... 
 
One interesting snippet that stayed with me was his comments on sports needing to look after their heartland, ie., not to take them for granted when pursuing the fickle fans otherwise they will drift away. And yes he was talking circket - at least at one stage. He did IIRC discuss the same with regard to other sports as well - but the T20 discussion stuck with me.

booboo

Also recently finished reading "Fire in the Night - The Piper Alpha Disaster" by Stephen McGinty 
 
For those who can remember the mid-80s the Piper Alpha was a Norh Sea oil rig. 
 
I copied the blurb below from amazon.com: 
 
[i]The fire was visible seventy miles away as a distant, flickering flame on the horizon. The heat generated was so intense that a helicopter could only circle at a perimeter of one mile. Flying at a height of 200 feet, the air crew saw that the tongues of flame extended high above the rotor blades. On the surface a converted fishing trawler inched as close as possible, but the paint on the vessel's hull blistered and burnt, and the rope handrails began to smoke. In the water surrounding the inferno, men's heads could be seen bobbing like apples as their yellow hard hats melted with the heat. At the centre stood, at least for now, the Piper Alpha oil platform, 110 miles northeast of Aberdeen, once the world's single largest oil producer. On 6 July 1988, its final day, it was ablaze with 226 men onboard. Only sixty-one would survive. Fire in the Night will tell, for the first time and in gripping detail, the devastating story of that summer evening. Combining interviews with survivors, witness statements and transcripts from the official enquiry into the disaster, this is the moving and vivid tale of what happened on that fateful night inside an oil rig inferno.[/i] 
 
Fascinating and harrowing and moving all at once. 
 
I acquired mpg file called "Spiral to Disaster" (not sure if I should have it or not) which is also about Piper Alpha - only watched it the once and not for a year or two - and it is similar in the detail of the disaster (but doesn't include the befores/afters/reactions). Both though describe the breakdown in QA procedures that meant that features that were relied upon were not in place and nobody knew so the various pipelines continued to pump and did not shut down. This was exacerbated by indecision, financial imperative and disbelief. 
 
Worth a read.

The Silver Fern

TSF Book Club