Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss. Pretty good book about negotiating and getting others to see things your way.
Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss. Pretty good book about negotiating and getting others to see things your way.
The Invisible Life of Addie Larue - VE Schwab. It's not something I'd have normally read but it came up as a suggestion due to some superhero book I'd read at some point so I gave it a shot and it was well crafted.
Neal Asher's Jack Four
I love the universe he has created. Near two dozen books in the universe.
I finally caught up on Robert Dougherty/Bob Mayer s Area 51 series.
Reads like an action novel, would make an amazing tv series, very weird twist at the end.
I just got a kindle with 3 months of kindle unlimited, so I'm hoping to find since things I've been missing out on our wanting to revisit like Eric Flint 1632 series.
I just finished Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, about the exploits of Taffy 3 during the battle off Samar in WWII. A fleet of Japanese warships, including the battleship Yamato, ran into the escort carriers and destroyers supporting the invasion of Leyte and was eventually turned back. Amazing read.
In reply to BenB :
Did you know the author of that book (James Hornfisher) just recently passed away?
Just finished "Project Hail Mary"... <jazz hands>
Now my two girls are arguing over which gets the book next.
stroker said:In reply to BenB :
Did you know the author of that book (James Hornfisher) just recently passed away?
No, I didn't know that. 
In reply to BenB :
Just ordered the book. My dad was there on a carrier escort (Savo Island, CVE-78). He would never talk about the war, save for general remarks about Navy chow and uniforms, and I've long thought it was because of this battle.
Margie
I just finished the 660 pages of John McPhee's Pulitzer Prize winning "The Annals of the Former World".
While this may not be your standard lightweight summer beach read, I enjoyed it. Obviously, it probably isn't for everybody. There is a ton of geological science with layers of interesting stories that add a human element to the science.
Author John McPhee wrote himself, that if there was any one sentence in the book covering over 20 years of research, he said it would be: "The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone."
I learned a lot. In many ways it reinforced the feeling of being less important that a spec of flea poop when gazing at something like the Grand Canyon.
Funny story, RJ was my uncle. Brandon did a good job with what he had to work with. What started out as one book to finish the series turned into 3. Amazon has announced the first season of the show will come out in November. But no date on that yet...they have started filming the 2nd season so they must be hopeful it will fly. I am not sure how I feel about it. Jordancon will be in Atlanta for its 14th year in April. You should come join us.
codrus (Forum Supporter) said:About a week ago I decided it was time to finally get around to reading the last 3 books in the Wheel of Time -- the ones that Brandon Sanderson wrote to finish it off after Robert Jordan passed away. I've read the previous 11 before but it's been 15 years and I've forgotten a lot, so I decided to go back to the beginning. 2/3 of the way through The Great Hunt (book 2) at this point.
Marjorie Suddard said:In reply to BenB :
Just ordered the book. My dad was there on a carrier escort (Savo Island, CVE-78). He would never talk about the war, save for general remarks about Navy chow and uniforms, and I've long thought it was because of this battle.
Margie
Wow! What those guys went through was horrific. The hulls on those ships were so thin, the large caliber armor piercing shells went right through them without detonating. It's no wonder your dad never talked about it.
In reply to Marjorie Suddard :
My grandfather was in WW2 in the 42nd Infantry. They were among the divisions that liberated Dachau. We did not find about any of his military service duties until after he died. The only things I remember him saying were the most scared guys on the boat were usually the first to die, and that Austria was one of the prettiest places he had ever seen.
Rad Rides - The Best BMX Bikes of all time by Gavin Lucas
wow, what a throw back.
BenB said:I just finished Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, about the exploits of Taffy 3 during the battle off Samar in WWII. A fleet of Japanese warships, including the battleship Yamato, ran into the escort carriers and destroyers supporting the invasion of Leyte and was eventually turned back. Amazing read.
Thanks for the recommendation! I'm just about at the point where the Japanese fleet encounters Taffy 1, 2 and 3--took a break to do some googling, and now realize exactly where my dad, whose ship was a member of Taffy 2, was during this battle. It's pretty horrifying. I think this is where Savo Island, his Jeep carrier, took a kamikaze hit just behind the conning tower (a.k.a. Dad's office, since he was a radioman).
Margie
ShawnG said:Agency by William Gibson.
A rather creepy look into adaptive AI and machine learning.
I read The Peripheral a couple months ago, and now I am about 1/3 of the way through Agency.
I generally like Gibson's stuff, but I didn't really get The Peripheral. I mean, I understood the premise and I enjoyed reading it, but I didn't really get how all the subplots were connected. A month or two on from reading it I sure can't remember, anyway.
Agency is shaping up OK so far, but like its predecessor, there's a little too much deus ex machina for my taste and they seem to move too casually fast for the titanic scale of some of the background events. Like, "We need a lot of money so we're going to rev up the entire global economy and then crash it in 3 days, and next week we're having this random person elected President," kind of non-believable.
Gideon the Ninth.
:"Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space."
I've found it to be highly amusing. Not quite sci-fi, not quite fantasy, but it has elements of both.
Reading through the Harry Potter series.
I made a deal with SWMBA that I'd read these if she read the Dark Tower series by Stephen King.
After this, I'll jump in to the Game of Thrones series.
And after that I'm free to explore some more.
In reply to birdmayne :
Once I'd read the first couple as proof of concept, and waited for all the books to come out, I read through both the DT and GoT series uninterrupted. I figured it would improve the experience.
It didn't for me. By the time I got to the end I couldn't remember the details from the beginning.
Just finished Gregory Benford's Berlin Project. It's an alternate history novel and I found it interesting.
I feel my readings are so unimportant when compared to Marjorie's tied to her father's activity in WW2.
Most of my readings are more based in reality. Just finished "The Sound of the Sea" by Cynthia Barnett (University of Florida). Funny thing I bought it to be able to converse with my wonderful wife about all the tons of seashells she brings home from the beach with each visit. Not exactly a light book, there was a bit of science woven into each chapter. That said, I still got interested in the whole book because Ms. Barnett focused on only about 12 types of shells and then went deep into their history in terms of the Earth's geologic time while at the same time explaining their complex history with humankind. Then, by the end you learned they all were basically canaries in the proverbial coal mine.
Really hits home if you live in Florida...
Duke said:In reply to birdmayne :
Once I'd read the first couple as proof of concept, and waited for all the books to come out, I read through both the DT and GoT series uninterrupted. I figured it would improve the experience.
It didn't for me. By the time I got to the end I couldn't remember the details from the beginning.
My second read through of the DT series was so much better than the first. Plus I've reread a lot of relevant (to DT) Stephen King novels in the last few years to make it all tie together appropriately.
I NEED to finish reading my tuning / efi books, but I just haven't been in the mindset lately.
birdmayne said:Reading through the Harry Potter series.
I made a deal with SWMBA that I'd read these if she read the Dark Tower series by Stephen King.
After this, I'll jump in to the Game of Thrones series.
And after that I'm free to explore some more.
I love Harry Potter. Probably because the first came out when I was 7. First two are kids books, and the third is but moving into young adult. Last 4 are where it really is good for me. Read them too many times in my life.
Just started Beartown, forget the author and will get it tomorrow. About a small town junior hockey team in Canada. 12 pages in, it is excellent.
Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:I feel my readings are so unimportant when compared to Marjorie's tied to her father's activity in WW2.
Most of my readings are more based in reality. Just finished "The Sound of the Sea" by Cynthia Barnett (University of Florida). Funny thing I bought it to be able to converse with my wonderful wife about all the tons of seashells she brings home from the beach with each visit. Not exactly a light book, there was a bit of science woven into each chapter. That said, I still got interested in the whole book because Ms. Barnett focused on only about 12 types of shells and then went deep into their history in terms of the Earth's geologic time while at the same time explaining their complex history with humankind. Then, by the end you learned they all were basically canaries in the proverbial coal mine.
Really hits home if you live in Florida...
Ooh, that sounds good. UF press puts out some great stuff. And don't worry that I spend all my time reading "significant" books--I am an omnivorous reader with a deep and abiding love of crap.
I just finished "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors." It wasn't a fast read--lots of detail about the naval battles, which I needed to refer back to the included maps to follow closely--but that detail was also gripping. I wish my dad were still alive so I could ask him about it, but it may be best that he isn't. I do now understand his comment that the worst thing he saw in the war, besides the kamikaze attack on his ship, was "lots of bodies in the water." That had to have been some of the hundreds of men from the downed ships of Taffy 3. Never realized he really, really meant "lots."
On a lighter (?) note, just started Andy Weir's "Hail Mary." It starts with our protagonist lying on a table with tubes inserted (literally) everywhere, and scary implement-loaded robot arms hovering above. I'm already hooked.
Margie
I just finished the Murderbot Diaries series, by Martha Wells, about a rogue security bot's adventures. It's not Asimov or Bradbury, but it's short, fun beach vacation reading. Think T888 Terminator with Deadpool's attitude and built-in weapons keeping its human clients from getting killed by large alien critters, murderous company types, or humans infected by alien tech.
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