What are you reading now?

40

Finished the Castaway trilogy. 

The third book was kind of a generational summary, that lead right up to the Yunger Dryas impact, then jumped to "modern"times leaving a big question as to how an archaeologist everybody knew wound up in a 12,000 year old underwater cave. Nevermind that the first book used a bunch of astronomical math to decide it was 8000 years ago. Someone didn't even have a proofreader.

Any ways in the Amazon/Kindle store to block authors from being recommended? 

His writing style is like a banker on a coke binge, and I don't like it, but of course it's filling my recommendations now.

Back onto Brandon Morris now, reading Ganymede, and having the strangest feeling that I've read it before but don't remember.

41 

That makes sense. I forgot, Morris writes all out his books in the same universe. I've been reading them out of order apparently. But this goes for standalone stories and series alike. 

Ganymede, which is like book number 15 of his I've read, was also apparently the first. For introduced to a lot of characters I've already seen stories of, but filled in a lot of history towards a few of the series. 

Catching up

Read Zero to one, Peter Thiel. It was okay.

I just finished The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls.  I love memoirs, and this one was a great example that kept the pace throughout.  Would definitely recommend. 

I just finished Get Jiro! by Anthony Bourdain, it was a fun read with great illustrations. I am also listening to Ready Player Two on audio book, I was excited to listen to this one because I enjoyed the first book and movie but the second book so far is a big disappointment. 

Duke said:

Currently working on Virtual Light by William Gibson, first of the Bridge trilogy.  Pretty readable and the action just started heating up, a little past the halfway point.

Just finished Virtual Light.  It was very readable throughout; Gibson sometimes gets a bit opaque, but not in this one.  The two main characters were both likable, and came out well on the other side.  Gibson is good at sketching descriptions with enough detail that your mind fills in the a plausible whole, but not enough to bog down the story.  Stuff is left to the imagination, yet you can sort of trust that the backstory is there.

My only complaint about Virtual Light is that the ending seemed very rushed, and tied everything up a little too neatly.

I picked up a general history of the Vietnam conflict, 1945-1975.  Unfortunately our library system's app is down right now and I can't remember title or author.

I reserved JSA Corey's Persepolis Rising and was hoping it would take a few weeks to come in, but unfortunately it is sitting at the library waiting to be picked up.  I'll probably read this one first and table the Vietnam book, since the Expanse book will be quicker and probably more in demand.

Just finished the second book in the trilogy, the well of Ascension, by Brandon Sanderson. It's was good. The author trips over language sometimes, but the plot and character development is great.

42

The last cosmonaut 

Another Brandon Morris book down. This one, oddly, wasn't in the shared universe. Kind an of alt history take. USSR collapsed, but, Germany stayed divided. Probably a lot to be said about political implications in the book, but I don't really care about that part. Interesting read none the less. 

Onto the next one.

Duke said:

I picked up a general history of the Vietnam conflict, 1945-1975.  Unfortunately our library system's app is down right now and I can't remember title or author.

The book is Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975 by Max Hastings.  If you're looking at an overview of the whys and hows of Vietnam, I recommend it.  I'm about 30% in; historically, it's the 1960-62 era, with the French finally abandoning ship in disgrace and the American presence starting to ramp up significantly.

Hastings is a British journalist and historian, old enough to have actually reported on the conflict from the field.  Being British, he is more capable of giving a very balanced view of the conflict and its players.  It's very readable and strikes a good balance between historical detail and personal interpretation of motivations and actions.

The roots of the conflict stem from the last gasp of post-WWII colonialism, like so many of the conflicts that troubled the world in the second half of the 20th century (some of which are still going strong today).  Hastings describes the French as "morbidly insecure" and there is no question that their shame from WWII drove them to try to hang on to Indochina far longer than they reasonably could, let alone should.

Without getting too political, the situation has many parallels to Israel, including the current strife.  Yes, the Vietnamese communists were terrible... but they didn't appear in a vacuum, and the governing styles of the French, South Vietnamese, and Americans gave the communist revolutionaries lots of political material to work with.

As a Vietnam veteran I regret the role I played during my time in the Navy.  I had a choice to leaving the country or going in the service.  Another book that details our involvement is "The Pentagon Papers" which was a portion of an official report commissioned by Robert McNamara the Sec. of Defense and the former president of Ford.  It was leaked by Daniel Ellsberg.  The Vet Cong had to go to the communist for help because Truman refused to meet with Ho Che Minh in 1948.  

In reply to Mustang50 :

I don't think you need to regret anything.

Starting whenever the French first set foot in-country, the entire situation was completely mishandled by everyone at the highest levels, including the Vietnamese themselves when they had a chance.

I'm not playing the old "just following orders" platitude here, but policy directs action, and politicians set the policies.

In reply to Duke :

THANK YOU!!

In reply to golfduke :

We have that one and another by her and enjoyed both.

I think this is the one where they had to "skeedaddle" every so often.

The Silmarillion 

Decided it was time to slog my way through it.

I tried years ago but couldn't make it.

Way behind on keeping track of these. I finished the audiobook Misery Bay by Steve Hamilton, and it was great. He's getting better as that series goes on.