Reading list

[Ed Reppert]

Currently:
Timothy Ellis, The Hunter Legacy (series, I'm on book 10, Hero At The Gates)
Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism
Trevor Matthews, Card Reading
Dr. James Marsh Sternberg, Simple Squeezes Made Simple

On deck, in no particular order:
Timothy Ellis -- whatever the next series is in the ongoing Jonathan Hunter saga
Blake Banner, An Ace And A Pair
J.B. Turner, Hard Vengeance
H.R. McMaster, Battlegrounds
Ludwig von Mises, Socialism
Robert P. Murphy, Choice

[quibblemuch]

B.H. Liddell Hart, Why We Don't Learn from History
Robert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow
Charles Dickens, Bleak House

[Ed Reppert]

I read two of those years ago. I've read some stuff by Liddell Hart, but not, I think, that one.

[Ed Reppert]

Lol. There's a hardcover edition of Liddell Hart's Strategy (that's the one I've read) available on Amazon for a mere $566. :-) I think I'd go for the kindle edition. :-)

[Ed Reppert]

Started yesterday: Jay Apfelbaum, Six Steps to Winning Declarer Play.

[David M Mallon]

Currently reading:
The Indian Mutiny, by John Harris
Beowulf, prose translation by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, prose translation by R.M. Lumiansky

Up next:
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
The Gulag Archipelago (abridged), by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Lord of the Rings (single volume), by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis
The Coast Watchers, by Eric Feldt
Land of the Dead, by Thomas Harlan

[Ed Reppert]

Finished the Hunter's Legacy series. Haven't started anything new yet.

[Ed Reppert]

After Hunter's Legacy came three Spacemage novels. After that, the Hunter Imperium. I'm on book one (Crossover -- It's A Jon Hunter Thing) in which Thorn (protagonist of the three Spacemage novels) has just met Jon Hunter.

Also reading: What Has The Government Done To Our Money? by Murray Rothbard. A book that everyone should read. Available free from mises.org.

And Robert P. Murphy's Choice. Another required read IMO.

[David M Mallon]

Recently finished:
The Indian Mutiny, by John Harris
The Gulag Archipelago (abridged), by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Into The Wild, by Jon Krakauer
Terminal Freeze, by Lincoln Child
Exogenesis, by Peco Gaskovski
1493, by Charles C. Mann

Currently reading:
Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, prose translation by R.M. Lumiansky
The Korean War: The Story and Photographs, by Donald M. Goldstein and Harry J. Maihafer
World Made By Hand, by James Howard Kunstler

Up next:
A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
The Lord of the Rings (single volume), by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis
The Coast Watchers, by Eric Feldt
Land of the Dead, by Thomas Harlan

[Ed Reppert]

Re: Korean War.. I strongly recommend This Kind Of War, by T.R. Ferrenbach. "You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, and wipe it clean of life - but if you desire to defend it, protect it,and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman Legions did - by putting your soldiers in the mud." Another: "A people [America] that does not prepare to fight should then be morally prepared to surrender. To fail to prepare soldiers and citizens for limited, bloody ground action, and then to engage in it, is folly verging on the criminal."

Currently I've progressed in the "Hunter Imperium" series; I'm on "Rogue". Also reading "Harnmaster Kethira", a new rules set for Harnmaster.

[David M Mallon]

Ed Reppert wrote:

Re: Korean War.. I strongly recommend This Kind Of War, by T.R. Ferrenbach.

I'll put it on the list.

Jocko Willink has recommended several books on the subject on his podcast, and I've added a few to my list of future purchases, including Colder Than Hell, by Joseph R. Owen, and Valleys of Death, by Bill Richardson and Kevin Maurer. So far, the only one I've bought and read has been About Face, by David Hackworth-- only the first third or so covers Korea, but I really got a lot out of the book as a whole.

[Ed Reppert]

I've decided that I need to re-read Brave New World and 1984, so those are now added to my list.

Also have to find Gilgamesh (a translation of the original epic) which I intended to read a while ago but didn't get to.

[quibblemuch]

Stephen Mitchell's translation is quite good.

[Ed Reppert]

Found it. This one is by Stephan Grundy. Probably not a direct translation. "A magnificent retelling of humankind's oldest epic adventure".

"I am Enzi of Erech, son of Lugalbanda and Rimsat-Ninsum, two thirds god and one third man." :-)

[Qunnessaa]

I need to read more Mesopotamian stuff, but there's always too many things to read, and the list (and the stacks) just keep on growing.

A recent entry is Irving Finkel's The First Ghosts, about those from that part of the world. He gave a fun talk about them online recently, which is probably up on YouTube. If I recall correctly, the difference between ghosts and demons in Assyrian(?), as far as the cuneiform goes, is that both are built around the sign for ishtar (in the generic sense of feminine divinity, rather than Ishtar the specific goddess), but with the addition of the sign for 1/3 for ghosts, and 2/3 for demons. :)

Other things that I'm already splitting my time between now, rather than consigning to the purgatory of the list, are Aston's Blessed Thessaly (history through to about when Rome shows up and starts making a mess of things) and Faraone's The Transformation of Greek Amulets in Roman Imperial Times, which is a nice introductory archaeological survey for someone who's normally more of a text person.

[Limeylongears]

Just finished an old Penguin compilation of Mediaeval English verse, put into modern English; also have 'The Warrior of World's End' by Lin Carter to be going on with

[Ed Reppert]

Currently:

Unruly - Tim Ellis
Bergen For The Defense - Marty Bergen (this is about Contract Bridge, the card game)
A Kingly Pattern - Jonathan George (about Hnefatafl, aka "Viking Chess"

On deck: too much stuff to list.

[quibblemuch]

Limeylongears wrote:

Just finished an old Penguin compilation of Mediaeval English verse, put into modern English; also have 'The Warrior of World's End' by Lin Carter to be going on with

I find myself mutter-quoting Deor a lot of late... þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg...

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

Ed Reppert wrote:

A Kingly Pattern - Jonathan George (about Hnefatafl, aka "Viking Chess"

It's been years since I played that game. I will have to dig it out at some point.

My current 'to read' list, as in the ones I actually will read rather than the ones I want to read or reread at some point and the ones I merely think I should, contains among other things:

Tanith Lee: "Elephantasm", "The Birthgrave", "Vazkor, son of Vazkor", "Quest for the White Witch"

Mercedes Lackey's Magewind trilogy

Melanie Rawn's "The Ruins of Ambrai"

Ben Arronovitch: Rivers of London/Peter Grant series books 4-8

Brent Weeks: something I cannot remember

ERB: "Tarzan and the Foreign Legion", "Carson of Venus"

Tara Sim: "City of Dusk"

A bunch more books by various authors unknown to me and whose name sI have forgotten, bought on sale at flea markets, used bookstores or discounted at the FLGS.

[quibblemuch]

The Army that Never Was: D-Day and the Great Deception by Taylor Downing. A fun history of Operation Overlord to convince the Nazis that the invasion of France would happen in Calais instead of Normandy.

[Waterhammer]

quibblemuch wrote:

The Army that Never Was: D-Day and the Great Deception by Taylor Downing. A fun history of Operation Overlord to convince the Nazis that the invasion of France would happen in Calais instead of Normandy.

I don’t know of any books to suggest on the topic, but the various deceptions used by the Allies in WWII are fascinating. I understand that a fake Cairo was created for the Germans to bomb during the African campaign. And of course, the body with the fake documents that was dropped off near Spain, to suggest that the invasion of Sicily was going to be on Crete instead.

[quibblemuch]

Downing discusses a lot of the deceptions in setting the stage for D-Day, including the North Africa campaign, which was really the birthplace of British deception operations. The body with the fake documents was Operation Mincemeat. Ben MacIntyre has a book on that, which I haven't read, but I have enjoyed his other books on Kim Philby (A Spy Among Friends) and Oleg Gordievsky (The Spy and the Traitor).

[quibblemuch]

The World of Null-A by A.E. van Vogt. I'm 50 pages in and it's really my kind of novel. Weird, uncanny, and nothing seems to add up.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

van Vogt is a favorite of mine.

My 'will read' list increased by at least one book - Liu Cixin's "Three Body Problem" - this weekend as we visited a new bookstore in town. It's got a quite limited selection - just one and a half walls of an otherwise relatively spacious locale. Lots of decoration too, including a faux-home library corner complete with bigh-backed leather chairs and a coffee machine.
Pros: apart from promising a nice place to sit and read, much of the stock was SF&F, and it has a used section.
Cons: very limited selection, and the books they have I'm actually interested I already have

[quibblemuch]

Three Body Problem is amazing. The other two in the trilogy are also incredible.

[Ed Reppert]

Current:

Slam Bidding Made Easier, Marty Bergen
Vital Endgame: The Shape Of Things To Come, Janice Kim
Suzy Spitfire Kills Everybody, Joe Canzano
Modern Libertarianism, Brian Doherty

On deck: lots of stuff.

[Limeylongears]

I keep looking at Gerschom Scholem's biography of tip-top 16th century heretic and pseudo-Messiah Sabbatai Zvi whenever it becomes available on various popular online retail sites, but though I really want to read it, £30+ for a 2nd hand copy is difficult to justify.

Right now, I'm reading 'How the World Made the West', by Josephine Quinn, '138 Openings of Wisdom', by Moses Chaim Luzzato, and 'Azure Bonds', by Jeff Grubb and Kate Novak. I might carry on with the other two volumes of the trilogy once I've finished 'Azure Bonds', but might move onto 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' instead.

Audio books-wise, 'A Guide For The Perplexed', by Moses Maimonides. Not really into it, and still have 20-20-21 hours to go. O dear.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

True to form, my "will read" pile increases at a greater rate than my "have read" pile. One bookstore, not my favorite nerd one, but a 'proper' big name commercial one, had a surprising amount and variety of SF&F and manga that I wanted (and not stuff I had no interest in or already owned) when I happened to drop by to look for something, so I bought a bunch of stuff, including "The Margarets" by Sheri Tepper and the final volume of Knights of Sidonia.

[oliverr]

Quote:

My current 'to read' list, as in the ones I actually will read rather than the ones I want to read or reread at some point and the ones I merely think I should, contains among other things:

Tanith Lee: "Elephantasm", "The Birthgrave", "Vazkor, son of Vazkor", "Quest for the White Witch"

Mercedes Lackey's Magewind trilogy

Melanie Rawn's "The Ruins of Ambrai"

Ben Arronovitch: Rivers of London/Peter Grant series books 4-8

Brent Weeks: something I cannot remember

ERB: "Tarzan and the Foreign Legion", "Carson of Venus"

Tara Sim: "City of Dusk"
I love that you separate your "actually will read" list from the wishful thinking pile. My own shelves are full of books I bought with good intentions and never touched. Tanith Lee's The Birthgrave is a wild ride—I read it years ago and still think about some of those scenes. The Rivers of London series is pure comfort reading for me; Ben Aaronovitch writes dialogue like nobody else. What I've learned is that the books you actually finish are the ones that grab you right away, not the ones you feel obligated to read. If I'm not hooked by page 50, I put it down and move on without guilt. Life is too short for books that feel like homework. I keep a small notebook where I write down titles I actually enjoyed so I don't forget them when someone asks for recommendations. I also had to fax from phone recently to send a signed book contract, and the irony of using modern tech for old-fashioned paper wasn't lost on me. The used bookstores and flea market finds are often the best surprises—I discovered half my favorite authors that way. Your list looks solid.
A bunch more books by various authors unknown to me and whose name sI have forgotten, bought on sale at flea markets, used bookstores or discounted at the FLGS.

Tanith Lee and the Rivers of London series are both great picks

[Tensor]

It by Stephen King
Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy
The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King
Windmills of the Gods by Sidney Sheldon
Fine Things by Danielle Steel
The Haunted Mesa by Louis L'Amour