Quake3World

Mr.Sparkle! wrote:I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell - Tucker Max.

So far so funny.

Read it last year, fucking hilarious.

I've read over the last year
Anathem - Neal Stephenson
The Algebraist - Iain M. Banks
Shooter: Autobiography Of A Top-Ranked Marine Sniper - Jack Coughlin
Generation Kill - Evan Wright
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie

Reading:
Chesty: The Story Of Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller - Jon T. Hoffman
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
Men Of Mathematics - E.T. Bell
Dr. Euler's Fabulous Formula: Cures Many Mathmatical Ills - Paul J. Nahin
The Blue Cliff Record - Thomas and JC Cleary
Matter - Iain M. Banks

Forgotten a couple others I'm sure. My nightstand has about 12 books on it at any given time.

Ryoki wrote:Ah, the book thread

Storm of Steel - Ernst Junger
The most brutally honest book on war i've ever read. Very interesting, in several ways. Will probably reread a couple of times.

there's one you don't see often. he was a bit of a nazi back in the day, but the book is supposed to be good.

I hear Dawkins has a new book. comments thoughts etc?

^ read rook's post a few up

oh. i skimmed over it

menkent wrote:there's one you don't see often. he was a bit of a nazi back in the day, but the book is supposed to be good.

Haha yes, it was also a bitch to find... thank the gods for the interweb.
Been reading a lot of stuff about WW1 lately, and his name kept popping up in other books. By far the most revealing eyewitness account i've read on the subject... and by now i've read a good number of them

Memphis wrote:Just started Going Postal

Been meaning to get my hands on that, Mark Ames ftw!
What do you think about it so far..?

Fender wrote:^ read rook's post a few up

Why Evolution is True is by Jerry Coyne.

I've been considering picking up Dawkins' new one too though (The Greatest Show on Earth), just because he's got such a great gift for describing things in a way that's easy to understand and still awe-inspiring.

I think the first few chapters of The Selfish Gene are still the best bit I've ever read on evolution and biology.

Apparently there is an excerpt:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 805656.ece

I'm on a Dostoyevsky binge at the moment.
Started with The Brothers Karamazov, am currently reading Crime & Punishment, and The Idiot's next.
Fantastic books, and incredibly interesting from an historical perspective too.
Crime & Punishment in particular is startling considering when it was written.

Just finished Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Ordered Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian by Paul Knitter.

Thought I'd grab this off the shelf again ..



Heavy going most of the time, even for me

Ryoki wrote:

Memphis wrote:Just started Going Postal

Been meaning to get my hands on that, Mark Ames ftw!
What do you think about it so far..?

Going Postal is one of the funniest books in the series if you ask me. It's the only book I read out of the order of releases. So far I've read everything up to Thief of Time (which I'm reading now), although I did read the three Tiffany Aching books (The Wee Free Men, Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith) as well. Terry Pratchett is a genius.

Memphis wrote:Duma Key i enjoyed thoroughly

I read that and it left me a bit disappointed. While it was very easy to read, the book never got really scary or tense like I would expect from Stephen King. It worked to build up this uncomfortable atmosphere but it just got stuck there. It could've been much more intense than it was.

werldhed wrote:

• Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder... Pure, useless shit.

You are kidding me right? That book is absolutely brilliantly written. It is aimed at children though, so the writing style might have put you off but I think it's a fantastic way to introduce people to the different philosophers through history.

Eraser wrote: Going Postal is one of the funniest books in the series if you ask me. It's the only book I read out of the order of releases. So far I've read everything up to Thief of Time (which I'm reading now), although I did read the three Tiffany Aching books (The Wee Free Men, Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith) as well. Terry Pratchett is a genius.

Oh i see, different book... same title. I meant this one, from that guy from exiledonline.com:

http://www.abebooks.com/docs/authors-co ... ames.shtml

I only ever read the first book in the disc world series, didn't really draw me in at the time

Eraser wrote:

werldhed wrote:

• Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder... Pure, useless shit.

You are kidding me right? That book is absolutely brilliantly written. It is aimed at children though, so the writing style might have put you off but I think it's a fantastic way to introduce people to the different philosophers through history.

I know it was aimed at kids/young adults, so I took that into consideration. Also, I read a translated version, so I assume a lot of the bad writing was due to the translator.
Still, it was pointless, preachy, lacked any real insight, and was written like a textbook. If I wanted to introduce my kids to philosophy, I'd just teach them myself. Learning about philosophers alone is interesting, without all the useless "mystery" story.
He overreached with the book. I get the impression he thought, "look how clever I can be with this" and ended up just being obtuse and bland. I honestly wouldn't recommend it to anybody.

Ryoki wrote:

Eraser wrote: Going Postal is one of the funniest books in the series if you ask me. It's the only book I read out of the order of releases. So far I've read everything up to Thief of Time (which I'm reading now), although I did read the three Tiffany Aching books (The Wee Free Men, Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith) as well. Terry Pratchett is a genius.

Oh i see, different book... same title. I meant this one, from that guy from exiledonline.com:

http://www.abebooks.com/docs/authors-co ... ames.shtml

I only ever read the first book in the disc world series, didn't really draw me in at the time

lol, ok. Well Memphis was talking about the Discworld series...
The first book in the series is arguably one of the weakest to be honest.

pronto by elmore leonard

the bridge trilogy by william gibson

good shit

also, olde threade

Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan

Céline - Journy to the end of the night

Bukowski - Women

Bukowski - Hollywood

All tragic yet funny

Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird
Never read it in HS (lazy). I picked it up again on a hunch and have been enjoying it.

Other than that, tons of Microsoft Certification Material. Project Management bullshit.

duffman91 wrote:Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird

The movie's better.

No.

"The Elegant Universe"



I had only seen the NOVA shows (about five times) but hadn't read the book. The book is mucho bene. Read it after you've watched the show to get a deeper understanding of the concepts.

I tried (again) to read "The Reality Dysfunction" but it's simply written in a way that makes an interesting story fucking horrible and tedious to read. In a book with roughly 10,000 pages it feels as if the author introduces 10 new characters every single page and yet takes 5 pages to introduce each of them, while adding gibberish such as "nanoneucleonic substrate quantum-flopperinski fulstrom vector inducers" onto every second page.

Made a start on The Prince by Machiavelli, but it's heavy going, so lightened the load with some Charles Stross. The one I'm currently reading is Halting State, a near-future geek-fi novel about a heist in an MMO. I've read his "Laundry" series, and he just keeps getting better.
Most of my reading is now done on Kindle; it's an excellent device, and I think Amazon have finally cracked it, although the button layout could do with some work.