I heard Tomcat in Love wasn’t great, but I haven’t gotten to it. I have The Nuclear Age on my pile, but it keeps getting left on the bottom - I am not sure what I am trying to tell myself by doing that…
But yeah, Tim O’Brien is a masterful writer…
I just finished Nation by Terry Pratchett. A+
Look me in the eye by John Elder Robinson. (Augustin Burroughs older brother.) I’m into the second chapter and liking it.
I enjoyed The Time Traveler’s Wife. It had an intriguing flavor of time travel and a touching love story. It’s not without its flaws, but I find myself reviewing and admiring the plot, and I think I will end up re-reading it one of these days.
Now I’m in the middle of Flashman at the Charge. I’ve had to go look up the Crimean War and the Charge of the Light Brigade, which I knew nothing about.
I just finished Sherwood Smith’s Inda, The Fox and King’s Shield. I’m eagerly awaiting the fourth and hopefully final book in this fantasy series, On Treason’s Shore, which is not due till next year sometime, sigh… Now I’m about 70 pages into C.E. Murphy’s Heart of Stone, and it needs to improve very soon or it gets swapped. Next in the queue are Matriarch by Karen Traviss, and Dust by Elizabeth Bear.
YES!!! YES!!! Finally a book where the little corporal does it!.
After reading all the Sharpe books and a lot of O’Brian i am just tired of the goddamns winning all the battles.
I read the first Temeraire book and the Emperor almost, almost gets to invade perfid Albion, only to fail in the last minute :(, so he finally managed it, cool, he will no doubt lose at the end, but at least he will get some victories. Reading English novels about the Napoleonic Wars you’ll hardly see him as a genius, I mean i do not remember any Sharpe book for example where the British are defeated, if it happens at all it is “off camera”.
I’ll try to get that book 
I’m re-reading Nancy Peacock’s Life without Water about a girl growing up in a hippie house in central NC in the mid-1970s. I always end up reading it in a day whenever I pick it up. This time, though, the constant “I remember…I remember…I remember…” is slightly irritating me. Yes, you’re remembering your childhood. Please find a new way to start your sentences while you do it.
That was my first Flashman book. I loved it. The Crimean War was the one in which Florence Nightingale did her thing. (And if I recall, she may make a brief appearence in the book?) It was also the first war in which trains played a major role.
I’m still on Bangkok Haunts and enjoying it thoroughly. But I thought I’d mention I might have had a brief encounter yesterday afternoon with the author, John Burdett. I was sitting on the Skytrain – that’s our elevated mass-transit system – reading the book. Shortly before we pull into Siam Station, a fellow farang (Westerner) says he was wondering how did I like that book. I said it was great, and he asked me if I’d read the previous ones in the series, and I said something like yes, they’re all great. (And they are.) Then the Skytrain pulls into the station, and we go our separate ways.
But something about him seemed familiar. Then it hit me that he might have been this guy. I really wasn’t paying that much attention to him, and it was all over quickly. I can’t even remember his accent. But he did look a lot like the guy in that photo, although maybe he’s lost just a little weight.
I gave up on Seabiscuit–just wasn’t doing it for me.
I’ve started A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle. I read it over twenty years ago and picked up a copy last year when it was reprinted.
I just finished The Name of The Wind and thought it was the most enjoyable books I’ve read in months. Absolutely captivating story. I’m now going to be waiting with some serious anticipation for April.
I started The Year of Living Biblically. The concept is very interesting, but the writing style is a little too anecdotal for me. I want more detailed information and historical facts and fewer descriptions of his son’s television viewing habits.
I loved this book as well and every time someone else mentions I am compelled to chime in. I think the phrase I used was a storyteller’s story. I read it when it first came out and have been waiting not-so-patiently for the release of the next.
I finished African American Men in College, which I was reading for work, it was okay as far as stuff you have to read for work goes.
I am almost done with Living Dangerously, a biography of Merian C. Cooper, the guy who made King Kong. Before he was a movie producer, he was a fighter pilot in WWI and got shot down and was a prisoner of war and everything. He seems like a very admirable guy … but my impression from this book at least is that his need to put himself in dangerous situations was bordering on the pathological.
Just started - Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World. So far, so good … it’s very heavy on putting the Olympics in the context of the Cold War.
That’s pretty cool. I’ve always wondered what I would do if I were a famous author and I saw someone reading my book in public.
I know a few of the locally well-known authors, but John Burdett is a cut above the rest, and I’ve never met him before. I still think that was probably him the other day. But there’s one guy I know who’s published nine books in Thailand – fiction, personal musings – and he got all excited one time when he saw one of them featured as a prop in a commercial that appeared before a film in a cinema. It was for a cellphone company, and this girl gets a phone call while she’s browsing in a bookstore. It’s his book she’s looking through when her phone rings. My friend loved it!
I think Flash for Freedom! is still my favorite so far, but I enjoyed Flashman at the Charge.
carnivorousplant, I thought Flashy was unusually mellow in this book. He was moved by the plight of the soldiers wounded in the charge and even seemed mildly patriotic at moments. He kissed the girl before tossing her out of the sled, which is pretty sentimental for Flashman. He didn’t bully anybody in this book, either, which is really the hardest aspect of Flashman for me to stomach.
Does he ever find out for sure if Elspeth is faithful or not, or does Fraser keep it inconclusive? I like to think she’s not as stupid as Flashman thinks she is.
He does sort of bully the German prince at the very begining, though, if I’m thinking of the same book. When push comes to shove, Flashie will get a (very brief) patriotic tear in his eye. And while it is never conclusively demonstrated that Elspeth is unfaithful, there’s enough circumstantial evidence to convince me that she is, but Flashie does not want to believe it. (I see the same thing lots of times in Thailand.) My favorite is probably Flashman and the Redskins, although there atre still two or three I’ve not read.
Trying to read *The Given Day *by Dennis Lehane, but am so freaky busy.
I finished Dune: House Atreides last night and picked up House Harkonnen as soon as I got up this morning. I don’t care what purists say, I love the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson books as much as the original six. The prequels anyway, I haven’t read the sequels yet.
One of my roommates lent me The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain which is the only Prydain book I’ve never read. I’m going to have to add that to my collection.
I’m now struggling through The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard and thinking about giving up on it. This book was not written for a nonfiction dilettante like me; it was written for people who have a consuming interest in Antarctica. It’s telling me 'way more than I want to know. But I’d feel like a wimp if I did abandon it.
Impact Parameter by Geoffrey Landis. Hardcore SF by a writer that I wasn’t familiar with.