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What are you currently reading?
LeeC:
I suppose it would be best to post this here rather than anywhere else. As mentioned before, I had read Good Omens fairly recently, but my wife had me wait to watch the show until after our child was born (old world superstition) so we finally watched it. I couldn't help but compare it to the book the entire way through and I must say I like the book better, however the show is also good. They add new scenes to give the book readers something new to see instead of beat by beat the same story. The ending is essentially the same thing but they go about it differently after the climax. My two biggest complaints about the show 1) the Narrator's pacing (I felt the audio-book had better pacing regarding the narration, and the show narration just seemed rushed) 2) The story seemed rushed. It could be that to me it seemed like it took the entire last week of earth to get through everything whereas the show makes everything happen over the course of the last 3ish days. Now I must admit these are nitpicks and that is one advantage the book will have over any TV show or book is plenty of time to delve into everything. There were many more nit picks I had, but they are just nit picks because I like the book and YMMV. The show was still great and the new things they did, they did well.
LeeC:
Started "Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian Barbarian: The Complete Weird Tales Omnibus" by Robert E. Howard and compiled by Finn J. D. John. So far its pretty interesting. After the author's notes the first few stories has nothing to do with Conan. The first one is a Kull story (Shadow Kingdom) and the 2 following are Solomon Kane stories (Red Shadow and Rattle of Bones), followed by an Essay Howard wrote explaining the Hyborean age where Conan takes place. Finn J.D. John did this to help show Howard's evolution in writing and it does help you get a taste for what you're in for. The Conan stories are then presented in the order they are published so it leaps from different points in his life. For example, the first Conan story "The Phoenix on the Sword" takes place when Conan is now king of Aquilonia (like a mix between the Roman Empire and Carolingian Empire) so he's a bit older than his other adventures. I've only now gotten to this story but so far its pretty good. A lot of cloak and dagger game of thrones stuff going on.
LeeC:
I finally read Fahrenheit 451. It was required reading in high school but I didn't read it. Go figure.
Reading it now with the gusto of wanting to read, just wow! It was a great story that I don't think my younger self would have appreciated. Everyone likes to cite that its about book burning and censorship, but thats just what you get from reading the back of a book and maybe the bit of the beginning. Its about so much more than that! Dumbing down media for something thats easier to consume, keeping people happy/distracted at all times, growing apathy in society, and the dumb persecuting the intellectual because they feel inferior. God this feels relevant today as I am sure it was back in the 50s when it was written.
I swear I work with someone that is just like Montag's wife. :venonat:
dutchrvl:
Currently reading Bryson's "The body: a guide for occupants"
It's in the same vein as "A short history of nearly everything' and "At home: a history of private life".
So far it's quite entertaining and a fascinating read, although I don't think it comes close to 'history of nearly everything'.
Thrillho:
I got a book called Wild Irish Women, about innovative Irish women funnily enough, from one of my partners' mums, and I stopped reading because like many history books I like it refers to a bunch of shit it expects you to have heard of.
Sadly, I am grossly uneducated in Irish history; this partner, by the way, is Irish.
So I've paused. I'm going to read the Irish equivalent to Sixth Form set text on history, then get myself some heavier duty Irish potted history book, and then head back on to Wild Irish Women once I can appreciate just how special they really were.
I've rattled through a bunch of other books recently. I am currently reading American Caesars. I'm also reading Redshirts by John Scalzi, which I've barely started but am enjoying. It is seemingly set up as a Star Trek parody of sorts, but the friend who recommend it to me says it is much more than that.
I also read The Vietnam War by Max Hastings. If you are remotely interested in that war, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It goes into phenomenal depth, not just considering The American War, as it's known by many in Vietnam itself, but also covering extensively the disastrous French efforts to keep it as a colony after World War II. I never cease to be amazed by the depths that the 'heroes' of our history will sink to when the enemy isn't so easily 'evil' in capital letters like Hitler is. I would say the most gripping part of the book was the French segment, but that may be because it's the part I knew the least about.
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