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illini

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Heading to the beach next week and got my stack of books ready. In the spirit of totally off-topic threads that discuss personal tastes (such as the recurring threads on other hobbies), what types of books do you read and what have you read lately?

Me: Just finished "The Source" by James Michener and, prior to that, "Light This Candle" (biography of Alan Shepard).

My stack for the beach:

"Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East" by Michael Oren
"Paul Revere's Ride" by David Hackett Fischer
"American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson" by Joseph Ellis
"Tai Pan" by James Clavell
"Isaac Newton" by James Gleick


Your turn.
 
OK... Heres what I have read over the past 6 months:

The Davinci Code
Angels and Demons
LOTR trilogy
Harry Potters 1-5
The Hobbit
Gunpowder (by Jack Kelly... All sorts of stuff about explosives... What more could a pyro boy want? :D)

Thats about it for the last 6 months to the present... :D
 
Mostly sci-fi and fantasy, with a few other oddities thrown in.

I'm currently in the midst of two books:
- Night Masks, by R. A. Salvatore (a Forgotten Realms D&D novel, book 3 of a 5-book series)
- The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (a mammoth book, but an interesting read)

Others I've read in the past few months
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
- The Lord of the Rings (I re-read the trilogy every few years)
 
I don't normally read but at the moment I'm reading Sabriel by Garth Nix...mainly to impress a girl. :)
 
Currently:

Pinocchio Syndrome

In the last couple months:

Angels and Demons
Digital Fortress
Deception Point (Dan Brown Rocks!)
Summer of Night
Mystic River
Teeth of the Tiger
One Door Away From Heaven
Winter Haunting

Can you tell I like to read?
 
Originally posted by illini868891
Heading to the beach next week and got my stack of books ready. In the spirit of totally off-topic threads that discuss personal tastes (such as the recurring threads on other hobbies), what types of books do you read and what have you read lately?


A random selection of Terry Pratchet's Discworld books, for the 4th or 7th or eleventieth time.

The entire (rewritten, apparently) collection of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

A 1957 book on the history rockets by the then president of the FAI (can't recall the title right now).
 
No time to read, I'm too busy writing :D ...

But seriously folks, "Voyage" by Stephen Baxter. Then I plan to re-read "Ice" by Shane Johnson. Both are pretty neat alternative history-type stories of the Apollo program.
 
This week I are been mostly reading ...... documentation on Fedora/Linux - mostly to do with getting video files playing.
 
Yea, I like Dan Brown books too... I hear hes writing another one set in Washington DC... Should be interesting... Angels and Demons isnt nearly as good as the Davinci Code, IMHO... Annoying how those two books are so similar... Still interesting reads, though! :D
 
I just finished "Flags of our Fathers" by James Bradley.

An excellent read about the lives of the 6 men in the picture of the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima (and the invasion of the island).
 
Originally posted by cmmeyers
I just finished "Flags of our Fathers" by James Bradley.

An excellent read about the lives of the 6 men in the picture of the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima (and the invasion of the island).

I read that one. Outstanding. If you liked it, I also strongly recommend "Ghost Soldiers."
 
Oh yea... TWo more...

Rockets of the World (not cover to cover, but the more interesting birds, anyways...)
Modern High Power Rocketry.:D
 
This year I have been mostly reading:

Periodicals:
10...9...8...
interspace
Extreme Rocketry
Sport Rocketry
Ministry of Space #3
2000AD
Judge Dredd Megazine
New Scientist
Various IEE publications

Fiction:
John Bunyan's A Pilgrim's Progress, Geraldine McCaughrean
Voyage to Mars, Sir Patrick Moore
Earth is Room Enough, Asimov
Soft, Rupert Thomson
"Free summer reading", freebie from Borders
Science Fiction Stories, edited by Tom Boardman Jr.
Ringworld Throne, Larry Niven
Total War 2006, Simon Pearson
Mindbridge, Joe Haldeman
Mammoth book of Science Fiction 16*, edited by Gardner Dozois
Time, Stephen Baxter
Super State, Brian Aldiss
Microserfs, Douglas Coupland
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the night-time, Mark Haddon

* Will be a different number in the US, 'cos we Brits started late with this series, anyway it's the one covering 2002

Non-fiction:
Spaceplane Technology and Research (STAR), Fred W. Redding, Jr.
Full Moon, Michael Light
Down Under, Bill Bryson
A Vertical Empire, C.N.Hill
A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
Neither Here Nor There, Bill Bryson
Woomera, Ivan Southall
Deep Future, Stephen Baxter
Last Man on the Moon, Eugene Cernan & Don Davis
The Soviet Space Race with Apollo, Asif A. Siddiqi
Two Sides of the Moon, David Scott & Alexei Leonov
The View from Serendip, Arthur C. Clarke
Atkins for Life, Robert Atkins
The Falklands War 1982, Martin Middlebrook
The Spanish Civil War, Antony Beevor
The Worst Journey in the Year, Apsley Cherry Garrard
Eats Shoots & Leaves (The zero tolerance approach to punctuation) , Lynne Truss
"The Hybrid Chapter" from Sutton

I've been _very_ busy at work, so I've read a ton of documentation relating to TI's DM642 DSP.
 
recently ive read band of brothers, under a war torn sky, and all quiet on the western front... im working on the things they carried and brothers in arms, and the Bedford Boys

if your a fan of the tv show, you should DEFINATELY get the band of brothers book...
 
Currently, I am reading I am OK, You are OK . I have no clue why. I have been reading it at night. I am averaging about a half chapter per night before it puts me to sleep. Amazingly, I remember about 70 percent of what I read the night before,
 
LOTR trilogy
Harry Potters 1-5
Stupid White Men
Black Hawk Down
 
I am currently reading "The Bachman Books" a collection of 4 early novels by Stephen King.
I just finished "Wolves of the Calla" and "Song of Susannah" the 2 most recent of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King.
I also read "The Truth" and "Nosferatu" of the Area 51 series by Robert Doherty.
 
Reading Tales of the Velvet Comet by Mike Resnik
Rereading the Deathstalker Series by Simon Green
Just Finished Davinci Code and the othe one
I usually have between 5-6 books going simultaneously.



Fall back favorites:

Most anything by Clive Cussler and W.E.B. Griffin


Toss in:

Fast Company
Sport Rocketry
PC Magazine
Sound and Vision
InformationWeek
NewsWeek
ReadersDigest
People (guilty pleasure)


And my reading urge is met.
 
Not reading much beyond technical/work/rocketry stuff right now, but
I am planning on a trip to the library tomorrow-

<a href="https://www.ocls.lib.fl.us/Articles/JoeKittinger_040720.asp">Meet Joe Kittinger</a>
 
Now: Gene Kranz- Failure is not an option

just finished Ben Franklin and American Sphinx
 
Currently: Ice Hunt by James Rollins

Recently: The Complete Peanuts Vol. 1 - Charles Schultz
From the Earth to the Moon - Jules Verne
Desert Solitaire - Edward Abbey

On going: Any old Uncle Scrooge comic I can get my hands on! (plus the new ones)

John (not Jon) Arthur

www.JonRocket.com
 
Experimental Composite Propellant (Terry McCreary)
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
Rainbox Six (Tom Clancy)
 
In a past life I was an avid reader. I haven't read a whole book in over 4 years now...

in the past, however...

Many of the startrek books way back when
All of Issac Isimov (he writes *much* more than just scifi and science)
James P Hogan Minervan Experiement (the Giants trilogy)
Ringworld
Most works by Arther C Clarke (he invented the satellite :) )
misc plays and poetry
 
I just re-read I Robot, and then saw the movie on Sunday. They were sorta related....

I have been reading the Hammer's Slammers series by David Drake recently....
 
I don't read much fiction. I tend to go through phases where I identify a subject I'm interested in and then dig in with several books until I'm satisfied. A few years ago it was the American Revolution (bad Brits...baaaaad Brits!). Then civil war. Then WWII. Then special operations forces. Then cosmology. etc., etc. Lately, for whatever reason, I've been getting into Middle East history, although early U.S. history continues to be one of my big interests.
 
Originally posted by MattEx
Experimental Composite Propellant (Terry McCreary)

Is this an interesting read? Even if, as is most likely the case, I will never make a composite motor?

Also has anyone read the new Teleflite book, or Bill Colburn's new Hybrid book?
 
Originally posted by jflis
Most works by Arther C Clarke (he invented the satellite


Jim, does he (or did he) write fiction or non-fiction? What is his best work? (I would be interested to read about satellites)
 
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