Book Thread

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Comments

  • I recently read the Malus Darkblade books Volume 1 and 2. Both based in the Warhammer Fantasy universe and they are VERY good. Based on a sadistic dark elf who gets tainted by a daemon and must find five relics in a year to save his soul and gets up to all sorts of stuff from start to finish so it really keeps you hooked on it.

  • I am currently reading The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America by Walter Borneman. A very detailed book, and well written. If you're a history nerd or reenactor like me, you'd do well to check it out. It's good for beginners as well as the more dedicated person. :D

  • edited June 2016

    My favourites, in no particular order:

    less than zero(bret easton ellis)

    the picture of dorian gray (oscar wilde)

    doors of perception (aldous huxley)

    infinite jest (david foster wallace)

    neuromancer (william gibson)

    the rum diary (hunter s. thompson)

    starship troopers (robert heinlein)

    drive(james sallis)

    dune(frank herbert)

    the wild boys(william s. burroughs)

    kill your friends(john niven)

    deus irae(philip k. dick)

    the man who was thursday (g.k. chesterton)

    roadside picnic (strugatsky)

    heart of darkness (conrad)

    Recently re-read Vonnegut's excellent short story "HARRISON BERGERON" (link to read it).

  • Big up Kear's list, but I add to the pile

    The Crying of Lot 49 - Pynchon

    The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway
    Collected Poetry of T.S. Eliot

    Good Morning, Midnight - Jean Rhys

    A Scanner Darkly - P.K. Dick

    Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West - Cormac McCarthy

    Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
    Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney

    Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

    Goodbye to All That - Robert Graves

    The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

    The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster

    Train Dreams - Denis Johnson

    Any Raymond Carver short story
    and

    The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe

  • @PFC Asboe said:
    I am currently reading a collection of Danish soldier letters from World War One. It is letters written by danish soldiers fighting in the Canandian, Americane, British, russian or in the French "Légion Étrangère." I just felt over it when I was at the liberay last.

    This one sounds really cool, could I have the name of this book please?

    @2Lt. Fritz said:
    I'm slowly going through "The War of the Austrian Succession" by Reed Browning. Reed himself is a retried professor.

    One of those books that I would love to own, but they cost a small fortune to get here. Most of my books are bought used in what is basically charity organisation thrift shops (so old books that old people don't want anymore usually).

    Other than that, the one's I'm currently reading are:
    Some general history book
    Culture of Complaint - The Fraying of America
    Krigen - Anden Verdenskrig (The War - World War II, big old tome of a book)
    Blood Song

    I also got a guide to Dothraki (Living Language Dothraki) for my birthday so kind of doing that as well.
    Just for the record I actually own a copy of the Koran in Danish, mainly for use in discussion and religious study (as a hobby). It's a very weird and tedious read (in my opinion) though, personally would not recommend.

  • Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett, one of the greatest fantasy authors.

  • Currently I'm reading Generation Kill from Evan Wright, it's a really great book, I love the series based on it and this book is really like an extended version of the series with more from everything. It's written in a great style, it's really readable and easy to understand even if your English is a bit weaker. I recommend this to everyone who liked the HBO series but hasn't checked out the book so far and well to everyone else who was unfamiliar with the topic but likes history in general. And well this story is amazing anyways. :)

    Once I'm done with this book I'll read Armored Thunderbolt: The U.S. Army Sherman in World War II from the tank-God, Steven J. Zaloga, because one can never read enough about tanks.

    I have two more books on order:

    • The Fastest Show on Earth: The Mammoth Book of Formula 1 by Chicane
    • Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 by the famous historian, Christopher Clark
  • A good thread resurrection!

    Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination - grandfather of modern sci-fi (assuming Jules Verne is great grandpa)

    JG Ballard - Concrete Island, Super Cannes, The Unlimited Dream Company, High Rise, Crash

    Yamomoto Tsunetomo - Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

    Conn Iggulden did a good pulpy book series called Conqueror on the Khans of Mongolia starting with Wolf On the Plains. I recommend it! A good read and pretty well researched.

  • edited June 2016

    I fully recommend the aforemented book and HBO TV-Series (PFC Sánta´s).

    But, if you are into European Literature, apart from Mann´s "Death in Venice", "The Magic Mountain" and Céline´s "Journey to the End of the Night" (Wonderfully written, exceptional), a writer that you should really discover (and discovered, on this same year), is Heinrich Böll.

    Damn, this guy is good. Even though I´ve readen his books in Spanish, I´m pretty sure they will be as good as in the English Translation.

    Check these:

    • The Clown ("Ansichten eines Clowns")
    • Billiards at Half-past Nine
    • Group Portrait with Lady

    And tell me. Hit me up on Steam. I´m sure you´ll love them. Also, I got a couple of Gunther Grass books ready for this summer.

  • I recently bought Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse so I'll be reading that very soon.

  • I'm reading War and Peace, which is super long but the characters are so well fleshed out and have interesting arcs throughout the book. Since it's so long, I've taken breaks at some parts to read others, so I'm currently in the middle of The Once and Future King, which is an interesting book so far.

  • Alternating between Franz Kafka short stories, the short story collection Burning Chrome by William Gibson, and soon I'm going to start VALIS by Philip K Dick

  • The Sword of Truth series was a good read for myself at one stage when my dad handed them to me because I was going through a crazy reading phase, but I got bored eventually as I felt the writer was dragging it on.

    At the moment I'm also reading the Gotrek and Felix novels and so far I'm on the sixth book in the series, Vampireslayer. Very good reads and lots of violence.

  • Got myself into "The Last Wish" by Andrzej Sapkowski. If you played the Witcher games and are fascinated by the world like myself, pick up the books and learn the backstories to get more immersed!

  • edited March 2017

    Recently finished a pleasant re-read of 'Flowers for Algernon' (Daniel Keyes); I plan on finally finding the time to finish 'We' (Yevgeny Zamyatin), but keep getting sidetracked by 'Dorian' (Will Self).

  • @Sgt. Kear

    There is and can be only one Dorian.

  • edited March 2017

    @Cpt. Fritz said:
    @Sgt. Kear

    There is and can be only one Dorian.

    Agreed, it's often subtitled 'Dorian: an imitation' for that reason; it's got heavy vibes from the 80s cult classic Withnail & I, which is partly why I keep getting waylaid by it.

  • I'm currently reading "Mourir à Berlin" (Dying in Berlin) from Jean Mabire, sadly this book hasn't been translated in english so far so it can only interest french speakers. It's the third book of a trilogy about the 33rd Waffen-SS Grenadier-Division 'Charlemagne', the french volunteers's division from 1943 to 1945.

    I've been through the others 2 books of the trilogy (also only in french sadly) that are "La brigade Frankreich", which relate the formation of the division, and "La Division Charlemagne" that deals with the battle of Pomerania.

    I strongly recommand this trilogy to any french speaker interested by the subject, it's very well detailed and captivating.

    Other than that, I recently read "The forgotten soldier" by Guy Sajer, it's the true story of the author, the book relates the story of a 16 yo french boy from Alsace that gets incorporated in the Wehrmacht after the battle of France (when Alsace and Moselle were claimed by Germany) and explains his whole deployment from his basic training to a frontline unit in the Großdeutschland Division on the eastern front. This book truly is fascinating till the end as it explores all the things that come through a soldier's head on the frontline, all his feelings and emotions are depicted, cold, hunger, fever, sadness and fear. it also got advised as a good read by U.S. Army Command and General Staff College as an example of the things that you can go through during a high-intensity war.

    I would compare this book to "With the Old Breed" from Eugene Sledge about the pacific front, this book inspired the HBO serie "The Pacific" where Sledge is a character. A good read as well.

    Then there's another french-only book "Invasion: le débarquement en Normandie vu par les allemands" (Invasion: D-Day seen by the germans), this book is about the preparation, the response and the consequences of D-Day on the german point of view, it's not as interesting as the other books since it covers events on the general staff level and the effects on the german morale but still a good read, definitely worth it.

    Other interesting books are Erwin Rommel's "Infanterie greift an" (infantry attacks) and "Krieg ohne Haß" (war without hatred), these are classics, I know he wrote other books but these are the only ones I read.

    That's about it for now, I highly recommand all these books to anyone interested by World War 2 in general!

  • Chaos by James Gleick, an introduction to chaos theory.

  • Woah. Missed this thread completely.

    Haven't been reading anything lately, but I'll put down my favorites - both from childhood and now. Not in order, of course.

    Being - Kevin Brooks
    Sharpe novels - Bernard Cornwell
    Gone - Michael Grant
    Undercover - Joe Carter
    Little Black Lies - Sharon Bolton
    Private Peaceful - Michael Morpurgo
    War Horse - Michael Morpurgo
    Sparrow - Michael Morpurgo
    Buddy - Nigel Hinton
    Kensuke's Kingdom - Michael Morpurgo
    Toro! Toro! - Michael Morpurgo

    Also once read a diary of a WW1 soldier. Barroux found it, illustrated it and released it to the public. The diary begins in 1914 and ends in 1917. Never get to know what happened to the soldier, but his story is interesting. It's titled 'Line of Fire'.

  • my book colection

    British Motor Torpedo Boat 1939-45
    British Aircraft Carriers 1939-45
    British and Commonwealth Warship Camouflage of WWII: Battleships and Aircraft Carriers
    German Commerce Raiders 1914–18
    Commonwealth Cruisers 1939–45
    The Wolf: The Mystery Raider That Terrorized The Seas During World War I
    Strategy: Second Revised Edition
    Gentlemen of War
    U.S. Army Improvised Munitions Handbook
    U.S. Army Guide to Boobytraps
    British Battlecruiser vs German Battlecruiser: 1914–16

    the gentlemen of war with depicts the story of karl von muller and the S M S Emden is my favorite by far.
    I am looking for a book on the SMS Seeadler (Sea eagle) Cpt felix von luckner.

  • For a cool mix of adventure and surrealism, read Jules Verne, anything really.

  • edited April 2017

    False Gods, by Graham McNeill, part of the Horus Heresy novel series. Very tragic, if you know the lore of Warhammer 40k.

  • edited October 2017

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    Just about to finish The Potsdam Führer: Frederick William I, Father of Prussian Militarism, a book written by Dr. Robert Ergang, a now deceased historian who taught at New York University. The book is a fairly interesting analysis of the life of Frederick William I, the father of Frederick the Great and the man many attributed to the professionalization and disciplined nature of the Prussia army of the 18th century.

    The book was written in 1941 which technically would place it as outdated in terms of historiography and research, however seeing that the topic of Prussia isn't a primary focus anymore for historians, it can still be used for fact checking and getting a better grasp of the history of Prussia during its formative years as a monarchical state. Being written in 1941, the book tend to place Prussian militarism in a World War 1 and 2 pretext, painting an opinionated analysis of both Frederick William I himself and that of the Prussian State, however Robert Ergang does convey an informative history without juxtaposing too much time period political outlook. There's a lot of information on Frederick William's formative years as a youth and young king, as well as how he transforms the Prussian state into a well oiled bureaucratic machine that was a European model for its time.

    I'd highly recommend it if you're interested in Frederick II or Prussia in general.

  • As for war related books I would recommend:
    "The Good Soldier Švejk" by Jaroslav Hašek. Good one about start of WWI viewed from the perspective of former Austrian soldier, somewhat spiced with cynical humor.

    "Chickenhawk" by Robert Mason - about his experience as "Huey" pilot in 1965-66 Vietnam. Would give 10/10 PTSD. Filled with parts of army humour which works as comic relief from getting all depressed.

    "Ciaphas Cain" series of books written by Sandy Mitchell about Iperial Guard comissar - who could be described as the most Heroic Coward. Grimdark Future in Wh40k, army humour/situation comedy.

  • Anything from Bernard Cornwell is a decent read. I find his "Saxon Tales"/"Saxon Chronicles" series particularly good.

  • edited November 2017

    Latest book I read was Animal Farm by Orwell and it was both really comedic at some points but it also has a very serious undertone. It's a short, satiric book that tells the story of a bunch of animals on a farm who feel mistreated by the farmer so they start a revolution to take over the farm. But if you look past the metaphores and place it in the real world, its about a communist revolution in a capitalist system. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone whether or not youre interested in politics and regardless of what "side" of politics you agree with.

  • I'm about to read The Road. Should be a nice cheerful read.

  • Just finished the first three sections of The Natural History of Religion by David Hume. Sublimely illuminating.

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