What books are you reading (or listening to?)

Hickey said:
If you liked the Terminal List, you would probably love the Mitch Rapp series by Vince Flynn. The Audible version is fantastic.
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George Guidall is tied for first place as favorite reader. RC Bray is the other. Mitch Rapp books are excellent. @cruiseroutfit have you read/listened to The Martian? It is a great book that is soooo much better than the movie. Lots of good detailed engineering data that makes sense.
 
RockChucker said:
George Guidall is tied for first place as favorite reader. RC Bray is the other. Mitch Rapp books are excellent. @cruiseroutfit have you read/listened to The Martian? It is a great book that is soooo much better than the movie. Lots of good detailed engineering data that makes sense.
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The Martian is a great book. That authors latest book “Project Hail Mary” is just as good, maybe better.
 
RockChucker said:
George Guidall is tied for first place as favorite reader. RC Bray is the other. Mitch Rapp books are excellent. @cruiseroutfit have you read/listened to The Martian? It is a great book that is soooo much better than the movie. Lots of good detailed engineering data that makes sense.
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I have not. I'll check it out.


This thread has already given me some great stuff to read or listen to! 😎
 
If any of you have watched “The Last Kingdom” series, the books it was based on were written by Bernard Cornwell. It’s definitely not my favorite series by him. A much better series is his King Arthur series.

Cornwell is a Historical Fiction master. He researches his material intensely. “The Winter King” is one of my most favorite novels ever. He tells the King Arthur story from a very different viewpoint, the viewpoint of one of Arthur’s warlords. The series is more about that warlord’s life, but you can’t tell his story without leaving the Arthur out.
If you enjoyed “The Last Kingdom” then you’ll probably enjoy this series.
 
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I finished "It Took Heroes" last night. Not an easy read but definitely worth discussing. Newby is a good writer. He's a bit matter of fact about relaying his journal entries. He's an LDS chaplain and talks a bit about theology but the story would be worth reading just to get the perspective of an infantry man.

I don't think the religion gets in the way but I'm very biased because of my religious beliefs and I know the author. I had to put the book down a few times to reflect on the infantryman and the politicians that sit in cozy DC. (That perspective is NOT in the book at all). Newby does NOT sugar coat at all the experiences of the infantryman. The facts are presented and you digest them.

Newby leaves his family (oldest son is 11 when he leaves on the first tour) and serves two tours as a chaplain. Being that he was an experienced infantryman, he takes the chaplain role pretty seriously. Spending time in fox holes and being a medic. This puts him in harms way a LOT. Worth my time to read
 
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We are cleaning my grandmothers house out after her recent passing. Her husband was an avid reader. I found these two in his collection. When I was a teenager I read Walden several times. He and I discussed this books and it's concepts at length many times. I'm stoked to have this copy.
The beaver county history is also cool . My grandmother was born and raised in Beaver. Lots of cool history in the few minutes I've scanned it.

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I’m not really one who sets aside time for reading a physical book. My mind tends to wander as I read the text and I find that I’ve mindlessly turned the physical page without really retaining any of the words my eyes read.

I have had better success with audiobooks during road-trips or driving for work when that was what I did.

I don’t think I’ve read a physical book since high school, and even then it was only because it was a required task.

I have been taking up interest in arduinos and automation control lately. YouTube University has been great in this but I really want to further understand the terminology and hopefully the programming aspects of arduinos, so for the first time in an undefinable amount of time I have bought a physical book.

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I finished all the Musketeer cycle of books finally. A multiple year listen as they are thousand + hour listen type stuff.

I'm listening to the second book in "The Reincarnationist Papers" series "The Cognimina Codex" (it just came out). (The 1st book inspired the fair to middling movie "Infinite" with Mark Wahlberg.)
The books however are excellent.
 
nnnnnate said:
It was depressing. When I finished it I told my wife it made me mad. She was like, that's how it's always been. (She is half Navajo.)

So another question, are you heavy readers just going nuts at the library or are you reading ebooks or what? I looked up empire of the summer moon and there are 70 holds on it in SLCO. The river of doubt had several holds as well. Are you guys just patient or are you buying books?

I don't know that I'm super interested in the "self help" type books. Maybe that term is degrading, and I don't mean it that way, but books like prepared or the 10 traits of a successful person, or how to think your way out of a box type books. I'm more into history or maybe historic fiction. Something to keep my ADD brain from wandering too much. I know the classics are going to be at the library, and my wife has a lot of them already.
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If you like historic fiction, I really enjoyed Ken Follet's Century Trilogy. Fall of Giants, Winter of the World, & Edge of Eternity. If you are familiar with Ken Follett's series, you will understand. It follows 3 generations (1 each book) of various families in different parts of the world during the 20th century. Book 1 Fall of Giants is about the time frame around WWI. Book 2, Winter of the World is around WWII. Book 3 goes longer, is more from the Cold War until 2008. Loved the series enough that I read his 2 others (Kingsbridge trilogy and Pillars of the Earth trilogy)

As for my reading...it's nothing like most of your guys (at least what you listed) I tend to stick to fiction, but through in some non-fiction here and there (I like Gladwell) Atlas Shrugged is probably my all time favorite book. I liked and related to The Fountainhead, but Atlas was much better.

I recently finished Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollett which I liked....didn't even know it was about him. I also like Terminal List.

Back in the day was a HUGE John Grisham fan. I read every book of his up through the Painted House. After that I stopped because they were all a bit too similar, but still LOVE A Time to Kill.

I also tend to like WWII historical fictions.

All the Light We Cannot See
The Last Green Valley (not fiction, but reads like it)
Beneath a Scarlet Sky
The Book Thief
 
School started back up for me so leisure reading has slowed way down. I've got to read 120 pages in an intro cloud technology text book this week. Not my preferred material.

I did read a couple free chapters of Endurance last week and really liked it. So far I've been able to hold off getting it so I can focus on school but I almost bought it yesterday.
 
I took the family out to Usana again last night.

‘Falling in Reverse’ was awesome! That guy has some serious range of voice and capabilities. Not many bands start out as as metal core and expand into rap, pop, punk. So awesome I’ll definitely go see them again.

‘Avenged Sevenfold’ was the headliner and reason I wanted to go. I love these guys, especially their insane guitar duets. Unfortunately their sound wasn’t mixed well and the performance was kinda lame. Not interested in seeing them live again.
 
nnnnnate said:
School started back up for me so leisure reading has slowed way down. I've got to read 120 pages in an intro cloud technology text book this week. Not my preferred material.

I did read a couple free chapters of Endurance last week and really liked it. So far I've been able to hold off getting it so I can focus on school but I almost bought it yesterday.
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I didn’t realize you were doing school, whatcha up to?
 
cruiseroutfit said:
I didn’t realize you were doing school, whatcha up to?
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I've been doing school off and on for a while. Currently working on a sys admin degree through ensign college. I finish an associate in 2013 and could be finished with this 4 year degree end of 2024 if I keep up my couple or three classes a semester. Work is footing the bill so it's fairly low stakes. The time is what's more difficult to find.
 
Tonkaman said:
I took the family out to Usana again last night.

‘Falling in Reverse’ was awesome! That guy has some serious range of voice and capabilities. Not many bands start out as as metal core and expand into rap, pop, punk. So awesome I’ll definitely go see them again.

‘Avenged Sevenfold’ was the headliner and reason I wanted to go. I love these guys, especially their insane guitar duets. Unfortunately their sound wasn’t mixed well and the performance was kinda lame. Not interested in seeing them live again.
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I wasn’t overly impressed with A7X live either.
 
I've had a little break from school this week and have almost finished reading "Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations" by Ronen Bergman. Its long (600+ pages) but basically starts in the 1940's and goes up to today talking about the methods and discussions that have taken place with "targeted assassinations" of the enemies of Israel and I guess Jews in general throughout the world. One of the real interesting things to me is how technological advancement has changed their targeting and ability to coordinate these efforts over time.

Not that any of you would know this but a ton of digital forensic tools have been developed by Israelis. Specifically cell phone tools to crack and decrypt the data on them. I am familiar with these tools through work and knew essentially where the tools came from but reading the context of Israel in the book fills in a lot of the blanks as to why the tools were needed in the first place.

The author is an investigative journalist from Israel and has a few other books too. I'm interested in reading "The Secret War With Iran: The 30 year clandestine struggle against the worlds most dangerous terrorist power" but the library doesn't have it so it might be a bit before I get to it. Rise and Kill First was at the county library and I think there is an Overdrive version too with audio if thats your thing.

This book was suggested by the Martyr Made podcast guy in a substack post where he was giving a list of his sources used for his Israel series.
 
I finished East of Eden over the weekend. I’ve been thinking about it since then and still can’t figure out why you all think it’s so great. I mean, the guy can write a good story and string you along, but what’s the point? Everyone has evil in them and you can’t do anything about it? We are bound to repeat the lives of our past relatives?

I’d like an essay on the book by someone on here please. Your deadline is a week.

I’m still looking for my next book. I’ve had a couple of false starts but nothing has stuck yet.
 
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