1886 réponses à ce sujet

[The Uncanny]

 

What do you think, mouse? Does the prose form work? I'd quite like to read the She-Hulk one.

[mousestalker]

What do you think, mouse? Does the prose form work? I'd quite like to read the She-Hulk one.

I just started it, so I'm undecided about this one. The She-Hulk one was a delight, funny and exciting with excellent characters.

[Jorji Costava]

Parfit is great. Have you read Reasons and Persons?

 

Yes I have; it's a landmark text in the field, and deservedly so. The great thing about Parfit for me is that whether or not I agree with him about any given issue, reading what he has to say about it helps clarify my own thinking tremendously.

[The Uncanny]

[LadyJaneGrey]

Leaving China: An Artist Paints His WWII Childhood by James McMullan

Pure Grit: How American World War II Nurses Survived Battle and Prison Camp in the Pacific by Mary Cronk Farrell

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman

Richard III by Shakespeare

various plays of Noel Coward

 

During the odd moments I'm not being asked to read It's Pumpkin Day Mouse, One Duck Stuck, or one of the Duck & Goose series.

[Aimi]

Talking with some friends back home rekindled a bit of interest in classical history. I'll never be a classicist, but so long as I don't have to actually speak Greek or Latin, I can fake it reasonably well with the avalanche of monographs I'm reading now.

Currently on Seleukos Nikator by John Grainger. Grainger is a pretty good writer - a little more chummy in his writing than I might otherwise like, but usually solid analysis. He also has an excellent command of his sources, drawing from Roman writers, the infamous Diodoros, archaeology, and epigraphy with equal facility. He also injects a hefty dose of cynicism into his source criticism, which is always welcome. Doesn't always escape the ancient historian's traps - hagiography, judgment calls, and coulda-shoulda-woulda alternate history - but in small enough doses those are endearing anyway. The book is nearly twenty-five years old and still holds up reasonably well.

I also have The Age of Titans by William Murray (a study of Hellenistic naval warfare) and Land of the Elephant Kings by Paul Kosmin (a look at Seleukid "space, territory, and ideology") ready for later.

[The Uncanny]

[mousestalker]

I started this three years ago and wound up putting it to one side. Now I'm trying it again.

[Liadan]

The 3rd book of the Shadowfell trilogy:

 

[Tel]

[Johnnie Walker]

[ObserverStatus]

[Funkcase]

I'm currently reading three awesome books.

 

I was lucky enough to get a signed copy!

 

I'm not far into this, but it's marvellous so far.

 

Murakami is my favourite writer, and this is probably one of his best.

 

 

 

On another note, have we got a Bioware bookclub group? I think it'll be great fun for us to have one. =)

[Halfdan The Menace]

[SwobyJ]

Freaky covers, guys.

 

[mousestalker]

[Liadan]

[De1ta0m3ga]

[ZeroPhoenix94]

Right now I'm halfway through Louis L'Amour's Utah Blaine, then I'm going to tackle either Dragon Age: Asunder or Resident Evil: Underworld.

[Straw Nihilist]

 

 

This mother fucker is not translation compatible. Heard it all rhymes in Italian, now that's amazing... given the length. 

[Aimi]

Off the back of my classical history binge, I'm diving into the First World War. Again.

Today's book is Geoffrey Wawro's A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire. I'm about halfway through, and so far I have very mixed feelings.

Geoff Wawro is, for lack of a better word, a very important historian of the Habsburg military. He's right up there with Deák and Rothenberg; his work on Habsburg military administration and politics - and, inevitably, corruption - was a fantastically well-researched field-changer. I think he's very good at what he does, and his command of the sources and of Habsburg imperial history is virtually unmatched.

My problem with his books always arises when it's time to compare the Habsburg military and its competition, though. He does a spectacular job comprehensively excoriating Habsburg officials and leaders for their often monumental incompetence. In emphasizing these blunders, he is not wrong. But this portrait is often a tendentious one. Wawro sometimes leaves out information that would mitigate how stupid the Habsburg Empire looks. And he rarely considers the monumental blunders made by virtually every contemporary state. The Habsburgs often screwed up, yes; so did their allies and rivals. Many of the military campaigns he examines were very close-run things all the same, liable to have gone Austria's way with a flip of the coin.

Leaving much of the analysis aside, however, a comprehensive, up-to-date, and accessible narrative of Austria-Hungary's campaigns in 1914 is more than welcome. I have enjoyed the book - even if I sometimes cringe at his style.

What with all the academic history I've read over the summer, I feel this clip is appropriate:


 

Freaky covers, guys.
 
[the cover of Hyperion]

That and its sequel are two of my very favorite novels ever. (Ilium and Olympos, by the same author, are also very good.) But I agree: the Shrike is generally pretty freaky, and the landship is also freaky with a lot of whimsical mixed in.

[AtreiyaN7]

Kind of in the middle of studying kanji, so I haven't really been getting any fiction reading done lately. I keep meaning to get around to:

 

 

and

 

[President of Boom]

Rereading the Discworld series for the 7539th time.

As a side note, if I had children, I would sell them for these leather-bound babies: