06-03-2023, 09:33
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#1261
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Virgin Media Employee
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Re: What are you reading?
Reading lots of books about the Gospel According to Mark to write an essay on the Feeding of the Four Thousand. It's part of my GDip in Theology.
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13-05-2023, 19:18
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#1262
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laeva recumbens anguis
Cable Forum Team
Join Date: Jun 2006
Age: 67
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Re: What are you reading?
Reading now
Adam Kay - Undoctored
Tom Hanks - The Making Of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece
Ken MacLeod - Beyond The Reach Of Earth
Justin Cronin - The Ferryman
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15-05-2023, 17:47
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#1263
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Mum 15/08/46 - 30/09/20
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Galactic Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, A secret Moonbase (shh don't tell anybody)
Age: 55
Services: 1 V6, 2x1TB TiVo, SH3. Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ 5G, Ton's of Smart Home stuff, & Cuddy Toy
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Re: What are you reading?
I see that a few here like me have lots of books.
I recommend the free app (Android, may be iPhone) called My Library (the icon has a stack of books).
You can scan the barcode, or type the ISBN.
I the book isn't in there then you can manually add the book, you can add a catorgory for each book to make a search easier.
You can export to a spreadsheet file.
I currently have 1042 books with another 600 to add, but they are pre ISBN so I will need to add all the details manually.
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I'm a Trustee & Secretary for a local charity
STAY AT HOME: I found out that mum will never walk again as the coronavirus attacked her nervous system. She died on September 30th.
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18-05-2023, 12:11
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#1264
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Virgin Media Employee
Join Date: Sep 2005
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Re: What are you reading?
I use Zotero to keep my book details in as it also produces citations for my essays. As long as you don't store extracts the free tier will work fine.
Add entries by ISBN or other references for papers, articles etc.
Use the browser plugin and if you find the title on Amazon you can add it from there.
Add articles, web pages and so on.
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I work for VMO2 but reply here in my own right. Any help or advice is made on a best-effort basis. No comments construe any obligation on VMO2 or its employees.
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06-10-2023, 16:26
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#1265
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laeva recumbens anguis
Cable Forum Team
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: What are you reading?
Recently read
Starter Villain - John Scalzi
World War 3.1 (Axis of Time series) - John Birmingham
White Sun War - Mick Ryan
Three Days in April - Edward Ashton
Exo - Steven Gould
The Dispatcher (Travel By Bullet) - John Scalzi
Mindbridge - Joe Haldeman
Reading now
Berserker - Adrian Edmondson
And Away - Bob Mortimer
Fake History - Otto English
Bournville - Jonathan Coe
Next in the TBR pile*
Fake Heroes - Otto English
The Rotters Club - Jonathan Coe
Bob Mortimer - Satsuma Complex
War Transformed - Mick Ryan
The Big Book of Cyberpunk - Jared Shurin
*virtual - all on iPad
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03-12-2023, 12:40
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#1266
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laeva recumbens anguis
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Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: What are you reading?
Recently read -
Scorpio: Frontlines Evolution* - Marko Kloos (new branch of the Frontlines series, but from a different viewpoint) - enjoyed it so much I may re-read the Frontline series.
Escape From Yokai Land - Charlie Stross
Mindbridge - Joe Haldeman (re-read)
Communications Breakdown (anthology) - edited by Jonathan Strahan
17: Last Man Standing - John Brownlow
Assassin 18 - John Brownlow
The Secret - Lee Child & Andrew Child (Reacher back on form - I gave up halfway through the previous book)
I Am Pilgrim - Terry Hayes
Legends & Lattes - Travis Baldree (not normally a fantasy fan, but enjoyed this one)
Bookshops & Bonedust - Travis Baldree
Reading now -
System Collapse - Martha Wells (Murderbot series)
Winters Gifts - Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London series)
Year of the Locust - Terry Hayes
War Bodies - Neal Asher
*Amazon First Reads, so got to read it before it’s on general release - burnt through it in a day
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10-12-2023, 01:05
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#1267
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laeva recumbens anguis
Cable Forum Team
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Re: What are you reading?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugh
Recently read -
Scorpio: Frontlines Evolution* - Marko Kloos (new branch of the Frontlines series, but from a different viewpoint) - enjoyed it so much I may re-read the Frontline series.
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And I’ve just burned through the first six books in the series, with two more to go…
(Off to a wedding in Northumberland tomorrow, Monday & Tuesday, where I’m the best man, so my reading rate may drop a bit…)
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11-12-2023, 11:58
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#1268
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Virgin Media Employee
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Re: What are you reading?
A bit of light reading for the throne room. From Nicea to Chalcedon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nicaea-Chal.../dp/0334029937
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I work for VMO2 but reply here in my own right. Any help or advice is made on a best-effort basis. No comments construe any obligation on VMO2 or its employees.
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01-05-2024, 18:23
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#1269
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laeva recumbens anguis
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Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: What are you reading?
Been reading a couple of series this year.
Slow Horses series by Mick Herron (just finishing book 8, Bad Actors)
Levon Cade series by Chuck Dixon (12 books in the series, and the first one (Levon’s Trade) is going to be filmed with Jason Statham as Levon Cade, with a script from Sylvester Stallone, directed by David Ayer (Fury, Suicide Squad, The Beekeeper, End of Watch))
Bad Times series by Chuck Dixon (six books in the series)
Others include
Storyteller’s World by Jason Lambright
Run by Blake Crouch
Into The Light by David Weber & Chris Kennedy
To Challenge Heaven by David Weber & Chris Kennedy
MaL Goes To War by Edward Ashton
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04-05-2024, 19:02
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#1271
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RIP Tigger - 12 years?!
Join Date: Jul 2005
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Re: What are you reading?
I thought I'd comment on a series I've read a lot: E.C. Tubbs' The Dumarest Saga.
Earl Dumarest is a traveller in the far future, apparently in the last stages of a far-flung galactic empire, now decaying, with no central controlling authority. Economics are much as they are today, buying and selling - and, of course, cheating and thievery. He has one objective, and only one: to find Earth and return to it. Basically, he's homesick to a degree we can hardly comprehend - even though he left Earth as a starving kid, being pursued by a mob and having no idea then what a spaceship even was.
The problem is that human influence has spread so far and wide owing to the Erhaft Drive, providing FTL, that by the time he's travelled more towards the galactic centre, Earth has long been forgotten and is thought of by most as just a myth, like El Dorado or Eden (both believed to be worlds - there are in fact at least 3 worlds called Eden). The coordinates are long since lost - and Earth itself is, as Dumarest discovers, proscribed for some reason.
But he finds clues: a rhyme concerning the Zodiac, a painting depicting Earth's Moon as he remembers it, a strip of plastic bearing a spectroscopic record which he's sure is of Sol. He makes his way doing odd jobs and, when he has to, fighting with a knife in the arena. The series is often violent, but not for the sake of it. Often he comes so very close to finding Earth, but doesn't quite manage it.
One benevolent influence is the Church of the Universal Brotherhood. The monks, based on the planet Hope, travel far and wide, doing what they can for the sick and needy, yet they can also be found in the courts and palaces of the rich and powerful. For all their mild, unassuming demeanour, the monks are a product of high technology and the Church is a power not to be messed with.
Nor is the Cyclan.
This is an organisation equally widespread in the galaxy, comprised of Cybers - men who are trained in logic and respect nothing else (no women, they're considered too irrational - ladies, DON'T FLAME ME, I didn't write the damn thing!). When young they're trained and, at a certain point in their development, operated on in such a way that they no longer feel emotion and are not subject to its distractions. They utilise logic to predict future events, and so are very valuable to leaders and businessmen.
Except that they have a hidden agenda, of which few - including Dumarest - are aware. Their intent is to take over the entire Galaxy, remodelling it to conform to purely logical goals, doing away with all inefficiency and wasteful duplication. The poor and sick (from whom acolytes are sometimes plucked to be trained as Cybers) will be eliminated. Every piece of advice they give is aimed in the long term at subjugating and ultimately conquering whomever they're advising in accordance with their Master Plan. If you invite a Cyber to advise you, then you're effectively giving your world over to domination by the Cyclan. Yet if you don't, they'll advise your competitors instead, ruining you - and ultimately taking them over instead.
They employ Central Intelligence, an organic computer composed of millions of naked Cyber brains. Freed of all bodily distractions, the brains are even more logical and efficient. They pass orders and information to the Cybers by use of the Homochon elements, a graft of alien tissue which provides ultra-fast communication and the closest thing Cybers can experience to ecstasy when they're in communion with it. Every Cyber aspires to join Central Intelligence at the end of a useful and productive life (by their standards).
A Cyclan research lab creates the Affinity Twin - this is an artificial symbiote composed of 15 molecular units. The last is either dominant or submissive, depending on its orientation in the molecule. It can be used to completely control the host, submissive body, all sensation and knowledge being ported FTL to the dominant half. With the Twin, Cybers could control rulers and managers directly, and no-one would ever know - making the Master Plan achievable in a human lifetime.
But they don't know the correct sequence of units.
Brasque, the scientist who developed it in book #4, destroyed all records and fled to Solis, his home, to give his crippled wife a new life in the young, healthy body of her servant before dying of the wounds he sustained in his escape. She acquires precognition as a side-effect of the symbiote. She meets and falls in love with Dumarest, and he with her, and before her death at Cyber Mede's hands, she passes him the secret encoded via sonic trigger in the ring she bequeaths him (she, of course, knows she's going to die) - except that at first, Dumarest doesn't know that.
Now Tubb, rest his soul, made a mistake here: Brother Jerome, the High Monk of the Universal Brotherhood, tells a grieving Dumarest that even if the Cyclan could construct and test a chain every second it would take them four thousand years to check them all - and to construct and test a chain takes a minimum of 8 hours. This is in fact incorrect - it's nearer to forty thousand years:
15! = 1,307,674,368,000 seconds. That's 21,794,572,800 minutes. 363,242,880 hours. 15,135,120 days. So 41,737.7 and a bit years.
That's constructing and testing 1 chain every second. But it takes 8 hours - so that means 1,193,405,765.9 and a bit years!
Either way, it's an eternity in human or Cyber terms - time Dumarest could save them, if they capture him and, via torture (being logical, the Cyclan is no more above torture than the sea is above the sky - they're logical and therefore utterly amoral), determine the correct sequence.
But when he discovers he has it, in the sixth book of the series, he becomes grimly determined to keep the secret out of their hands - by this time he's lost three women he'd loved (Derai in #2, Kalin in #4, Lallia in #6) at their hands and thus he hates the Cyclan and everything it stands for in his very bones. Most of the rest of the series concerns their attempts to capture him, and the various, often ingenious ways in which he frustrates them, often costing Cybers' lives.
And all the while, he's getting closer to Earth, which apparently neither the Church nor the Cyclan wants him to find...
If only they could tell his backstory properly, or write a good origin story, it'd make a brilliant Netflix or Amazon series. Adults-only, though; there's too much blood and gore for kids. Tubb wrote 33 books in total, and had intended to combine them, eliminating all repetition, in volumes. Alas, he didn't live long enough; he was born in 1919.
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WINDOWS 11, ANYONE?!
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04-05-2024, 19:44
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#1272
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laeva recumbens anguis
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Re: What are you reading?
I remember reading those in the 70’s and 80’s.
I see he passed away in 2010, so he had a good innings…
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02-07-2024, 18:12
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#1273
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laeva recumbens anguis
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Re: What are you reading?
Exodus: The Archimedes Engine, by Peter F. Hamilton.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Exodus-Arch...735f2b0&nodl=1
Managed to get hold of an ARC from NetGalley - it’s not available until 19th September 2024.
Really enjoying it, and he’s back to brick-size books - 928 pages.
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There is always light.
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If only we’re brave enough to be it.
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02-07-2024, 18:34
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#1274
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Architect of Ideas
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 10,884
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Re: What are you reading?
Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz.
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25-07-2024, 16:38
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#1275
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RIP Tigger - 12 years?!
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Bolton
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Re: What are you reading?
I've always favoured Heinlein, too. Certain of his novels are only available as audio books - The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, Stranger In A Strange Land, 'The Number Of The Beast' among others.
Plus the brilliant Have Spacesuit - Will Travel.
I discovered this at primary school as a library book...and I borrowed it for ten weeks straight. It'd make a great TV series. It's a bit of a commentary on US education in that the hero's father describes the high school course Kip's taking as "Twaddle! Beetle tracking! Occupational therapy for morons!"
To illustrate:
"Why, Dad, Center is a swell school. It's run along the latest, most scientific lines, approved by psychologists -"
"- and paying excellent salaries for a staff highly trained in modern pedagogy. Study problems emphasise practical human problems to orient the child in democratic social living, to fit him for the vital, meaningful tests of adult life in our complex modern culture. Excuse me, son; I've talked with Mr. Hanly [the principal]. Mr. Hanly is sincere - and to achieve these noble purposes we are spending more per student than is any other state save California and New York."
"Well...what's wrong with that?"
"What's a dangling participle?"
I didn't answer.
"Why did Van Buren fail of re-election? How do you extract the cube root of 87?"
English A (commonly known as Bonehead English), anyone?
In other words, they're not teaching the kids so much as keeping them busy. But with the help of some hard books, Kip takes and passes his College Boards.
And then his troubles really start...
I wish they'd publish it in Kindle. I hope they do.
Also I have David Weber's Honor Harrington books. Though she isn't tall enough, Claudia Christian could've played Honor. Certainly she was strong enough; I met her at Cult TV, and she had a hell of a grip!
Nowadays I think either Brie Larson or Gal Gadot could play her (with camera tricks to make 'em look taller). Nimitz the treecat would be a doddle with CGI. Honor really comes across as genuinely humble...but not without her flaws, as shown in The Honor Of The Queen, in which she meets a man in charge of a prison which took in 53 of Honor's people as POWs, over half of them women...and she finds only two women, both of whom have been multiply raped and savagely beaten.
She comes this close to blowing the man's head off, in direct violation of her duty and oath as a Queen's Officer, and to ending her career. Now you can't blame her for her fury at the savage treatment of the POWs; I was halfway hoping she would kill him, before one of her officers pleads with her (exerting all his strength to stop her, giving you some idea of her strength) that by law he has to have a trial.
Which he does, of course. He has his trial, fair and above board...and he is summarily, and rightfully, hanged.
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"People tend to confuse the words 'new' and 'improved'."
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WINDOWS 11, ANYONE?!
Last edited by Anonymouse; 25-07-2024 at 17:06.
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