What book is everyone reading at the moment?

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I read Stranger in a Strange land, and I didn't get what the big deal was. Seemed like a bunch of hippy diatribes about "free love" and all that nonsense. Maybe it seemed groundbreaking at the time but I wasn't a fan.

I also started reading The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and while it started out ok, I had to stop after there was a seemingly unending dull explanation of lunar transportation and I couldn't continue. So that makes him 0/2 for me. I've heard lots of good things about Starship Troopers and Have Space Suit - Will Travel, so maybe I'll try those sometime.
 
tomwaits said:
I read Stranger in a Strange land, and I didn't get what the big deal was. Seemed like a bunch of hippy diatribes about "free love" and all that nonsense. Maybe it seemed groundbreaking at the time but I wasn't a fan.
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Yeah, that's about it.

I also started reading The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and while it started out ok, I had to stop after there was a seemingly unending dull explanation of lunar transportation and I couldn't continue. So that makes him 0/2 for me. I've heard lots of good things about Starship Troopers and Have Space Suit - Will Travel, so maybe I'll try those sometime.
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"Starship Troopers" is basically one long political lecture with a plot tacked on and some interesting speculations on future military tech.

"HSS-WT" is one of his juvies, so isn't bad at all.

"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is completely ludicrous and I suspect is entirely an excuse to use one single plot point, and "I Will Fear No Evil" is completely horrible from beginning to end.
 
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tomwaits said:
I read Stranger in a Strange land, and I didn't get what the big deal was. Seemed like a bunch of hippy diatribes about "free love" and all that nonsense. Maybe it seemed groundbreaking at the time but I wasn't a fan.

....
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Which is exactly why my first boyfriend gave it to me.

It didn't work.

And neither did his own poetry, begging and pleading.
 
Piscivore said:
Good for you.

Did he really think that a book that treats women as swooning, shallow, little-better-than-really-clever-talking-house-pets was going to win you over? that's just sad.
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Thanks, and yes, it was very sad. His only real excuse was that I was his first girlfriend, and he was a clueless engineering student (finished sophomore year).

I had just graduated from high school, so at least I knew what to expect in college. That helped.
 
Hydrogen Cyanide said:
Thanks, and yes, it was very sad. His only real excuse was that I was his first girlfriend, and he was a clueless engineering student (finished sophomore year).

I had just graduated from high school, so at least I knew what to expect in college. That helped.
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Are you sure that is the reason he gave you the book? I have a few friends who think that SIASL was the greatest book ever. They have recommended it to anyone who would listen, including myself.
 
Patrick O'Brian "H.M.S Surprise" is my current read. Over the summer,I finally after two and a half years finished plowing through all three of Shelby Footes Civil War series.
 
EeneyMinnieMoe said:
John Fante's Ask the Dust.

Honestly, I do not personally like it. I like it very little.

It's beloved by many people and very highly regarded so I'm probably wrong about this but I mostly just wished that Arturo Bandini would just stop and go away. :o
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I read it many years ago and didn't like it. But everyone said it was wonderful, so I felt quite stupid (I was still youngish then). Reread it last year, still didn't like it and decided not to finish it, which felt quite good.
:)

Have just started Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman. Very moving, crushing, oppressive, poetic, intelligent, beautifully written, an absolute masterpiece I think.
 
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The Ship of a Million Years, Poul Anderson. "Reading" is too comprehensive for how I'm getting through it. I sometimes skip the left-hand page, sometimes the right-hand page. Don't reckon I'm missing a thang. Great God of Spaghetti, what an awful writer.
 
I got The Book of Atheist Spirituality by Andre Comte-Sponville for my birthday. I'm reading it, but for the life of me I still can't tell what spirituality is or why it is desirable.
 
I'm halfway through 'The Last Theorem' by Arthur C Clarke & Frederick Pohl.

I'd always loved Clarke's writing and ideas - big sense of wonder and always a killer final sentence at the end of each chapter or short story.

But this is hard work. It really does look like Pohl was given Clarke's notes and has just pulled them together without fleshing them out.

I will finish it - but more out of politeness to the memory of the great man.
 
Mud, C. E. Wood, 2006. It's a brief survey of mud in military history. The style is lamentable and the pix unsatisfying, but at least it's a start on the subject. Mud is the one constant in war. "Wherever there are soldiers there is mud," as somebody or other once observed.
 
sackett said:
Mud, C. E. Wood, 2006. It's a brief survey of mud in military history. The style is lamentable and the pix unsatisfying, but at least it's a start on the subject. Mud is the one constant in war. "Wherever there are soldiers there is mud," as somebody or other once observed.
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How extraordinary, this fascination with mud. But then again, the more you know about a thing, the more interesting it becomes I guess.
:)
 
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