What are you currently reading?

Into Battle - A Soldier's Diary of the Great War by Sir John Glubb.

Last war book I ever intend to read.

 

^
Wow, you gonna stop reading about history?

 

No - and maybe I was premature in saying that, but this book is quite a difficult read.Harrowing. Very sad stories of young men getting killed and living under unbelievably bad conditions. I've read about it before, and I wonder if I gain anything by dwelling on all that.

I feel I should persist though, as Glubb is an author I admire as an historian, and I feel that maybe it might help me get a better sense of the experience of my own family members who were in that war.

 

To me reading about such sadness always becomes easier when it is about a time I was not alive in. I can become much more objective on the matter then as well.

 

I think stuff about WWI has some effect on me because my grandfather fought in it (would never talk about it though) and without it, my family wouldn't exist.

Also maybe these days I'm getting to the point where I just feel I've read enough about 20th c wars. Must run to tens of thousands of pages over the years, and god knows how many hours spent watching films about it all.

 

Well if you were talking about war books specifically about the world wars I can relate. I already felt like I overdosed on WW2 info in my teens (had a big interest for it as a kid that was filled in with both emerging myself in books and documentaries and by playing a lot of (allied of course ) soldier with fake guns and friends)

 

Sounds familiar :army:

Just a mention that John Glubb, who wrote this book, went on to have an illustrious military career in the middle east. He became an expert on the history of the Arabs. His book 'The Life and Times of Muhammed' is about the best account I've read of the rise of Islam.

 

That sounds more like my kind of stuff these days too, thanks for noticing that book

 

Re-started "Rabbit, Run" by John Updike. I read about half several years ago and put it down, never to be seen again. I found it when I moved, so started from the beginning.

Also just started "The Body" by Stephen King, aka the novel on which the movie Stand by Me is based. It's difficult to read it without imagining little fat Bradley Cooper and Corey Feldman and River Phoenix and the other dude.

 

Just to prove myself wrong about war books, this is the latest

 

I just finished reading The Color Purple by Alice Walker. I found it to be a very cleverly, well-written novel, but quite different from what I expected, having seen the movie several times. I want to read her other work now.

I'm now reading Mama Flora's Family by Alex Haley and David Stevens. I'm already hooked.

 

Fascinating stuff.

 

I read it as The science and music of Dr. Dre at first instance :-D

 

Did you ever see the film 'Excalibur'? - seems the image they gave Merlin was based on that portrait of Dee.

Anyway just for clarity's sake, the book is written as a history - it's not an 'occult' book as such, although of course a lot of occult ideas in there.

 

Haven't seen that one, nope. I did see a mini series called Merlin with a small role for Rutger Hauer :-D And the disney movie of course!

I already assumed the book was more historic than purely occult (not sure why though ), seems fun and intriguing!

 

The movie dates from the 80's - it's a quite good version of the Arthurian Legends (some of them anyway).

 

Grey EL JAMES fifty shades of Grey as told by Christian

 

[SIZE=16pt]A snippet of the John Varley book I’m reading now…. [/SIZE]


[SIZE=16pt]Two octillion tons (2 times 10/27) times one hundred sextillion stars (10/23) equals two hundred quindecillion tons 2 times (10/50), the mass of all the stars in the observable universe. You can throw out all the planets, asteroids, comets, and such and not affect the final total much; it’s like tossing in a couple pennies in a bucket of hundred-dollar coins. ( There’s also a hell of a lot of neutrinos, but let’s not go there, I don’t like neutrinos; their very existence offends me.) I like to write out numbers like that, because it gives me a better sense of just how huge they are. Two hundred quindecillion looks like this….[/SIZE]

[SIZE=16pt]200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000[/SIZE]

[SIZE=16pt]That’s the mass of all the stars there are, and it seems like so much. It sounds pretty crowded too, but it’s not. You could travel almost eternally through it at the speed of light and your chances of hitting a star would be virtually zero.[/SIZE]