Mission Compromised - Oliver North (yes really. It's a surprisingly good thriller/mystery/spy novel. Of course, he had help. And made himself a (minor) character in his own novel)

I've been reading too much heavy shit lately, wanted something that wouldn't tax the cranium so much.

i just read the 1st book of the wheel of time and based upon this thread and the general feeling i got from book one, i don't think i'll finish the series(even though i bought book 2 and misplaced it). I remember noticing that he wastes time on the details of traveling far too frequently...I think he was trying to follow tolkeins formula, but the characters are not as charasmatic or exciting.

On the other hand i also just read "Lamb". What a great book! It's written from the perspective of "Biff", Christ's best friend, and addresses the missing 30 yrs of Jesus' early life. hysterical. Highly recommended reading. 84 thumbs up, as my son would say.

i have had countless friends and one exhusband who raved about the wheel of time series...given that it had so much...enthusiasm placed upon it i tried valiantly to force my way through the first book to no avail.....i don't know how many times i have heard, "ah, if you just finish the first one you will see", i don't really care. i don't like to be bored. if a book doesn't grab me by the first 300 pages- guess what? it just gets added to the stacks of books littering my house never to be heard from again. i was a huge fan of the sword of truth series by terry goodkind but i found the same problem as i tried to read the 8th book 'a naked....somethingorother'. just dull, dull, dull.

      The problem I had with the "Wheel of Time" series is that it takes three books to cover three chapters worth of actuall events. It's annoying. Mostly since a lot of 'major events' become meaningless. Like a couple of major villians get knocked off and you think, "okay, two down." Then they get brought back. Useless waste of a few thousand pages...
      I recently read William Peter Blatty's "Legion." Loved it. Of course I tend to like stories with the good guys that are out of their league, in the "No, they really can't win" kind of way. Good stuff.
      I've liked all Ayn Rand's fiction, but don't read "We the Living." Not unless you've been happy for to long and are ready for a little depression.

I've stayed away from "We the Living" myself, but I've read the fountainhead twice. I enjoyed atlas shrugged except for the ending. The long narrative from John Galt at the end got a bit much (I think it was him) and put it down with a few pages left to read

Rand actually has the honors of being my favorite book quote. When Howard Roark replied to Tooheys' question of what he thought of him in the fountainhead. "But I don't think of you". Quite possibly the best line in written history. (At least in my mind :D)

Bad Blood: Crisis in the American Red Cross
by Judith Reitman

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...16614?v=glance

Currently....

Edward Debono - I am right, you are wrong
95% - slow read

Edward Debono - Serious Creativity
90% slow read

D Chu - Explosive Power & Strength - Complex Traing for maximum results
decent - 80%

T Baechile, B Groves - Weight Training Steps to Success
decent - 80%

J. Carr - RF Circuits
30% - very technical slow read

Recently

Edward Debono - Sur/Petition
Good- but slow reading

Anyn Rand - The Fountainhead
Excellent but long

Farenheit 451 is an excellent read. It's getting more and more relevant.

The stack next to my bed:
Nostromo, Joseph Conrad
Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Roberto Calasso
Winterhawk, Craig Thomas

Joseph Conrad, in Nostromo anyway, is like a huge biscuit of shredded wheat. I need to just sit down and make one night a week readin' night. No TV, no Internet.

I've actually been thinking about doing more book reading...now if I would just drag my sorry ass up the street to the library...

      Yeah, I liked that, not quite as much as when Galt started talking the idiot bastards through the process of fixing the turture machine in Atlas Shrugged. Oh, yeah the Galt narrative was way to much like reading her non-fiction stuff. Save it for non-fiction books, I say. Really drags down the storyline.

Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk

(This is a very strange and disturbed man. I'm only about 5 chapters into the book so far, and the plot has taken some really dramatic twists, even for one of his books. Oh, and if you haven't read it, you need to read Fight Club, even if you've already seen the movie, especially if you haven't.)

i'm on the fourth Harry Potter book. I started reading them a couple of weeks ago, because I wanted to see what all the hype was. I don't really feel like finishing it.

If you like King Arthur stories:

Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King.

this is an alternative viewpoint like the mists of Avalon, but written from the eyes of Derfel, one of his knights. The author bases his story on true events and battles, and it makes a lot more sense than the fairy tale type story we've seen on tv and in movies. Plus, it is written very well, and moves at a nice pace.

8.5/10

the sequels are just as good.

Sword of truth series.

A little preachy, but good readin'.

Just finished Wolves of the Calla. I dearly love the gunslinger series and am so relieved that Stephen King has them all finished. Now I can stop praying for his health every night.

Just another thing off my list.

Sword of Truth is getting a lot preachy recently...

Anyway, I just finished reading "What Liberal Media?" by Eric Alterman. It was pretty good, but I think I'm overwhelmed by the number of recent political books, so I'm now reading "Wasp" by Eric Frank Russel and "Sandman: King of Dreams" by Alisa Kwitney.

"What Liberal Media?" was pretty depressing, especially the last chapter, on Richard Mellon Scaife. I was reading it just as the news broke about Soros donating to liberal causes, and I listened with disbelief as people like O'Reilly screamed about it. Just a bit of interesting timing there.

"Wasp" is a lighthearted science fiction book apparently about a terrorist in an interplanetary war. I'm not too far into it.

"Sandman: King of Dreams" is essentially a summary/retrospective on Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic book. It's a beautiful coffee-table style book with tons of art from the comic and other related work.

Next up: Another book by the author of "Wasp", and then a translation of "Arabian Nights".