What are we reading?

[Gusington]

Sign with a quill, for authenticity.

[bob48]

...extra 5 dolla...........

[mirth]

Gus can't spare $5. He needs every penny for TW: Warhammer.

[bob48]

You mean he's a little short right now?

...OK, 4.50.

[BanzaiCat]

I've been reading a little here and there. Usually I get in about 30 minutes, tops, just before bed, but I've been struggling to find something decent and keep jumping around.

Snow Crash continues to get my attention off and on. Although, my latest quit from this odd hodgepodge of futurepunk type fiction was over the main character having a LONG, LONG, LONG and utterly dull discussion about religion with an A.I. librarian. Holy hell it just NEVER ended. Maybe I'll try again sometime.

Trying to read through Red Hope: A Modern Day Adventure Technothriller by John Dreese. The premise was interesting - Curiosity finds a fossil on Mars, a crash Mars mission is implemented...but I'm having problems with it. The civvie that built the rocket engines (which are some fictional new technology where they run forever and use very little gas) that push them to Mars in one month (yes, one) gets to be one of the four crew members. But he has severe claustrophobia. He blackmailed NASA to let him go along or he'd withhold the tech. This, after he screwed the Russian space program by backing out of a deal and not repaying the 20 million he received for it. How he avoids getting killed by the Putin assassins is beyond me, but apparently all is well because NASA is threatened to have all access to their Soyuz rockets for trips to the Space Station removed, because of the back-out deal, but only if they take a cosmonaut with them. The other two are just generally bad characters, but astronauts apparently. You'd think the author would kind of indicate some adeptness at astronauting by the characters in his book, but they're constantly doing stupid things (oops, I forgot to ground the ship! oops, I forgot NASA was calling us!). They just seem like a bunch of amateurs, though the mission commander is a veteran of a Shuttle mission. He doesn't act the part, though. I'm losing my buy-in to this book fast and I'm about 60% through the book (they just landed on Mars). I might stick around for a bit longer, but I can't stand stuff like this - it takes me out of the story.

[veb_yw]

Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson

[MetalDog]

Awesome book.  First time?

[mirth]

Holy crap. That book's a classic.

[veb_yw]

Yes, first time with Battle Cry! The book is great although the maps are too small so it is difficult to follow the battles.

[bbmike]

I won a copy of that way back when Sid Meier released Gettysburg. Sadly it wasn't signed.

[bob48]

Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson

Excellent book. I've read it maybe 3 times.

[mirth]

Re-read Jurassic Park this weekend. First time in 20-plus years that I've read it. Terrific book. Perfect summer read.

[JasonPratt]

Even his own The Lost World wasn't too bad, although I only recall that it wasn't too bad -- so I must have only read it once, then had all memory obliterated by the movie (for better and/or for worse).

[JasonPratt]

Speaking of dinosaurs (sort of, maybe, or maybe giant prehistoric seals) in the (sort of) modern world, I'm currently scanning through Oudemans' The Great Sea Serpent. Originally published back in the late 1800s (this is a modern hardback reprint), the author is a naturalist who has done his best to collect all printed accounts up to that date of animals thought to be a giant sea-serpent, and then collate them in chronological order, with reports he deems mistakes or frauds excerpted in their own category.

Keeping in mind further variances for mistaken details in the accounts -- which also involves him explaining away some variant details or lacks of them to theorize how the accounts can fit his theory -- he infers from the majority of reports, the existence, not of a reptile or living dinosaur (although he isn't against the idea of living prehistoric animals, he just doesn't think the accounts as a majority point that way), but of a pretty dang freaky seal or sea lion species with a super-long neck, body, and tail (as distinct parts, unlike serpents). Possibly still prehistoric of course, from the age of giant mammals.

One of the things that struck me while reading it, which I'm surprised the author hasn't mentioned yet (although he might still do so in his concluding chapters), is that his collected descriptions of how the animal moves (undulating up and down like other water-going mammals) and its mane (for some animals) and eyebrows and whiskers and large eyes, plus its small four fins, synch up very well with Asian notions of sea (and sky?) dragons, even down to modern day art -- although they don't tend to represent a proper difference in the body per se compared to the neck and tail.

[mirth]

Even his own The Lost World wasn't too bad, although I only recall that it wasn't too bad -- so I must have only read it once, then had all memory obliterated by the movie (for better and/or for worse).

Didn't read it. The only sequel that Crichton ever wrote. Spielberg talked him into it.