What are we reading?

[OJsDad]

Dies he Fire by S. M. Stirling

I've eyeballed this one. What are your thoughts?

It's pretty good.  To me, it seems a bit long winded at times, but I'll pick up the next one in the series before long. 

Let me elaborate. 

Stirling does a good job of talking about how fragile modern society is.  The heart of the book is how society start to rebuild itself as small groups.  He also talks about reinventing the tools that where used 300 years ago.  Unfortunately, he tends to gloss over too much of this and not a lot of detail.  There are a lot of times that I'm left scratching my head.  As an example, there is point that they talk about having made some ice cream.  Great, but how did hey do this without ice.  If they had ice, where did they get it in the middle of summer with no electricity. 

If you're going into this wanting a story on reinventing 300 year old tools that are needed for society to survive, then you'll be disappointed.  If you're looking more for a society structure rebuild, then this may be a book you like.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Interested to hear about the Rome comparison, Biggs. And. If the author has a timetable for the next 25, 50, 75 years etc.

The Rome comparison seems to be more of a response to other books that have put that in their title, maybe to get sales from history buffs. The chapter doesn't really say much about it, it does not fit for the author. It mostly lays out descriptions of US culture, politics, and the economy.

My take is that a king of the hill type empire would not fit with American ideals of freedom, democracy, etc. Some people are always looking for competition. The Us has mutually beneficial relationships with Europe and other countries. That is a source of strength Russia will not understand. The description of the economic relations with the EU, china, etc, is in the book.

Here are the first chapter footnotes he references:


1.Cullen Murphy, Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America (New York: Mariner Books, 2007).
2. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict Among the Great Powers from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987).
3. Of course, there were many more causes of this complex phenomenon. See Ramsay MacMullen, Corruption and the Decline of Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).

A very valuable thing he brings up is the positive and the negative aspects of us culture. Will western leaders ever have the guts to challenge the negative impacts of culture? The fear will of course be looking like an anti-freedom authoritarian. I think popular media can be challenged with incentives of success. A lot of media seems to be pro glamour, anti productivity.

[Gusington]

I've been planning on reading that Murphy book for a long time. Rise & Fall of the Great Powers is one of my Top 5 books ever. Read it 20+ years ago but still remember some bits.

[bob48]

Just downloaded a couple of free Steampunk books for my Kindle.  O0

[Staggerwing]

Titles or it didn't happen.

[bob48]

Oops, sorry;

The Nephele Ship: Volume One - The Frozen Workshop


The Tinkerer's Daughter

[Barthheart]

...
The Tinkerer's Daughter

[Toonces]

I have been enjoying Tolkien's Unfinished Tales far more than I expected.  It's much darker than LotR.

[BanzaiCat]

I have been enjoying Tolkien's Unfinished Tales far more than I expected.  It's much darker than LotR.

It's good to know you're getting something out of it. It was the first of his books I tried to read, back in middle school, and it totally turned me off of Tolkein, so much that I never read any of his other books. Even to this day.

[Toonces]

No way would I suggest starting with it.  But having read LotR, most of the Hobbit, and about half The Silmarilion, I have a better appreciation of what I'm getting into.  Having at least some familiarity with Silmarilion was kind of critical because it lays the groundwork for a lot of the stuff in Unfinished Tales.

Give Tolkien another shot, but start with Hobbit or LotR.  When I finish Tales I'm going to circle back to Silmarilion I think and try to finish it...after The Hobbit of course!

[MetalDog]

When you get back to the Silmarillion, Toonces, power through the Ainulindale and the Valaquenta.  That's the first part with the creation story.  It's about 40 pages or so and it's kind of boring, but, it sets the whole rest of EVERYTHING in motion.

@B_C: I second Toonces recommendation to try Tolkien again.  The Hobbit is a great place to start.  It's definitely a kids book at heart.  Failing that, you might pick up a copy of Return of the King and go poking through the Appendices.  There's a lot of good history and odds and ends, including a chapter on languages of the races of Middle Earth, the alphabets used by those races, and time keeping (calendars) in use in LotR.

[Martok]

Whilst eating my lunch at work early this morning, I finally finished Mercy Kill, the 10th (and final) book in the X-Wing series.  It didn't seem as well-written or -paced as the others IMO, although that could be (at least in part) because it refers a fair bit to events from the New Jedi Order and Legacy of the Force series, which I never read. 

Still, I did enjoy re-reading it overall, as I did the series as a whole; I honestly think I liked it as much as I did the first time.  O0  I also liked that Mercy Kill switches the primary focus to one of the non-human characters; it was a refreshing change for a Star Wars novel. 



Next up:  I'm taking (what is for me) a rare detour into non-fiction, diving into historian David McCullough's biography of John Adams.  I know it's well-regarded (as is McCullough's work in general), so I'm looking forward to it.  I'm obviously not deep into the biography yet, but it's engaging thus far. 

[Gusington]

McCullough is a great writer.

[mirth]

Anyone who can read the Silmarilion is more effed up than I am and I salute you!

[MetalDog]

Thanks!