What have you read recently?
‘The Tunnels of Chu Chi’ by Tom Mangold.
Book about the tunnel rats in the war, brave or stupid men? flip a coin really. No movie can capture how scary that shit was, some of the stories in the book are blood curdling.
Excellent read. About why only franchise movies get made and/or released in theatres - the collapse of DVD sales, appealing to the market in China, Marvel replacing movie stars with universes, et cetera. The part about “After Earth” is hilarious; how they thought the movie franchise could possibly replace Facebook and marketed it along side After Earth cologne. Laughable.
Educated by Tara Westover… a memoir by a woman who grew up in a strict Mormon society and whose father was a paranoid bipolar nutter who stockpiled food and fuel in anticipation of the end of society as we know it. A grim read - the author was subject to some terrible abuse by father and brothers. In the end, despite being educated at home, she managed to escape her family community and studied at Cambridge and Harvard.. impressive. Not easy reading. 8/10
Ready Player Two- Only half way through but so far its essentially the same as the first book but not as enjoyable.
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Finished Stephen King’s ‘The Institute’ last night.
Not exactly highbrow, or cool, but a good story, well constructed and paced. Easy bed time reading.
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oh didn’t realise that was out…first book was a great read.
Might have to read Obama’s memoir first though - the reviews look top notch
The Black Prism was entertaining, will continue with the rest of the series.
The Constant Rabbit was good, typical Ffordian freakshow. Not his best, but not nearly the worst either.
The Burning God, the finale of the Poppy War trilogy by R. F. Kuang. Was really good, but the end the last book was so… empty.
Just started Brandon Sanderson’s latest, Rhythm of War, the 4th book in The Stormlight Archive. I wish he and other authors that have series running would include a Cliff Notes version of the previous novels as an appendix. Especially if it takes the publishers more than 2 years to release the next book. Or, I just read too much fantasy and get shit confused.
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Stephen Morris Fast Forward. Proper page turner full of dry wit, great observations. Helped get me through covid and feed my NO obsession. Like the fact that unlike Hook, he doesn’t carry grudges
Got it for Christmas but it’s under tier 4 quaratine at my sisters. Will be interested to read his version of events after Hooky and Barneys
Has anyone read Where the Crawdads Sing?
If so, is it any cop?
Amps The Enceladus mission - Brandon Q. Morris - I’m about ¾ through it and it’s pretty cool.
Smallman1 Yes. Reminiscent of Pat Conroy, but kinda chick-lit.
Sucker for oral histories. Loved The Daily Show and The Wire takes on the story-telling style. Got this as a Crimbo present and enjoying it so far.
Started Dan Simmons’ Hyperion-books again. The greatest scifi-series ever. It’s a shame what happened to Simmons. These days he’s mostly ranting against Greta Thunberg on his Facebook.
The number of people that young girl manages to trigger is insane. And the things these (mostly) men say to and about her is just flat out gross.
jonattonyeah Another honey trap for whoppers to out themselves over. Long may she continue.
Smallman1 Has anyone read Where the Crawdads Sing?
If so, is it any cop?
Three women on my Facebook have posted about this now.
One of them has those ’It’s Gin o’clock’ Etsy posters that Millsy loves on her wall.
Another is absolutely crackers and keeps posting conspiracy theory rants about COVID.
The third is one of those really nice people who has three kids and is just into really nice things and doing really nice things with her family, and looks like she will cry if you swear in front of her.
In other words, it should be right up your strasse.
I’m currently (still) reading “King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa” and trying to work through a self-assessment section of “What Color is Your Parachute”, so I can find a job that I enjoy more.
The book about King Leopold is pretty good so far (only about ⅓ of the way through), as it’s written in a bit of a storytelling fashion and has thus far, been mostly focused on Henry Morton Stanley and his dubious beginnings, dealings, etc - kind of a shady fucker tbh. But then, so is Leopold.
The Nugs Cookbook
Oh Dave…you can do better.
The ’Za Cookbook?
A for effort at least 
Going through Dan Simmons’ sci fi-books. Read the Hyperion-books already, now near the end of Endymion-books, Ilium and Olympos.
Am reading this -
Expect to retire within 5 years.
A rare upvote for Amps’ Twitter Bilge ™
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The Devil’s Chessboard - David Talbot.
Dunno where to start, a brilliant book, as recommended by @zackster, very much worth a read for anyone with any interest in the history of the 20th century. In truth, there’s very little in it that you couldn’t guess at already, but when the staggering breadth and depth of cuntery is laid out in great detail, it’s compelling stuff. Arguably, after Hitler and Churchill, Allen Dulles did more to shape the world than anyone, and he did it for the worse. Calling him a cunt doesn’t do him justice. Socialism will never flourish in the west, these people will just kill you if you try.
Five industrial business backed presidential assassinations out of five.
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Loving Adam Buxton’s (the podcaster) Ramble Book, which I’m listening to on Audible… the chapter on the Quiet Train Coach had me in hysterics. Great way to cheer yourself up at times like this imo
Reading Masters of Doom about the creation of ID software and making of the Doom game by Carmack and Romero- quite good so far. Some of the techniques to get side scrolling working when they ported Super Mario to the PC which was less graphically powerful was interesting.
Any easy reading recommendations?
Read a couple of Stephen King books lately and enjoyed.
Perfect for ½ hour reads before bed