What's the last book you read? Rate, comment and recommend.

SpinerippingFun

SpinerippingFun

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I haven't seen a topic about books yet, so I might as well create one. The rules are easy, it's the same as the movie thread. However you can also state your opinion on everything concerning books.
Let's begin. What's the last book you read? Come on, feel free to share and recommend some titles.

Mine was Thus spoke Zarathustra. 10/10 I've spent countless hours with this book, Nietzsche is one of my favourite authours, I love philosphy.
 
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The last book I read was The Godfather. A true classic, the way that the characters evolve in the story and the style of writing are top notch
 
I finally got around to re-reading "The Good Soldiers," by David Finkel. Still one of the best pieces of literature I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Interested in the Iraq war, down to the last gritty detail? The entire book is a novelization of the stay of one particular infantry company in Iraq. I couldn't recommend it enough.
 
Death Row by William Bernhardt

7/10

This is my favorite author yet this book seemed off. It focused on the main character, Ben Kincaid, and his legal team well yet it was mostly focused on his best friend Detective Mike Morelli. The ending was filled with twists as usual and Mike's adventure was fun but strange cause it mostly had the story on him finding this killer with a new partner. The ending kinda had the same, two person killing team formula as the other books and was kinda expected when it happened.

Nonetheless still a good read cause you have to love the characters
 
The Player of Games, by Iain M. Banks.

8.5/10.

A book set in Banks' original universe featuring 'the Culture', The Player of Games is about a man whose profession is that of an expert gamesmaster, similar to a real life chess master, but with a broader focus in all games and disciplines of games and strategy. He's manipulated into visiting a different world and playing their game, which is how in their society they determine who holds virtually every public office, what station in life one has, etc. To him, it's the first game he feels will really challenge him, even if he has to risk his life and safety to take part in it, and in it he's able to see how the game of Azad is a metaphor for their entire society--even life itself.

Very engrossing, with some memorable characters, and very much an interesting lens with which to compare the kinds of societies Banks writes about (the post-scarcity, egalitarian utopia of the Culture vs. the brutish, less technologically advanced--relatively speaking--and perhaps even 'immoral' Empire of Azad), and their value as systems. It's my first read in the Culture novels, and I'm probably going to find other titles to pick up.
 
I read The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman. This guy uses his knowledge of geopolitics to outline his vision of what the next 100 years of history will be like. Contrary to what a lot of people are saying today, he thinks that Russia and China are no real danger, and will probably collapse in the next 20 or 30 years. Meanwhile, WWIII will occur somewhere around 2050 and pit a coalition of Japan and Turkey, which will then be world powers, against the United States. And it won't be fought with nuclear weapons.

Some of it sounds silly, but if you actually read the book, he makes it sort of make sense. He also makes a very good point about how the history of the past 100 years would have sounded pretty doggone silly to someone in 1900 as well.
 
Love Cowboy said:
I read The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman. This guy uses his knowledge of geopolitics to outline his vision of what the next 100 years of history will be like. Contrary to what a lot of people are saying today, he thinks that Russia and China are no real danger, and will probably collapse in the next 20 or 30 years. Meanwhile, WWIII will occur somewhere around 2050 and pit a coalition of Japan and Turkey, which will then be world powers, against the United States. And it won't be fought with nuclear weapons.

Some of it sounds silly, but if you actually read the book, he makes it sort of make sense. He also makes a very good point about how the history of the past 100 years would have sounded pretty doggone silly to someone in 1900 as well.
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That sounds extremely interesting. I'm going to take a look at that.
 
BIOS by Robert Charles Wilson

It's a science fiction novel about a team of scientists exploring an alien planet known as Isis, that has remarkably adaptive lifeforms but everything on that planet is toxic to human beings. Unfortunately, things don't go as a plan because of shaky support from the elite ruling classes and their heavily-shielded vessels getting compromised by the Isis' biosphere. Given the relatively short length of the novel, it seems like the author was trying to do too much at once. None of the characters are fully develop, and little is explored in the sociopolitical pull behind the expedition, and little is explored concerning Isis and it's significance to mankind.

For a quick and dirty numerical score, I'll say 6/10. The author had some neat ideas but unfortunately the narrative got rushed in the end.
 
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Love Cowboy said:
I read The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman. This guy uses his knowledge of geopolitics to outline his vision of what the next 100 years of history will be like. Contrary to what a lot of people are saying today, he thinks that Russia and China are no real danger, and will probably collapse in the next 20 or 30 years. Meanwhile, WWIII will occur somewhere around 2050 and pit a coalition of Japan and Turkey, which will then be world powers, against the United States. And it won't be fought with nuclear weapons.

Some of it sounds silly, but if you actually read the book, he makes it sort of make sense. He also makes a very good point about how the history of the past 100 years would have sounded pretty doggone silly to someone in 1900 as well.
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Interesting. I wonder what this guy thinks would cause one of America's closest strategic allies--Japan, who can't so much as tie their own shoe laces without American say-so, such willing lapdogs they are--to turn on their masters.
 
Freyith said:
Interesting. I wonder what this guy thinks would cause one of America's closest strategic allies--Japan, who can't so much as tie their own shoe laces without American say-so, such willing lapdogs they are--to turn on their masters.
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Well for starters, in this guy's scheme, Russia and China are in shambles by then and North Korea is totally gone, so Japan's strategic relevance to the US is significantly less by then. Their desire for cheaper natural resources will lead them to start expanding their borders again which will lead to conflicts. I'm sure there was more to it than that, but I read through it so fast I'm already forgetting details. It was a lovely read. You should check it out.
 
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows - J. K. Rowling
Currently reading The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien

I hate what they did with the films, so I'd rather read Them.
 
The Bible of Unspeakable Truths.

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Was hilarious, thought provoking. I like Greg's humor and generally agree with him, and if you disagree with him you a racist homophobe worse than Hitler (+rep if you get the joke/reference).

9/10
 
I'm in the middle of reading:

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Matter, by Iain M. Banks,
as well as the Collected Works of Thomas Paine (again).

I'll get back to you guys about how the first two went.
 
Has anyone read Fifty Shades of Grey?

I am not usually one to read something because OMG EVERYONE ELSE IS, but my friend started reading it and said it was good so far (she was at like chapter 2 lulz).

Kinda sounds like a stupid book, though.
 
My girlfriends and I wanted to do a mock dramatic reading of it, that much I can tell you. But by all accounts of anyone whose opinion I trust on matters literary, it blows enormous equine phallus.
 
Currently reading:

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I <3 Bob Woodward. Yes, as in 'Woodward and Bernstein'. Mr. Woodward is the Washington Post correspondent who in the 1970s, along with Carl Bernstein busted open the Nixon Watergate scandal with the help of the informant 'Deepthroat'. Anyhow, this current book serves as a documentary and study of the first 3 and a half years of Obama's administration and how he and his staff dealt with the budget crisis and debt ceiling debate. I'm about 135p in at the moment and liking it so far, even though I don't necessarily agree with Woodward's take on events. It's still very insightful and fascinating. It's the first book of his I've read since finishing 'State of Denial' (about the failed hunt for WMDs in Iraq and the Bush Administration's mishandling of the war effort) in '07.
 
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