What Are You Reading?

[YellerDog]

I picked up the Zombie Survival Guide the other day and I'm switching off between that and Catcher in the Rye.

Holden... Zombies.... Holden.... Zombies....

It's a tough decision.

I was on a "Glass Family" kick lately, fun books!

Have you read World War Z?

[Mzo]

The stories were the best part of the ZSG and WWZ is all stories.

[YellerDog]

The "go north in the winter" solution is a good way to go about surviving a zombie apocalypse!

[dog$]

I Heard You Paint Houses. Good stuff. The last epilogue had some a few small instances of bad editing but overall I found it to be pretty well constructed. If you care about mob stuff at all I would recommend reading it. I'll have to re-read Five Families after this.

But I won't, at least not yet. Devil In White City is next.

[Mr-K]

I was on a "Glass Family" kick lately, fun books!

Have you read World War Z?

I didn't realize this thread was that old. Anyway, Yes, I did eventually read World War Z, great book.

I finished The Walking Dead compendium which got me up to issue 48 (sad face) and I'm catching up on the next 20 issues through... other means. I am also a couple of pages from finishing up Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. I was going to start reading Needful Things, but I cna't find the $2 copy of it that I bought, so I guess I"m going to read Red Mars.

[dog$]

Devil In White City. Overall a good read. The guy likes to flex his thesaurus in his writing.

I think the criticism that the book shouldn't be labeled as Non-Fiction is pretty accurate, at least in regards to the people involved with the HH Holmes side of the story. Yes, the way the actions are portrayed have a reasonable basis, and yes, it would have been much more cumbersome to frame it all with a passive description for the author to directly state that his accounting of events is assumed. Despite that, it is disingenuous for a book to be classified and marketed as Non-Fiction when he describes what certain people are internally thinking without any factual basis. It's pretty ingenious to have this book marketed as Non-Fiction, because it's much easier to have a NYT Best Seller on the non-fiction half of the rankings.

I have another book on the Columbian Expo to read before a copy of the Valachi Papers shows up, which is arriving with a history book called Gaslight Chicago. Good times ahead.

[BioMechanic]

I started The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Crusades because I didn't know much about them at all. Holy crap was that a crazy time in Western history.

Here's some things I've learned:

The horseshoe is considered one of the most important inventions in human history, as it allowed "real" farming to develop.

The "civilized" world (i.e. France) considered the bow-and-arrow to be a weapon of heathens and serfs because killing someone from a distance wasn't in the spirit of combat.

Also everyone used to have sex doggy style only, with most of their clothes still on.

The First Crusade basically started because the ruler of Constantinople was being threatened by the Turks so he asked Rome for help, using the city's riches as bait. Pope Urban II then presented it to the people as a Holy War to save Jerusalem from the Moslem Scourge, offering absolution from sin as reward for anyone who took the Cross.

Anyways it's completely fascinating reading, very clearly and carefully presented.

[Rated E]

I was surprised to see Chi's Sweet Home at Borders today, so I had to buy it. It's a manga revolving around a kitten, and it's spot on regarding all the adorable and mischievous antics that kittens have. It reads left to right, and I like the fact that it's colored. Very cute and sweet comic.

[Mzo]

That page makes sense right to left.

After putting it down and forgetting about it, I went back and reread "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat" by John Gribbin. I know it's old (written in the 80s, oh my) and someone even mentioned he wrote a sort of sequel to it, but once you get past the history of quantum physics bit and get slapped in the face with the two-hole electron experiment it is like wow. What the fuck. He's also right about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Princible being taught as more of a you disrupt the experiment type of deal than reality says you can't really "know" this shit deal. Lame, teachers. Lame.

Now I need more, more! I'm going to read some of his suggested texts and sci-fi mentions.

[Rated E]

Yeah, that scan does, but the one I bought doesn't.