I cannot think of a Book of the Week this week.

It’s like a mental block.  So let me outsource this: what should we all be reading? Feel free to sing out on this one.

27 thoughts on “I cannot think of a Book of the Week this week.”

  1. I’m plowing through “Modern Times” by Paul Johnson (again).
    It helps me understand where we went wrong.

    1. Seconded! And I’d recommend any of the later Scribners “juveniles” — Citizen of the Galaxy, Have Spacesuit, The Star Beast, or the non-juvenile but fun and astonishingly prescient The Door Into Summer.

  2. Find a copy of Death Wish – yes, it was a novel before a movie – and goggle at how —applicable it is today (regardless of the authors moaning about it’s misrepresentation).

    And for more fun, compare it with Morrell’s original novel First Blood (both published in the same year!).

    1. And speaking of Death Wish, the robbery/rape scene that triggers the plot is one of the most brutal ever put to film. I know it was the 70’s but I still don’t know how that made it past the censors.

  3. Common Sense.
    a Powerful Mind: the self-education of George Washington
    The Hobbit
    Hitchhiker’s Guide

  4. I’ve got two things going on right now – Larry Correia’s ‘Son of the Black Sword’, and I finally got around to starting the listen of the audiobook of ‘Ready Player One’. As much as Wil Wheaton is an annoying git in real life, he does a pretty good job of reading this one.

    1. I like Ready Player One. But given the author’s spoken poetry, I was hoping for a more imaginative use of language. And I know he’s from Austin, and it’s more cyberpunk themed than anything else, so it needs some sort of catastrophe. But still, global warming led to the point that lower middle class housing is 8 people crammed into a double wide, stacked 20 or so high on iron frames? In the US, land of abundant open space?

  5. I just finished “Good Money” by George Selgin, the story of how private enterprise (the Birmingham button makers) solved the problem of a lack coinage that threatened the Industrial Revolution. It’s a fun read.
    .
    Another is Simon Manchester’s “The Map That Changed the World”.
    .

  6. Oops, I should have added Manchester’s other cracking good read, “The Professor and the Madman”:
    .
    “The compilation of the OED, begun in 1857, was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.”
    .

  7. Re-reading Niven & Pournelle’s Footfall and Lucifer’s Hammer. Nostalgic. Can’t believe how the technology has changed.

  8. Do you Weber?
    .
    http://www.amazon.com/Sword-South-BAEN-David-Weber/dp/1476780846
    .
    Note that this is the latest in a series stretching for many books, so if you *haven’t* read Bahzell before, this is *not* the place to start. (I won’t include a link to the actual place to start because two links gets a post a trip to the spam filter, and that means More Work For Moe..)
    .
    That said, the entire series is solidly written swords-and-sorcery fantasy, with a sense of humor that’s both respectful to the material and funny .. and it passes the “re-read test”, it’s not ‘word wooze’.
    .
    Mew

    1. got this because — Weber — but didn’t realize it was part of a series. Explains why I felt adrift in the story. didn’t finish it. Will look up the beginning of the tale.

      1. A more in-depth reply. “Sword of the South”, despite being in the same universe as the “War God” series (“Oath of Swords”, “War God’s Own”, “Wind Rider’s Oath”, and “War Maid’s Choice”) is actually the start of a new series.
        .
        This explains why we get a bit less of Bazell’s point of view, and a lot more of Wencit’s .. and Wencit’s backstory and conflict.
        .
        It’ll be interesting to see how Mad Wizard Weber follows this one..
        .
        Mew

      2. Second series has at least one gimmick which a few fans have figured out. The book has to be very tightly written to pull it off, and I think it is. So far.

    1. Read the ending first (I always do) and STILL stayed up late to read it start to finish just to see how he pulled it off. Want to see the movie.

  9. @Herp…yes! Evocative, but not derivative, of Frederik Pohl’s “Man Plus” novel (story?) about a cyborg astronaut sent to Mars, penned back in the day when a Hugo meant something.
    .
    btw-Any of you ever read Kris Neville’s 1967 short story “The Forest of Zil”? Man, the sound of the trees still haunts my dreams.
    .

  10. John Wright’s Somewhither.
    .
    The first volume of Kindhearted Bee’s Martial God Asura is on Amazon Kindle. The genre is Xianxia (immortal hero), which is related to Wuxia (martial hero). Bloody tales of revenge and gaining ever greater super powers are not unusual in this genre. A lot of authors write many different Xianxia titles. This might not be the best of them, but it is not the worst of them.
    .
    This is an authorized translation of a Chinese ebook that isn’t going through the big five publishers. If successful, we may see a wealth of salable foreign language material added to the English market without going through wrong headed and obsolete traditional publishing companies. I do feel compelled to warn that this particular series does have non-consensual sex caused by third party drugging.

  11. “The Long Run”, Daniel Keys Moran. Hard to find, 2nd (3rd?) part of a series that starts with “Emerald Eyes”

  12. I just finished “Speaker for the Dead,” the sequel to Ender’s Game. Really interesting themes there: Family, real government under unique circumstances, understanding a radically different people. Might be informative and fun. Hell of a philosophy read.

    1. Haven’t read that one in a long, long time .. but I see what you mean.
      .
      Speaking of Orson Scott Card, “Magic Street” is one of his attempts at “urban fantasy” ..
      .
      Depending on how much one (Moe, for instance) likes Shakespeare, it’s at least a decent read .. it has the ‘feel’ of one that was supposed to start a series, but .. didn’t.
      .
      Mew

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