Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Question for the avid readers here

LOL! I have this particular set. It's tough to go through these because every paragraph there is an annotation to read about what the weather was like on that particular day, or what some building mentioned in the story actually looks like. Interesting stuff, but it sure slows down the pace of the story.

Interesting books. Actually, this just put the bug to read them stories in me!

Yup! Most contemporary fiction novels can keep me awake awhile, but many biographies and WWII histories can put out my light in 10 to 30 minutes. It's not that they aren't interesting, it's just that they're a little dry, lacking page turning excitement. At the moment, I'm reading a highly acclaimed, 541 page, history of the WWII African campaign entitled An Army At Dawn - The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson (Operation Torch). Again, it's interesting, but I sometimes can't make it more than a page or two before turning out the light. I'm only up to page 109.

I have some good ol' action/mystery thrillers on order at my local library (Robert B. Parker; Ken Follet; Richard North Patterson; David Baldacci) which should begin arriving any day. Things should get a lot more exciting soon . Can someone explain why, when one orders books from the library weeks or months apart, they all arrive at the same time, giving one only a few weeks to read 4 or 5 books?

Reading for knowledge is rewarding but, mostly, I read for enjoyment.

Ian really loves the movie "The Great Escape" so I bought him the book - amazingly the movie didn't dramatize a thing! If anything, the movie was even less dramatic than the book! That's pretty rare. Anyway, a WWII book that won't put you to sleep, guaranteed!

Thanks Amie. I've seen the movie, oh.....only about a hundred times. But, since I love to read, I'll definitely put it on my list.

It's very rare that a movie does justice to the original novel, I just read the Harry Potter series for the first time then watched the movies, Imho terrible adaptaion. The Lord of the Rings did a good job in the translation, but didn't give me the chills like the books did when I was younger.

Jack,

Well, if you're willing to indulge a little fantasy/sci-fi, I recommend Harry Turtledove's books. He mostly writes alternative history. Guns of the South is probably one of his best, and is a stand alone novel if you don't want to get into one of his 8-12 novel series. That one's a civil war alternative history.

His WWII/alien invasion series is excellent, and his current Civil War through WWII America-split-into-two-countries is amazing.


For all of you who stopped reading Wheel of Time at book 6, you've missed some good stuff. Granted, Book 7 wasn't fantastic, but it was necessary to move the plot along. Book 8 picked it back up, 9 was great, at the end of 10 I thought he was going to end it then and there, and 11 was also quite good. I hope that 12 gets published at some point, although he certainly wasn't done with it.

Re: Wheel of Time

I read until the beginning of book 10. I have all of the books. I just haven't forced myself to read the rest of 10 and 11, mainly because it's been so long that I'd want to read the whole series again, and we know how daunting that is.

Yeah, he wasn't done with 12, but I don't think there's any way it won't get published, as he supposedly tried to get as many notes as possible down, and when he was sicker, he recorded himself explaining what was supposed to happen. I imagine it will take a little while, though. I'm sure his wife, who was also his editor, will make sure it gets the proper treatment.

He had the ending in mind the whole time he was writing, so I want to see what that was. Hopefully it's not a big anticlimax.

I was getting set to re-read the entire series next year, in preparation for book 12. Sigh.

My usual MO with those books was to read the previous one prior to reading the new one.

Probably need to start doing that with the Turtledoves, too...

For rereadableness:

-- Cmdr. Richard Marcinko USN, Ret. - the Rogue Warrior series and "The Real Team"

-- Roy Boehm - First SEAL

Realistically the only set of books I've read in the past 10 years (save two Tommy Douglas biographies)

Bren R.