The Gun Counter

I finally wrapped up the Aubrey/Maturin series with #20, Blue At The Mizzen. Perhaps I'll read the unfinished final novel, 21, perhaps not. Sad to see it come to an end... I'm now reading Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton: A Biography, by Edward Rice. I've always been fascinated by what I knew of the man, hopefully I'll gain a fuller understanding with this book. Do they make such men anymore?

"This masterpiece of history and biography turns the real-life adventures of Burton into a riveting tale...The last great word on the last great explorer of the colonial age." -Wall Street Journal.
A New York Times best seller when it was first published, Rice's biography is the gripping story of a fierce, magnetic, and brilliant man whose real-life accomplishments are the stuff of legend. Rice retraces Burton's steps as the first European adventurer to search for the source of the Nile; to enter, disguised, the forbidden cities of Mecca and Medina; and to travel through remote stretches of India, the Near East, and Africa. From his spying exploits to his startling literary accomplishments (the discovery and translation of the Kama Sutra and his seventeen-volume translation of Arabian Nights), Burton was an engrossing, larger-than-life Victorian figure, and Rice's splendid biography lays open a portrayal as dramatic, complicated, and compelling as the man himself.

http://www.amazon.com/Captain-Sir-Richa ... 030681028X

What's on your reading list?

Chris, you sound like me.

Right now, my bedside book is Christopher Duffy's history of the 1745 Scottish rising. My travel book is Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Darrell, if you are into Age of Sail fiction, I can heartily recommend Dewey Lambdin's works. Right now, I rate him as the top living writer on the period.

Right now, I'm rereading two books:

The VENDETTA edition of Monster Hunter International, by Larry Correia, and;

Battle Cry by Leon Uris, which was his first novel AND which put him on the map as far as writers go. The book I have was the 47th printing since 1953 (40 through 1973), and had been printed in several different languages and typefaces. And it doesn't have that admonishment in the front about the missing cover and neither the writer not publisher have been paid for it if the cover is missing.

It doesn't read as fast as many of my other books, and it seems to take up more of my time because the words and imagination/picturing are different - a much older style of writing with MUCH greater character development and dialog.

For his very first book, Leon Uris does a magnificent job of drawing in the reader - but I suspect much of that is because he WAS a Marine in WWII (which is what he was writing about). I won't disagree about which of his books sold the best, but my favorites are Battle Cry (which was turned into a movie) and Exodus (which was also turned into a movie (starring Paul Newman & Eva Marie Saint, PLUS Peter Lawford, Ralph Richardson, Lee J. Cobb, Sal Mineo, but was NOWHERE NEAR as good as the book since they had to cut WAY TOO MANY of the scenes to make it watchable).

The movie had the hell chopped out of it to even make it to the time they finally wound up with. If they're tried to make the movie into something even close to the book, they would wind up with a mini-series. YES, a SINGLE BOOK could wind up a mini-series. It all depends on how much actual information you pack into each page, the words you choose, the imagined settings you create as well as the visual imagery.

If you've read the book, you KNOW the movie TRIES and does a GREAT job of trying to portray the characters and situations, but you just CAN NOT create everything they need in the time allotted. This book should REALLY be made into either TWO movies, or a TV mini-series. There's just too much historical information to pass in an hour or hour-and a-half.

Personally, I would LOVE (and pay) to see an updated version (with current visual effects), but without updated political kiss-ass arab views, put on the screen. The Lord knows that any such attempt to remake or recreate the original EXODUS movie will be met with LOTS of protests, political grandstanding, even threats of an oil embargo, so that's why they will never even CONSIDER such an endeavor. It would simply get all their panties in a MAJOR twist!!

LEON URIS was a great writer. He has GREAT character development, and tells a great story (and besides, he was a REAL Marine on the combat lines at Guadalcanal AND Tarawa).

Semper Fi!

The Diamond Age

Neal is absolutely one of my favorite authors. If you've not read Cryptonomicon, get your hands on a copy.

I have yet to read it, but man I love his Russian design quote from that book.

The only things on my reading list right now are a re-read of Ringo and (mainly) Kratman's Tuloriad, and occasionally referring to Kochan and Wood's UNIX Shell Programming. (The only thing worse than shell programming is shell *maintenance* programming- people who program in shell write some perverse shit.)

I'm partway through 2 Thomas Sowell books but I've had to put them aside.

Two Osprey books :-
1967 Six Day War
Israeli Mirage and Nesher Aces

Going though Pournelle's CoDomminion series, picked up an e-book compilation from Baen. Hadn't read many of them for years (in some cases not since they were originally published in Analog in the 70's).

Next up Baen has a compilation of Pournelle/Niven works including Lucifer's Hammer and Footfall that I might pick up. I hope this is a trend and that they put togehter a compilation of Niven's Known Space works.

Yeah, I've got most of these in hard copy, but packed into boxes and a pain to get to. Plus these editions often have stuff not published in the original and/or intros with some interesting information.

1967 Six Day War

I just finished Michael Oren's book: http://www.amazon.com/Six-Days-War-Maki ... 0195151747

Long winded, you say? I'm currently rereading Great Expectations. I've come to the conclusion I enjoyed Dickens more when I was younger.

Read Poorly Made in China and re read one of Clancy's Strikeforce books on last month's China and Taiwan trip,

Back to home and The Essential American: 25 Documents and Speeches; Gingrich (just read the Articles of Confederation last night late. Reading God's Final Word, (Ray Stedham on Revelation) and and re-reading A.W. Tozer's "The Knowledge of the Holy and Ken Sande's "Peacemakers."