Grand unified books thread

[garbon]

Just purchased The Ethical Slut and Alison Weir's new bio of Anne Boleyn.

[MadImmortalMan]

Now even the Federated Suns are tainted. 

[crazy canuck]

Goldsworthy's Caesar: Life of a Colossus. Just started it a few days ago, but great so far. I should have been born two thousand years ago. :patton:

Good book. Good historian.

I'm expecting his latest work, on the fall of the Roman Empire, any day now.

I just picked that up. 

I am just finishing Hollands' Millenium.  I really like the period he covers but I was disappointed in his writing this time.  I am a huge fan of Rubicon and Persian Fire but this book doesnt have the same kind of gripping genius the other books had.

[jimmy olsen]

Now even the Federated Suns are tainted. 

When did I reference them?

[Sheilbh]

Got the Everyman Library () Flashman collection (Flashman, Flash for Freedom! and Flashman in the Great Game).  I recently finished the first one and am half-way through the second.  Very funny.  I know grumbler's been a Flashman proselytiser for a while but I should have listened earlier.

[Agelastus]

I just picked that up. 

I am just finishing Hollands' Millenium.  I really like the period he covers but I was disappointed in his writing this time.  I am a huge fan of Rubicon and Persian Fire but this book doesnt have the same kind of gripping genius the other books had.

Millennium as a subject didn't grab my attention for some reason, so I didn't pick it up although I have in my collection both Rubicon and Persian Fire. It appears that this was a wise choice from your comments.

[Barrister]

Got the Everyman Library () Flashman collection (Flashman, Flash for Freedom! and Flashman in the Great Game).  I recently finished the first one and am half-way through the second.  Very funny.  I know grumbler's been a Flashman proselytiser for a while but I should have listened earlier.

I've been reading the odd Flashman book the last few months.  Enjoyable.

[Agelastus]

As for me, the books I have most enjoyed over the last year have been the "Shadows of the Apt" series by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

http://shadowsoftheapt.com/

Even for fantasy they require at least one unusually large suspension of disbelief, but they are fluently written, have likable characters, and possess a solid plotline. The world in the books also has an impressive sense of history about it, without the weight feeling too oppressive. The fifth book is out in the summer, and it will be picked up as rapidly as possible at that point.

I especially admired the way several important characters ended up at a key confrontation in the fourth book without it feeling too contrived, when at the end of the third book you would have felt it was the last place in the world they would be at that point in time.

I haven't recommended these before, have I?

[Agelastus]

Got the Everyman Library () Flashman collection (Flashman, Flash for Freedom! and Flashman in the Great Game).  I recently finished the first one and am half-way through the second.  Very funny.  I know grumbler's been a Flashman proselytiser for a while but I should have listened earlier.

I've been reading the odd Flashman book the last few months.  Enjoyable.

Flashman's one of the things Grumbler and I agree on. Everyone should read them.

[Syt]

Almost through with The Bad Guys Won! A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo-chasing, and Championship Baseball with Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, The Kid, and the Rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put on a New York Uniform--and Maybe the Best.

Very entertaining book about an interesting cast of characters (many of them a'holes).

[crazy canuck]

Got the Everyman Library () Flashman collection (Flashman, Flash for Freedom! and Flashman in the Great Game).  I recently finished the first one and am half-way through the second.  Very funny.  I know grumbler's been a Flashman proselytiser for a while but I should have listened earlier.

I've been reading the odd Flashman book the last few months.  Enjoyable.

Flashman's one of the things Grumbler and I agree on. Everyone should read them.

I keep forgetting to pick this series up.

After I finish Downfall of the West I will do that.  Btw I am not liking Downfall as much as I thought I would.  So far it has only amounted to a brief description of the various Emperors and co-Emperors since the second century with a bit more time spent on Constantine. I feel like I am getting the encyclopedia brittanica version of the fall of the Roman Empire in the West.

[Admiral Yi]

Currently rereading Postwar.  New factoids keep popping up at me, such as the one that in 1950 there were only 32,000 high school graduates in France.

[Sheilbh]

Currently rereading Postwar.  New factoids keep popping up at me, such as the one that in 1950 there were only 32,000 high school graduates in France.

I'm currently reading Judt's cri de couer for Social Democracy - very good, I'll post it shortly.

I also recommend his lecture on living with Lou Gehrig's disease, it's an amazing piece.  I think it's in the New Yorker.

[Alatriste]

Currently rereading Postwar.  New factoids keep popping up at me, such as the one that in 1950 there were only 32,000 high school graduates in France.

or  or 

In French, High School = Lycée

A 'Haute École', i.e. a 'high school', is for doctorates, MBA's and other post graduate courses. The most famous is probably the 'Haute Ecole de Gestion de Genève' (in francophone Switzerland)

[Admiral Yi]

or  or 

In French, High School = Lycée

A 'Haute École', i.e. a 'high school', is for doctorates, MBA's and other post graduate courses. The most famous is probably the 'Haute Ecole de Gestion de Genève' (in francophone Switzerland)

Judt uses the term bachelier.