To help avoid a de-rail, I'm creating this thread...

(March 21, 2015 at 8:20 pm)Spooky Wrote: Another author recommended that I'll have to take a look at! Thank you

And the Pendergast novels are wonderful. Own them all. My final recommendation to anybody reading today:


I almost feel like this thread should be transferred to the "off topic" section. But I am still interested in Ant-Theist web organizations.

Yeah, the Amber series was fantastic.

I read a lot

I mentioned this one briefly in another thread (and the PacNW crowd would probably like it a lot) and finished it (again, after about 12 years) this morning. "A Gift Upon the Shore" by M.K. Wren. A post-apocalyptic tale set on the Oregon coast about one woman's struggle to keep something of civilization's knowledge after a nuclear holocaust, in the face of fundamental religious fervor.

9/10
Easily one of the best post-apocalyptic stories I've ever read.

Finished this one last night:


This is the third (of five with a sixth rumored) of the Felix Gomez series. Felix is a vampire P.I. who manages to get into all sorts of trouble. The supernatural aspects are very tongue in cheek and the books are very campy. Incredibly fun reads but nothing for the serious fiction reader to be found anywhere.

Good history - he should leave the math to others.

My youngest daughter got me interested in the Divergent series. Read all three books. She bought the fourth one titled Four. Haven't read it yet because now we've moved onto the Maze Runner series. We have the movie Divergent. Insurgent came out last Friday and we wanted to go see it. It'll have to wait though. I honestly enjoyed reading Divergent and was a bit disappointed in the movie because they left out a few key parts, I guess in the interest of time.

(March 26, 2015 at 12:52 am)Minimalist Wrote: Good history - he should leave the math to others.

What's wrong with it if I may ask?

(March 26, 2015 at 12:52 am)Minimalist Wrote:

Brakeman sent me a PDF of this book and I'm in the middle of it right now. It's pretty interesting and I'm enjoying it so far.

(March 26, 2015 at 1:18 am)Judi Lynn Wrote: My youngest daughter got me interested in the Divergent series. Read all three books. She bought the fourth one titled Four. Haven't read it yet because now we've moved onto the Maze Runner series.

I read the first Maze Runner book and wasn't thrilled by it. It was aiight, I guess. What I don't like about YA books nowadays is not the penchant for every last fucking one to become a series (series can be fun! I really liked the I Don't Want to Be A Serial Killer series), it's that a lot of the ones I've read lately don't have actual endings for the first book! The first book just leaves off in a giant, unanswered question mark that I know is supposed to draw me into the next book but it's just pissing me off lately.

So until they sort that shit out and stop doing it I'm not reading YA.


My other current book right now is Catch 22


Gotta admit that I'm very bored by it. I'm like 80 pages in (it's ~450 long) and I'm wondering how much longer I have to go in it before it becomes, you know, good.

the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was extremely draggy in the first... quarter to third of the book, but I managed to stick with it until it became a page-turner and I either must not be there yet with Catch 22, or it never becomes that.

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(March 26, 2015 at 3:06 am)Alex K Wrote:

(March 26, 2015 at 12:52 am)Minimalist Wrote: Good history - he should leave the math to others.

What's wrong with it if I may ask?

Not speaking for Min, but the only issue I see with the math part of it is that he assumes you've read Proving History (which is a reasonable expectation), and that, having read it, you now thoroughly understand Bayes Theorum so that you can read through all of his equationy bits and totally get it. I know enough to say I'm not there yet with BT, so the equations still look like strings of numbers to me.

Overall, though, there's not a whole lot of math in the book up to the point I've read and I'm about ~40% through it. I find them to be a bit of a stumbling block, but I just skip over the equations and keep reading.

Yeah, this Bayes theorem shit is probably interesting to a math geek but it is in essence a comparison of probabilities. That is fine but then Carrier frequently seems totally arbitrary (or worse ) in the assignment of numerical values to those probabilities. Now for the "or worse" part. He almost always tends to over-value religious positions I suppose in the interest of "fairness." It is not necessary. The story is bullshit and he knows it from the beginning and all of this alleged mathematical proof is a distraction from the narrative.

The fact that jesus is nothing special within the literature of the time is sufficient.

CM, what is a YA book?

Just finished Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout. Recommended to all hepcats.

(March 26, 2015 at 10:15 am)Clueless Morgan Wrote: I really liked the I Don't Want to Be A Serial Killer series

Dan Wells is an amazing author. His "Partials" series is also very good, as is "The Hollow City."

(March 26, 2015 at 11:32 am)Judi Lynn Wrote: CM, what is a YA book?

Young Adult.