What are you reading?

[1.21GW]

Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson

Really interesting book!  

Yeah, I'm sure I learned a little of that history in school but I definitely forgot it all by the time I picked up the Anderson book.  Was good to get an understanding of the background in the MidEast and, frankly, how utterly random events and minor political decisions can end up having such a profound effect on the world.  Also, TE Lawrence is an inspiring---if complicated---man.

current:
Freedom Climbers: The Golden Age of Polish Climbing by Bernadette McDonald

Almost done and conclusion is that the Poles were tough and fearless SOBs. 

[MendoDave]

Base Nation
By David Vine

"How U.S. Military bases abroad harm America and The world"

Just started reading, very interesting stuff.

[yamifixer]

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West
by Stephen Ambrose

[1.21GW]

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West
by Stephen Ambrose

Went through that last year.  I would give multiple limbs to have been on that expedition.

[GK]

Under Fire "Tom Clancy" (Grant Blackwood)

A Jack Ryan Jr Novel

Pretty good so far.

I have that very book on the bed beside me Dave!

Just finished 'Full Force And Effect' yesterday which I thought very good!

[Kopfjager]

Meditations on Violence

[Popeye the Sailor]

All the posts (so far).

http://www.dailyyonder.com/topics/in-the-black/




“I'm here with P and P Construction, said I'd be shoveling belt.”

The man I was speaking to behind the desk was strong, arms the size of oak trees, what a lot of folks refer to as a mountain man. He wasn't very old, but the lines on his face, the way he spoke, and the glare in his eyes said that he was physically and mentally much older than his age in years. He was simple and to the point.

“You got your miners card and papers?”

“No,” I said. “I just got my papers last week at the state office in Hazard, but they said this Xerox copy would do until my card comes in.”

“All right, you'll work for me then. You work every night from 9 'til we get done. Now go get your shâ€" together. We start in about an hour”

Nervously I tried to lace up my new matterhorns, get my cap light adjusted, and look like I knew what I was doing, failing miserably. My knee pads were still in the plastic. My belt was so stiff it would have served more purpose as a walking stick. All I could do was push back the fear and walk back into the mine office.

“Hey, boy, where did ya work at before now, the pie factory?” I just grinned and held onto my dinner bucket so tight that my knuckles turned white. “You too pretty for a coal miner. I imagine we'll get some use out of ya somehow though. Stop starin' at the lockers and get out there, you're gonna miss the mantrip.”

I walked a fast pace out to the rail car, 20 burly men lying side to side somewhat spooning, just like my girlfriend and I would do at night. I was intimidated and scared. I wasn't scared just because we were riding a rail car seven miles back into the mountain to work in a 36 inch seam of coal. I was scared because these were “real” men, fathers of the kids I went to school with, men who had enough strength to bend a one inch steel bar with their bare hands. I was just a skinny teenage boy with glasses, bad skin, and not enough ass to pick up a loaded number four coal shovel.

So I just laid down in the first opening I saw, turned on my headlamp, and closed my eyes as the wheels of the car barked against the rails and the diesel engine roared into my ears.

A few minutes after we entered the mine, a voice cut through the noise like nothing I had ever heard before.

“WHOA! Stop gâ€"damn you!”

Sparks flew up past my face and the wheels of the car screamed as the operator brought us to an abrupt halt.

“Alright now, it's Sunday night after pay day. Everybody chip in so we can get this night started right. Don't any of you sons-a-pregnant doges hold out neither.”

All the men were bearded, haggard, eyes sunken back into their skulls. The darkness and glow of the head lamps made everyone look like death. Pulling plastic bags, pill bottles, and emptied Skoal cans out of their pockets and dinner buckets, they dumped the contents onto the top of the rail car. Lortab, Xanax, Valium, and whatever other prescription drugs they had.

“New kid, you got any medicine or candy to put in on this?”

I simply shook my head right to left, right to left, right to left. When I could finally stop, I watched the men use their mining certification cards to cut lines of a multi-colored rainbow assortment of powders they had crushed from the pills. It disappeared as quick as we did when we entered the drift mouth. So did my romanticism about miners.

[ungeheuer]

Great read 

[Slide Panda]

The Last Wish - Fiction by a Polish Author that became basis for The Witcher set of games.

Never played the games. But the books a good light read so far.

And since my last update... All of the Laundry Files to date, A Dresden Files set of short stories, The Aeronauts Windlass, all of the Monster Hunter International series to date, all of the Grimnoir Chronicles series, and all of the Gentlemen Bastards books to date

[NAKID]

Currently reading The Martian, and Seven Deadly Sins by Corey Taylor.

[Jaman]

True North, by Jim Harrison

Devil in the White City, Erik Larson

and on the 'lighter' side, the Grimm trilogy, by Adam Gidwitz (I have gone from recommending books for my daughter, to reading her recommendations for me... )

[Blackout]

Just finished "Cloudsplitter" a 750 page tome on abolitionist John Brown written by Russell Banks. Somewhat fictionalized but a helluva read.
Currently reading "President Me" by Adam Carolla. Love that guy.

[MendoDave]

NATOPS C-130T Flight Manual



You too can have a copy (Takes about a minute to download)

[DarkMonster620]

Just finished the NORIEGA MESS . . .

[Blackout]

Any of you Cali guys remember the SLA (leftist terrorist group that kidnapped Patty Hearst)?
Reading Jeffrey Toobin's great book on the whole thing. I think I was 10 when she got kidnapped and remember watching their safehouse burn down on the news. Turns out she was holed up in a motel room near Disneyland about 3 miles from my house at the time.