Reading 50 Shades of Grey, and I'm regretting this decision.

The author use words like "sweet", "delicious" and "taste" so much I think she was originally trying to write an erotic cookbook. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by jipan 

Just finish my copy of "A Memory of Light". It was awesome. Now I'm sad because there are no "The Wheel of Time" series again... Oh, well....


Now, starting "The Dirty Streets of Heaven" by Tad Williams. His Otherland quartet were awesome, I had high hopes for this book.

1....Tad is a good choice for the next Author.  Missing Rand and the crew already though....

Quote:

Originally Posted by billybob_jcv 

"Makers" by Cory Doctorow - it's a free download from his web site: http://craphound.com/makers/download/
 

Just finished this one myself. Another great book from him.

I recently finished Tom Wood's "Nullification:How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century" and highly recommend it to anyone in the U.S. who tries to be informed about the long slog towards tyranny our once great republic has been on and the rights we have to reverse such course.

Fiction wise, read a Tom Clancy book "End War" for a lighter break and am currently reading H.P. Lovecraft's collected works. 

Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal,

Decided to read the Steven Erikson Malazan Book Of The Fallen series, have no regrets. Hard to understand at first, but a great fiction like LOTR. 

Good luck with that one.  One of the few I quit on.  Enjoyed the settings and the writing, but had no clue as to what the **** was going on.  At least he's finished the series anyway.  May give it another go further down the line.

Right now just started Joe Abercrombie's The Blade itself.  Will see how that goes, then after that it will be the new Terry Brooks one Blood Fire Quest :)

Rethinking Anti-Americanism:

The History of an Exceptional Concept in American Foreign Relations

Frank Rich, in "The Greatest Story Ever Sold:

The Decline and Fall of Truth in Bush's America'' 

Jan 10, 2008Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars

Every thirty pages or so I put this book down to keep my blood from boiling.

Beginning with 9/11, President Bush was given leeway by congress and the press to pursue a “war on terror”. Watching events unfold on TV, or in the newspapers, it is difficult to get a longer perspective on the marketing, and selling, of the Iraq war as a part of the war on terror. This book provides perspective, drawing on public information to provide a richly detailed account of an administration that sold a bad idea.
Iraq war planning dates to days after Bush #43's first inauguration. A former cabinet member confirmed the fixation on Iraq began in the first national security meeting, months before 9/11(1).

Early ideas included goading Hussein into attacking first.
After 9/11 Orwellian machinations began. The Bush team rewrote, or made up, history, emphasizing shaky 'evidence' such as yellowcake uranium from Niger, vague, unsubstantiated meetings in Prague, photographs of mobile biological weapons labs (aka port-a-potties being trucked to a construction site) and other misleading, or misinterpreted, 'evidence'.

The hope was that repetition would lead to belief that Iraq had WMD and was tied to international terrorism. 

For this plan to work, the administration had to prevent the United Nations Weapons Inspectors from finishing their job, since there was not only no credible evidence of WMD, there were none – but facts would not interrupt war plans. Inspectors were fired, impossible deadlines were set, and once the UN was stopped the alternative story could be shaped and sold in prime time as a cause for war.

Many people don't remember Dan Rather's interview with Saddam Hussein two months before the war. Rather pressed on WMD, and Saddam said I don't have any and haven't been since the first Gulf War. Hussein was a truthful government spokesman in the whole sordid run up to war.
The three overriding government principals in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four are:

WAR IS PEACE 
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH 

I reread Nineteen Eighty Four last year during banned book week. The Nineteen Eighty Four Ministry of Truth and the current administration's PR machinery tried to remake or rewrite history to suit ill conceived notions. Fortunately, we have an independent press, and government officials that spoke out about the decision process.

Too much wasn't adding up; journalists did their homework, dug out the truth, exposed manufactured 'evidence'.

Even slavish early Bushs followers are turning on the administration, having been duped and taken for fools. One thing we have relearned is, the emperor has no clothes.

 
If your heart can stand it you should read this one.

1. Page 113, paraphrased from Paul O'Neil's book