Finished Dance with Dragons.

Finished Robopocalypse. If you liked World War Z, you'll like it.

Finished Dances with Dragons as well, and have started The Wheel of Time Series, which I started a number of years ago and never got all the way through. Reading Eye of the World now, hope to get through them all by the time the final one hits shelves sometime next year.

Yes. I liked it a lot. It's one of the reasons that I thought I might like this book. The other is that Neal Stephenson wrote one of the essays. He's the author of the Baroque Cycle, a sweeping fictional history that heavily involves characters and events related to the early Royal Society.

I read on Variety today that Stephen Speilberg is attached to making it into a movie for summer 2012.

Your comment piqued my interest, so I looked it up on Wikipedia, which said: "Sources like Robert Crais and Booklist have compared the book to the works of Michael Crichton and Robert Heinlein." I'm sold! It'll be my next book after I finish A Dance With Dragons.

The Baroque Cycle is so freaking awesome and impressive.

Yeah, similar to The Passagr, it has "made for Hollywood" all over it.

I've only finished the first of the three books, but I agree. Stephenson is freaking awesome and impressive.

Just finished: Game of Thrones by George R Martin
The Mist by Stephen King

Now reading: Ghost Story by Peter Straub

Recently read Sniper One, which is about a British sniper at the Al Amarah Iraq in the 2004'ish timeframe, when the Iraqi Shi'as rose up under al-Sadr. Great, fast read.

I'm not reading The Rise and Fall of Bear Stearns, by Alan (Ace) Greenberg, the former CEO and then Chairman at the time of its demise. As expected, so fast it's an easy, fast read of a narcissist who is setting things up to blame everything on his successor, Jimmy Cayne. I already read House of Cards, the Big Short, and some other books around the 2008 meltdown, so I have a pretty good understanding of the Bear Stearns collapse. Looking forward to All the Devils are Here, which was highly recommended to me by a private equity guy with a background at the big investment houses. That one's next. I bought a crapload of books at 50-60% off at Borders two weeks ago, including these two (and Sniper One).

I decided I wanted to read a sci-fi novel. Never really have before. I love sci-fi movies and tv.

I picked one at random. It ended up being Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

That was pretty excellent. Any more sci-fi recommendations?

Read Ender's Shadow, which is the paraquel. Tells the same basic story from Bean's point of view. Probably better than Ender's Game, imo.


You might try Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson as well.

The Magician King by Lev Grossman.


The second in the Magicians sequence (no word on how many there will be, but I'm guessing trilogy). I liked this one better than the second. It's billed as Harry Potter, if Hogwart's was an Ivy League college, but it's so much more than that. Anyone who was a fan of fantasy in their youth will appreciate the themes this series plays around with (why do we like fantasy? What if all of our childhood fantasies were actually real?).

Currently reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Just started it, but it's great so far, especially for children of the 80s. I don't feel like making my own synopsis, so here it is:

Just finished "A Feast for Crows" by George R.R. Martin yesterday morning. Fired up "Dancing with Dragons"' right afterwards. Thankfully, they've returned to Roy Dotrice as the narrator for DwD, who narrated the first two books.