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OT: Watcha reading?

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Something up @garnetpalmetto's alley. It's about the naval battles that occurred while the Allies were kicking Japan back out of the Philippines, and specifically the Battle off Samar, where a small group of American destroyers and escort carriers got blindsided by an entire Japanese fleet of over 20 battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Despite being horribly outnumbered by larger ships (including the Yamato, which weighed about as much as every American ship combined), the destroyers fought the Japanese to a standstill, and eventually forced them to retreat.


If you have any interest in naval military history, I can't recommend this enough. Hornfischer was a fantastic author.



Also, the wreck of one of the ships sunk, the Johnston, was discovered last year, and is officially the deepest shipwreck on record, almost twice as deep as the Titanic.


Wreck of USS Johnston discovered 77 years after its sinking at the Battle of Leyte Gulf
 
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Late arriving here....

I've been alternating between heavy stuff - "On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres" by Nicolaus Copernicus (from Stephen Hawking's "On THe Shoulders of Giants" series) - and light - "American Grand Prix Racing" by Tim Considine (known more as a child actor than an author).

Also recently read a couple of historical graphic novels a friend lent me - "Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atom Bomb" and "Moonbound: Apollo 11 and the Dream of Spaceflight", both by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm.
 
Navin R Slavin said:
Watership Down for like the zillionth time.
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I could never read that. My parents announced to my brother and I that they were getting separated the day before my 8th birthday. The next day, on my birthday, they took us to see the animated movie of Watership Down. I think that they wanted to see how much trauma would be required to get me into therapy.
 
MinJaBen said:
I could never read that. My parents announced to my brother and I that they were getting separated the day before my 8th birthday. The next day, on my birthday, they took us to see the animated movie of Watership Down. I think that they wanted to see how much trauma would be required to get me into therapy.
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That is... uh... some serious hraka.
 
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Currently reading a fall-of-Constantinople story The Dark Angel by Mika Waltari. If you want grand historical fiction that has things on its mind, you could do worse than Waltari.
 
Currently I'm reading C.J.Sansom's Dark Fire. I've been going through these 16th century murder mysteries in random order, this one being my 4th book from him (I think it is the 2nd in publishing order). It is kind of interesting to get a view to Henry VIII's reign from few steps down the ladders of power. The main character is a London layer who gets pulled into the schemes of men higher up in the rankings.
I'm also going through estonian Indrek Hargla's Apotechary Melchior books that take place in medieval Tallinn during the reign of Knights of Teutonic Order there. These are also kind of detective stories with this nice historical twist. It is fascinating to read how people (including main characters) back then really believed in supernatural and created and used all kinds of potions and medicine collected from nature.
Oh, and just last week I finished Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn fantasy trilogy. Esp. the latter half of that was very good, so I'm glad I didn't give up during the first book.

(Going through my 12th book this year, and still my lady complains that I'm always gaming and watching Netflix etc.. :DD???)
 
Surrounded By Ahos said:
91v0sqhxc9L.jpg






Something up @garnetpalmetto's alley. It's about the naval battles that occurred while the Allies were kicking Japan back out of the Philippines, and specifically the Battle off Samar, where a small group of American destroyers and escort carriers got blindsided by an entire Japanese fleet of over 20 battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Despite being horribly outnumbered by larger ships (including the Yamato, which weighed about as much as every American ship combined), the destroyers fought the Japanese to a standstill, and eventually forced them to retreat.


If you have any interest in naval military history, I can't recommend this enough. Hornfischer was a fantastic author.



Also, the wreck of one of the ships sunk, the Johnston, was discovered last year, and is officially the deepest shipwreck on record, almost twice as deep as the Titanic.


Wreck of USS Johnston discovered 77 years after its sinking at the Battle of Leyte Gulf
Click to expand...

Oh man. You know the way to my heart. I'll add that to the reading list! BTW if you've never made the trip down to Charleston to check out Patriot's Point, I urge you to do so. It's not quite as awesome as it used to be (at its peak when I was a kid they had 5 ships and now they're down to 2), but they've spent a good amount restoring the USS Laffey (DD-724), better known as "The Ship That Wouldn't Die), after an engagement on 4/15/45 when she suffered damage from 4 bomb hits, 6 kamikaze crashes, and strafing runs by Japanese aircraft that killed 32 of Laffey's sailors and wounded 71 more.

Because Patriot's Point's primary funding source is the South Carolina state government there's no telling when the museum might find that they need to cut Laffey loose to another museum (like they did with USCGC Ingham (WHEC-35) which is now in Key West, FL) or to reef her like they're planning on doing to USS Clamagore (SS-343) in the interests of concentrating money on their crown jewel, USS Yorktown (CV-10).
 
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garnetpalmetto said:
Oh man. You know the way to my heart. I'll add that to the reading list! BTW if you've never made the trip down to Charleston to check out Patriot's Point, I urge you to do so. It's not quite as awesome as it used to be (at its peak when I was a kid they had 5 ships and now they're down to 2), but they've spent a good amount restoring the USS Laffey (DD-724), better known as "The Ship That Wouldn't Die), after an engagement on 4/15/45 when she suffered damage from 4 bomb hits, 6 kamikaze crashes, and strafing runs by Japanese aircraft that killed 32 of Laffey's sailors and wounded 71 more.

Because Patriot's Point's primary funding source is the South Carolina state government there's no telling when the museum might find that they need to cut Laffey loose to another museum (like they did with USCGC Ingham (WHEC-35) which is now in Key West, FL) or to reef her like they're planning on doing to USS Clamagore (SS-343) in the interests of concentrating money on their crown jewel, USS Yorktown (CV-10).
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I've been to Patriot's Point at least once or twice that I recall, and I definitely remember having a great time touring the Yorktown. I can't remember if I ever actually boarded the Laffey, though. The last time I went I was probably in middle school, but the little destroyer didn't impress me all that much, since I'd seen the USS North Carolina on a school trip a year or two earlier.

That sentiment is changing, though, as I'm reading up on what those little tin cans were capable of.
 
tarheelhockey said:
Totally agree. The difference with Facebook is how pervasive it is. 70%+ of the population has an account and it influences nearly 100% indirectly.
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Boom Boom Apathy said:
Also, Without Amazon, Microsoft and Apple, Facebook never gets off the ground. Those 3 companies products and services enabled Facebook.

I also neglected to include Google and YouTube in my initial list. I’m sure I’m missing some others.
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tarheelhockey said:
If for any reason Google decided to just not play ball with the rest of society, we'd all be deeply, deeply ****ed. And I think it's fair to say that at this point, they cannot possibly lose market share unless they relinquish it voluntarily, like a beneficent king.
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I recently read "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism". While not a great page-turner, it's a good book related to this topic of how invasive big tech is in our lives. How they gather data, monetize it, use it to manipulate behavior, use it to build AI, share it with 3 letter agencies, etc.

It was a good wake-up call...I've been re-examining what tech I use and what the relationship/contract is...and slowly removing/replacing services/devices.

South Park nailed it a decade ago with Human-CentiPad.
 
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@MrazeksVengeance I JUST FINISHED READING REAPER MAN FOR THE FIRST TIME AND I NEED TO TALK ABOUT IT


I've read not quite half of Discworld so far, and until now my favorite one has been the one I just finished, but I think Reaper Man might break that streak. That is going to be hard to top. What a perfect ending. Death pleading to Azrael to give Miss Flitworth a bit of her borrowed time back, and the response. I never would have thought that the word "YES." would bring me nearly to tears, but here we are.


The scene where Death attacked the New Death with the scythe reminded me of you, btw. Rage and vengeance, brother, rage and vengeance.
 
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