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What book/literature are you reading right now? - Printable Version +- Sinisterly (https://sinister.li) +-- Forum: General (https://sinister.li/Forum-General) +--- Forum: The Lounge (https://sinister.li/Forum-The-Lounge) +--- Thread: What book/literature are you reading right now? (/Thread-What-book-literature-are-you-reading-right-now) |
What book/literature are you reading right now? - MiS - 05-27-2014 Or what have you recently read? This can include e-books, textbooks, short stories, comics, manga, non-fiction... Any and all types of literary work. I've just started House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, and it's gotten me drawn in, although it's a bit confusing to get into at first, since it's basically a story within a story. The interlying storyline is pretty amazing. RE: What book/literature are you reading right now? - Saikou - 05-27-2014 Reading this book that is a biography of George Washington that explains in significant detail how he is like Neo in the Matrix. RE: What book/literature are you reading right now? - cZarKastic - 05-27-2014 Because of the show I've been powering through the "A Song of Ice and Fire". Right now I'm on A Feast for Crows. RE: What book/literature are you reading right now? - Losi - 05-27-2014 I'm reading the Kilo-Five trilogy for Halo. As a big fan of the Halo franchise, i decided to read the books. The books take place after the Human-Covenant war. Here's the link to the wiki: http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Kilo-Five_trilogy RE: What book/literature are you reading right now? - Uzinero - 05-31-2014 I just finished reading Andy McNab's DropZone. It's a very good book, there's a second book, DropZone: Terminal Velocity that I plan to get soon, but can't afford it just yet. RE: What book/literature are you reading right now? - MiS - 05-31-2014 @Saikou I need the name of this book. For science history. @Uzinero Sounds pretty interesting from the title alone. What genre is it, and what is it about? RE: What book/literature are you reading right now? - Uzinero - 05-31-2014 (05-31-2014, 07:54 PM)MiS Wrote: @Saikou I need the name of this book. For science history. I guess it would fit best into Action&Adventure. It's about a young adult in the UK doing his A Levels (So around 17-18 years old) who isn't sure what to do with his life, and lives in a terrible apartment with his Sister, Mother (who works multiple jobs so they can keep their awful apartment), and his alcoholic Father. One day he sees someone who he recognizes from the school year above him do a BASE Jump (skydiving from on top of a platform, such as a building or radio tower, in this case the block of flats he lives in.) The person then tells him to check out his Myspace page, which he does, and finds multiple videos of him skydiving. He sees about this place on there called "FreeFall", a big skydiving center in his city which is currently hiring. He gets the job and soon finds himself doing a tandem skydive with the ex-army owner, who is trying to create the ultimate expert skydiving team. The owner and team sees potential in him, and he soon finds himself doing his own skydives and with a chance of getting a place in the team, but all is not as it appears. I can't really say much more than that or I'll give away the whole story, but it's a really good book and is incredibly well written. RE: What book/literature are you reading right now? - tortilla - 05-31-2014 Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown. RE: What book/literature are you reading right now? - Oni - 05-31-2014 Book against global warming, which was written by a friend of mine. RE: What book/literature are you reading right now? - Saikou - 05-31-2014 (05-31-2014, 07:54 PM)MiS Wrote: @Saikou I need the name of this book. For science history. The book, if you care enough "This is an excellent, interesting, easy to read biography. Though it is written primarily for the young reader, it is fascinating to a history buff of any age. The author clearly did her research and did an excellent job of representing the spiritual life of George Washington." - Some guy who reviewed this book Spoiler: The good part, not an excerpt from the book but essentially identical to the book's account
Opinion: George Washington was a divinely assisted badass. Today is Presidents Day, the day we celebrate George Washington’s birthday — and apparently all other past presidents. But screw all the other presidents, for they’ve got nothing on ol’ George. In honor of Washington — who may have also been either a ninja or wizard — I have decided to celebrate his birthday. But first, let me clarify something. This is more about what happened to Washington than what Washington did. By most accounts, Washington was a pretty bad general, which makes his accomplishments all the more impressive. Earlier in his career and before the revolution, Washington was what Dwight Schrute might call an “Assistant British General.” He was actually an assistant to that general (as in secretary who also fetched the rum), but no one’s counting. One day during the French and Indian War, the British decided to surprise the Native Americans with an ambush. During that battle, Washington — assistant to the general, remember — decided to hop on a horse and join the fracas after his general was killed, taking command himself. Small problem — his horse was immediately shot out from under him. “No biggie,” Washington thought. He quickly recovered from the fall, spotted a vacant horse, shouted, “Dibs!” and ran toward it. He then mounted the beast and resumed his organizational efforts of the troops. And then his horse — yep, his second horse — was shot out from under him. George Washington’s badassery could have ended there that day, but it didn’t. In an action that would have gotten him a nasty letter from PETA today, he hopped on a third horse and resumed leading the troops. Luckily for the horse, Washington was fine for the rest of the battle. When he got off his steed at the end of the day, he looked down at himself. He had four bullet holes in his coat and none in his body. George Washington was pretty much Neo from The Matrix. He was The One. There are other accounts of stories like this in which Washington essentially rode circles around bullets. For example, during the Revolutionary War, Washington, who was commanding the American forces, arrived late to a battle between his troops and the British. If you’ve seen any movies about the revolution, you’ll know common practice was to form a straight, horizontal line and fire at each other. Upon arrival to the battle, Washington reformed his army’s line and told them to hold their fire. He then rode his poor, poor horse between both armies and ordered his troops to fire. Just visualize that scene in your head for a moment — I’ll wait. After surviving — and at this point, that’s kind of expected — the battle, he wrote a letter to his brother describing his time, saying, “I heard bullets whistle and, believe me, there is something charming to the sound of bullets.” In addition to dodging bullets, Washington also frequently made battle plans that heavily relied on weather or other conditions that should not exist. One such plan called for a group of Washington’s troops to gather supplies and heavy gear from a fort 300 miles away from their current position, load them onto boats in a nearby river, sail down that river, then unload the boats and use snow sleds to bring the supplies back to base — all during the freezing winter. This, of course, seems incredibly difficult, but when you throw in the fact that the river needed to be unfrozen while there was snow on the ground makes it seem quite impossible. You already know it worked anyway. The river started freezing over while they unloaded the cargo after their trek down the river. Only then did it start snowing. Remember, Washington specifically ordered sleds to be used, so if it had not snowed, the mission likely would have failed. America is unlikely to ever have such a badass for a president again. The trend seems to be moving away from presidents with military experience, which is neither good nor bad. But it does kind of suck that we’ll never hear cool battlefield stories about our future presidents. Happy birthday, George. Source |