Sunday Morning Book Thread 10-06-2013: America the Formerly Beautiful [OregonMuse]

Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to AoSHQ's prestigious Sunday Morning Book Thread.

Our Uncertain Future

I'm coming to the conclusion of Unintended Consequences by John Ross and I can't say that I like the direction it's taken: it's turned from gun pr0n into revenge pr0n. But I will say this: among firearms enthusiasts, there's not a lot of love for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

I mentioned this to my gun nut brother a while back ("Are you reading that? That's a classic book!") and that started a discussion about books in general and America-is-going-to-hell novels in particular, and he told me he enjoys reading what he calls "near-future American balkanization" stories, involving armed resistance to federal tyranny. So I thought I'd pass along his recommendation of Matthew Bracken's 'Enemies' trilogy, Enemies Foreign and Domestic, Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista, and Foreign Enemies And Traitors.

And along these same lines, there's the America-has-screwed-the-pooch novels of D.W. Ulsterman, mentioned in previous book threads, Domitatus and Tumultus.

Perhaps some of you morons can recommend others of this type of novel.

And speaking of the destruction of civilizations, God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades by Rodney Stark arrived in the mail a couple of days ago and is now on my never-shrinking stack.

Where Some Moronettes Will Not Be Vacationing

Science!

I found this piece on an NPR blog that reports that somebody did a study that found that reading (literary) fiction can boost social skills. The study as described in the NPR piece sounds like complete rubbish to me, especially when they try to distinguish between 'literary' and 'popular' fiction, totally subjective and ripe for the kind of abuse wherein the researchers succeed only in embedding their own preferences into the results. Also, are they completely forgetting the stereotype of the nerdy kid who reads books all day and has hardly any friends?

An Unexpected Death

Tom Clancy, author of 'The Hunt For Red October' and other best-selling techno-thrillers, passed away a few days ago at John Hopkins Hospital after a brief illness.

A new Jack Ryan book, "Command Authority," co-written with Mark Greaney is due out in December. And a new Jack Ryan movie, "Shadow One," will be released at Christmas.

Clancy was 66.

Dinosaur Pr0n

You've got to be kidding. (warning for mildly NSFW bikini pics)

Books For Morons

Since the book thread mailbag was pretty sparse this week, this might be a good time to repeat an earlier recommendation: David Vining tells me he has been skulking about the AoSHQ since 2009, not commenting much, but he did write a fantasy adventure novel called A Quest through Winter Sleep, and is available for $4.99 cents on Amazon:

A young woman wakes up to discover her father murdered and her mother missing. What follows is a harrowing journey through a richly imagined world of dying magic and ancient religions.

Hidden from the truth because of a veiled family secret, Fanny Mayer finds herself in a world she never knew, a place that is only now beginning to rebuild twenty years after a bloody and savage civil war. Rifts still run deep, and she must navigate through a long series of pitfalls, traps, and catastrophes in her search for the woman who gave her life and the men who took her.

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In last week's thread, commenter BornLib recommended the book Walls, Wire, Bars and Souls by conservative blogger and former prison chaplain Peter Grant. I picked it up based on the recommendation and it's a fascinating look at America's prison system. Grant pulls you right in and displays for you the mindset of convicts, how they think and what they value and why they behave the way they do. All I can say is that prisons are scary places, and I'd last about a week.

I also picked up one of Grant's science fiction novels, Take The Star Road, which appears to be the first of a series. One sequel, Ride the Rising Tide, has also been released.

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So that's all for this week. As always, book thread tips, suggestions, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to OregonMuse, Proprietor, AoSHQ Book Thread, at aoshqbookthread, followed by the 'at' sign, and then 'G' mail, and then dot cee oh emm.

What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as I keep saying, life is too short to be reading lousy books.

posted by Open Blogger at 10:48 AM

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