I finished "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".  Overall, I'd give the book 4.5/5.0 stars.  Well worth the read.

In British military intelligence, deniable operations is the most dangerous tightrope you can walk. Ex-SAS man, Nick Stone, has no choice in the matter. He may be tough, resourceful, ruthless, highly trained, but he still must do what his masters want, whatever that might be.

Sarah Greenwood is beautiful, steel-willed, intelligent, cunning - the only woman Stone has ever let under his guard. And now he's been sent to hunt her down...

As the pair are pursued through the backwoods of the American South, Stone's mission becomes a deadly game of cat and mouse, and a journey to the heart of a terrifying conspiracy to which only Sarah holds the key. And as the tension builds to breaking point, the two are led to a confrontation that echoes our worst nightmares.

Only about 4 pages into it, but as always, Andy starts with some good humour, which is always fun, and grips you into the story as much as all his other books

**edit**
Forgot to upload ther picture lol

Being fiction, and going off his own memory, I guess it would be hard to recall every single event...

Do you mean it's fiction or non-fiction? Or is it a fictionalization of real events? I read Andy McNabb's first couple of books and enjoyed them, but never got the impression that they were factual.

Just finished "Forbidden Knowledge", the second in Stephen R. Donaldson's 5-book "Gap" series.  Pretty entertaining.  Now reading Book III: "A Dark and Hungry God Arises".

About half way through The Art of 3-D Computer Animation and Effects, 4th Edition, 2009 by Isaac Victor Kaplow.

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Currently reading Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory series. I'm currently on the second book (first book of the Great War Trilogy) American Front. It's an alternate history series that starts with the Confederacy winning the American Civil War and seceeding from the Union resulting in an ongoing power struggle in North America. I'm about a third of the way through the American Front which sees the USA allied with Germany and the CSA with Britain and France in the First World War...

I'm done now with the German edition of that one:

"Delete" looks at the surprising phenomenon of perfect remembering in the digital age, and reveals why we must reintroduce our capacity to forget. Digital technology empowers us as never before, yet it has unforeseen consequences as well. Potentially humiliating content on Facebook is enshrined in cyberspace for future employers to see. Google remembers everything we've searched for and when. The digital realm remembers what is sometimes better forgotten, and this has profound implications for us all. In "Delete", Viktor Mayer-Schonberger traces the important role that forgetting has played throughout human history, from the ability to make sound decisions unencumbered by the past to the possibility of second chances. The written word made it possible for humans to remember across generations and time, yet now digital technology and global networks are overriding our natural ability to forget - the past is ever present, ready to be called up at the click of a mouse. Mayer-Schonberger examines the technology that's facilitating the end of forgetting - digitization, cheap storage and easy retrieval, global access, and increasingly powerful software - and describes the dangers of everlasting digital memory, whether it's outdated information taken out of context or compromising photos the Web won't let us forget. He explains why information privacy rights and other fixes can't help us, and proposes an ingeniously simple solution - expiration dates on information - that may. "Delete" is an eye-opening book that will help us remember how to forget in the digital age.

The most recent trilogy I've enjoyed has been the one that begins with "The Blade Itself".  Highly recommended!

Just finished Book I of the KingKiller trilogy, The Name of the Wind.

If this is any indication of the quality of the next two books, I'll not be getting much sleep anytime soon!

My most recent books have been:

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Stevenson (reread)
Huckleberry Finn - Twain (reread)
Flowers for Algernon - Keyes
The Stranger - Camus (reread)
and
Toddler 411



I feel rather out of place in this thread...

Quote from: cthorpe on April 22, 2011, 05:13 AM

My most recent books have been:

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Stevenson (reread)
Huckleberry Finn - Twain (reread)
Flowers for Algernon - Keyes
The Stranger - Camus (reread)
and
Toddler 411



I feel rather out of place in this thread...

You shouldn't.

A few years ago I sat down and started to reread (or sometime just read) all those books they gave us in High School that I didn't really care about. (I was so much more "into technology" at the time.)

And guess what?

I discovered they were all very good books. OK, maybe I wasn't too crazy about Wuthering Heights, but that was the sole exception.

Since books can't change (unless you're living in Ocenia under Ingsoc) the only thing that could have was me.

So I guess I just needed to mature enough - and broaden my interests enough - to be open to what these books were about.

Glad I took the time to do it. Because some of these authors (Dickens, Twain, and Melville in particular) are far too good to pass up.

Just recently, I also was thinking about reading my old high school literature class books.  True, it was a chore at the time.  You know, I've never read Catcher in the Rye?!  I still remember...there were two literature classes, and the one I took skipped that book and read something else like Lord of the Flies.  So I have to read Catcher.  Oh!  And what was that story about the guy who had a friend who was like really gifted in certain ways, or something like that?  Shit, that's the worst possible explanation ever!  But I remember one scene: the friends go to a swimming pool, and the guy swims and breaks the record, but nobody other than the friend witnesses it.  Then there was a scene with the guy falling out of a tree and breaking his arm or something.  What was that book?

Quote

Oh!  And what was that story about the guy who had a friend who was like really gifted in certain ways, or something like that?  ****, that's the worst possible explanation ever!  But I remember one scene: the friends go to a swimming pool, and the guy swims and breaks the record, but nobody other than the friend witnesses it.  Then there was a scene with the guy falling out of a tree and breaking his arm or something.  What was that book?

The book you are talking about is called A Separate Peace by John Knowles.  It's a great book.

There you go!  Yeas, I'm going to reread that.

I recently read an essay entitled The Law by Frederic Bastiat. It's in the public domain so you should be able to find it for free or cheap somewhere. In fact it's even part of a collection of Bastiat's Essays on Political Economy on Librivox.org if you prefer an Audiobook edition. The basic premise of the essay is to explain the purpose of governmentmental law. A few select quotes:

"If every person has the right to defend--even by force-- his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right--its reason for existing, its lawfulness--is based on individual right."

He explains an idea of how government sometimes is corrupted from its natural and rightful purpose to protect life, liberty, and property to denying those very things from some people using a system he calls Legal Plunder:

"When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it--without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud--to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed...
"How is the legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime..."

It's a relatively short read (perhaps 50 pages?) compared to what I'd consider a "normal" length (novel-sized) book, as I suppose essays typically are. But I found the concepts in it enlightening I, for one, agreed with Bastiat.



Additionally I just read another related book entitled The Proper Role of Government (which appears to also be released under the title The Proper Role & Improper Role of Government) by Ezra Taft Benson.

This one is even shorter than The Law; the edition I read was only 32 pages. In this pamphlet(?) Benson talks of the principles on which government should be formed, the basic function of government, the source of governmental power, the proper role and functions of government, things the government should not do, the basic error of Marxism, the real cause of American prosperity, as well as consequences for disregarding the principles, and suggestions on how to return to basic concepts and principles in government. Benson even quotes Bastiat's The Law a number of times throughout the book. A couple select quotes from the book:

"This means, then, that the proper function of government is limited only to those spheres of activity within which the individual citizen has the right to act. By deriving its just powers from the governed, government becomes primarily a mechanism for defense against bodily harm, theft and involuntary servitude. It cannot claim the power to redistribute the wealth or force reluctant citizens to perform acts of charity against their will. Government is created by man. No man possesses such power to delegate. The creature cannot exceed the creator."

"There is one simple test. Do I as an individual have a right to use force upon my neighbor to accomplish this goal? If I do have such a right, then I may delegate that power to my government to exercise on my behalf. If I do not have that right as an individual, then I cannot delegate it to government, and I cannot ask my government to perform the act for me."


And while I'm on the topic, I'm about to get started on The Five Thousand Year Leap by W. Cleon Skousen. The Amazon page describes it as follows:

In The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle That Changed the World, Discover the 28 Principles of Freedom our Founding Fathers said must be understood and perpetuated by every people who desire peace, prosperity, and freedom. Learn how adherence to these beliefs during the past 200 years has brought about more progress than was made in the previous 5000 years. These 28 Principles include The Genius of Natural Law, Virtuous and Moral Leaders, Equal Rights--Not Equal Things, and Avoiding the Burden of Debt.