Have you seen the series of documentary on youtube know as "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0IJCGuNtqk"?

It's a little over-alarmist, but there are some painful truths here and there. (It basically says how money isn't a "positive" thing, actually, money (As in a Dollar) is someone's debt in the form of paper... Something like that if I remember right. )

for school, I am being forced to read "Everyone's a coach" by Ken Blanchard and Don Shula. In my leisure reading, I am reading "the way of shadows" by Brent Weeks.

Eh yea. There are interesting, and true things there, but I can't help but roll my eyes at the stuff for the most part.

I can't wait to read Cornwell. I've been looking into him, especially the Sharpe series.

Yeah, people would get more recognition without all the "Illuminati!", "Conspiracy!", "Rothschild!" thing...


I don't know... The Sharpe series have maaany books and I would need to read all of them since the beginning... Maybe in the future I will read it.

But yes, those who read it told me it's really good.

I'm reading 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne.

To be completely brutally honest...I kind of liked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia:_The_Secret_of_Blue_Water take on the story better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_and_the_Black, by Stendhal.

11/22/63: A Novel by Stephen King

I'm on the third chapter. I don't have a lot of reading time currently. I'll be reading Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand, after I finish my first book.

The Internet.

I'm really liking the book, but I'm forcing myself to not read Clash of Kings until after I watch the second season of the TV show. The show is what brought me to the books and I refuse to spoil it, I'm being much more careful of spoilers then I usually am.

Pratchett books are like Monty Python sketches for me, I can't choose a definitive favourite. Pyramids was a very good book, but my favourites are Small Gods, Going Postal, Thud, Good Omens, Hogfather and the Last Continent*.

*This was the first of his books I read.

Right now everything I'm reading has to do with school. I'm reading the Pearl and Catherine called Birdy. I really like Catherine called Birdy because my real name is Catherine and I used to ride a horse named Birdie.
But I really want to finish The Last Unicorn. I watched the movie, read the new comic, now I just need to read the book.

Let me know how it is when you're finished

I haven't been reading much for a while so unfortunately I've got nothing interesting to add. Right now I'm reading looking through How to Play Guitar, but I haven't spent much time with it lately...

Right now? This thread. Okay, I figured there had to be one smartace remark like this, but I'm done now.

Well, I just finally read "The Hour of the Dragon" for the first time which is about the last point in Conan's life that R.E.Howard wrote about. Before that I kinda sped my way through a re-read of all the Conan stuff I had (only stuff written by R.E.H. although some of it was edited or added to by L.Sprague DeCamp.)

Now I'm reading Conan the Unconquered by Robert Jordan. Pretty good, so far, though I'm not sure he quite captures Conan's character as well as Howard (since he created Conan).

Also, I'm about halfway through "Commentarii de Bello Gallica" (Commentaries on the Gallic War) by Julius Caesar. It's very interesting, though somewhat dry reading at times. Which is why I've had the book for ages and never finished it.

On a similar note, I have this other book called "Gladiator: The Roman Fighter's Manual" that I pick up from time to time. It almost strikes me as written for teens or something, though it is pretty detailed. Maybe it's just written more from an entertaining perspective, with a good amount of historical information included. Anyway, it makes for pretty casual reading, but it's both informative and enjoyable, regardless.
I want to read Bran Mak Morn some day. I think he is supposed to be sort of an early prototype of Conan, like one of the characters Howard later drew on when he started writing Conan.

"I tend to read a bunch of things at once - sometimes to my detriment." Huh, you don't say? I think I can relate to that.

With that avatar

I don't really understand that, seeing as aGoT was written 15 years before. If that's what you're doing, it's cool with me, anyway. I heard the show is great. I can't wait to watch it. I wonder how they're going to do a Storm of Swords - I bet they'll have to split seasons or something. The book is like 400k words - 1300 pages or so.

Well, I'd say Bran Mak Morn were fantasy, but they were also really historical fiction in some ways (with supernatural elements)... He only ever finished 3 (I think) stories with Bran, but all the stories here include the Picts, which I guess are a possibly-real race Howard was fascinated in. That's all I really know just from reading the introduction and some forums.

Good stuff, though. I'm looking forward to reading Conan for the first time soon.

(Also, I think Kull was the real precursor to Conan, if I'm not mistaken. He was more of a barbarian than Bran, as far as I know.)

Shane Crawford's autobiography.

Shane Crawford is a famous Australian rules player...

Yeah, Kull is more a true precursor to Conan, but R.E.H. tried his hand at "historical fiction" and fantasy based in a historical context before developing the more fantasy setting of Conan's Hyborian Age. He has written that Conan seemed to be an amalgam or blending of many traits of his previous characters (and people he had met in RL) and he re-used some plots and story ideas that maybe didn't sell well the first time, but could be salvaged by a re-writing, even changing the characters or setting. He used some stories originally written as Kull to instead feature Conan as the protagonist and changing some settings and story elements. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he had used some Bran Mok Morn story elements as well.

Conan's world is still very loosely based in Earth's history but in an alternate reality sort of way. I've read that some historians of his day didn't understand what he was doing with the essay "The Hyborean Age" where he outlined the setting - so those people mocked him because of the "innacuracies" or "impropabilities", thinking he was attempting a historical theory rather than a fictional world.

Historical fiction and what I'd call "historical fantasy" is a genre I am interested in and you have made me want to read the Bran Mok Morn stuff even more now.

I also very much want to read some Solomon Kane stuff and see that movie. Many modern Vampire hunters and investigators of the supernatural owe alot to R.E.Howard's Solomon Kane character. You can feel his influence in everything from Vampire Hunter "D", to the modern movie version of "Van Helsing" and even in stuff like "Devil May Cry." Van Helsing may have appeared first in Bram Stoker's Dracula novel, but Solomon Kane was the original model for the modern swashbuckler/cowboy Vampire/Werewolf/Demon Hunter. Half of them even 'borrow' his trademark Puritan slouch hat or some very similar hat.

Same here, but for international law.


UK constitutional law consists of centuries' worth of text, if I'm not mistaken. So I can see why it wouldn't be well liked. Here, I just have to learn 18 years' worth of select cases. Much more pleasant.

An internet forum, thousands more people have read it too so it's hardly unique

Yeah, I want to read some Solomon Kane, too. I saw the illustration and thought "wow, about 100 urban fantasy series right now are aping that".
Originally I planned on reading the more well known 3: Kull, Conan, Solomon Kane, but I happened upon the Bran Mak Morn book at a sale or something, and really liked it.

Have you read any of his contemporaries, like Lovecraft etc?

State and Federal Legislation.

Why are a lot of people reading Law books and the likes?

I just started Lord of Souls.It's been a several months since I read anything else which was The Infernal City.

I'm juggling between two books:

Game Of Thrones (George R.R. Martin)
The Road To Reality (Roger Penrose)