Books Read: 2011

[REPO Man]

Recently revisited the Infernal trilogy by Edward Lee, a book series that mostly takes place in the Mephistopolis, a.k.a. The City of Hell.


The first is City Infernal. It follows Cassie Heydon, a goth chick whose twin sister, Lissa, commits suicide after catching Cassie making out with Lissa's boyfriend, a goth club bartender named Radu who is described as looking like Nosferatu with muscles.

Some times later, after therapy and failed suicide attempts, Cassie's father moves him and his daughter out to the country, but Cassie discovers that the house belonged to a Satanist who raped women and then sacrificed the babies to Satan.

To make things weirder, Cassie finds three ex-residents of Hell living in her house... and only SHE can see. It turns out that she's an "Etheress", a legendary myth in Hell. Being born a twin on an Occult Holiday, who and whose twin was suicidal but only one succeeded in suicide and were both virgins, the Etheress has vast powers in Hell. She crosses to Hell and discovers that it is in fact a vast city that is a polar opposite of ours.

She later comes across a plot to bring the horrors of Hell to Earth... and the Etheress is the key!



The next is Infernal Angel.

Continuing some time after City Infernal, Cassie has found herself in an insane asylum, where she is told by a Caliginaut angel that she must return to Hell.

Meanwhile, Lucifer has begun work on a means to allow a part of Hell to occupy an exact portion of Earth as a means of a demonic plan that stretches across space AND TIME!

And if that wasn't enough, a male counterpart to the Etheress, the Etherean, has found himself in Hell, but what are his motives?



The next, and (currently) last, is House Infernal.

This time, the main character is Venetia Barlow, a young woman working to fix up an old priory house that was in fact built by a Satanist, who has created the house under demonic influence. And the priory house is at the heart of a criminal investigation involving blood-harvesting Satanists, a plot by the demonic Antipope Boniface, and an effort by two humans, a priest and a recent member of the Human damned, to stop a plan by Boniface to bring a brood of unholy monstrosities into our world.


I highly recommend it to fans of dark fantasy or for fans of Clive Barker.

There's supposedly a movie adaptation in talks.

Personally, I wish they'd make a video game based on it. It'd be a mix of Devil May Cry, GTA, Diablo, Alice: Madness Returns and various other elements. Basically, an open-world action-RPG with adventure, beat 'em up, and hack 'n' slash elements.

As for the web series City Infernal: Redemption is Hell, IDK what that is, but doubt it's related to this awesome book series.

[BoringSupreez]

I finished reading Dune. It's only as long as a Harry Potter book, but it takes quite a lot more time to read. I enjoyed it though, and now I understand the various Dune parodies I've seen better.

[BRIK]

1984.
Great book, it's a classic I've been meaning to read for ages since I read Animal Farm in high school. Dunno whether I should be happy for the ending or sad though

[Ack]

Ooph, I really need to update this soon.

[saturnfan]

1. Disquisition of Government - John C. Calhoun
2. Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
3. Breaking the Backcountry: Seven Year's War in Virgina and Pennsylvania, 1754-1765 -Matthew C. Ward
4. Christianity in Latin America: A History - Ondina and Justo Gonzalez
5. The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America - Walter R. Borneman
6. Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570
7. John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union - John Niven
8. Hall of Mirrors - Laura A. Lewis
9. Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ - Carolyn Dean (half read)
10. Texas Revolution - William C. Binkley
11. Wild Yankees - Paul B. Moyer
12. Fries's Rebellion: The Enduring Struggle for the American Revolution - Paul Douglas Newman
13. Taming Democracy - Terry Bouton
14. Dimity Convictions - Barbara Welter
15. The Faces of the Gods - Leslie G. Desmangles
16. The Presidency of James K. Polk - Paul H. Bergeron
17. Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement - Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page
18. Freedom Under Siege - Ron Paul
19. Mighty Stonewall - Frank E. Vandiver
20. The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience - Emory M. Thomas
21. The Dawn of a New Era, 1250 -1453 - Edward P. Cheyney
22. Lincoln's Darkest Year: The War in 1862 - William Marvel (new)
23. The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn - Nathaniel Philbrick (new)
24. George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I - Miranda Carter (new)
25. North against South: The American Iliad, 1848-1877 - Ludwell H. Johnson (new)

I haven’t updated my list in a while so I present to you the four most recent books I have read. I won’t go into laborious detail though. The two Civil War books were excellent. Marvel’s book primarily deals with the North’s overall poor military strategy in 1862 and their trouble with recruiting new soldiers. Johnson’s work is a conservative survey on the Civil War and Reconstruction, and one that I highly recommend.

George, Nicholas and Wilhelm was a very interesting, but somewhat unbalanced look at the years leading up to WWI. The focus of the book is how these three Royal cousins (UK, Russia, and Germany) were inept at working with each other and therefore powerless to avoid war. This is more or less true, but by limiting the work to only these three individuals, key players like France, the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungry are basically ignored. It did however offer great biographical sketches of the three men.

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn was a more or less a narrative telling of the battle. Didn’t really offer any new information so it wasn’t particularly academic, but it is nonetheless a great choice for those who new to the subject. This is the second book I have read on the battle, and those looking for something more scholarly should check out A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn - the Last Great Battle of the American West.

[indecks]

I love to read but I don't do it excessively. Not that you could read excessively, but you get the idea.

I'm currently reading Transformers: Exodus, which is apparently the 'official' History of the War for Cybertron. At least it says that on the cover. I thought the game War for Cybertron was the official historical 'record', but whatever.

They seem to reference several things from the game in the book, such as Trypticon Station and Starscream and his Seekers being the guardians for Trypticon.

It's pretty cool so far.

[Ack]

B is for Bad Poetry, by Pamela August Russell
The 13 Crimes of Science Fiction, Edited by Isaac Asimov
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, by Stephen King
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein
Kull, Exile of Atlantis, by Robert E. Howard
The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty
The Great Train Robbery, by Michael Crichton
Von Ryan's Express, by David Westheimer
Sphere, by Michael Crichton
The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
Hondo, by Louis L'Amour
The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli
We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam, by Lt. Gen. Hal Moore (Ret.)
Mao Tse-Tung and China, by C.P. FitzGerald
Farmer in the Sky, by Robert A. Heinlein
In Gallant Company, by Alexander Kent
Korea, by Patricia K. Kummer
The Koreans, by Russell Warren Howe
Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob, by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill
Making Strategy: An Introduction to National Security Processes and Problems, by Col. Dennis M. Drew and Dr. Donald M. Snow
The Withering Away of the Totalitarian State ...And Other Surprises, by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile, by Arturo Valenzuela
The Polynesian Triangle, by Erick Berry and Herbert Best

TOTAL: 23

Like I said, I needed to update. I'll run through these quickly:

Making Strategy is a textbook written originally by an Air Force colonel at Maxwell Air Force base and a professor from the University of Alabama. It covers the basic premises and concepts of national strategy, presenting arguments and theories based on the military history of the United States. Of particular note is its emphasis on the bizarre nature of nuclear strategy, for which we had no real historical precedent. In fact its believed that nuclear deterrent strategies may not work at all...we just won't know until it fails. Anti-insurgency strategy also has a small place in the book, but unfortunately it's quite limited. I wasn't really surprised by this though, considering the book was written in the 1980s while arguments over the failure in Vietnam were still raging in the military. Anti-insurgency was effectively put on a backburner at the time to nuclear strategy anyway, since the Cold War was still going on.

The Withering Away of the Totalitarian State is a collection of columns, articles, and essays written by Jeanne Kirkpatrick in the mid-1980s to early 1990s as she watched the Soviet Union and its international empire collapse. Mrs. Kirkpatrick prepped each piece with a short paragraph about whether her views had changed or how her theories had proven true or not, making for an interesting retrospective into the US perception of the second Russian Revolution. Since it is effectively a play-by-play of regime collapse, I'd say this book has definitely shaped my views on current world events.

The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes focuses on the collapse of the Chilean government in the early 1970s into a military junta. Chile was an interesting experiment for socialism and communism: an attempt to bring about a worker's revolution through entirely legal means. Unfortunately it led to a minority socialist government, the bolstering and then faltering of the economy, a collapse in the political center, and eventually a coup from the Chilean military. There were some interesting parallels to the modern United States in terms of economic disparity and political polarization, but a considerable amount of what caused Chile to fall apart isn't likely to happen in the United States due to massive differences in how we handle democracy and how our military operates.

The Polynesian Triangle was a welcome change to anthropological considerations, focusing on the people, history, and cultures of the Polynesian Triangle, a massive section of the Pacific ranging from Hawaii in the north, New Zealand in the south, and Easter Island in the east. I read the book because I have little knowledge of the region and was interested in learning more.

[Gnashvar]

Just finished reading Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

A good read. I couldn't put it down. There are some things that are out of date like the Warsaw Pact. The kids talk way too much like adults but overall great.

[MrPopo]

Just finished reading Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

A good read. I couldn't put it down. There are some things that are out of date like the Warsaw Pact. The kids talk way too much like adults but overall great.

You'd be surprised just how much kids talk like adults.

[BoringSupreez]

I finished Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Lord of the Flies recently. Both were great, although Lord of the Flies is rather depressing. Now working on The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.