What are you reading right now?

I started reading "Scorecasting" last night. The example they use in the introduction was about little league softball and how they put the worst player in right field cuz he was least likely to touch the ball there, but then teams figured it out and started hitting that way, so they put the kid at catcher cuz there was no stealing allowed and whatnot.

Then they started talking about the David Tyree catch in the Super Bowl and how Mike Carey, the referee, could have blown the play dead because Eli Manning was basically "in the grasp" of the defender. The whole first chapter is about how fans will react worse to a bad call than a no call. They call it ommission bias. Pretty interesting so far.

 
I started reading Stephen Hunter. He is the author of the Bob Lee Swager series(Movie Shooter) the first one Point of Impact is what the movie us based on. There are a total of seven of then I red the first one in two days couldn't put it down!

 
I'm about to finish Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. Simple book, one of the classics, and a very quick and easy read.

 
darkhorse85 said:
Ender's Game. Great book if you're into Sci-Fi. I'm not a really into Sci-Fi too much but I loved this book.
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That is a great book. Its too bad the rest of the series is not nearly as good. Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide don't live up to the greatness of Ender's Game.

 
GSG5545 said:
I started reading "Scorecasting" last night. The example they use in the introduction was about little league softball and how they put the worst player in right field cuz he was least likely to touch the ball there, but then teams figured it out and started hitting that way, so they put the kid at catcher cuz there was no stealing allowed and whatnot.

Then they started talking about the David Tyree catch in the Super Bowl and how Mike Carey, the referee, could have blown the play dead because Eli Manning was basically "in the grasp" of the defender. The whole first chapter is about how fans will react worse to a bad call than a no call. They call it ommission bias. Pretty interesting so far.
Click to expand...
I had to bump this because there was mention of the "defense wins championships" mantra in another thread.

In this "Scorecasting" book, they break down how it's not entirely true that defense wins championships. It's basically pretty even between top-notch offenses winning titles and top-notch defenses winning titles. So they are both even valued.

I thought that was interesting considering we have defensive guru as a head coach here at DONU.

 
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My oldest son gave me this book saying that since the 'cold war' shaped so much of my life,

that I would enjoy the 'behind the scenes' motives.

He is right.

This book will probably scare some people with the amount of chemical munitions still missing from the former Soviet Union.

Where they are at and in whose hand, makes this book an interesting read.

 
NPR took nominations, then votes, for the top 100 Sci/Fi & Fantasy novels. Looking through this list, I'm a little surprised that, although this is my favorite genre, I've only read about 1/3 of the books on this list.

LINK <---- Contains descriptions of each novel/series.

Their results:

1 The Lord Of The Rings

2 The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

3 Ender's Game

4 The Dune Chronicles

5 A Song Of Ice And Fire Series

6 1984

7 Fahrenheit 451

8 The Foundation Triology

9 Brave New World

10 American Gods

11 The Princess Bride

12 The Wheel Of Time Series

13 Animal Farm

14 Neuromancer

15 Watchmen

16 I, Robot

17 Stranger In A Strange Land

18 The Kingkiller Chronicles

19 Slaughterhouse-Five

20 Frankenstein

21 Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

22 The Handmaid's Tale

23 The Dark Tower Series

24 2001: A Space Odyssey

25 The Stand

26 Snow Crash

27 The Martian Chronicles

28 Cat's Cradle

29 The Sandman Series

30 A Clockwork Orange

31 Starship Troopers

32 Watership Down

33 Dragonflight

34 The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

35 A Canticle For Leibowitz

36 The Time Machine

37 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

38 Flowers For Algernon

39 The War Of The Worlds

40 The Amber Chronicles

41 The Belgariad

42 The Mists Of Avalon

43 Mistborn Trilogy

44 Ringworld

45 The Left Hand Of Darkness

46 The Silmarillion

47 The Once And Future King

48 Neverwhere

49 Childhood's End

50 Contact

51 The Hyperion Cantos

52 Stardust

53 Cryptonomicon

54 World War Z

55 The Last Unicorn

56 The Forever War

57 Small Gods

58 The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever

59 The Vorkosigan Saga

60 Going Postal

61 The Mote In God's Eye

62 The Sword Of Truth Series

63 The Road

64 Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

65 I Am Legend

66 The Riftwar Saga

67 The Sword of Shannara Trilogy

68 The Conan The Barbarian Series

69 The Farseer Trilogy

70 The Time Traveler's Wife

71 The Way Of Kings

72 Journey To The Center Of The Earth

73 The Legend Of Drizzt Series

74 Old Man's War

75 The Diamond Age

76 Rendezvous With Rama

77 The Kushiel's Legacy Series

78 The Dispossessed

79 Something Wicked This Way Comes

80 Wicked

81 The Malazan Book Of The Fallen series

82 The Eyre Affair

83 The Culture Series

84 The Crystal Cave

85 Anathem

86 The Codex Alera Series

87 The Book Of The New Sun

88 The Thrawn Trilogy

89 The Outlander Series

90 The Elric Saga

91 The Illustrated Man

92 Sunshine

93 A Fire Upon The Deep

94 The Caves Of Steel

95 The Mars Trilogy

96 Lucifer's Hammer

97 Doomsday Book

98 Perdido Street Station

99 The Xanth Series

100 The Space Trilogy

 
They've been writing books a lot longer than any of us have been reading them.

I recent finished the fourth and fifth installments of George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones to you HBO subscribers)––the narrative hit a pretty big lag here. I don't know if at his current pace he'll ever finish the series. He's got a long way to go and claims there are only two books left. Somehow I doubt that.

 
I was going to call BS if Asimov didn't get in the top 10 :)

Liked the dragon series by Anne McCaffrey too; kinda superficial but entertaining.

Dean Ing wrote a trilogy about post apocalyptic America. Entertaining with survival training included at no additional cost.

Let me clarify that. Post nuclear apocalypse :D

Lots of sci-fi I love but most isn't too deep and not bound for the literary honor roll.

 
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