Re-reading Dies the Fire.  The first three books in the series, at least.  They're my favorites.  Imagine a world were all high technology suddenly stops.  Those who can sling and/or make slings would be in high demand.  Sadly slinging doesn't play a role in the books, they did lead me to think about what weapons would still be useful in such a world, which lead me here. 

Oxnate wrote on Nov 6^th, 2020 at 10:56pm:


Read abook on that principle by one of the old time sf writers - can't remember exactly what it was called or who wrote it but i do remember which part of my library it's in - I'll go look.

basically alien machines suddenly pop up out of the earth and shut off all electricical activity above the voltages and currents that organic life uses to work.
So petrol cars don;t work -,but diesel cars do (don't use spark plugs)
Can't remmeber if gunpowder works or not.
Bugger it I'll go look....

Fade Out by patrick Tilley.
Worth a look
Not that old 1999.
Most of my library is older

I just got done reading the entire hunger game series.
It might be outside the intended age for most people on this forum but I absolutely loved it.

Rat Man wrote on Nov 8^th, 2020 at 2:44pm:


That sounds rough!
I hope you have gotten better and reading since you posted this.

I just finished "The Wright Brothers" by David McCullough. 2nd time reading it. He weaves a very engaging narrative of their development and why he thought they were so successful. I would recommend it. Probably my favorite non-fiction book.

Now I'm onto some fantasy with Brandon Sanderson.

I will start reading Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson.

The first law trilogy is solid. Thoroughly enjoyed that. I didn't like his spin offs in the same world. Just don't have the same punch.

Just started "Highlander" by Newark

Nonfiction history. Enjoyable so far. Is helping me get british history a bit straighter in my head.

Chrysalids by John Wyndham... audio book though, no real bookshops here.

currently reading Airman by eoin colfer.

Kinda brutal so far, way more adult than the artemis fowl books.

Oh yeah, don't bother with the artemis fowl film - it's total rubbish.

As far as actual physical books go - I pretty much just read e-books these days.

A cheap e-book reader is - in my opinion - an essential item.
Just make sure it's got an actual e-ink screen and NOT lcd.
I get about three weeks on a single charge.

You can use a smart phone or tablet - i started on my sharp zaurus organisers about 20 years ago, before e-book readers were an actual thing - but they're just not as good as the analog e-ink screens and you need to keeo charging them up.

The way I see it, from about the age of 10 to about my mid thirties, I read many thousands books, and even after having to leave my first library behind when we moved back to the uk, I've still got a personal library of about 3,000 books.
I've paid my dues on both library fees and actual book sales

I will occasionally still buy e-books if there's a good deal on baen books. But for the most part I pirate them.
And yes the latest jack reacher is available as a pirate e-book about 3 milliseconds after it hits an actual bookshop.
you can even buy special book digitisers to automatically scan and convert physical books to e-nooks.

That said amazon are largely to blame. As they release pretty much everything as an ebbok these days and there are a LOT of programs around that will easily remove the drm from the book files and turn them into plain non-specific ebooks.

Although I guess if you want to apportion blame to anyone for starting the whole media pirating culture, you need to blame governments and Libraries.
When they started lending records and videos to people - who promptly took them home and copied them - that's where the whole pirate culture started.
Government sponsored, as it were.
And when dvd's replaced video cassettes you could spend about £5 a month and rent as many dvd's as you could get posted to you, copied and sent back.
I used to figure a turnaround of about 3 days per film.

The whole netflix and subscription video insdustry also make it way too easy to access their content without paying. 

my nook simply touch (once jailbroken, probably the next ebook ever made) currently has a folder of 3,800 amazon format mobi books. That covers just about every category you can think of - so I'm working my way through that.

If you want genuinely free book - go take a look at project gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/

It's where I started with ebooks, way back in e-book pre-history.

But my book reader is right up there with my tassimo coffee machine with things that - if they ever break - will be replaced asap if not sooner.
You can keep your television and smart phones - but try and take my books and coffee away and there will be trouble !