What are you currently reading? Volume 4:

[TransWarpDrive]

I'm reading Quotable Star Trek, edited by Jill Sherwin. This tome, published in 1999, contains quotes from the Original Series as well as The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. It also quotes all the movies released up until then, which means that anything released after Star Trek: First Contact is not in the book. But that's OK; even without the most recent films the book is still 374 pages thick (including the index). There are lots of profound and thought-provoking quotes from all of those shows & movies within its covers. I don't know if it's in print anymore, but if you find a copy, buy it. It's well worth the purchase price, believe me.

[TransWarpDrive]

I've been rereading some of my Harrington books lately. Right now I'm half way through A Beautiful Friendship by David Weber. It's about Honor's ancestress, Stephanie Harrington, and how she met her treecat companion, Lionheart (in the process becoming the twelfth human in mankind's fifteen-century diaspora to the stars to make first contact with a tool-using, clearly sentient, alien race).

[lunchmeat]

Mornings On Horseback, a biography covering the early years of my favorite president, Theodore Roosevelt. So far, it's positively bully, next up Hunting Trips Of A Ranchman and the Wilderness Hunter, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail and Roosevelt's own Naval War of 1812.

Wish we still made them like that.

[TransWarpDrive]

I finished A Beautiful Friendship, and am now rereading Mr. Weber's House Of Steel: The Honorverse Companion. It has a short novel about King Roger III's buildup of the RMN prior to the war with the Havenites, as well as background information about both the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Protectorate of Grayson. A great read, and a must-have book for any serious Harrington fan.

[jeriddian]

I have been reading some novels by Richard Parks, who is an author who has spent a lot of time in Japan and has studied its history extensively. The books are very well written and basically are like detective novels, but also they are set in a fantasy setting as the stories are put in the Heian period of Japan's history, often called its "golden age" from the 9th to 12th centuries. The fantasy comes in in that ghosts, demons, and demigods exist in this world, all very Japanese of course. I recommend these books heartily. It starts with Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter. Then it follows with Yamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate, Yamada Monogatari: The War God's Son, and Yamada Monogatari: The Emperor in Shadow.

[lunchmeat]

I finished A Beautiful Friendship, .......

The continued adventures of Rick Blaine and Capt. Reineau?

[TransWarpDrive]

No, this "beautiful friendship" is between Stephanie Harrington and her treecat pal, Lionheart.

[campy]

Now reading G-Man by Stephen Hunter, his newest Bob Lee Swagger novel.

I spotted an anachronism on page 77: in 1934, characters are listening to a jazz combo play "It Might As Well Be Spring" — a 1945 song.

[TransWarpDrive]

Now reading G-Man by Stephen Hunter, his newest Bob Lee Swagger novel.

I spotted an anachronism on page 77: in 1934, characters are listening to a jazz combo play "It Might As Well Be Spring" — a 1945 song.

That's OK - in the first Back To The Future movie, Marty's visiting his mother's home in 1955 and they're watching a new episode of The Honeymooners - which he calls a "rerun." But the episode shown in that scene was actually first broadcast in 1956 - the end credits for the episode even list that year as its copyright date.

[TransWarpDrive]

I decided to re-read an old favorite: Small Wonder: The Amazing Story of the Volkswagen Beetle by Walter Henry Nelson. I was surprised to find out recently that many automotive historians share my opinion that this book is the definitive tome on the history of the VW Bug, and the people who helped create it.