The 10 best historical novels | Books | The Observer

masashige · 12 days

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Romola by George Eliot

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampadusa

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín

Pure by Andrew Miller

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

Property by Valerie Martin

The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker

Ntang · 13 days

Robert Massie has some great books about Russia. Peter the Great and Nicholas and Alexandra are both very good.

aka_Foamy · 17 days

I would recommend it the same way I would a bag of Doritos. I enjoyed it for what it was: light fun.

It's not great literature. It doesn't have iconic characters. It's just a series of short stories about a zombie apocalypse. If you like reading about zombies getting shot in the face, get this book. If not, there are a lot of better books out there (I guess I would agree it was average, but still thought it was a fun read).

eggs_benedict · 23 days

When it first came out I was really skeptical. But after my wife got one and loved it, I decided it was worth a try. Initially, I had thought it would be good because I could get new books instantly. Yeah, it might be a little more expensive, but there was a value in time saved (and yes, I am one of those that loved to spend hours browsing in used bookstores).

Now, rather then reading the latest and greatest, I've been reading classics (which I neglected to read growing up). I have all of Dostoevsky, Dickens, Lovecraft, RE Howard, Dumas, just to name a few with me at all times. Carrying a (small but growing) library is all it's cracked up to be.

In addition, I subscribe to Science News, The Guardian, Smithsonian and Current History. So, I always have my newspapers and magazines as well (at work or home).

Tl:dr I'm going to be like Burgess Meridith in that end-of-the-world episode of the Twilight Zone screaming at my blank Kindle with a USB cord.

vistascan · 24 days

I liked World War Z. It's more like a bunch of short stories/after-action reports about a zombie apocalypse. It's not exactly great literature, but is a fun read.

eli5lol · 1 month

I think if you call your congressman's office, you can get a copy of a little booklet called How Laws are Made for free (link below to the online version).

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/lawsmade.toc.html

It's a pretty comprehensive look at least about the legislative side.

harpagos · 1 month

If the Soviet publisher or exporter were selling editions abroad, I suspect they would stamp it with this to show where it was printed. Products imported into the US are generally required to be marked with the country of origin (in English).

HerrGubba · 1 month

Look on the sidebar to the right. There's a spot where it says you can show your "flair" when you post.

Adama43 · 1 month

From what I understand, in games like CoD, your machine acts as the server. For BF3, servers are externally hosted.

Cactrot · 1 month

I'm in the same boat. I started super lousy and have graduated to slightly less lousy. The best thing I've found is to slow down, look around and try to see what is going on around you. Think. Don't just sprint directly towards the objective. Take a different route. It's easy to get too excited and just start running. Don't do that any more. On some of the larger maps, I spawn, run to a good piece of cover, stop, and just watch for 10 to 20 seconds. Look around, see which direction the firing is coming from (and don't run directly towards it).

I play support mostly and mainly try to provide covering fire and spam ammo boxes. If I see someone on my team nearby, chances are I'll run over and drop ammo. My k/d may not be great, but I try to make it 1 and 6 instead of going 2 and 18. I'll never have the reflexes of most of the players around (old man of 47 and I don't play that much). But, I try to die less often, help my team and always always play the objective.

ryanpsych · 1 month

Of course the fact that Romney has two current Harvard professors as advisers (Gregory Mankiw and Meghan O’Sullivan) sort of undercuts this argument. And he didn't seem to have a problem sending 3 of his kids there. He also donates money to Harvard, so there's that too.

crushmastac · 1 month

Fear what exactly? The reason the law was passed in the first place is because people were being turned away from emergency rooms when it was found they didn't have insurance. If not for the law, then what exactly would they be afraid of?

GameMackeral · 2 months

Right. And they just happen to single out in the bill those things that Republicans don't agree with. Not scientists. Republicans. To wit:

The teaching of some scientific subjects, including, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning, can cause controversy;

The ONLY reason the religion clause is in there is because the Supreme Court would throw it out. This is not about science.

TheGhostOfNoLibs · 3 months

Ron Paul on Anti Sodomy laws:

Under those amendments, the State of Texas has the right to decide for itself how to regulate social matters like sex, using its own local standards.

MrzimTeDebilu · 3 months

http://celebslists.com/19346-yahoo-serious.html

lmth · 4 months

Alteration can be very handy. I'm about level 19 or so and have been going mainly for destruction and conjuration as well. But, my Mage Armor perk with Stone Flesh has come in handy. It's a pain casting it every 60 seconds, but it gives me a good 150 points in armor.

One tactic I've been trying on hostile mages is casting a ward spell and bound sword, running in and pounding at them like a madman. It seems to work because they are often casting ward spells themselves, which does little against even my terrible one handed skill.

edit, meant Alteration instead of restoration...

LeftSeven · 5 months

I would not if on console (which I have). I played Oblivion first, and it kind of ruined it for me because of the combat. Not that Oblivion is a better game, but Morrowind combat left a lot to be desired. I've heard it gets better as you level up.

And then there are the cliff racers. They're everywhere and they attack you very very slowly. You hear them and you have to stand there scanning the sky waiting for them. Waiting.... Mod them out of existence if you get it on PC.

Lots of mods out there though: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes3Mod:Mods

suntfrumose · 5 months

The House passed a bill extending the tax cuts for a year. The Senate passed a different version extending them for only 2 months to basically kick the can down the road on some other issues in the bill (involving a Pipeline project).

One of two things can happen. Either the House can vote on the Senate version, pass it and send it to the President. Or, they can pass a motion to have what is called a Conference committee (with people from the House and Senate) to reconcile the two bills. They would then hash out the differences, and send the Conference bill back to the House and Senate to pass or fail the final version of the bill.

The House decided to pass a motion to appoint conferees instead of passing the Senate version. So, a "yes" vote was a vote to NOT vote on the Senate bill but instead appoint members to a Conference committee.

That's the technical version of what happened.

bobored · 5 months

The second part of that, I would add, is that the official name of the Govt. newspaper (as opposed to the party) was Izvestia. Izvestia means News. There is no izvestia in pravda and no pravda in izvestia (you get the idea).

abigfatphoney · 5 months

Or that. I couldn't remember if it asked, so I was just going to pull the plug on my adapter today to be sure.

abigfatphoney · 5 months

It is if you unplug it from the network.

Aspel · 6 months

This isn't original but I thought it was cool. For Geist, have a crazy guy named the Maestro that is inducing musicians to kill themselves so he can build his own underworld orchestra. I didn't get to play this one but our group ran it.

Or you could have all the ghosts disappearing and have a rival sacrosanct krewe eating them and trying to close all the gates to the underworld.

If you want to weave some corporate conspiracy stuff, go to streamheat.com. They're this fictional shadowy corporation used in the national Camarilla Geist chronicle (it looks very convincing). Use their subsidiary called the Janissary Corp as a sort of ghostbusting Blackwater group causing trouble.

YtseDude · 6 months

There is also the Thursday Knights group on justin.tv. They start about 7:30 PST. It's a pretty good group of players and a very organized DM. They also have a website (easy to find on google).

jdsykes · 6 months

Because they're all fags. Seriously though, I can't figure it out. Maybe they're all in parties with friends. God knows I've tried to open a dialogue. I get nada. So far I have had one game with 2 guys that actually talked. This is like the 20th post I've seen about this.

From everything I've heard, the best strategy is to hook up with other redditors.

JaredVegas · 6 months

I like support. I like the big guns and I like running up to tanks, dropping C4 and blowing them up. My main issue though is that if I'm tank hunting, I don't get to really do much supporting (ammo dropping and suppression). I'll be trying out engineer later.

mrbarky

TROPHY CASE

mrbarky

TROPHY CASE

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