The Hunt for Read October: A month when you try to actually finish reading that pile of books, but preferably none of Tom Clancy's later works where it's too plainly obvious that he was a right wing conservative bigot and you're sick of that shit.
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@liamvhogan Yes, but at least they were exciting reads (probably Larry Bond's contribution).
I think it was the line that Colgate University was a great institution that finally broke me.
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@allrite the review line I read that Red Storm Rising read like two nerds transcribing their D&D session was a big *ooof* from me
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Mike, First of his Namereplied to Liam :fnord: last edited by
@liamvhogan @allrite cursed challenge, Tom Clancy of the Overflow - adapt Red October as epic bush poetry.
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@mike @liamvhogan @allrite Wait, we’ve done this already, let me dig up the toots.
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Deborah Pickettreplied to Deborah Pickett last edited by
@mike @liamvhogan @allrite GDI finding old toots is impossible on this platform. It might have been BOMT (Before Old Mermaid Town) in which case I have zero chance of finding it.
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@liamvhogan @allrite I just read a couple of his books and yeah they are pretty terrible. He just fellates the authoritarian cop/military mythos for long, tedious sections. Characters have paragraphs of tired, cliche-ridden expositionary thoughts, and then do it again later. Multiple times!
And this is apparently *after* editors worked on it? Yikes! -
@daedalus @liamvhogan @allrite Clancy's early books worked because they were full of near-classified information that wowed all the mil-heads at a time before you could look it up on the internets (or just the War Thinder forums)
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@liamvhogan @daedalus @allrite if you were reading it for the story then yes
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@liamvhogan @Ex_spurt @daedalus @allrite I was about to chime in and say his books are huge with teen boys who read and it makes them feel like they understand geopolitics. Certainly my experience, and that of all my mates who were mega fans right up to the first Rainbow Six book.
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@Kels_316 @liamvhogan @daedalus @allrite my expert opinion was based on reading Red October and Red Storm. After that I zoned out
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@Ex_spurt @liamvhogan @daedalus @allrite I was way too much of a True Believer. What was I doing when I read Clear and Present Danger? LT in an Infantry Battalion. What was I doing when Rainbow Six came out? Trying to get into SF. Lol. Kool-aid shares were riding high just on my personal intake.
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@liamvhogan @Ex_spurt @daedalus @allrite mate I carried James A Michener's SPACE around with me for about 18 months as a kid, reading and re-reading it I was a massive loser, still am.
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@Kels_316 @liamvhogan @daedalus @allrite at least you could read. I remember looking around at all the Army instructors in the 80s and realising how much Commando comics had to answer for
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@Ex_spurt @Kels_316 @liamvhogan @daedalus I wonder if these were the little war story books that used to be on the shelves of the farm stay cottages when I was a kid.
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@allrite @Kels_316 @liamvhogan @daedalus they were everywhere. Full of daring do, boys own heroics and lashings of racism
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@Ex_spurt @allrite @liamvhogan @daedalus we had probably 100 of them? Maybe more. Intermingled with Phantom and the 25c "western" paperback things that my parents referred to as "Larry and Stretch books". I read all of it.
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