Peter Heather, The restoration of Rome; have read the first 100 pages. It's about Rome's imperial legacy, with sections of about 100 pages each about Theoderic the Great, Justinian and his wars, Charlemagne and the reform popes of the 11th century. I find the prose cringeworthy at times, there's too much of an attempt to appeal to a broad audience with sometimes comical results (e.g. Heather cites a section from The godfather about Sonny Corleone to make a point about Theoderic, uses terms like "alpha males", "bullshit" etc.). Still, it's an interesting read, so probably recommended with some reservations.

Conan The Distiller?

Two things;
1. Stephen Kings - The Stand, fourth time through it, just got to the end of the Captain Trips segment. Amazing thing, a modified version of influenza destroys the whole world in three weeks. You cough, you sneeze, its gets worse and worse until about three days after symptoms begin your a dribbling, hallucinating mess with fluid running out of your nose, mouth and any other orifice you can think of and then you die. Anyone who has come near you after you start coughing has got it and it spread and spreads, unless by shear luck you have to be genetically immune to the thing. Also as it was made by the good people in the US military, it's near impossible to make any kind of treatment. They say in the book it would take about six or seven weeks to come up with a prototype vaccine, it destroys the world and kills 99.7% of humanity in just over three. Although in the two sections of the book after that things get worse when are certain figure from many major religions shows up in disguise and starts make problems for the people who are left.
2. Judge Dredd volume 28 - What's not to like about a police office who shots people in the back for what would be considered in North Korea a minor misdemeanour, if an offence at all.

Yep, exactly. However the famous hero is a secondary character and retired here. The main character - Jakub Wędrowycz, who is alcoholic, distiller and, hm, secular exorcist - visits him with a job offer. In general, the whole series is a parody with a lot of references to classics and pop-culture :) Sometimes funny, some other time - stupid and embarrassing, as most of parodies.

Just started the Lies of Locke Lamora.

Daniel Kahneman; *Thinking, Fast and Slow.*

Lucky you! You're in for quite a treat. :)

Uh, let's see...

The Dark Half - Stephen King

Lord Foul's Bane - Stephen R. Donaldson

The Sword of Shannara - Terry Brooks

Kind of in a nostalgic mood, I guess.

Carter Wilson's "Revelation." Wow. Great thriller.

Continuing my walk through the alley of classics:
* The Deep Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Polish novels with amazing historical setting of Kingdom of Poland ruled by unique Polish noble class (szlachta), proud of their freedom and tolerance - golden age of our country:
* Diabeł łańcucki by Jacek Komuda
* Banita by Jacek Komuda

Interesting and critical (no political correctness here) insight into Egypt and Egyptian mentality (including many fractions of Islam, their traditions, cuisine, custom etc):
* Egipt haram halal by Piotr Ibrahim Kalwas

Did finally start "Ready Player One" a couple days back. Not far into it, but it almost feels like required reading for anyone who came to gOg because of the classic games.

I wasn't hugely impressed by it, but I wonder if the movie will be better because Spielberg generally has a better way with characters than the author.

I'm reading Watchers by Dean Koontz. My mom raved about it back in the 80s so I figured I should finally get around to it. It's okay so far.

We'll see how it goes. I'm only up to where he just found a <no-spoiler> thingy.

Hoping he doesn't overdo it on the pop culture references. After a while, that can feel forced. But as someone born a little before Halliday, a lot of that stuff rings true and it sort of feels like, "Hey - I was there!" Might fall flat on younger readers, though.

I've just finished reading The Cambridge companion to the age of Justinian, a collection of essays about the age of the East Roman/Byzantine emperor Justinian (d. 565) which has been traditionally regarded as a threshold between late antiquity and the early medieval world. It was interesting (I especially liked the chapter about art and architecture which discusses some amazing pieces of art, e.g. two silver vessels, one showing a scene from pagan myth - Heracles killing the Nemeian lion -, the other showing David and Goliath in a realistic, life-like style; this was used as an example that the artistic traditions of Greco-Roman antiquity continued on a high level until the 7th century). But on the whole, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't have some serious interest in the subject, much of the content is quite specialised.
Now I've begun reading Rome and the sword by Simon James, a book about Roman soldiers.