I've got stuff I want to write, and will this afternoon, but thanks to the reader who sent me a copy of Patriots: Surviving The Coming Collapse, I am nose deep in a book right now.
I read it on the 'net as Triple Ought back in the day, and borrowed Oleg's copy and read it a few years back, but it must have been the abridged edition because there is stuff in this one that I'm not remembering.
So, uh, yeah... further bloggery is going to have to wait until after noon or so.
Great book. You're right about new material; JWR added a few chapters for the 2006 version. There's also a new edition coming out in April 2009, which is apparently going to have an index and fewer typos.
ReplyDeleteBe prepared to lose some sleep as you read the book. It WILL keep you up at night.
ReplyDeleteI'm putting money on the reader who sent you the book being JWR himself.
ReplyDeleteHe's into spreading the word, and he is admittedly a regular reader of your's now.
It takes place a few miles from my home in Idaho. The town of Troy mentioned in the book is a fifteen minute drive to the east.
ReplyDeleteThere were some things in the book that annoyed me but had he got them right it would have messed up the plot big time. The most glaring to me was that people in the area were hungry -- some to the point of cannibalism. But in that area the biggest export (other than the hippies from Moscow Idaho) is food. Most of the year there is a million pounds of food in bins on my brother's farm alone. There are literally hundreds of millions of pounds of food in the grain storage bins within 50 miles of where the story in that book takes place. That doesn't count all the cows, pigs, chickens, and wild game in the area.
Still, it's a good book if you want to use it as a "how-to" book wrapped in a survivalist fantasy plot.
In some versions you will find an acknowledged to me for some suggestions I emailed him in the form of "Huff The Dynamite Shooter".
"In some versions you will find an acknowledged to me for some suggestions I emailed him in the form of "Huff The Dynamite Shooter"."
ReplyDeleteYup. I had a feeling I knew who he was talking about in the credits, there... :D
When I first got that book I finished it up in two days, couldn't sleep. Some of the characters are annoying because they are just too good and righteous but other than that I love the book.
ReplyDelete"I've heard that criticism before."
ReplyDelete--Alissa Rosenbaum
"Across the nation, in dying cities and empty factories, people have asked, Who is Huff the Dynamite Shooter.
ReplyDeleteThis is Huff the Dynamite Shooter speaking."
Excellent book. Rx will like it, too. I thought you'd both already read it.
ReplyDeleteAll together, now:
ReplyDeleteHuff the Dynamite Shooter
Loved Liberty
And each year gave his Boomershoots
To remind us we are Free
[additional verses welcome)
When I first encountered the book on the web,it was titled _The Grey Nineties_.
ReplyDeleteIt has only gotten better with rewrites, to the point that I bought a copy of _Patriots_ from Rawles. It's still something I come back to when I want something to read, along with Johnstone's _Breakdown_ and Smith's _The Probability Broach_.
So, Tam -- this must mean you've finished "The Last Centurion," right? Book Report. What'd you think?
ReplyDeleteIt makes you think, doesn't it? Hmm.
ReplyDeleteJim
my investments are doing well. Brass, Steel, Lead, and Walnut. In a variety of combinations.
ReplyDeleteOkay, thanks guys. Now I have tears rolling down my face from laughing so hard. I'm glad my officemate is on vacation so I don't have to explain it to her.
ReplyDeleteHer being from India would require explanation of John Galt, Atlas Shrugged, survivalists, and concepts of Boomershoot that she probably couldn't really understand even if I spent all day trying to explain.