Current reading - Page 90

Enjoyed kings Kennedy book (can never remember the title of top of my head and navigating about on sn old iPhone is a nightmare).

The Derry stuff genuinely gave me the creeps, and it hung well together as a whole. Liked the way it ended and wasn't too annoyed by the very ott (in my mind) butterfly effects. Loved the one sentence shout out to Ellroy, but then I love the American Underworld trilogy so that was always going to make me smile.

Next: The Feast of the Goat - another parallel to Ellroys work by pure coincidence, then Conan Doyle's The Valley of Fear

Because I didn't have the time to take my daughter to see Hugo for the third time, and because she's just an awesome little girl, I bought her the hardback of The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

 

What a beautiful, beautiful book.  And, although she's only 6, she can read most of it, only needing our help to stay focussed on the longer passages.  She's already devouring all the illustrations and is even now reading it on her own in bed.

A book to treasure, I hope she keeps it forever.

 

Of all the gifts I've given to my daughter, I think a love of film and a love of reading are by some distance the best.

Andy, I suggest you follow up with The Hugo Movie Companion. Selznick goes into a lot of detail about the making of the film but keeps the language and vocabulary consistent with the level of Invention. Also, it's designed to look good next to Invention on your bookshelf.

Edited by Hammerhead - 1/30/12 at 1:32am

Awesome, thanks very much, I'll look out for it :)

Title corrected and link added. My memory isn't what it used to be...

Just finished Snowdrops by AD Miller. It was a Man Booker short list. Great little novel for a debut. Think Great Gatsby, but we follow Nick following Daisy and Jordan through post-Communism, early-Putin Moscow.

I'm reading The Detachment by Barry Eisler.  I've only finished his Ben Treven books which I didn't really care for.  Treven is just a huge douche.  Rain is pretty great though.  I'm going to have to start on his series.

I just finished Ready Player One.  I'm having a hard time deciding where to come down on it because it boils down to a lazily written Snow Crash but the story isn't bad and the nostalgia appeals to me.  I'd say overall that I enjoyed it, but I don't imagine it would have the same appeal to people who weren't total dorks in the 80's like me.

I thought Ready Player One was a light, fun weekend read.  But yeah, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who wasn't into the whole Geek nostalgia thing.

 

Currently reading The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus. Weird and out there.  Makes me think something like Pi by way of Cronenberg, with a hint of Burroughs.

Feast of the Goat was very good.  All the build up to Trujillo's assassination and the aftermath was excellent, but I struggled with the contemporary stuff.  I understand why it was in there, but the mystery of why Urania was the way she was, was so obvious I kept waiting for the revelation to occur, and for it to be more than it was (it wasn't).  Again, I get what the author was trying to do with the metaphor but it didn't really do it for me.

 

And I popped my Sherlock Holmes cherry with The Valley of Fear which was fantastic.  Maybe I'm a muppet but I didn't see the "twist" coming in the second section (although I was smugly proud of myself for solving the first mystery).

 

Now onto: "Iron Council" by China Mieville followed by "The Departure" by Neal Asher, then possibly the final one in John Birmingham's After America trilogy.

I recently received  volumes 1-4 of the Judge Dredd Complete Case Files via Amazon.  Between these 4 volumes, I probably have a few dozen progs to get through.  Good times.

I totally agree. I had fun with this book. But it's not for everyone. Then again, my father in-law loved it.

Iron Council was fantastic.  Loved it, I think it's my favourite 'Bas-Lag' novel so far, and what an ending!

I still prefer The Scar, but Iron Council is very, very good. A lot of my friends are Bas-Lag fanatics, but they seem to undervalue Iron Council quite a bit. I guess they can't get into Westerns?

 

I think it was in this thread that LaurenOrtega and Prankster recommended that I read Moorcock's Elric work, and I have started in on that stuff. I like it quite a bit so far. Light, but satisfying and a lot of fun.

It may have been because I was reading it while watching Hell on Wheels, so I had a very visual reference going on at the same time.

 

Plus I just flat out loved the Golemetry

Started to read 1Q84 the other day.

I just started the only classic King book I'd never checked out, the Dead Zone. Pretty awesome, and way fun to finally get to it.

If absolutely forced to choose my favorite King book, this would be it.  Not too long and completely nails the ending.  

 

To this very day, if I ever find any cash, the first thought that goes through my mind is:

 

"found money brings bad luck" and then I have to give it away.  Stupid I know, and not a superstition I've heard anywhere other than that book.

Curious to know what you think when you are done.  I don't want to say anything until you finish it.

 

 

The Dead Zone is one of those classic King novels I haven't read either.  I enjoy reading his books, so I don't know why I haven't read it yet.  I'm currently reading Duma Key, along with two other books (The Fat Years and The Devil All The Time), and I'm having a hard time staying interested.  I'm sure I'll plow my way through it eventually, but other books keep taking me away.

 

I Love the works of Murakami. I've yet to pick this one up though.

Started Blood Meridian. Tough read.

 

I need some books!  Anyone have some good recommendations for some sci-fi, cyberpunk, mystery/crime, fantasy or just all around great books from the past 7 years or so, stuff I might’ve missed?  Smaller, more obscure books are welcome.

Have you read Scepticism Inc? It's a story about a sentient atheist supermarket trolley. Pretty great.

I found it more impenetrable than Moby Dick, but all the scenes with The Judge make it worth it.  The book is fucking diabolical.  

 

If you're into cyberpunk, have you read Richard K. Morgan's series about Takeshi Kovacs? Those books are amazing.

 

More down to earth, right now I'm reading Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and it's pretty cool.
 

 

Yes, I love Altered Carbon.  I just finished playing Syndicate and kind of have a taste for slick, cyberpunk shit.  Mods and corporations and violence and hacking and power suits and slums, all that kind of shit.

 

Scepticism, Inc. looked cool, just added it to the cart, thanks!

This.  I love all three of those books, how they are different approaches to the genre because of the nature of "re-sleeving".  BlackMan (or I think it's called 13 in the States) is a good read too.

 

The Steel Remains (Morgans dip into fantasy) is also very good.  He does spend a rather large amount of time talking about what one of the characters can do with his cock though, which doesn't really add to the plot.

Honestly, a number of books would be better if the authors would discuss this. Roland Deschain, Aragorn, Atticus Finch, and Edward Cullen are all made more interesting if this line of thought is followed.

 

Best Guesses:

 

Roland Deschain - Little to nothing. It's inert, probably burned or something. 

 

Aragorn - A better question would be what can't it do.

 

Atticus Finch - Expands to nearly four times its resting size, stays hard after ejaculation, but it always, always, defers to the brain's better judgment.

 

Edward Cullen - I'm sure it's fine and all, but can it stand up to the hype? Eh, it probably comes closer than you might think.

 

Sorry

Just finished Ready Player One. I was going to take my time with it but I ended up reading it in one sitting (and finishing at 3:30 am). I felt the last part of the book was a little rushed but that's because I also wanted more so that might just be my greedy self coming through.

 

Might move onto the second book in the Long Price Quartet or go for another one-off like RPO, not sure yet. Before RPO I was trying to read A Canticle for Liebowitz but just couldn't get into it at the time so I'll come back to it in a few months.

I was killing time in the Mission tonight before a movie, and while browsing a used bookstore this title caught my eye: In Old Hollywood (1977) by one Clyde Owen Jackson, via a vanity publishing house. It's a rare example of fan film-writing in the pre-internet days, filled with unguarded opinions and autobiographical detail. I do wish that the chapter entitled "Hollywood and the Blacks: A Missed Opportunity" was more than two-and-a-half pages long because that's where the author's perspective seems to come into focus.

 

 

A Canticle for Leibowitz was the very first sci-fi novel I ever read.  My 10th grade English teacher lent me a copy, and I fell in love with the genre.  A borrowed copy of The Hobbit from the same teacher sealed my fate.

 

I just started THE MIRAGE by Matt Ruff.   It's an alt-history novel a la FATHERLAND that deals with 9/11 . . .  the day where radical Christian fundamentalists fly planes into the Tigris & Euphrates Two Towers in downtown Baghdad.   

Reread the first two Gap books by Donaldson. great series

Kraken by Morville. Really reminded me of American Gods by Tainan, with a but of the BPRD thrown in, except in London.
As much as I love his ideas, I actually find him quite hard to read. Sometimes it almost feels deliberately obtuse. I imagine him concatenating a word together to mean something and then basing his books on that premise. The memory angels would be one in this case. His dialogue can seem a but forced too. I really enjoyed it but it was a struggle as I kept having to reread sentences to parse what he was saying.

Then Surface Detail, a Culture novel by Iain M Banks. Now I live his prose. It flows so well, the dialogue is natural and his books are horrifying, brilliant, exciting, dramatic and funny.loved this one. And about half way through I thought one of the characters may have been one from a MUCH earlier Culture novel (one of my favourites), which would be a great rarity as he almost never does that, but the very final sentence of the book proved me right :-)

Nothing planned next. Wanted to read some John Carter books but can't find them anywhere.

Not books, but I dug these letters written by Tolkien and CS Lewis, respectively, and posted on Letters of Note.

 

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-have-no-ancestors-of-that-gifted.html

 

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/04/c-s-lewis-on-writing.html

I am rereading Feast of Crows. I also have the Walking Dead Graphic Novel. Coming up is Graceland, about a West African boy's coming of age while acting like Elvis.

 

In class I am reading Life of Pi and A Tale of Two Cities

I'm reading far too many things but not finishing enough of them.  I'm at various stages with...

Haruki Murakami's WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING,

Albert Brooks' 2030,

BB King's autobiography BLUES ALL AROUND ME,

Hunter Thompson's FEAR & LOATHING AT ROLLING STONE,

Ethan Coen's GATES OF EDEN,

Kevin Weeks' book about his time with Whitey Bulger called BRUTAL,

Bill Murray's CINDERELLA STORY

and Ernest Cline's READY PLAYER ONE.  

 

At my current rate, I should be done with these sometime around 2014. 

Just finished THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE, which I enjoyed.  Now on to DIVERGENT,  a Hunger Games-esque novel set in future Chicago.  

Just got the new Tim Powers novel Hide Me Among the Graves. I'm 70 pages in and it's rocking...really good stuff.

 

Also struggling to finish John Keegan's Face of Battle. If you are interested in the real experiences of soldiers at Agincourt, Waterloo and the Battle of the Somme, this is the book for you. Skip the first chapter though, as it's 90 odd pages of Keegan whining about never having fought in combat, even though he's made a living teaching about warfare.

Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections.  Wow, dense book.  Funny, weird, interesting.  Some great observations on the horror of modern life.

 

Currently reading Dragons of the Dwarven Depths by Weis & Hickman.  This is a nostalgia read for me since I loved the Dragonlance books as a youngster.  Not the most taxing read, but I am enjoying it.

After that my Dad brought over Dances with Dragons and the Complete Sherlock Holmes when he came to visit, so that'll keep me going for a while.

Rereading Infinite Jest, just finished Snuff by Palahniuk. I've never been a fan of his, and this just confirms my opinion. How is this guy the voice of a generation and Foster Wallace hung himself?

(weeps in a theatrically manly way)

I don't think Palahniuk is really seen as the voice of a generation anymore. I definitely see Foster Wallace namedropped a lot more than Palahniuk. But the blooms gone off the Palahniuk rose, but I still have soft spots for Fight Club and Survivor. Haven't read anything by him since Haunted, which I kind of liked.

Reading DFW now is almost too sad now. Infinite Jest is so rich and so full of joy that it's hard to believe there'll be no more from this fine writer. The passages dealing with depression and addiction (both issues that DFW lived with) are heartbreaking given his de-mapping of himself. 

 

And as far as Palahniuk goes, Fight Club the movie changed my life, the book not so much. His facile treatment of pop cult just seems hollow. Even Martin Amis had more to say, and said it better, about pornography. 

I've been reading a LOT of James Enge recently, going from a few of his short stories in Blackgate to This Crooked Way(which is basically a collection of short stories) and I'm loving every minute of it.

 

 

Strange sword and sorcery that owes more to earlier fantasy writers than the current generation.

Finished the Weis and Hickman one. Entertaining enough in a vigorously unchallenging way. I'd completely forgotten how totally annoying Tasslehoff is though. That almost made it unreadable.

4 chapters into Dance with Dragons and i'm liking it a lot thus far (this possibly has to do with what i've just read though, it's like going from McDs to Supper Club)

Reading Wise Mans Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, hell of a thick book.

I'm reading a strange little book called Johannes Cabral the Necromancer, which is a very Terry Pratchett-y book about a Bradbury-esque Dark Carnival, except written from the POV of one of the autumn people. I wish it took its premise a bit more seriously, but whatever, it's right up my alley.

Long Way Round, companion to Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman's travel doc.

Ender's Game, finally.