Author Topic: What are you reading?  (Read 845515 times)

lowky

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Reply #75 on: March 26, 2007, 02:06:16 PM
Aas always, I'm in the middle of 3 or 9 diffrent books, but the one that I've been sticking to lately has been Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming by Rodger Zelazny (of Amber fame) and Robert Sheckley.  So far it's well writen, entertaining, and most of all FUN.
That was an awesome series, IIRC there were 3 books in that, I know there were at least two.  I loved those stories.  If you like that you would probably like the Myth series by Robert Aspirin.  All of the titles are bad puns using Myth in the title.  Like Mythnomers and Impervections


lowky

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Reply #76 on: March 26, 2007, 02:57:38 PM
Currently reading Christopher Moore's Island of the Sequined Love Nun  If you like satire I strongly recommend Christopher Moore. 

On my to read pile:
Stephen King Lisey's Story
Michael Gruber Valley of Bonesand Tropic of Night
Kim Harrison Every Which Way but Dead
Carol O'Connell The Man Who Cast Two Shadows

The last 4 were recent finds at one of those discount booksellers.  The Kim Harrison looks like it may be about book 4 in an Anita Blake Vampire Hunter sort of clone series.  Carol O'Connell I have read before and enjoyed.    Their scifi selection sucked, so I wound up mostly with thrillers this time *shrug*.  Discount booksellers it's always a gamble what you will find, but it's a good way to try different authors, given that most paperbacks are about $6.50-$7.00 anymore here in the US.  And I live about a 5 mile walk from my closest library.  Now that it's warming up, won't be so bad, but...


Bdoomed

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Reply #77 on: March 28, 2007, 04:39:58 AM
i might pick up the Simarillion again soon.  ive tried to read it 3 times... cant get too far because all the different names overwhelm me... but i have a feeling it would be fun... (and i hope one day to be able to speak elvish)

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


sayeth

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Reply #78 on: March 28, 2007, 12:26:34 PM
i might pick up the Simarillion again soon.  ive tried to read it 3 times... cant get too far because all the different names overwhelm me... but i have a feeling it would be fun... (and i hope one day to be able to speak elvish)

You do know that The Children of Hurin is being published next month? Christopher Tolkien cobbled together the book from his father's writings. It'll be a regular novel, not the disjointed notes of History of Middle Earth. If you're planning on reading The Simarillion, I would read up to "Of Turin Turinbar" and then read the new book.

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Alasdair5000

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Reply #79 on: March 28, 2007, 12:45:20 PM
Currently reading Christopher Moore's Island of the Sequined Love Nun  If you like satire I strongly recommend Christopher Moore. 

On my to read pile:
Stephen King Lisey's Story
Michael Gruber Valley of Bonesand Tropic of Night
Kim Harrison Every Which Way but Dead
Carol O'Connell The Man Who Cast Two Shadows

The last 4 were recent finds at one of those discount booksellers.  The Kim Harrison looks like it may be about book 4 in an Anita Blake Vampire Hunter sort of clone series.  Carol O'Connell I have read before and enjoyed.    Their scifi selection sucked, so I wound up mostly with thrillers this time *shrug*.  Discount booksellers it's always a gamble what you will find, but it's a good way to try different authors, given that most paperbacks are about $6.50-$7.00 anymore here in the US.  And I live about a 5 mile walk from my closest library.  Now that it's warming up, won't be so bad, but...

   That Kim Harrison series is quite fun.  It's a slightly more scientific approach than the Anita Blake one (In this case, the supernaturals are very public and have whole neighbourhoods and police forces of their own) and works a little better, at least for me.

   Been reading a lot of graphic novels recently, if nothing else because I've borrowed a lot from a friend of mine:)

-The Alan Moore run on Captain Britain is both interesting and arguably the weakest thing Moore has ever written.  There's a lot to enjoy in it (And some early indications of his fascination with Miracleman) but the end of the story honestly feels like an issue is missing.  However, the alternate Captain Britains are great fun, especially Kapitan Englander and Captain Airstrip One ('It'sdoubleplussgoodtomeetyou!')

-The Jame Delano run on Captain Britain.  Going very slowly with this one.  It's good but it's dated horribly and the central concept is a bit too cosmic, a bit too weird after getting nothing but cosmic and weird in the Moore run.  Having said that, it's nice to see an early appearance by Dai Thomas, who would go on to become the lead character in the superb, and criminally under-rated Knights of Pendragon.

-Hellblazer-Setting SunThe second collection of Warren Ellis' truncated run on the title and effectively a short story anthology.  Some of Ellis' best work is in here, especially 'One Last Love Song', one of Ellis' best riffs on the idea of Constantine being haunted by London.

-Hellblazer-Rare Cuts  A collection of some of the most unusual and least well known stories in the title's history and one with some real gems in it.  The two part Grant Morrison story in here, which takes in secret weaponry, pagan festivals and the US Listening Post at Menwith Hill somehow got reprinted in a newstand comic over here in the early '90s.  Scared the bejeesus out of me then and now:)

-Storming Heavin-The Frazer Irving Collection-A splendid collection of the work Irving has done for 2000AD.  The artist on Necronauts(He's Charles Fort!  He's Harry Houdini!  They fight Cthulu!), Irving's work is staggeringly impressive and he's teamed with some great writers on this.  The stand out is 'Storming Heaven', a '70s hippie superhero story that, oddly, could stand a sequel.

   Meanwhile, over on the prose file we have:
  • Eyes of Amber by Joan Vinge
    Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link
    The Forever Omnibus by Joe Haldem
an



ClintMemo

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Reply #80 on: April 03, 2007, 09:49:04 PM
The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories.

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Bdoomed

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Reply #81 on: April 05, 2007, 03:15:30 AM
Im beginning Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for school

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


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Reply #82 on: April 05, 2007, 04:27:18 AM
I am beginning Stephen Coonts' "The Traitor".



Brian Reilly

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Reply #83 on: April 05, 2007, 02:51:44 PM
I've just bought The Execution Channel by Ken Macleod. Unlike his recent Space Opera style stuff, this is a near-future spy thriller. Fast-paced and exciting, in a dark, dystopian, scary sort of way. I can't wait to get stuck into it.

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Reply #84 on: April 09, 2007, 03:34:40 AM
Updating, I just finished off Sandman and then The Old Man and the Sea. Poaching shamelessly from our fearless leader, next up is Breakfast of Champions.

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Reply #85 on: April 09, 2007, 03:53:55 AM
Updating, I just finished off Sandman and then The Old Man and the Sea. Poaching shamelessly from our fearless leader, next up is Breakfast of Champions.

Have you read other Vonnegut?  It's not the one I'd recommend starting with.  (It's also far from his best, IMO, now that I'm finished with it.)

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Heradel

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Reply #86 on: April 09, 2007, 06:50:37 AM
Updating, I just finished off Sandman and then The Old Man and the Sea. Poaching shamelessly from our fearless leader, next up is Breakfast of Champions.
Have you read other Vonnegut?  It's not the one I'd recommend starting with.  (It's also far from his best, IMO, now that I'm finished with it.)
Slaughterhouse Five in High School. I meant at the time to read some of his other stuff on my own at the time, but I think it was... Monstrous Regiment that I started reading and made me forget entirely about my Vonnegut plans.

Come to think of it, Going Postal stopped me from reading This Side of Paradise and Thud! derailed my Shakespeare reading.

Terry Pratchett, the black hole twixt me and my literary intentions.

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SFEley

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Reply #87 on: April 09, 2007, 04:04:16 PM
Slaughterhouse Five in High School. I meant at the time to read some of his other stuff on my own at the time, but I think it was... Monstrous Regiment that I started reading and made me forget entirely about my Vonnegut plans.

Heh.  This is probably going to get a corner cut off of my Intellectual Chit, but I would hazard to declare that, at his best, Pratchett is a better philosophical humorist than Vonnegut.

(To hedge my bets, though: the Vonnegut novel I think everyone should read isn't Slaughterhouse-Five, it's Cat's Cradle.  It's not as gut-wrenching, but it's funnier, deeper, and has an absolutely astounding SF idea at its core.  It very nearly made me convert to Bokononism.)

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Anarkey

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Reply #88 on: April 12, 2007, 06:04:05 PM
Im beginning Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for school

Oh honey.  I'm so sorry.  It's a wretched book.

Happily, I no longer have bad books assigned to me by teachers, and can instead spend my time re-reading Ray Bradbury's "The October Country".

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jrderego

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Reply #89 on: April 12, 2007, 06:23:11 PM
Im beginning Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for school

Oh honey.  I'm so sorry.  It's a wretched book.

Happily, I no longer have bad books assigned to me by teachers, and can instead spend my time re-reading Ray Bradbury's "The October Country".


Really? I absolutely loved Heart of Darkness. I read it in high school and it was okay, but when I re-read it as an adult I just fell completely in love with it. An awesome indictment of Eurpoean colonialism. I also read and loved Lord Jim, which for my money, has the most fantastically descriptive language I have ever read in any book anywhere.

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Anarkey

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Reply #90 on: April 12, 2007, 06:35:14 PM
Really? I absolutely loved Heart of Darkness. I read it in high school and it was okay, but when I re-read it as an adult I just fell completely in love with it. An awesome indictment of Eurpoean colonialism. I also read and loved Lord Jim, which for my money, has the most fantastically descriptive language I have ever read in any book anywhere.

Really.  Had it assigned twice (high school, college) and hated it both times, though it was certainly worse the second time through.  I wondered if there was a shortage of books on colonialism, since I kept having to read the same dreadful one.  Just saying Conrad's name puts my teeth on edge, a completely aversive Pavlovian response, I'm sure.  To cap it, the second time around it was paired with a V.S. Naipaul book.  Guh.  I hate Naipaul's writing so much I struggle to keep it from extending to a hatred of him as a person.

Let's hope BDoomed feels like you do, and not like I do, or he's in for a dreadful time.

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jrderego

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Reply #91 on: April 12, 2007, 07:01:23 PM
Really? I absolutely loved Heart of Darkness. I read it in high school and it was okay, but when I re-read it as an adult I just fell completely in love with it. An awesome indictment of Eurpoean colonialism. I also read and loved Lord Jim, which for my money, has the most fantastically descriptive language I have ever read in any book anywhere.

Really.  Had it assigned twice (high school, college) and hated it both times, though it was certainly worse the second time through.  I wondered if there was a shortage of books on colonialism, since I kept having to read the same dreadful one.  Just saying Conrad's name puts my teeth on edge, a completely aversive Pavlovian response, I'm sure.  To cap it, the second time around it was paired with a V.S. Naipaul book.  Guh.  I hate Naipaul's writing so much I struggle to keep it from extending to a hatred of him as a person.

Let's hope BDoomed feels like you do, and not like I do, or he's in for a dreadful time.

I am not sure if it qualifies as an indictment of colonialism but The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna is certainly explores the themes of a nation emerging from a colonial shadow. Good read, but harder as it gets into the guts of how steam engines work and I am about as mechanically inclined as a flatworm. But if you can get past that and into the story itself, it's a brilliant read.

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slic

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Reply #92 on: April 13, 2007, 02:46:46 AM
Updating, I just finished off Sandman and then The Old Man and the Sea. Poaching shamelessly from our fearless leader, next up is Breakfast of Champions.

Have you read other Vonnegut?  It's not the one I'd recommend starting with.  (It's also far from his best, IMO, now that I'm finished with it.)

Breakfast of Champions wasn't too bad - my favourite Vonnegut is Galapagos



Bdoomed

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Reply #93 on: April 17, 2007, 09:34:53 PM
Im beginning Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for school

Oh honey.  I'm so sorry.  It's a wretched book.

Happily, I no longer have bad books assigned to me by teachers, and can instead spend my time re-reading Ray Bradbury's "The October Country".


Really? I absolutely loved Heart of Darkness. I read it in high school and it was okay, but when I re-read it as an adult I just fell completely in love with it. An awesome indictment of Eurpoean colonialism. I also read and loved Lord Jim, which for my money, has the most fantastically descriptive language I have ever read in any book anywhere.
i agree with you, I am enjoying Heart of Darkness.  While some of it is pretty hard to follow, i like it overall.  From what i've heard, however, most people (at least last year's junior class) absolutely abhorred (did i spell that right?) the book.  This year, most of my class is enjoying it.  My only problem is not being able to read it on my own terms.

next up in school reading is "The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters"... dont know what that'll be like.

next up in personal reading is going to be Asimov's Foundation series (where should i start there? prelude or order of writing?)

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


ClintMemo

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Reply #94 on: April 18, 2007, 11:54:19 AM
next up in personal reading is going to be Asimov's Foundation series (where should i start there? prelude or order of writing?)

I would recommend order of writing.
If you wanted to read them chronologically, you'd really have to start all the way back with his original robot short story collections and then some of the robot novels and then some of the foundation novels and then some of the crossover novels.  AFAIK, there is no official chronology.  If you read them in the order they were written, then books that really belong together (like the foundation trilogy) will be together anyway.

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RichGarner

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Reply #95 on: April 18, 2007, 05:23:31 PM
Right now... I'm reading this forum.

Actually, I'm not much of a reader. It's the ADD in me. Even my Bible reading times have been supplemented with audio commentaries just so I get some education out of the time. I can't even read instructions without dropping the book after the first page thinking that setting up a four person tent is easy enough to do without help.

Oh, that reminds me to get a new tent. WOOHOO! Shopping spree!

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Bdoomed

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Reply #96 on: May 06, 2007, 01:54:57 AM
I've just bought Foundation and ill start reading tonight maybe...?
ive composed a list of other books i want to read (all in all i have 21 books to read... woo!)

Foundation series
Harry Potter (7th)
Slaughterhouse-Five
Breakfast of Champions
Fight Club
Crime and Punishment
Dune series
the second half of this Clive Cussler novel im reading, Trojan Oddysey
The Things They Carried
and for required reading...
The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (reading now for school, its very good! Pretty funny!)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (dunno anything about this book)

and i have to get a book on Visual Basic so i can learn it over the summer, so I can take C++ next school year....

sooo yea i think thats actually over 21 books...

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


lowky

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Reply #97 on: May 07, 2007, 06:49:24 PM
Just finished Scar Night that a buddy loaned me.  Fantasy type novel by Alan Campbell.  I guess he worked on the original Grand Theft Auto.



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Reply #98 on: May 07, 2007, 08:20:50 PM
Horses Don't Fly: A Memoir of World War I, by Fredrick Libby.  It's the true story of a cowboy-turned-flying-ace.  I'm serious.

It's comforting to know that often, the fantasy I enjoy can't hold a candle to the history I'm constantly discovering.  What a delightfully strange world we live in.



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Reply #99 on: May 07, 2007, 11:53:16 PM
Right now I'm reading:

The Epistle of James - Bible
The Consolation of Philosophy - Boethius
Gulliver's Travels – Swift

I'm always reading the Bible, and I usually have an easy read and slow read going at the same time that I alternate between depending on how much time I have, how awake I am, etc.