Book thread

[Amok]

I'm into the Wheel of Time series at the moment, currently on book 5 of about 8 or 9.

Also about to read some of George RR Martins work.

Also really enjoyed Robin Hobb's books.

[Gregor]

started reading rule 34 by charles stross loving it so far. its the follow up to halting state which was quality too. anyone use a kindle ? I have had one for 6 months and now I wont go anywhere without it. just wish it done comics too !! suppose that new kindle fire will whenever they decide to release it in the uk ...

[RoryQ]

Reading the anniversary edition of Dan Simmons' 'Carrion Comfort'. Stephen King has described it as one of the best horror novels of the 20th century. It's one of those old-school late 80s / 90s horror offerings that runs to nearly 1000 pages, biblical stuff.

[amoxill]

"The Hero with a 1000 Faces" by Joseph Campbell was good, if a bit dry. "Way of The Tarot" is very informative and offers a peek into the way Jodorowsky interprets imagery-heavy mystical stuff, but not hippie-dippy.

After that, I'm going to try and pick up this-looks super interesting:

Amazon.com: Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) (9780307475299): Jake Adelstein: Books

kev,

tokyo vice is a phenomenal read. the yakuza-related dirt that adelstein gets into is pretty unbelievable...

[Gregor]

Yeah I read Tokyo Vice too , excellent book !

[Jaycel Adkins]

I'm into the Wheel of Time series at the moment, currently on book 5 of about 8 or 9.

Also about to read some of George RR Martins work.

Also really enjoyed Robin Hobb's books.

Be prepared for a stunning experience reading Martin. I just hope you do not get spoiled by someone, which would suck.

Anyone interested in good vampire stories should check out, The Passage by Justin Cronin.

Huge book reader, glad to see a thread for them here!

[RoryQ]

I enjoyed 'The Passage'. Curious to see whether the sequel will match it.

George R. R. Martin / ASOIAF is just an amazing series. I think the HBO show has led a lot of people to pick up the novels who might otherwise not bother with SF/Fantasy.

My favourite Martin novel is a 1982 horror he wrote called 'Fevre Dream'. 19th century vampires on riverboats, essentially. Martin appears to have invested a lot of time researching the state of cities and towns in the mid C19, the food, the dress etc. It feels like a period drama as much as a horror tale.

[Kev]

I was in Half Price Books looking for "Drive" by James Sallis, the book the Ryan Gosling movie is based on, when I came across a bunch of the Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown books in bargain section- $3 a piece. They were all I wanted to read as a kid and were always missing at the library. Working on this now:

[Jaycel Adkins]

I thought that 'The Passage' was truly great! I just hope he doesn't take a Martin-esque writing pace to finish his series. I heard it is supposed to be pretty different in terms of setting, etc.

Speaking of which, the author of 'The Passage' just wrote a review of a new zombie book, Zone One by Colson Whitehead, where he said:

But what truly sets Zone One apart from the literary and filmic zombie hordes is the sheer quality of the writing. Whitehead’s language zings and soars. The zombie genre is an intrinsically playful blend of horror and slapstick, but Whitehead takes this maxim to vertiginous new heights, producing a shockingly full-throttle immediacy in the process. The distance between the real world of the reader and the imagined world of Whitehead’s skel-infested New York, in all its aching pity and graveyard comedy, collapses to nothing. In these pages, the world of the undead is brought vibrantly to life. Friends, you are there.

He could have been writing a review of his own book with that one.

[Tight-Lines]

Just picked up:

East Of Eden (Lost it 200 pages in a month ago)

Travels With Charley - Steinbeck

The Demon - Hubert Selby Jr.

The Song the Silent snow - ""

Gonna ba a good month.

Americana - Don Dellio

[cfgsteak]

Travels with Charley is one of my favorite books of all time. I fucking LOVE that book.

I picked up and started Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon. it is hilarious.

[Therinx]

Be prepared for a stunning experience reading Martin. I just hope you do not get spoiled by someone, which would suck.

Anyone interested in good vampire stories should check out, The Passage by Justin Cronin.

Huge book reader, glad to see a thread for them here!

If you like Martin, you may also want to try The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss and The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.

[RoryQ]

A few pages into Stephen King's 'Under the dome'. So far so good. Simple concept, it seems - town trapped under impenetrable dome degenerates as resources become scarce (I'm just trying to not think of 'The Simpsons movie').

I'm a sort of fairweather fan of King's, in many ways. I really like some of his (now) older novels like 'The Stand' and 'Salem's Lot'. He lost me for a bit then up until he restarted 'The Dark Tower' series and pulled off the amazing trick of managing to pull his entire back-catalogue into one huge mythos.

[Tight-Lines]

I picked up and started Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon. it is hilarious.

Im really excited I found someone else who enjoys Pynchon. I've only read "V", "Against The Day" and "Slow Learner" so far. Im looking forward to "Gravity's Rainbow" after I am finished with this lot of books. Did you by any chance read his forward in the new edition of 1984? It was incredible. Especially since Pynchon is such a hermit and had made maybe 5 public appearances in his carrer.

Sorry about all the quotes, my english prof's burned that shit into my head. I cant wait to start Travels with Charley.

[cfgsteak]

Thats cool D!

I have only read the Crying of Lot 49 (its really a great little book...there's totally a tattoo idea in there) and about a quarter of Gravity's Rainbow. GR has been a little bit of a struggle for me, i dont know why. I have enjoyed what I have read so far. Plus, I like the Frank Miller art on the cover of the version I have (geek exposed). I need to read the other ones! I'l have to check the forward of 1984, i think my kid has the newest edition...

Have you read Infinite Jest? I think you would like it if you haven't.

[Tight-Lines]

Heard great things about Infinite Jest. Ill pick it up on my next round to the used book store. I get that from a lot of people who try and get into his stuff. It took me about three time to sit down and read "V". The last I finally said to myself that if I dont finish this book im a true asshole to literature. So glad I did. I cant wait to pick up Inherent Justice though. Sounds great.

[Dr Benway]

V and Gravity's Rainbow are for me the best two novels that Pynchon produced. Both took me probably about three or four goes to get through them, but perseverence pays off in the end. He is often compared to writers like Rushdie, Eco and Calvino in terms of post-modern, magic-realist styles of writing, but I find him to be much more in a tradition of American writers such as Burroughs and Vonnegut. I prefer him to Don DeLillo as well, and I don't really understand why they are so often mentioned in the same breath.

[Tight-Lines]

Im halfway through Delillo's "Americana" and am on the fence about the book. The entire second part drags for pages and pages, but offeres little pieces if literary gold which keeps me going.

[ChrisM]

How have I missed this thread!? I've read all of Pynchon's books! It was such a great surprise when Inherent Vice came out. With how old he is and how long it usually takes him to finish a book I thought for sure Against the day would be his last. Now I'm feeling greedy, hope he has a couple more in him. Gravitys rainbow is his best. But they're all worth a read. Also lots of weird occult shit in GR which shows up so much in tattooing nowadays.

[exume]

I read a bunch of vonnegut this summer, a little kesey and keroac. Ran through the Millenium series (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, etc.), that was a pretty fun one. Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson was a pretty cool take on post-apocalyptic war between humans and machines... right now I'm doing the whole George RR Martin thing, halfway through A Clash of Kings

[embers]

finished storm of swords. reading the name of the wind by patrick rothfuss right now and nightwoods by charles frazier (cold mountain is my favorite book dont judge)

[kylegrey]

I've just finished " The Road less Travelled " , considering the nature of the book I found parts quite disturbing and bigoted , for example - " the passively homosexual young man for the first time summons the initiative to ask a girl for a date " WTF

[Mike Panic]

Started reading Fly, Colton, Fly: The True Story of the Barefoot Bandit - kind of crazy...

[irezumi]

lately I really prefer light reading. no need to be so serious all the time. also they seem easier to read on a plane, which is some of my best reading time as weird as that sounds. i have plenty of 'the classics' and a lot of contemporary writers, but you can only read ham on rye (or other such stuff) so many times. sometimes it's nice to take a break from high-brow or low-brow type of books.

books i have read (or re-read) this last year;

[RoryQ]

Bought Dan Simmons' 'The Terror' today.

This came out in 2007 and I've been meaning to get around to reading it since then. I love Simmons' science fiction, but this homage to Melville appeals to me as the kind of book you'd want to read in the winter months, with a glass of scotch in hand and the elements hammering on the windows.

It's set in the mid 19th century, and deals with the fate of two arctic expeditionary ships, the Erebus and the Terror, which run into trouble. Clearly I've not read it yet, but I gather that, in addition to dealing with a spot of bad weather, crew members start turning up torn in half / chewed up by something out in the blizzard...

Bought it in a secondhand bookshop, I like supporting them when I can. They had what appeared to be a completely-new but nonetheless secondhand-priced set of Barry Eisler's 'John Rain' books. They're not unlike Lee Child's 'Jack Reacher' series, which my girlfriend loves, so I snapped them up as an extra Christmas present for her.

Also got my older brother Joe Sacco's graphic novel 'Journalism'.

Right now I'd still reading Ben Aaranovich's London supernatural thriller 'Moon over Soho', the sequel to 'Rivers of London'. Essentially, it's about a small department in the London Met which is responsible for policing the supernatural in the city. Sounds a bit naff, but I assure you it's both an accurate portrayal of what it's like to be a copper and a well-observed snapshot of London living.