Not signed in (Sign In)
Categories
- Main Junction
- CROSSED
- London Zoo
- Freakangels
- Music
- Printheads
- Culturegasm
- Web Nuggets
- WorldWeird
- Blogs
Welcome, Guest
Vanilla is a product of Lussumo:
Documentation and Support.
-
Tomorrow (most likely) I will go out and buy FOOL, the new novel by the wonderfully deranged Christopher Moore.
Picked up Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation by Martin Millar the other day, and only barely cracked open the cover. Stupid job hunting is getting in the way of reading.
Started re-reading (kind of) Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist. Saw the movie the other day and thought it was enjoyable, but the book is, naturally, better.
Still have on the "to read pile"
FDR
Just Add Buddah
The Portable Atheist
I Am American and So Can You
M is For Magic
Nocturnes
The Moral Majority -
- CommentAuthorsacredchao
- CommentTimeFeb 9th 2009 edited
Reading Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. It's pretty good, a little didactic at times and the occasional long winded explanations of how particular technology works are slightly irritating, but otherwise it is enjoyable. It's very convincing though in terms of "what could happen." Makes me worry, you know?
Also reading I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down by William Gay. I've only read the first two stories thus far, but It's an excellent book thus far.
Listening to The Eyre Affair, partly because you guys keep talking about the Thursday Next books, partly because my dad just read Something Rotten and described it as "part Raw Shark Texts, part Douglas Adams, and part (something else, I forget)." -
- CommentAuthorBrent Wilcox
- CommentTimeFeb 9th 2009 edited
Enjoying Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch right now. (Got the movie on my Netflix queue) Any comments on the rest of the series?
Just pre-ordered Chris Moore's Fool
(Generally killing time until that volcano about 150 miles downwind decides to blow and make my life more complicated for a couple weeks... maybe I'll be able up catch up on my reading) -
@allana -
i spent most of today hunting in libraries and bookstores for A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari. i read the first few sections, filled three notebook pages with notes, and then realized i had to own it. this week i have a few more bookstores to check out before i start looking for copies online. it reads like a drug-fuelled pisstake of all philosophies, all anythings, and a proposal of every alternate system of being that could possibly or not possibly exist.
Alright, that's it. I'm starting a Deleuze and Guattari thread in a few days. We've got at least 4 people who have read it or have a continental philosophy background, so that's critical mass. In a few days I'll post a chunk from the /War Machine/ essay, perhaps, and we'll see what happens. -
I've just finished, and have been raving about ever since, Michael Burstein's "I Remember the Future". It's good science fiction in the style of the masters (Asimov, Clarke, et al), without most of the space opera or BEM's (elthough there's a good story towards the back that involves a Catholic priest, a Rabbi and a pregnant insectoid alien, which is not the setup for a dirty joke that it sounds). It gets a bit schmaltzy in places, but it's well worth a read.
Available from publisher Apex through their store and, my preference, through Fictionwise as an ebook. (And no, I'm not a shill for the company...I just really like the book.) -
-
CommentAuthorlexmachine
- CommentTimeFeb 10th 2009
@bschory - I think of all the Discworld I've read [maybe half?] Maskerade was my least favorite. Feet of Clay is on my top 3 though.
[I would just like to say that when I saw "discworld" underlined in red by the spellchecker, I thought that it was obviously bitching because it's wasn't capitalized...]
Currently working on Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler.
Also adding my recommend of World War Z to the ever growing pool. -
-
Finally through Dune Messiah, on to Children of Dune.
-
-
CommentAuthorAWilliamsID
- CommentTimeFeb 10th 2009
Finished Bach's Illusions.
A few pages into Stephen Graham Jones' Demon Theory . Not sure what to think about the style so far. -
-
-
CommentAuthorAdmiral Neck
- CommentTimeFeb 10th 2009 edited
After putting Atlas Shrugged aside for a while after it made me hate reading (fucking shitty fucking fucking book), I blasted through A Writer's Tale by Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook, with the Dr. Who writer talking about his craft over a couple of years of running the show. As with all books by writers on their job, I found it vastly inspirational. After that I flew through Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, a YA novel similar to Battle Royale. As I'm considering writing a YA novel, it was bracing to find that there is a market for something as uncompromising and cruel as that while still retaining a lightness of touch that I think a lot of po-faced adult writers would be well advised to adopt. Next up, catching up on all of the comics I've not bought over the last few months, and then Stephen King's On Writing. I can't wait.
When I'm done with that, maybe back to Atlas Shrugged. It will be like driving a stake into the evil fucking thing so my mind can rest easy. Or I'll finally read Slaughterhouse 5, what with Lost going all Billy Pilgrim this season. -
-
- CommentAuthorundulatingungulate
- CommentTimeFeb 16th 2009 edited
Finally finished The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner. Brilliant; downer.
Next up probably either Ombria in Shadow by Patricia McKillip, or Bridge of Birds: A novel of an ancient China that never was, by Barry Hughart. Or maybe Using Your Brain For a Change by Richard Bandler. -
About 200 pages in...not terribly impressed. Reads like an awkward cross between Eco, Walter Miller and Vonnegut so far... -
Last books I've read:
About a Boy - Nick Hornby
Lullaby - Chuck Pallaniuk
Hi-fidelity - Nick Hornby
Pattern Recognition - William Gibson
Fight Club - Chuck Pallaniuk
Looking forward to picking up Gibson's new one, Spook Country -
-
CommentAuthorbrittanica
- CommentTimeFeb 16th 2009
picking and choosing through a collection of edgar allan poe's stories and poems.
love a lot of the stories, but just... so... long... winded...
interesting note: i first read "the cask of amontillado" in third grade (i think, around that time anyway). probably followed it soon after with "the masque of the red death". i was an interesting child. -
-
-
CommentAuthorrickiep00h
- CommentTimeFeb 16th 2009
@heil_brittanica
We read "Red Death" in fourth grade for school. I thought it was damn amazing, everyone else was bored or scared. -
-
-
CommentAuthorAWilliamsID
- CommentTimeFeb 16th 2009
Reading Stephen Graham Jones' Demon Theory. I love getting lost in his footnotes. -
-
Currently reading Butcher and Bolt, by David Loyn. It covers 200 years of foreign armies invading Afghanistan and getting cut to pieces. At the moment I have got as far as the second Anglo-Afghan War and can't help but marvel at the historical parallels. Somewhat poignant, as we just hit this anniversary.
Still savouring How to be Idle, by Tom Hodgkinson, editor of The Idler magazine. Lovely book, excellent for frittering away a dozy mid-morning or afternoon.
And I have a space for a novel to read, as I just finished Catch-22. I am not sure where I will go next; I may continue the cynical treatment of global war and pick up Slaughterhouse 5, or I do have a brand new copy of The Reluctant Fundamentalist on my shelves. Decisions ... -
- CommentAuthorsacredchao
- CommentTimeFeb 16th 2009
Reading The Women by T.C. Boyle, which just came out last week. It's pretty good, though it feels a little distant from the events that take place. He's going to be stopping in the bay area this weekend, so I'm going to try and catch that.
Still reading I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down by William Gay.
Listening to Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett. It's the third book in a series, and not nearly as interesting as the first two. It is kind of dwelling on themes that were adequately covered in the first two.
Probably going to read Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor next, partially because I just bought it, partially because Criterion is releasing the DVD in the next couple of months. Synchronicity, I guess. -
Managed to get through World War Z, Butcher Bird and The Temporal Void while on vacation in Austria. Three very good reads, in their own ways. World War Z really surprised me, as I had somehow gotten the impression that it was fairly humorous in tone, like Zombie Survival Guide with more narrative flow. Instead, it was gripping and horrifyingly... realistic. Top notch.
Butcher Bird felt like what might happen if Crooked Little Vein and Neverwhere met in a dark alley and had nasty, sweaty sex. And since both those books are among my favorites, that's meant as a compliment.
Temporal Void... I don't think there are any authors out there who do big space opera like Peter F. Hamilton. And now I'm waiting very impatiently for The Evolutionary Void.
Still got Holmes on the Range and Stand on Zanzibar waiting. We'll see which one I grab first. -
- CommentAuthorQuidamTulpa
- CommentTimeFeb 16th 2009
Just finished reading the four Ender books by Orson Scott Card. While I found the injection of religion a little annoying at times I decided to not let it influence my opinions of the books, because you have to write what you know and that's what he knows, besides his main character was agnostic to the end. It was a fantastic character driven series. The pro's; you became very attached to the characters even the ones you hated (and I mean hate like you want to nut-punch them every chance you get). The con's are in the science. The tech is never truly explained, therefor didn't have specific limits besides the time dilation, thus when the big revelations came they didn't have as much impact as they could have had. Understandably he favored the character development to the science and I can't fault him for that because he created some wonderfully memorable characters and species (limited though they were).
On to a for-the-hell-of-it Hellboy On Earth as it is in Hell novel then God's Demon by Wayne Barlow. -
-
CommentAuthorJustin Wrote This
- CommentTimeFeb 16th 2009
Just started reading Nightlife by Rob Thurman, after which I will either read Supernatural: Bone Key by Keith R.A. Decandido or return to my newly-discovered fascination with The Dresden Files books by Jim Butcher. -