I started reading Murder on the Orient Express for the first time. I'm enjoying it, although some of it gets a bit dry as they start interviewing the other passengers on the train. Still, I'm liking it. However it's had to be put on the back burner as I just got UNDISPUTED by Chris Jericho from the library and I'm tearing through it.
On Tuesday 3/15 I'll be purchasing the new Jasper Fforde novel when I attend his book signing in Denver which means that's going to be next on my reading list.
Work is reading about Locke at the mo, so recreationally it's all comics. Finished Sam Kieth's My Inner Bimbo, which was fantastic. Also Siege, which was poor, and some Grant Morrison penned DCU big events, which weremagnificent. When I began my comix obsession, I was firmly on the side of Bendis > Morrison. Oh, the follies of youth...
@Warped Savant I'm reading Sleepless right now, 15% in and I like it.
Just finished The mystic art of erasing all signs of death, also by Charlie Huston. A great read, seems like it's going to be a trilogy (suprise) which I'm looking forward to. next up after Sleepless is probably a re-read of Anna Karenina
I meant to pick up the next book in the pile but got distracted by a couple others:
Rereading A Wrinkle in Time for the experience of reading it out loud. It started as reading it to my niece, who is 8, but she hasn't been over very often and already declared it somewhat boring and not her style after two chapters. (But I caught her asking her mom how it ends.) I'll try to get back to reading it with her though I do have to admit the 40+ year old style is showing its age as it's likely a much more clunky and...well, bookish... read than Diary of a Wimpy Kid which the child loves. Plus I kept stopping for longer words to make sure she knew the meaning. I know I shouldn't try to make her like the things I like, I know it'll never work. But I read Wrinkle in the 3rd grade and it became my favorite books and is still one of my top 5.
Anyhow, I'm still reading it out loud to myself to practice the voices and push my mind-mouth coordination around some of the trickier passages as well as Mrs Who's lapses into foreign languages.
I'm also reading Voice-Over Voice Actor by Yuri Lowenthal and Tara Platt. It came highly recommended by no small number of people who know what they're talking about. Three chapters in and I see what they mean: it's very breezy in tone but impressive in detail. I look forward to getting into more depth as each VO market is explored.
i'm working on Against the Day by Pynchon, which is fun enough but such a heavy book that it's really cumbersome to read in bed. so i've also started The Fountainhead, which too references the Chicago Expo of 1893 in the first 50 pages, funnily enough. it's inspired me to start building a model of my dream house in Lego. (so far i just have the outhouse done. i don't have enough window pieces in my collection!)
Currently reading: Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder, which is about what happened to the people who lived in the chunks of land between Stalin and Hitler when Stalin & Hitler decided to try to change the world, and go to war. Lots of starvation, cannibalism, and rather horrible stuff. Nonfiction, but it's not dry, and as horrid as the topic is, I'm rather enjoying it. It's a huge book though.
When I'm not slogging through that I'm on Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison Some free e-book on Elizabethan Demonology (I *think* snagged from gutenburg) and Book Publishing by John Dessaur, which seems to be a history on the publishing industry more than anything else so far.
This seems to be my 'bland' month for reading, with that taken into account along with my classes.
@Straiit -- Sleepless is much easier to me to read (not that Windup Girl was difficult, I just didn't care for it and therefore got distracted by doing other things). I got about 35% of the way through within the first two days whereas Windup girl (being about the same size) took me over a week to get that far. Sleepless is much more enjoyable, very different than I was expecting it to be.
Ellis Sharp's Walthamstow Central Lots of fun, it's got a time-travel plot, a mystery plot, a love story, a revenge plot, a crime caper plot, all intersecting and wrapped up in a fun metafictional style where people get surprised when they find they're not in a realist novel that sticks to 'late capitalist narrative convention' and you have bits like "The woman who answered sounded bored. She sounded hostile. She sounded indifferent. She tersely cut the connection. But somebody realised. Somebody was on the ball. Somebody acted. Somebody had been reading The Cold Six Thousand."
i have to admit Sleepless didn't do it for me and I gave up halfway through.
i'm mid way through what i've christened, 'The Year of Ridiculously Busy' and really don't have the headspace to expend on books that are anything other than instant gratification. So it's pulp or nothing this year. Sleepless felt like the type of book i'd have really dug given the time and the room to relax into it but that's something i just don't have.
Fight Club - Chuck Pahluniak Finally got around to reading the novel which birthed one of my favourite movies. It is darker and more nihilistic than the film, and the ending is substantially less feel-good. The film remains such a strong imprint in my mind that the book's impact was inevitably lessened. There were few surprises left. Some cracking lines though.
I just finished reading Black Halo - Sam Sykes which wont be out until March 22nd. I won an Advance Readering Copy in a contest. The book's a great entertaining read, it didn't seem to have as many bloody battles as the first book Tome of the Undergates but it had some juicy character development which was great to read.
So, I've managed to finish off a fair few things over the last couple of weeks.
Age of Misrule trilogy Really enjoyed this. Superb world building and a great use of mythology. I'm glad I knew this was the first of a trilogy of trilogies before going in though otherwise I'd have been a bit disappointed by the ending.
Bug Jack Barron Picked this up after seeing Warren recommend it having never really heard of Spinrad beforeand I'm glad I did. I'm also kind of gutted I didn't find this back when I was a 14 year old as I'd like to imagine it would've had quite an influence on me. As it stands, it's made me want to hunt out more of his work now at the very least.
Bill the Galactic Hero - Harry Harrison Picked this up for the grand sum of £1 from our local charity shop after reading it years ago and was not disappointed on the re-read. The perfect bit of amusing brain candy that was needed after the two above and, like with Bug Jack Barron, has made me want to hunt down the rest of the series, plus the Stainless Steel Rat stuff he's done as well.
Next, I've got the Illuminatus trilogy lined up but am thinking of hitting that a book at a time as it could be heavy going....
Also started The Complete Apprentice by Steve Aylett. One of those books that throws you cold into a very strange world, and it's rather dense with tossed-off details along the way. I look forward to figuring out what's going on, but I've just cracked the covers...