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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Just finished up Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory. Spoiler us on what exactly is possessing these people please. Sounds interesting! By the time I get to it on my To Read list, I'll have forgotten the spoilers. I finished some BBC radio stuff from Ricky Gervais and am pummeling my way through Chasm City, but nothing has been happening for oh, 230 pages? So I keep falling asleep. edit: Added Crimson to my GoodReads list, thanks!!! That70sHeidi fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Jan 10, 2010 |
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Jan 10, 2010 16:49
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tvb posted:I wonder if how much someone's enjoyment of Sedaris is related to their previous exposure to him. I read Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim first and loved it, but got a little bored with Me Talk Pretty One Day, which everyone cites as their favorite. I read Me Talk Pretty One Day first, then all his other stuff in some random order, then When You Are Engulfed in Flames the first week it came out. My order goes: Me Talk Pretty One Day / When You Are Engulfed in Flames - Equally great, I think. Everything else / individual essays not yet collected - all pretty good, but not quite as good as what's above. Barrel Fever, which I didn't much enjoy.
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Jan 10, 2010 20:38
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That70sHeidi posted:Spoiler us on what exactly is possessing these people please. Sounds interesting! By the time I get to it on my To Read list, I'll have forgotten the spoilers. You wants it, you gots it  Demons! (says as much on the synopsis of the book on the back cover). For more details on them, I have spoiled a bit that doesn't give away TOO much of the storyline. They are possessed by demons. There are different ones, the painter (who paints but never talks), the little angel (who kills people dying of long term illness), the hellion (basically a hell raising little delinquent), Truth (imagine the Shadow, but more pissed off). Those are all the ones I can remember now. Any more information about them or the origins will end up spoiling the read for you. quote:edit: Added Crimson to my GoodReads list, thanks!!! I don't think you will be disappointed in this one at all. Finished up 13 bullets, and didn't really care much for it. The ending was pretty much just a sudden STOP kind of ending where the author could have added a few extra pages, but decided to just slam the brakes on right there. It was interesting, not many lesbian vampire hunter books out there, but ironically this was not some weird rear end vamp porn book. I think the most descriptive the author gets is about some nude  that jumps out of a tree. It is an interesting take on the mythology of vampires though, where the more blood they have the more they need, and it can't be chilled/preserved/etc , it has to be fresh. The more blood = the stronger the vampire is.I am thinking of finishing up the series (only 3 other books in it) but I also just finished up Bureau 13 : Full Moonster (book 3 of the series, which is a great series), and I am starting up on Bureau 13 : Damned Nation (werewolf attacks and supernatural creatures set during the civil war, can't beat that unless it's nazis!) The one thing about owning an ebook reader is drat you can plow through these books pretty quick. I'd recommend the Bureau 13 series to anyone who enjoyed things like the Dresden Files. It's a little more humor, but it's also kinda crazy too. Fun reads
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Jan 11, 2010 01:55
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Just letting you know ahead of time that the Wellington Vampire series is definitely NOT finished with book four. Unfortunately your complaint about the ending of 13 Bullets pretty much carries over to the rest of the series as each time the ending is rather sudden.
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Jan 11, 2010 05:39
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I just finished Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Enjoyed it a lot, and even though I pegged most of the "mystery" of the book down pretty early, the discovery was still enjoyable. It was the first of his novels that I've read, and I intend to pick up more soon.
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Jan 11, 2010 07:44
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muscles like this? posted:Just letting you know ahead of time that the Wellington Vampire series is definitely NOT finished with book four. Unfortunately your complaint about the ending of 13 Bullets pretty much carries over to the rest of the series as each time the ending is rather sudden. Crap. I was hoping the author would learn from the first book and make the next ones less jarring. Before I start in on the rest of the books, does it turn into some retarded porn vampire book series, or is it staying mostly in the horror genre?
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Jan 11, 2010 09:45
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Crap. I was hoping the author would learn from the first book and make the next ones less jarring. It stays completely in the horror genre. He never breaks setting in that being a vampire is a horrible thing. Just a word of warning, don't look at the back of any of the books other than the one you're currently reading as they give away major plot points. Like the third book Vampire Zero gives away the ending to the second book and the fourth book gives away the ending to the third.
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Jan 11, 2010 14:45
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The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart, by Jesse Bullington. It's a historical fiction/fantasy adventure novel about 14th century monster-killing German graverobbers that are headed down to Egypt to rob the pyramids. It's funny, violent, inventive, and dripping with all sorts of nasty humours. You all should probably read it.
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Jan 11, 2010 17:07
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Crisis and Change: Basic Questions of Marxist Sociology - Alan Specter and Peter Knapp I got this as a Christmas gift and have used it as a guide for some of Marx's more complex concepts. It's a textbook explaining Marxist Sociology in the wake of the fall of the USSR. Plus, mine is signed by Mr. Specter.
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Jan 11, 2010 22:51
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muscles like this? posted:Just a word of warning, don't look at the back of any of the books other than the one you're currently reading as they give away major plot points. Like the third book Vampire Zero gives away the ending to the second book and the fourth book gives away the ending to the third. I have this problem with Star Wars books...  I'm reading my SciFi bookclub flyer and am all "ooooh this sounds good" and then I read the next blurb over and it's all "Well he's evil, and..."  Similar to Dune, actually. If you read enough of the blurbs, you don't have to read the actual books!
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Jan 12, 2010 00:08
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Just finished Molecular Gastronomy by Hervé This. It was a really interesting book, but there's a lot of chemistry stuff he was talking about that I did not understand at all and, honestly, didn't feel like researching. On the whole though, it is a really fascinating look into the science of developing flavor and researching where it comes from. There are a few really cool ideas in there that any home cook could do, as well as plenty of cool ideas a home cook with a lot of money and knowledge of chemistry could do.
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Jan 12, 2010 09:15
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OrangeKing posted:I just finished Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Enjoyed it a lot, and even though I pegged most of the "mystery" of the book down pretty early, the discovery was still enjoyable. It was the first of his novels that I've read, and I intend to pick up more soon.
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Jan 12, 2010 10:54
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Just finished The Name of the Wind, gonna give it a big 'meh' for now, super kid is super. I hope the next book has more grit and disappointment for the protagonist.
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Jan 12, 2010 19:33
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Finished up Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore. God damned hilarious book. It's basically a telling of the years between the birth and death of Jesus, by his best friend Biff (Levi bar Alphaeus). It's got some language in it, which I was surprised to see, as well as sex scenes, which again, was surprised to see in a book about the big J, but nothing was overdone and the humor was on almost every page. You can't help but laugh when you hear about an angel that wants to petition God so he can become Spider Man  Great book, and had me laughing at many a part, and you can't ask for better from a humor writer. I would rank this up with any of the Patrick F. Mcmanus books I have read (which all loving ROCK  )I think Raziel is one of my new favorite angels , I am probably going to read The Stupidest Angel after this, because I think he is the referenced angel in the title.
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Jan 13, 2010 05:51
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I think Raziel is one of my new favorite angels I just read The Stupidest Angel and Raziel is the angel in question. And he is quite stupid. It is a hilarious book and I definitely recommend it but he really isn't in it much despite being the title character.
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Jan 13, 2010 06:38
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flippinmarilyn posted:I just started reading A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, even though he tends to lie. bowmore fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Jan 13, 2010 |
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Jan 13, 2010 06:58
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I'm on a post-apocalyptica kick right now, and I just finished Alas, Babylon. It was great, and everything that I had been led to believe. Next up is Nevil Shute's On The Beach. Roark fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Jan 13, 2010 |
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Jan 13, 2010 20:16
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Roark posted:I'm on a post-apocalyptica kick right now, and I just finished Alas, Babylon. It was great, and everything that I had been led to believe. Are you reading On the Beach because of Rand's recommendation? I just finished The Suburban Swindle by Jackie Corley. There are a couple good stories in the collection, specifically Blood in Jersey and the title cut. Unfortunately those make up a small section of a book that is already under 100 pages. I wouldn't really recommend anything except those two stories and possibly Catfish Boys. There's a fine drinking game to be played if you drink every time she says thumb, though. Pissed by the fourth page.
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Jan 13, 2010 20:20
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QVT posted:Are you reading On the Beach because of Rand's recommendation? No. I've had it recommended to me a few times in the past, and I know it's one of the classic 1950s post-A-Bomb novels that people usually mention. I did know that Rand was a fan of Shute's, though. That has to say a lot about the guy's views, considering that Rand loathed just about every other modern author bar a handful.
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Jan 13, 2010 21:56
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causticfluids posted:My wife and I just finished reading The Hobbit in parallel. It was great! I was worried about the book being too simple and child-oriented. It wasn't incredibly complicated but rather a kickass read that I can see myself coming back to across the years. Very immersive and a wonderful fantasy, and it cleared up a few Middle-Earth questions we had. Even better, we read it in one sitting, over six hours. Awesome. 4.5/5, losing .5 points due to the absence of hardcore erotica. The Hobbit has almost everything. I haven't read this since I was 13. Now I want to read it again! Thanks  I just finished A Wolf At The Table by Augusten Burroughs, which is as well written as all his other books but with a million times more heartbreak. The ending was incredibly tragic. I need to buffer my utterly destroyed heart and soul up with cheesy, happy, father-son movies like Finding Nemo. I've now read all 6 of Burroughs' memoirs. My favourite is still Dry, but really I love them all. Apparently his next one will be about his time with Pighead, so I'm really looking forward to that (the story with Pighead was my favourite one in his latest book You Better Not Cry). Now to start one of the books I got from the library yesterday: either Tales Of The City by Armistead Maupin, or When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris.
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Jan 14, 2010 04:56
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The Girl Who Played With Fire, book 2 in the Millenium trilogy by Stieg Larsson. This one is a lot slower to start, but the last quarter of the book made it completely worth it. I ended up liking it more than the first one; I felt more invested in Lisbeth as a person and a heroine, and there were much higher stakes involved with solving the mystery. The translation is even more bland in this book, though. Hopefully the trend won't continue with the third book, which I'm picking up next. Fortunately there's only three; if there were more I'd consider stopping. There's big chunks of the book that are just not interesting or pertinent. We don't need to know that she picked up microwave pizzas and cheese 3-4 different times over the course of the novel. I'll definitely need something a bit more flowery or heady or substantial after I finish the last one.
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Jan 14, 2010 07:02
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Ok, finished The Stupidest Angel tonight, and man I gotta pick up the rest of this guys books. Christopher Moore is, without a doubt, one of the better humor writers out there. Basically all hell breaks loose when God sends down our friend Raziel to grant a christmas wish to a young boy in a California town. It starts out innocently enough, but holy gently caress it got hilarious by the end. "I HAVE THIRD DEGREE ELECTRICAL BURNS ON MY SCROTUM BECAUSE OF YOU!!!"  will be a favorite line of mine for years to come.
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Jan 14, 2010 10:51
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Ok, finished The Stupidest Angel tonight, and man I gotta pick up the rest of this guys books. Christopher Moore is, without a doubt, one of the better humor writers out there. Pace yourself. I found those two and Fool to be the funniest of the bunch so far. Take some time, let them sink in, try another genre, because if you keep going with his stuff you miiiight get a little disappointed with a few of them (Lust Lizard, for starters, bleh). Maybe try A Dirty Job next, it has a baby skeleton on the front. Fool is INCREDIBLY raunchy and really good... it's a retelling of King Lear, but BETTER. quote:This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity, as well as non-traditional grammar, spit infinitives, and the odd wank. If that sort of thing bothers you, then gentle reader pass by, for we only endeavor to entertain, not to offend. That said, if that’s the sort of thing you think you might enjoy, then you have happened onto the perfect story! I learned the terms "bunny cunny" and "fuckstockings" from Fool.
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Jan 14, 2010 22:15
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Roark posted:I'm on a post-apocalyptica kick right now, and I just finished Alas, Babylon. It was great, and everything that I had been led to believe. You read "A Canticle for Leibowitz"?
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Jan 15, 2010 06:10
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That70sHeidi posted:Pace yourself. I found those two and Fool to be the funniest of the bunch so far. Take some time, let them sink in, try another genre, because if you keep going with his stuff you miiiight get a little disappointed with a few of them (Lust Lizard, for starters, bleh). Maybe try A Dirty Job next, it has a baby skeleton on the front. Fool is INCREDIBLY raunchy and really good... it's a retelling of King Lear, but BETTER. Without a doubt, A Dirty job is my favorite by Moore. Practical Demonkeeping and the sequel and far superior IMO, Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove are absolute riots. Did you read PD first? Maybe it is the time since I have read it when it came out speaking but LLoMC killed me. Sequined Love Nun is definitely my least favorite of his.
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Jan 15, 2010 06:35
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I just re-read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency for the first time in ages. It's way better when you get all the Coleridge references. (The bit with the possessed Michael detaining a wedding guest to tell him about the ship certainly went over my head when I read it as a teenager, as did the significance of Dirk interrupting Coleridge to make him forget the important bits of Kubla Khan) And I was pleased that contrary to my recollection of it being very HHGTTG-ishly random, the plot actually all fit together quite neatly (more or less) with no glaring loose ends.
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Jan 15, 2010 12:43
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Pocket Billiards posted:You read "A Canticle for Leibowitz"? It's next on the list. My local bookstore didn't have it in, so I ordered it.
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Jan 15, 2010 19:39
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Entropic posted:I just re-read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency for the first time in ages. It's way better when you get all the Coleridge references. (The bit with the possessed Michael detaining a wedding guest to tell him about the ship certainly went over my head when I read it as a teenager, as did the significance of Dirk interrupting Coleridge to make him forget the important bits of Kubla Khan) And I was pleased that contrary to my recollection of it being very HHGTTG-ishly random, the plot actually all fit together quite neatly (more or less) with no glaring loose ends. In many ways I prefer Dirk Gently to a lot of the HHGTTG material; the characters are more developed in less time, the plot (while not making much sense) is based on earth and the people in the books have earth problems which I can somewhat relate to.
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Jan 15, 2010 20:29
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Tactical Grace posted:In many ways I prefer Dirk Gently to a lot of the HHGTTG material; the characters are more developed in less time, the plot (while not making much sense) is based on earth and the people in the books have earth problems which I can somewhat relate to. I never liked the HHGTTG books quite as much as the radio plays. Half of what made them so great was casting; Geoffrey McGivern, Simon Jones and Mark Wing-Davey were all completely perfect and hilarious in their roles. Interesting note on DGHDA: the Professor Reg character and his time machine, St. Cedd's College, and a few bits of plot are all recycled from the never-aired "Shada" Dr. Who serial that Adams wrote. Speaking of recycling though, the Susan character really struck me as just being Fenchurch redux. I mean she's even got the cello.
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Jan 15, 2010 21:13
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Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. As a fan of his travel show, I thought I'd give his book a shot. It follows his life as a cook from when he wished his hands were hosed up, to now when his hands are hosed up. I found out some interesting things about the restaurant industry, and I respect dudes working in kitchens a bit more. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Pretty cool story about some guy paddling down a river into darkest Africa while he muses about colonialism being bad. There's been enough said about this one in the book club thread. The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett. I've read almost all the Discworld books, but somehow I skipped this one along the way. Another solid Watch book, with the associated themes.
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Jan 15, 2010 23:55
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City and the City by Mieville. Pretty silly, lovely stuff. Are the rest of his books like this? It took me an age to get over the terrible, clunky writing at the start of the book. The world he created was OK, but by the end I still didn't really know anything about his characters, what motivated them or made them interesting. The last 20 pages of the bad guy (well, the last in the series of evil dudes) explaining how he did it must have been a joke. Couldn't make up my mind whether he'd seen too many Poirot, or too many Bond spoofs.
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Jan 16, 2010 18:18
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CrimsonGhost posted:Without a doubt, A Dirty job is my favorite by Moore. Practical Demonkeeping and the sequel and far superior IMO, Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove are absolute riots. Did you read PD first? Maybe it is the time since I have read it when it came out speaking but LLoMC killed me. Sequined Love Nun is definitely my least favorite of his. Unfortunately books in series blend together for me lately... I may ask the library to print me a list of books I've rented, just to see if I remember reading PD. I wanted to go back and read the one before A Dirty Job, where they establish who the shopkeeper/hero is, but I never got back to it. I just finished Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse and Weird Tales: The Strange Life of HP Lovecraft which is quite short and interested me in reading some of the stories talked about. Monk was very satisfying, but I enjoy the TV series as well, so I'm not surprised. I'll be downloading more of the series. I also finished Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds. I really hate epilogues. Why can't they leave well enough alone without having to wrap up the stories of each character when they end a book? Leave a little mystery. Aside from that, I'm really loving tweaked about the fact that Tanner is actually Calwaya (spelling?), who stole Tanner's memories in order to get off-world to chase down the man who caused Tanner to kill Calwaya's wife. I don't really understand why Calwaya left Tanner to live after feeding him alive to the giant snake thing, to which humans are poisonous and Tanner lived, but you go through 90% of the book really feeling for Tanner and rooting for him, he doesn't seem like a bad guy, especially in comparison with Sky Hausman, who gets more and more assy as the story goes on. Then the author had to go and gently caress it all up by making FakeTanner into Calwaya, who did really bad things in his past; making TheRealTanner a loving cockpunch who is nonetheless justified in tracking and killing Calwaya by this point; and then OF COURSE we have to discover that FakeTanner/Calwaya is really Skye Hausman, Ultimate Space Prick, and immortal, and ruthless, and cunning, and cruel. How can you possibly recover interest in this story once all these facts are brought to light? Well you epilogue that fucker to make FakeTanner, who is back to using the now DeadTanners name, for some reason, into a wonderful person who is redeeming about 500 years of utter asshattery. Yeah. I'd buy it. Totally. I mentioned this ridiculousness to someone and they asked if I had the book itself and not an electronic copy, would I stop reading it. I had to answer that I'd throw it across the room. I don't often consider doing that. Too many breakables. But after I threw it away, I'd set it on fire. Oh and there's this cool hunting game Reynolds goes on and on about. Reminded me of Piers Anthony and his effing Game in the Adept series.  Congratulations on making space death cool again, dude.
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Jan 16, 2010 19:42
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Just finished Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. It's got a few errors here and there but it's still an amazing book that's fantastically written.
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Jan 17, 2010 02:12
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Ok, finished The Stupidest Angel tonight, and man I gotta pick up the rest of this guys books. Christopher Moore is, without a doubt, one of the better humor writers out there. The only one of his books that I wasn't enthralled with was Blue Coyote. Everything else, I really enjoyed. Did you read Lamb yet? I found that to be his absolute best.
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Jan 17, 2010 19:59
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appropriatemetaphor posted:Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. As a fan of his travel show, I thought I'd give his book a shot. It follows his life as a cook from when he wished his hands were hosed up, to now when his hands are hosed up. I found out some interesting things about the restaurant industry, and I respect dudes working in kitchens a bit more. He's got a new book coming out in June.
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Jan 18, 2010 04:09
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squash86 posted:He's got a new book coming out in June.
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Jan 18, 2010 05:10
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Roark posted:No. I've had it recommended to me a few times in the past, and I know it's one of the classic 1950s post-A-Bomb novels that people usually mention. Ah. I only asked because of your user name. Rand may have been the only person more exclusive and violent in taste than Nabokov. Those drat Russian emigrants who fled (eventually) to America during the November revolution! I just finished The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. Greene's Catholicism is one of those great pities of literature, along with the deaths of Carver or Fitzgerald, the eventual mortality of Nabokov, and the continued existence of the works of Jane Austen. What a book this could have been. I still recommend it, highly even, but that is on the strength of the first half and not the bumbling ramblings of the second. Why Graham Greene! Why couldn't you have been the greatest writer the world had ever seen. That's the first of six books off my January-March 2010 reading list. Next is Adventures of Augie March unless it continues to suck as bad as the first 20 pages, which suck really bad.
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Jan 18, 2010 07:26
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Gay4BluRayz posted:The only one of his books that I wasn't enthralled with was Blue Coyote. Everything else, I really enjoyed. Did you read Lamb yet? I found that to be his absolute best. Lamb was the first book I read by him, and it was  . I loving loved Raziel in it, he's my favorite  now.I was laughing entirely too hard at the first harlot scene in the stall. I am going to start Practical Demonkeeping in a day or two. I am reading Kell's Legend or something like that. Basically David Gemmell fantasy written by a big fan of his, so heres hoping it doesn't suck.
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Jan 18, 2010 08:54
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I finished A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. just the other day. Easily one of the best sci-fi books I've read. Surprisingly for such a book, the major focus doesn't end up being on the circumstances behind the book (nuclear war and the preservation of knowledge afterward) but on the Catholic Church and its role in the new world. It deviates wildly from the typical sci-fi setup by never questioning the presence of God - his existence is always assumed. The book, then, isn't so much a meditation on the nature of God, but on the nature of man's relationship to God and man's relationship to the Earth. I'd highly recommend it to anyone, regardless of whether you're a big sci-fi buff or not.
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Jan 18, 2010 09:09
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QVT posted:Ah. I only asked because of your user name. Rand may have been the only person more exclusive and violent in taste than Nabokov. Those drat Russian emigrants who fled (eventually) to America during the November revolution! Nabokov and Rand also have the distinction of having the two nuttiest executors for their estates: Dmitri Nabokov, and the Pope of Objectivism, Leonard Peikoff. I used to be a hardcore Rand fan at the start of college, but I grew out of that once I realized that (like most of her diehard fans) I was using all of that Objectivism to rationalize being a huge douchebag. That and the fact that she writes sex scenes like a 15 year old boy with anger problems would. I still do love The Fountainhead, ignoring the rape scenes.
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Jan 18, 2010 13:37
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