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Like most other humans I just started rereading The Hobbit.
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Dec 17, 2012 04:05
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I just got Caliban's War (James S. A. Corey), which I will begin as soon as I finish re-reading Leviathan Wakes.
Zola fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Dec 17, 2012 |
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Dec 17, 2012 19:53
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Zola posted:I just got Caliban's War (James S. A. Corey), which I will begin as soon as I finish re-reading Leviathan Wakes. The 3rd book in that series and the new Joe Hill are the 2 books I'm looking forward to the most in 2013.
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Dec 18, 2012 00:30
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Due to lots of Cormac McCarthy discussion among my friends, and having screwed my mind up with Blood Merdian 3 times this year, along with the fact that the cool old guy who runs the local used book shop lists it as his favorite, I'm now reading All The Pretty Horses. Even though I realize it is supposed to be of a much different tone, comparing it to how miles deep and disturbing Blood Meridian was I feel that maybe I'm being misled by how easy breezy it is so far. I also just received this as part of my Library of America subscription: http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=347 HandClap fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Dec 18, 2012 |
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Dec 18, 2012 03:10
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nate fisher posted:The 3rd book in that series and the new Joe Hill are the 2 books I'm looking forward to the most in 2013. I looked up the new Joe Hill book. It's called NOS4A2 and apparently has a vampire. 
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Dec 18, 2012 06:13
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Eh, at least the title is clever. Can't be worse than twilight 
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Dec 18, 2012 11:14
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Eh, at least the title is clever. No, no it isn't- that's the name of some Buzz Lightyear cartoon villain (a robot energy vampire or something).
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Dec 18, 2012 12:54
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It's pretty much the opposite of clever.
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Dec 18, 2012 13:01
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It's a pretty good title for a license plate.
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Dec 18, 2012 16:54
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I just gave up on "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" - I tried to give it a chance but just could not get into it. Meh. I found myself struggling to get through a chapter a day and just wasn't getting anywhere. Anyway, now I'm reading my first Jonathan Franzen book - 'The Corrections' - so far I like it a lot. I read 100 pages in one sitting which is rare for me.
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Dec 18, 2012 18:13
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Hedrigall posted:I looked up the new Joe Hill book. It's called NOS4A2 and apparently has a vampire. I am so so on the name but he hasn't let me down yet. Some Goon in the King thread read a preview copy and said it was Hill's best yet. So my hopes are up.
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Dec 18, 2012 20:48
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I'm imagining a book that's 50% FAST AND FURIOUS and 50% Dracula. It will either be amazing, or horrible, but I don't think there will be any middle ground.
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Dec 19, 2012 00:15
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I'm imagining a book that's 50% FAST AND FURIOUS and 50% Dracula. Add in Nightmare Before Christmas with the whole Christmas Land angle.
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Dec 19, 2012 01:22
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Started This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz over the weekend. I really didn't like Oscar Wao mainly because he put too much background into his family's history, how the curse got put on his family and other stuff, but this is a lot better so far
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Dec 19, 2012 01:39
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Got an Amazon gift card as an early Christmas gift and went on a Kindle eBook buying spree. 1. A Time to Kill by John Grisham - I'm a little less than halfway through this one already, and I'm really liking it. The main character Jake is a young lawyer representing a black man who murdered the two white men who had raped his ten-year-old daughter, a crime that tears apart the small Mississippi town of Clanton. Grisham seems to have a lot of extraneous detail--at one point, his characters go into a barbeque and the narration tells us about what kind of food is served every day of the week at that restaurant--but I'm still hooked. I think I may even like the extra details, while I kinda roll my eyes at them as they happen, a big part of the book is the effect of the trial on the town of Clanton, so having as much as possible helps get a feel for the town. 2. The Last Kashmiri Rose (Joe Sandilands #1) by Barbara Cleverly - Scotland Yard detective Joe Sandilands is dispatched to British Calcutta in the 1920s to investigate the death of an Englishwoman, the wife of an officer in the Bengal Greys cavalry regiment who died in a suicide that doesn't quite add up, only to discover that a Bengal Grey officer's wife dies in March of every year in seemingly unrelated accidents, the only connection being a Kashmiri rose placed on each grave by an unknown person. 3. Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan - Gravy Jones recommended this one to me when I asked for cyberpunk stuff in the recommendation thread and I just now got around to getting it. I downloaded the sample back when he originally suggested it and while I gave the biggest  at the random vitriolic anti-Catholic rant that had nothing to do with anything and was very obviously Morgan screaming directly at you, I still really liked the writing style and the mystery intrigued me, so I'm looking forward to this one.4. Equal of the Sun by Anita Amirrezvani - a historical fiction novel about Princess Pari Khan Khanoom Safavi, daughter of the Shah of Persia in the sixteenth century. When her father dies without naming an heir, she and her eunuch adviser try to navigate the political intrigue and schemes in order to restore order. 5. Rooftops of Tehran by Mahbod Seraji - Another novel of Iran as part of my effort to read more Middle-Eastern stuff, especially Persian. A teenage boy comes of age in an Iran on the cusp of revolution in the mid-1970s. 6. Out of India: A Raj Childhood by Michael Foss - Foss's memoir of growing up as a child in British India. Born in 1937, he grows up among World War II and the Indian independence movement. 7. The Emerald Storm (Ethan Gage, #6) by William Dietrich - This series is basically historical Indiana Jones, or maybe Assassin's Creed without the Animus. Ethan Gage, American expatriate and charming rogue, and his Egyptian wife Astiza, race to prevent the Egyptian Rite of the Freemason Order from capturing ancient treasures of great power, getting mixed up in historical events and rubbing shoulders with historical figures from the late 18th and early 19th centuries along the way--this time getting caught up in the Haitian Revolution. Pretty good haul, I think. I think I'm going to start with either The Last Kashmiri Rose or Equal of the Sun once I finish A Time To Kill.
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Dec 19, 2012 02:55
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I'm 10 or 11 chapters into Catcher in the Rye. I figured I should read a classic American-with-a-capital-A novel that's been so well reviewed. So far it's really cynical and sarcastic. I might have liked it 14 years ago, but now I'm 30 and cynicism and sarcasm are just draining and pointless. It's a quick enough read that I'll finish it in a day or two, but I'm really just hoping Holden snaps out of it.
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Dec 20, 2012 08:46
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Picked up books one and two of Ian Douglas' series Star Carrier for eight bucks on Audible. It's, it's... I dunno. There's something about it that bothers me, I just don't know what it is. They're "hard" sci-fi, if I recall the term correctly. As for the narrator he's alright, but no joke; he sounds like the guy from the old Hinterland Who's Who  PSAs.
Mister Facetious fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Dec 20, 2012 |
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Dec 20, 2012 10:27
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I picked up Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk at the airport today and am probably halfway through it. There are moments that are brilliantly funny and others where I'm like "gently caress, okay, I GET IT." I'm probably not the only one who has trouble cracking the narrator's gibberish at times, to the detriment of what is otherwise a very fun read.
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Dec 21, 2012 01:47
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My girlfriend worked with Cherie Priest before she became a hot-shot author. They were good friends and still keep in touch. So for my birthday, I received a signed copy of Boneshaker. Lucky boy this one.
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Dec 22, 2012 15:20
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Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (Lois McMaster Bujold) was under the tree this morning. So far, this is going to be right up there with A Civil Campaign as my all-time favorite Vorkosigan novels. The only thing that's keeping me from reading the choice bits out loud to the hubby is that he has Cold Days and when he's finished, he'll be reading this one (And I will at last have my greedy paws on Cold Days!!!)
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Dec 25, 2012 20:55
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 The latest from Allen Steele. I was hoping for a new Coyote novel, but I'll take it.
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Dec 26, 2012 04:20
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I got an Amazon giftcard in my stocking so I got a few new books: Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin Mitnick The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison I started The City & the City by China Mieville the other day. I quite like it; I'm ~50% in to it.
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Dec 26, 2012 04:40
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I got Mother, Brother, Lover by Jarvis Cocker. It's a collection of his lyrics and some commentary. Almost done. It's nice reading little inside notes on some of my favorite songs.
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Dec 26, 2012 13:38
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I just bought Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (the book Jenova Chen refers to in his thesis and the foundation for his first game FlOw). I just read few chapters but I'm already loving it. He's describing the best way to win life.
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Dec 26, 2012 18:47
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Over the course of the last 2 night shifts I've read The Killing Kind, The White Road and The Black Angels by John Connolly. Black Angels was especially good.
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Dec 26, 2012 19:38
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stratdax posted:I'm 10 or 11 chapters into Catcher in the Rye. I figured I should read a classic American-with-a-capital-A novel that's been so well reviewed. So far it's really cynical and sarcastic. I might have liked it 14 years ago, but now I'm 30 and cynicism and sarcasm are just draining and pointless. It's a quick enough read that I'll finish it in a day or two, but I'm really just hoping Holden snaps out of it.
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Dec 26, 2012 22:09
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WastedJoker posted:Over the course of the last 2 night shifts I've read The Killing Kind, The White Road and The Black Angels by John Connolly. Is the writing better than the first book? I read the first one, and it fell firmly into the "meh" category. It had a decent lead, but the INCREDIBLE PLOT TWIST ended up being called by me in the first half of the book. I dunno if it's cause I dunno if they are supposed to be airport fiction mysteries (and therefore the meh writing is pretty normal), or if they are supposed to be THRILLER ADVENTURES and the "meh" feeling was cause I didn't like the book.
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Dec 28, 2012 21:21
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I recently started reading the first book in Gorge R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Game of Thrones. Having only read about 55 pages, I'm really finding his writing style attractive and am wanting to get further into the story to see what he has in store for me. The individual chapters seem to handle the story of a separate character and blatantly labelling them as such, as opposed to naming them after events that occur in the chapter and whatnot — and if that's a hint to anything, it's a hint to that there's going to be a bunch of small stories that are connected in some way or another, there's going to be a lot of character interaction, and that it's going to be really complex.
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Dec 28, 2012 22:22
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Picked up WIlliam Gaddis' Agape Agape today at a used book sale. I'm looking forward to it: Gaddis is someone who comes up all the time on my Amazon recommendations and I've been meaning to get into but writes huge behemoths of novels, so this slim novel seems like a good entry point.
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Dec 29, 2012 04:15
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barkingclam posted:Picked up WIlliam Gaddis' Agape Agape today at a used book sale. I'm looking forward to it: Gaddis is someone who comes up all the time on my Amazon recommendations and I've been meaning to get into but writes huge behemoths of novels, so this slim novel seems like a good entry point. It's not really that indicative of what Gaddis can do. As lengthy as they may be, the best intro's still his first couple of books. Agape agape is more a love letter to Thomas Bernhard, a writer he was fascinated by in his later years. If you've read Bernhard's The Loser, you'll notice Gaddis is meeting him more than halfway stylistically, and the odd character even bleeds over into Agape agape.
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Dec 29, 2012 22:27
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I've also got The Recognitions, is that a better starting point?
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Dec 29, 2012 23:11
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I'd read Agapé Agape first just because it's so short. Also, as a reminder to any Gaddis fans, a book of his letters is meant to come out in the new year, which I'm really looking forward to. Exactly the kind of thing he railed against in the Recognitions but hey ho.
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Dec 30, 2012 01:05
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I just started Billy Budd. I'm only a few chapters in but it seems like every sentance carries far more weight than Moby-Dick. A coworker friend of mine wrote his 200 page masters thesis on this 100 page book. Given presumption and my fist impression, even though it's only 1/6th the size of MD, I think it may take me just as long to read this as it took to finish MD to get any sort of understanding...
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Dec 30, 2012 01:23
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Did anyone else go to town with the ebook sales on Amazon? I picked up The Prague Cemetary (a book I know I will like) as well as random political books about why Obama is an apathetic commie. All around 2-4 bucks. Should be good.
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Dec 30, 2012 01:46
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Homemaster posted:Did anyone else go to town with the ebook sales on Amazon? I picked up The Prague Cemetary (a book I know I will like) as well as random political books about why Obama is an apathetic commie. All around 2-4 bucks. Should be good. I looked around a bit but couldn't find anything that looked too interesting. Past few days though were pretty good I just started "Under the Dome" by Steven King and it was only 2 bucks. Pretty good so far. For anyone who read it already, does King do a decent job ending it or does it fall flat? SilkyP fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Dec 30, 2012 |
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Dec 30, 2012 01:48
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SilkyP posted:I just started "Under the Dome" by Stephen King and it was only 2 bucks. Pretty good so far. For anyone who read it already, does King to a decent job ending it or does it fall flat? I think the ending of the events in the book is fine, but the reason they happened is a little weak. More than worth the two dollars, and a pretty easy read for such a brick of a novel.
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Dec 30, 2012 02:06
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Reading House of Leaves and The Blade Itself. I'm really enjoying House of Leaves so far. It's the only "horror" book I have read that actually has a pulsating sexual undercurrent to it without even trying. e: not that that is a prerequisite of horror. RebBrownies fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Dec 30, 2012 |
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Dec 30, 2012 19:05
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I've also started House of Leaves. It's not as intimidating as I was led to believe, though it might be easier to deal with if you have a bit of liberal-arts college experience, because both the Navidson Record and Truant's asides seem to be two pastiches of terrible college writing smashed together. Also I like to think that all of those interminable Slender Man vid series were stealing from this book, consciously or not
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Dec 30, 2012 19:58
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Oxxidation posted:I've also started House of Leaves. It's not as intimidating as I was led to believe, though it might be easier to deal with if you have a bit of liberal-arts college experience, because both the Navidson Record and Truant's asides seem to be two pastiches of terrible college writing smashed together. I don't know why everyone was making a hubbub about the difficulty of the book. After reading The Pale King, this was a cake walk. The footnotes aren't very maze-like if you treat the book like a piece of string with loops in it. The footnotes carry you through a loop and you end up right where you left off but more "enriched." I agree that sometimes Truant's asides can be... I guess I want to use the word excessive? In the beginning I really loved his asides especially the foreword, but I just shut down reading a recent aside that reminded me of that really long sentence in Joyce's Ulysses if written by some depressed high school poet. There was literally no end in sight for a good three pages, and it was all just adjectives describing something that I had forgotten/lost sight of since the description went off on the most psychotic tangent. That being said I have been so horror hungry that it will take a lot to make me put this book down.
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Dec 30, 2012 21:19
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Does House of Leaves have a reputation for being difficult? I don't think it is, it's a pretty light read despite the gimmicks. I can see how Johnny's asides could seem like a distraction from Zampanň's text at times, but I thought they worked well. They tell a (mostly) separate story of a superficially very different sort, and I enjoy all the little ways everything hooks back together, little hints at why it might be that this book affected him so. Don't want to go into any detail since I'm not sure how far in you are, of course, and since I don't have my copy to hand. As for myself, I've recently started reading Dead Souls. I think I gave up halfway through it once a decade ago.
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