Favorite books / What are you reading?

Wooz said:
Finished Gibson's Pattern Recognition. Pretty good, entertaining.
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I recomend that you jump into SPOOK COUNTRY when you get a chance, it is the second book in that series and I enjoyed it a little bit more.
 
SuAside said:
currently reading Heinlein's "The Moon is a harsh mistress".

starts off nicely, but the writing style is a tiny bit annoying on a grammatical level.
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turns out it was a great little sci-fi book. hell, i'd rate it better than Starship Troopers (though less futuristic and closer to home).

solid story (even if some parts of the storytelling have aged over the years) and even pretty damn funny at times, but also gives you a bundle to think about. i guess if Starship Troopers was viewed as fascist, thisone would be labled revolutionary/anarchist.


and now on to "Stranger in a Strange Land".
 
SuAside said:
...and now on to "Stranger in a Strange Land".
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That's a good one.

I've been surprised by how good Oliver Twist really is. I'm finding it very suspenseful and hard to put down.

[spoiler:48a1611694]The scene between Monks and the Bumbles in the abandoned factory is as creepy as anything I've ever read.[/spoiler:48a1611694]
 
Currently reading John Irving's The Water Method Man.

It's pretty bad honestly. I love The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany but this one is just weak. It doesn't really have a strong cohesive plot and Irving struggles with clarity.

It's cool though seeing how certain devices he experimented with came out later on in his better works.
 
I finished Oliver Twist, which was good enough to get me reading more Charles Dickens. I wasn't quite in the mood to jump back into PKD, so I've started rereading The Martian Chronicles for the first time in years. I'm thinking it'll be quick and enjoyable and then I'll read another Dickens novel (any suggestions?) and then get back to PDK.

I'm not sure there's any writer whose style I enjoy more than Ray Bradbury's. It's extremely vibrant and poetic without lacking complexity of thought or metaphor. It reminds me of Jonathan Swift.
 
William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.

I've read As I Lay Dying, The Town, The Mansion, The Hamlet, and Go Down, Moses, following my usual technique of ignoring the "suggested reading order" that most people tend to throw at you.
As I Lay Dying was one hell of a read, it's no Ulysses however.

My favorite American author by far.
 
Faulkner is amazing. I'm reading "If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem" right now. I'm not really a Sound and the Fury fan, other than the tour de force first section.
As far as approaching Ulysses in quality, i think the work of his i have read that comes closest is "Absalom, Absalom!". That novel is such an engrossing and mysterious experience.

Just read Ballard's "Crash", and it made a great impression on me.
 
I thought The Sound was better written than As I Lay Dying. The latter is also quite short. There's a rumour that seems to support this: Faulkner reportedly wrote As I Lay Dying in a couple of weeks while working night shifts at a power plant.

All in all, Absalom and The Sound are my favourites in the Faulkner canon.
 
Just finished Iain M. Banks' 'Matter', and Greg Bear's 'City at the End of Time'.

If you like the 'Culture' novels, 'Matter' seems to be the best so far, with 'Excession'.
And Bear's novel is absolutely crazy, trying to present the 4D outcomes of a 3(space)+4(time)+2(probability/fate)-dimensional universe. Plus there is the epic save-the-world quest (sort of).


Now proceeding into Stross' 'Accelerando'.
Quite Gibsonian so far...
 
I have a question for you Faulkner fans. I'm looking for a Faulkner novel that's easy to get into for my first read. I'm very finicky about my fiction reading, and I need something entertaining to hook me in or I lose interest. Which book would you recommend?

I'm nearly done with The Martian Chronicles, and I have to say it's better than I remember it. It's very interesting to read it so close together with PKD's Martian Timeslip, which almost seems like a sequel in many ways.
 
Well not really proud to state it, but a guilty pleasure - reading Mechanicum and Tales of Heresy at the moment - WH40k books.
 
UniversalWolf said:
I have a question for you Faulkner fans. I'm looking for a Faulkner novel that's easy to get into for my first read. I'm very finicky about my fiction reading, and I need something entertaining to hook me in or I lose interest. Which book would you recommend?
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I've only read 'Sanctuary', but it was easy to get into and the flow was constant. It's also relatively short.

On the other hand, I haven't tried any other Faulkner after that. Not because the prose or style wasn't good (actually I liked it very much), it's just I wasn't (and am still not) really interested in Southern States douchebagery.


EDIT:
On another note, Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow' got recently published in Hungarian (my mother language), and I'm going home in two weeks, so finally I will have a better chance catching/understanding more layers present in that book. The Hungarian translation got really good critics.
Plus, his new noir/psychedelic detective novel (Inherent Vice) is coming out in August!!
 
syllogz said:
I've only read 'Sanctuary', but it was easy to get into and the flow was constant. It's also relatively short.
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Thanks! I'll try that one. Short is good to start with. Once I get comfortable with Faulkner's style (assuming I do) I'll be able to read his longer works.

syllogz said:
On another note, Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow' got recently published in Hungarian...
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Holy crap! Gravity's Rainbow in Hungarian? I love that idea. It's like a Rubik's Cube made from Rubik's Cubes.
 
Reading Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar right now. About 60% of the way through.

I really enjoyed the beginning and love some of her humor. The book's gotten a little confusing as she's starting to lose her mind but it's still pretty good.
 
I'm reading an old copy of The Amazing Spider-Man.

Number 74.

It's pretty fucking good too.
 
Just read Neil Gaiman's American Gods.

Awesome stuff for someone who can appreciate all the allusions to mythology.
 
I've only read 'Sanctuary', but it was easy to get into and the flow was constant. It's also relatively short.
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Pretty good suggestion. Faulkner tended to downplay the importance of this novel, although it is clear that he put a lot of work into it, and i thought it was excellent, dark. It could be considered the equivilant of a great B-Movie in his body of work due to its pulp origins. I would say "As I Lay Dying" would also be a good choice for a first Faulkner, as it is rather short and concise, and its style is not too oblique. It also is a masterwork. Most of his novels cannot be described as easy to get into by most standards.
 
Sander said:
Just read Neil Gaiman's American Gods.

Awesome stuff for someone who can appreciate all the allusions to mythology.
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Crappy stuff for those who can't.

(Though it's been a long time since I read it so maybe I would appreciate it more now).
 
SuAside said:
and now on to "Stranger in a Strange Land".
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finished Heinlein's supposed masterpiece, but i never liked it too much. the beginning is ok and interesting, but soon degrades in my eyes. too bad.

someone gave me a bucketload of Terry Pratchett novels, but i'm unsure if i'm going to read them now. read two a while back, they were decent enough, but never totally got sucked into them.

i'm more in a sci-fi mood anyway. Scalzi, Aldeman, Heinlein, PK Dick,...
 
Lately, I have been reading a lot about Mountain Men in the American frontier.

Men, shaggy, dirty, men. Living among me, doing manly things in a manly way, with men, other men. Manly men.
With guns.

Otherwise, Alan Furst - Dark Star.
Oh and I read the zombie graphic novels/comic books The Walking Dead.... oh it could have been so much better!
 
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