Favorite books / What are you reading?

I'm currently reading As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. Interesting stylistically, not an easy read though.
 
It's also the name of a pretty generic and pretty terrible metalcore band.

Has anyone here read the Hyperion cantos? So far I've read books 1 and 2...I've heard some negative things about the later books.
 
I'm re-reading It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken by Seth.

Still an awesome read.

 
Favorite authors: Roger Zelazny... Clive Barker... Pierce Anthony...
currently reading: A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny
 
I recently read "le match de football télévisé" by Jacques Blociszewski. In a nutshell it's about how television shows soccer games and how it distorts reality. It also talks about video assistance for the referee, a popular subject right now in France after the game that qualified our team for the next world cup. I don't know if people in the US have heard of this.


To Daimyo who was reading HP Lovecraft, I highly advise you to give "The dreamquest of unknown Kadath" a try. You should also take a look at some of Arthur Machen works.

To Eyenixon and Alec who seem to be Tintin and Asterix fans, have you already read other famous French or Belgium comics such as Gaston Lagaffe or Lucky Luke?
 
Iago said:
I don't know if people in the US have heard of this.
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Probably only the people who follow soccer/football closely. I hadn't heard of it, although I did hear about the contraversy with the Chilean team. Video replay is a source of contention in all sports though, so the debate is familiar.

I've decided to cheer for Côte d'Ivoire, by the way. :mrgreen:

I've been reading some short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The style is a little antiquated, but I enjoy the subtle theme of supernatural judgement. I wonder how much influence Hawthorne had on Lovecraft. There are some similarities between the two.
 
I've decided to cheer for Côte d'Ivoire, by the way.
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They have a good team with many great players and it would be nice to see an African team win this world cup.
I must confess I'm a bit intrigued by your choice of Côte d'Ivoire though. That would seem to indicate that you know european soccer well since most of their players are in big european clubs. Forgive the questionning but I'm just really curious to know how soccer is percieved in the US, the thing is so huge here.

Concerning Nathaniel Hawthorne I had never heard of him, thanks for the tips.
 
Iago said:
I must confess I'm a bit intrigued by your choice of Côte d'Ivoire though. That would seem to indicate that you know european soccer well since most of their players are in big european clubs.
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Heh. I know nothing about their team. :D

Actually, Nigeria's my first team. I didn't know they were in the World Cup this year, but I see they are now that I look it up. I like Nigeria because I have some Nigerian friends. I always cheer for Nigeria in the World Cup and the Olympics.

So Côte d'Ivoire will be my second team, because I'll stay in Africa. They would be my team if Nigeria were not in the tournament.

Soccer is more popular in the US than it was ten or fifteen years ago. I think it started getting attention when the World Cup was here, and also there are lots of immigrants who play soccer. On the other hand, it's a minor sport compared with baseball, football, basketball, hockey, NASCAR, and golf. Women's soccer is probably as popular or more popular than men's soccer because the women's team has been so good.

I can see why an international soccer fan would cheer for the US team. They don't really get much attention here, and they won't unless they win something big like the World Cup or a gold medal in the Olympics.

Iago said:
Concerning Nathaniel Hawthorne I had never heard of him, thanks for the tips.
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He wrote The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. He's one of the most famous 19th century American authors.

Every American kid reads The Scarlet Letter in school. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Hawthorne
 
UniversalWolf said:
Heh. I know nothing about their team. :D

Actually, Nigeria's my first team. I didn't know they were in the World Cup this year, but I see they are now that I look it up. I like Nigeria because I have some Nigerian friends. I always cheer for Nigeria in the World Cup and the Olympics.

So Côte d'Ivoire will be my second team, because I'll stay in Africa. They would be my team if Nigeria were not in the tournament.

Soccer is more popular in the US than it was ten or fifteen years ago. I think it started getting attention when the World Cup was here, and also there are lots of immigrants who play soccer. On the other hand, it's a minor sport compared with baseball, football, basketball, hockey, NASCAR, and golf. Women's soccer is probably as popular or more popular than men's soccer because the women's team has been so good.

I can see why an international soccer fan would cheer for the US team. They don't really get much attention here, and they won't unless they win something big like the World Cup or a gold medal in the Olympics.
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And that's never going to happen unless the sport grows bigger in the US. This sport is simply too popular in almost every other nation on earth, and the US talent gets diverted to too many other sports to make the US team a viable winner of anything. Except the North American nations cup (whatever that may be called, no one really cares about it I suppose).


Anyway, just finished reading "An Utterly Impartial History of Britain" by John O'Farrell. Fun book that does a humorous take of the full history of Britain until 1946. Fuzzy on the details and plain incorrect at times it isn't a good history book, but as a humour book it's pretty good.
 
thanks for the soccer digression.

More on topic I'm currently reading Don Quixote by Cervantes. I already started reading it a few years ago but I gave up near the half of the book cause I found it quite boring and repetitive. I hope I'll do better this time.
 
I've been trying in fits and stops to make it through the complete H.P. Lovecraft lately. I'm enjoying it, but I'm honestly having a little bit of trouble understanding what all the fuss is about. The following for his mythos, his creatures-- that, I get. But the actual stories just haven't been much to write home about, so far.
 
Yamu said:
I've been trying in fits and stops to make it through the complete H.P. Lovecraft lately. I'm enjoying it, but I'm honestly having a little bit of trouble understanding what all the fuss is about. The following for his mythos, his creatures-- that, I get. But the actual stories just haven't been much to write home about, so far.
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The more individual stories you read the more interconnected you realize his world is. I had the exact same feeling you did at first.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
I can see how Lovecraft might be hard to get into if you were starting with a complete works volume. I wouldn't overdo it if I were you - not in a single dose. The stories can vary widely in quality, and the style, while very distinct, can be heavy-handed and repetative if you try to plough through too much of it.

I tend to get a Lovecraft craving once every few years. I read two or three short stories and put it back on the shelf, satisfied.

From memory, I personally recommend:

Shadow over Insmouth
Shadow out of Time
The Colour out of Space
At the Mountains of Madness

There are a bunch of good ones, though.
 
Reading "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" here. *Quite* different from the series. In a good way though.
 
Still reading Nathaniel Hawthorne short stories a bit at a time. I found one really good one, called Young Goodman Brown. It's one of the most pessimistic things I've ever read, but it's enjoyable. It really shows some of the similarity with Lovecraft, too.

EDIT: Another pretty good one is Dr. Heidegger's Experiment. :wink:
 
I just re-read the Lord of the Rings, and I'm on a fantasy kick.

Currently, I'm reading my way through The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. It's long and slow, there's a lot of weird shit about the relationship between men and women (this one culture allows women to murder their husbands for pretty much every conceivable "offense"), and I think about every fifth character could be eliminated from the series altogether... but the plot is engrossing, the world is detailed and there are plenty of interesting characters amongst all the bad ones.

The Dresden Files is a good fantasy/detective series by Jim Butcher. The newest book, Changes, comes out this April, and I'm really looking forward to it. Codex Alera is another series by the same author, but it's more "high fantasy" than DF.

At some point I'll take a break from WoT and try the A Song of Ice and Fire series out.
 
At the moment I'm reading Prince of the Blood by Raymond Feist, and my favourite book is probably Magician by the very same man. Although I don't really remember much of what I read, so I can't pick a definite favourite.
 
About 2/3 of the way through Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. So far it's a good read, though it does seem to go off on a lot of tangents. I don't think he focuses enough on his main points.
 
Just finished King's Dark Tower series (Awesomess galore) and The Catcher In The Rye by Salinger (Read it out of curiosity, turned out to be a fun read). Now I'm back to reading Terry Pratchett, currently The Wee Free Men. To me, Pratchett is the greatest man ever and I hate God for giving him early-onset Alzheimer's, thus likely preventing him from writing another 1,000 books to keep me entertained until the day I die.
 
TheRatKing said:
About 2/3 of the way through Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. So far it's a good read, though it does seem to go off on a lot of tangents. I don't think he focuses enough on his main points.
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I never read this, only saw the associated documentary he did, but his hypothesis is so reasonable and common sense, it really needs those historical examples and tangents to give it a sense of life and gravitas.

Reading Mona Lisa Overdrive from Gibson, good shit, can't read enough of his work.
 
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