Favorite books / What are you reading?

currently reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I was supossed to have read it three weeks ago, but well procastination, so now I have to read it full speed, I am not liking the Little girl, she seems to much like your typical tween thinking she is fucking deep.
 
Not really a book itself, but I've been reading HP Lovecraft stories. They're not sex stories just cause they're the author is Lovecraft.
They're the original stories about Cthulu and th Necronomicon. They're pretty awesome, Especially The Horror at Dunwich.
 
What the Dog Saw http://www.librarything.com/work/8640738/book/70970675

Mother Tongue http://www.librarything.com/work/35328/book/70970745

The man who loved China http://www.librarything.com/work/4894103/book/70970720

I just finished the first one, and half way through the other 2. Gladwell didn't say anything that he hasn't said before. Bryson did an excellent job on the origin of English so far, but I haven't finished it yet. Winchester is famous for doing books like thing, and he is still a bit of a sensationalist on this Biography.
 
Been reading "Black Elk Speaks" which is a sort of life story told by a Sioux medicine man named, ironically, Black Elk. Sad, but a good read for sure.

darby70 said:
They're not sex stories just cause they're the author is Lovecraft.
Clearly you're missing some of the overt symbolism. Lovecraft's stories truly are about the craft of love.

Hint: Cthulhu represents a Cleveland steamer...
 
UniversalWolf said:
darby70 said:
They're not sex stories just cause they're the author is Lovecraft.
Clearly you're missing some of the overt symbolism. Lovecraft's stories truly are about the craft of love.
Hahahaha, that remidns me of my Graphic composition class, we had t o choose for ma list of Authors and make a flyer for an imagianry book signing, a guy choose Lovecraft and he made a flyer that looked like it was advertising some Teen drama novel. I pointed it out and the guy's score was reduced to half. fun times.
 
Actually, I recently read a pretty good zombie book.

The Reapers are Angels, by Alden Bell.
http://www.amazon.com/Reapers-Are-Angels-Novel/dp/0805092439

The story involves a teenage girl who grew up during the zombie apocalypse and knows little of the time before and who is on something of a road trip across the US, with a rather nasty human hunter after her.

There's a bit from the beginning and a review here-
http://www.walkerofworlds.com/2011/03/review-reapers-are-angels-by-alden-bell.html

The book is written in a Southern Gothic style, and there are lots of interesting insights into the human condition. This is a person who can still find the beauty and the divine in the apocalypse.

This is not a Romero/survivalist story. Rather, its more like a war story told by individuals who are experiencing it and surviving in it. The zombies are there like a shadow over the world, but the main action is in the people that populate that world.

Interesting read. I think many of you would enjoy it.
 
Finished The Fires of Heaven and started reading Lord of Chaos.
Damn, only prologue has 70 pages, and it's a small font.
 
Currently half-way through 'Sooner Dead' by Mel Odom, a book based in the Gamma World TSR - I remember playing Gamma World back in college - fun stuff.

This book is right up there with some of my favorite pulp fiction about future apocalypse themes.

---

ps - Some of you might know Mel Odom by his pen name, 'James Axler' under which he wrote the 'Deathland' and 'Outlanders' series.
 
I recently acquired a big used hardcover compendium of Mark Twain short stories. The first time I opened it an old library check-out card from the high school in Austin, Minnesota fell out. The latest stamp on it was 27 September 1962, so it probably hadn't been opened in almost 50 years.

Some of the stories I've read, but many I haven't. A Day in Niagara is my favorite so far. Funny to find an author skillfully butchering the crass commercialism of a tourist destination in 1871.
 
Finished Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan.
This part felt more tedious than the previous one, really. A lot more. To be honest, only few last chapters in the book (and one or two somewhere before them) had any real meaning to the whole story. Others felt like fillers. Fun fillers, but still, unnecessary, I guess.
Started reading the sequel, Crown of Swords. I hope this one is better. So far is good, I'm about 1/4 of the book in, and it seems better than the previous book. Still, 3/4 left, who knows what can( or can't) happen...
 
Hey DammitBoy-

THere is a book based on Gamma World? Awesome.

I hope you like "the Reapers are Angels"- its very Southern Gothic + zombies. If you like the more day-in-day-out zombie killing, than you might want to go with JL Bourne, Day by Day Armageddon, about a guy writing a diary about his life in a zombie apocalypse.

http://www.amazon.com/Day-Armageddon-J-L-Bourne/dp/1439176671

It was kind of fun.

Reaper are Angels is more about a young kid who kind of grows up with the zombies and she's seeing the world undone around her even as she tries to find that which is beautiful in the world and tries to survive. I thought the writing was quite nice and in some ways it moves past the genre.

Another decent zombie book was the Cell by Stephen King- in which cell phones spread the zombies. Kind of fun, but a little heavy near the end.
 
welsh said:
Hey DammitBoy-

THere is a book based on Gamma World? Awesome.

I hope you like "the Reapers are Angels"- its very Southern Gothic + zombies.

I picked it up today at 5:30pm and had finished it by 10:30pm tonight. Loved the book, hated that it was so frikken short.

You should love the Gamma World book, it was written by the same guy who did Deathlands.
 
Hyperion.

This is one of the best books I've ever read. The number of different sub-storys and how they meld together is incredible. It's also amazing how the author uses lots of different sci-fi ideas while still creating a believable world.

I don't know how to describe it since it sounds amateurish with the description on the back cover. Seven people with very different backgrounds are selected to go on a pilgrimage for a faith they don't believe in to meet an entity they all fear. The reason they go is, because each has a subtle hope and tangible hate that is forcing them on their journey. Also this is all occurring in the midst of the breakout of a huge war on a world on the very border of the struggle.

I can't describe how amazingly interconnected all the specifics of story and setting are without spoiling it.

I also found it to be the first book of four. I ordered the other three today after finishing the first.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
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A great book in a series of great books.

A review by Michael M Jones

So what happened was the world went to Hell, through a combination of war, terrorism, and natural disasters...

Nine years later, Mortimer Tate emerges from his well-stocked cave deep in the woods, ready to rejoin the world he left behind, and utterly unprepared for the changes made in his absence. It seems that compared to most, he's actually been living a civilized, luxurious life, and all because he wanted to get away from his soon-to-be ex-wife. Armed with weapons and trade goods, he heads down into town, and begins a nightmarish, bizarre odyssey through a world transformed. Together with his newfound companions, Buffalo Bill the new era cowboy, and Sheila, the hot-yet-dangerous stripper, Mort is dragged into one unreal adventure after another.

Suicide Squeeze
Gun Monkeys
The Pistol Poets
Shotgun Opera
Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse
Vampire A Go Go
The Deputy
 
Finished Neuromancer yesterday (finally), and yeah, it was a very good book, though the translation I read wasn't perfect in my opinion, maybe I'll re-read it in English sometime.

So I am at a junction here, should I
(a) continue reading the Sprawl-trilogy with 'Count Zero'
(b) get 'Snow Crash' which I heard is an all-round better book than Neuromancer
-or-
(c) read 'Brave New World' by A. Huxley to get my dystopian fix ?
 
Finished A Crown of Swords. Seems better than the previous one, or at least, it is easier to "digest".
Moving on to The Path of Daggers.
 
Barrett said:
Finished Neuromancer yesterday (finally), and yeah, it was a very good book, though the translation I read wasn't perfect in my opinion, maybe I'll re-read it in English sometime.

So I am at a junction here, should I
(a) continue reading the Sprawl-trilogy with 'Count Zero'
(b) get 'Snow Crash' which I heard is an all-round better book than Neuromancer
-or-
(c) read 'Brave New World' by A. Huxley to get my dystopian fix ?
Finish the Sprawl-trilogy.
Read Brave New World no matter what, it's an essential book.
While you're at it, read Nineteen-Eightyfour if you haven't already.
I haven't read Snow Crash yet, I should go and fix that.
 
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