Badmovies.org Forum

What are you reading?

Here're my most recent:

1.   _On the Take_ (Jerome Kassirer, MD) -- a well-written investigation into Big Pharmaceutical influence on docs.   Depressing, but very interesting, and it certainly is what I need to know.

2.   _Trial by Fire_ -- a Justice League of America graphic novel (forget the author) -- buying a copy of this for the plane this weekend.  That one looks cool.

I just finished reading "Hell House" by Richard Matheson.

It's probably been about ten years or so since I read a book, but I recently found out that's why bathrooms are arranged the way they are.

It certainly was a far cry from the movie.

On the shelf [though I'm sporadically reading since I'm short on time] is:

"Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way"

"The Zombie Surivival Guide" and it's sequel "World War Z"

"The Donnie Darko Book"

"The Making oF Bladerunner"

All were christmas pressies/things I've picked up this week and I've been kind of flipping through all of them, trying to decide which one to commit to when I do get a bit more time [it's been a buzy 2 weeks]

My favourite authors are:

Chuck Palahniuk (Fight club)

Hermann Hesse

Charles Bukowski


I recently finished House of leaves, wich was a very strange, yet fascinating book. Reading Robert Crumbs autobiography now. Odd man.

Recently finished:

Memoirs of an Amnesiac - Oscar Levant

Islam in Focus - Hammudah Abdalati

Little Green Men - Christopher Buckley

Nova - Smauel R. Delany

Reading in the bathroom: The Robber Bridegroom - Eudora Welty

Top 3 candidates to read next:

Rumpole of the Bailey - John Mortimer

The Watcher and other stories - Italo Calvino

Don't Fence Me in - Various. An anecdotal biography of late humor columnist Lewis Grizzard.

Any suggestions of which to pick?

Fixed spelling, naturally.

I always enjoyed Lewis Grizzard, the last book I read of his many years ago was "Don't Bend over in the Garden Granny, them taters got eyes" another arthor Bill Bryson reminds mw a little of him as far as his down home style goes. So I read a lot of Brysons' books too.

I'm reading Cinderella's Big Score: Women of Punk and Indie Underground by Maria Raha. Good stuff so far.  :thumbup:

At the moment, I'm reading The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore. I love everything he's written so far.

Just finished a bunch of Terry Pratchett books. Can't go wrong there: Discworld rules!

I'm also reading the Southern Vampire series by Charlaine Harris and the Vampire Files series by P.N. Elrod. And I'm not really even a vampire fan; these are just good series.

On the shelf: which shelf? I've got too many books to even begin to name.

Favorite authors: Those above, Vonnegut, Emily Bronte, the obligatory Shakespeare (though I'd call him a poet/playwright rather than an author), many others.

I am just finishing up the latest "The Year's Best Science Fiction" - the series edited by Dozois.  Think that it is the 23rd in that series.  I also noticed that "Startide Rising" is available again, which is a science fiction novel I like a lot.  Might be time to pick it up and reread it.

Just finished a re-reading of Green Ice, a novel by Gerald A. Browne; this one is about emerald smuggling out of Colombia and has been one of my guilty pleasures for years.

Currently reading Creation and Time by Hugh Ross in preparation for a class I will soon be teaching on the Evolution vs. Intelligent Design debate.

Read Into the Light by Dave and Jaja Martin a couple of months ago.  Very entertaining non-fictional account of their two year voyage to Iceland, the Faroes, and Norway aboard their 35 ft. sailboat, along with their three children.

Just before that, read Journey of a Hope Merchant by Neal Peterson (http://www.no-barriers.com/).  Neal grew up in South Africa under apartheid and went on to compete in two BOC/Around Alone singlehanded around-the-world sailboat races.  HIs stories are fascinating (like the time he had to hand-pump 20 minutes out of each hour halfway across the Atlantic, and the US Coast Guard tried to force him to abandon his vessel and he refused).  Neal now lives not too far from me, and we have chatted a few times on IRC.  Very, very cool guy.

A lot of my reading is children's books and references these days....

Recently I read:

- "Guillotine and the cross" by Warren H. Carol. It's about the French Revolution. Actually it could be called "Catholic Holocaust" because it's mainly about catho's situation during this time. But even that it's very good book.

- "120 days of Sodom" by De Sade. I don't like the libertine's philosophy (It's sometimes similar to the left-side "toleration-warriors" way of thinking) but I've seen the movie, so I'm reading the book. To be honest I recommend see some SM porno than read that  :twirl:

Currently reading Where the Evil Dwells by Clifford D. Simak.

I'm also part way through vol. 2 of Origin of the American Revolution: 1759-1766 and Growth of the American Revolution: 1776-1775
By Bernhard Knollenberg

I'm partway through The Runelords by Dave Farland aka Dave Wolverton.

I usually read in spurts, devouring several books in a row and then tapering off to a much slower pace for a couple months. Right now I'm in slow mode.

Cheezeflixz, my sister gave me the Grizzard book after she read it. I was a huge fan at one time, even saw him on stage once. I cooled when I got older, and gave up on him during his last two years of writing when he got very bitter and repetitive. I couldn't read one more column blaming everything he didn't like in America on Swiss cheese and mushrooms on hamburgers and the Beatles replacing Elvis as the biggest pop stars. I'm interested to see what the people who were closest to him have to say, but there is an air of hero worship around him even to this day.

Derf, I'm a huge Pratchett fan. A friend loaned me Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore, I read it about the time I started reading Pratchett (can't bring myself to refer to him as PTerry on a regular basis). I hated PD, since the plot was obvious and stitched together (to me) and found the humor rather mild after Pratchett. Does he get better?

I enjoyed his lighter stuff and books, I never lived anywhere where his story ran so I only read a few of his books . You might want to check out Bill Bryson for lighter quick reading I always get a kick out of his books. Other wise I'm reading rather dry history books or reference books.

I say start with this one ...
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
or
I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away

any are a good choice really.

Oh, also re-read all the Neil Gaiman books recently.

If you like brilliantly written, beautiful but bleak and dark fairytales, read _American Gods_, _Stardust_, and of course the estimable _Neverwhere_.
I have a feeling a lot of people  on this board would enjoy Gaiman.

Oh I have. My avatar is Death from his comic series "Sandman". I have Neverwhere but I haven't read it yet.

I've seen Bryson on C-Span, during the Book TV programming on weekends. He seems interesting, just haven't taken the plunge and tried any of his stuff yet. Thanks for the recommendations.

Just finished "Dune: Battle of Corrin."

Let's see... I'm reading On Basilisk Station by David Weber and Flight of the Nighthawks by Raymond Feist.

I just got done reading Just Another Kid by Torey Hayden,  America Alone by Mark Steyn, and Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison.

Also, I need to re-check Wizard and Glass by Stephen King from the library again (got halfway through it before I had to return the book.)   

I enjoyed Practical Demonkeeping, but it was his first novel, so keep that in mind. His humor is very different from Pratchett, so it is difficult to compare the two. Pratchett depends more on clever turns of phrase and funny descriptions (which I love) while Moore depends more on situational humor. That's not to say Pratchett never uses situational humor; he does, but his main tool is clever descriptions. Moore does use clever turns of phrase, but he depends much more on situations. Maybe Moore should be considered more of a "light fantasy" writer than a "humorous fantasy" writer. If you are interested in reading anything else of his, I'd recommend something like The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove (Stupidest Angel, which I'm reading now, is a sequel to this book) or Island of the Sequined Love Nun for a better story line. If you read mostly sci-fi / fantasy, Moore may not appeal to you; most bookstores don't seem to know whether to put his books in the sci-fi section or the general fiction section--he kind of borders on both, putting regular people in fantastic situations. If nothing else, his titles would make great B-movies, which is part of the reason I picked up his stuff in the first place.

Since I'm here anyway, I'll add to my favorite authors list:

Diana Wynne Jones
Jo Clayton
L. Frank Baum (soft spot from childhood)

"Mystic Warrior" by Tracy Hickman. The first book in the "Bronze Canticles" series. Usually he writes in conjunction with Margaret Weis, but he is writing this one in conjunction with his wife, Laura Hickman.

Three worlds. The world of man, which is ruled over by dragons. The world of the fairy or fae, which is at war with itself. And the pre-industrial world of the goblin, which is salvaging the machinery left behind by the previous inhabitants of the world. The book follows one or two characters from each world. The connection is that all the characters appear in the dreams of the other characters, which, of course, the characters are trying to make sense of.

Somewhat more dense and with less action, though the action seems to pick up in the second volume, than I am use to reading. And there is a somewhat religious overtone to the book.

I second this, I recently finished it too and it's brilliant, strange, fascinating and one of those books that I immediately gave my friend to read as I loved it.

Thanks for the info, Derf, I'll bear it in mind. I read very little scifi/fantasy these days, part of Pratchett's appeal to me was his humor where most of the stuff being recommended to me was the usual multi-part epic series made up of one brick-sized book after another. I keep meaning to plunge back in, got some China Mieville and Phillip Pullman books cluttering up the place I need to take a shot at.

Around here C Moore is pretty firmly in the straight fiction at the bookstores, Pratchett winds up in fiction and scifi/fantasy. At least they quit breaking him up willy-nilly and started putting the new release hardbacks in one section and the mass market paperbacks in the other.

The one part of PD I did like was the witch/pagan character. The part fleshing out how she had escaped her bad marriage and reinvented herself was well done. I found the character attractive or appealing (in my mental image of her anyway) and wanted more of her in the story. She reminded me of the friend who loaned me the book , but with her IRL rough edges smoothed out.

If anyone is curious, I started the Italo Calvino book yesterday. Not sure if the smooth writing style is due to him or the translator, but I'm liking it so far.

That's very cool!!! I really really enjoyed it.

I just finished "Grunts", sort of Lord of the Rings told from a orc's point of view, after the final battle a band of surviving orcs takes shelter in a wizards castle. The wizard has been traveling between dimensions and bringing stuff back, apparently he brought back an entire USMC supply depot, everything from boots and bayonets to attack helicopters and tanks, and the stuff has a spell on it, the more you handle it the more you know about it. I wound up thinking of the orcs as people for the most part, all the rest of LOTR people are there too, dwarfs, elfs, etc. there is even an invasion by aliens. I have to say I really enjoyed this book, any LOTR fan should read this, it's great.

Just finished reading "Blood Rites", Jim Butcher's sixth Harry Dresden book and just started reading the seventh in the series "Dead Beat" .

My next up will be "Hunters of Dune" the first in the two part sequel (written by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson) to Frank Herbert's "Chapterhouse Dune".


Yes Zapranoth, I like Neil Gaiman. I have read Neverwhere, American Gods, and just read Anansi Boys a couple of months ago. I've also read Good Omens, the book he wrote with Terry Pratchett.

Just finished Robert Heinlan's Number of the Beast,and working on Stranger in a Strange Land. Number of the Beast is quite bizzare,with a group of intergalactic  travelers jumping in and out of alternate universes,(including a world of literary charecters!)
On the table in front of me is a copy of Calvin T. Becks HEROS of the HORRORS, which I refrenced in setting up the Lon Jr. poll. It has bios on Chaneys Sr. and Jr.,Bela Lugosi,Boris Karloff,Peter Lorre,and Vincent Price.Lotsa cool pictures too!

I'm reading Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick.  I've been meaning to read some of his work for a while so I thought I'd pick this up at the library.

For bathroom reading I'm working on Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Recently I re-read Pilgermann by Russell Hoban (bet you can't guess where I got my screen name!).  I'll probably read it at least once a year.  It takes place during the Crusades of the 11th century, and starts with a character who refers to himself as 'Pilgermann' (from the start he is dead and exists only as "waves and particles" and says he's made a covenant with God that requires everything from him forever).  At the beginning of his story he's just slept with the town tax collector's wife (he's a German Jew and she's not Jewish).  After leaving her home he's intercepted by a mob of Christian peasants who've been making their way through the town, killing all of the Jews.  He's castrated, his genitals are fed to a pig, but the tax collector who happened to be leading the mob orders them to leave Pilgermann alone, sparing his life.  Pilgermann has a vision of Christ who tells him that God is no longer He but It, and It has nothing to do with mankind any longer.  He goes on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and along the way he's accompanied by Death (who brings people to their end by raping them), and various other characters who're dead (like a bear and the bear's owner who believed that the bear was God).  Much more occurs, but it's all pretty complex stuff that deals with religion, existance, morality, etc.  It's a very addictive book.

Hoban has become one of my favorite authors.  He's written a lot of children's books, but his novels are his best work.  Riddley Walker is a fairly famous post-apocalyptic work of his, although it gets some hate because it's written in a broken and twisted form of English.

I need to pick up a copy of Amphigorey Again.  It has some unreleased Edward Gorey stuff, plus some books that aren't in print on their own.1

While Tolkien is probably the best known name among fantasy writers, he is not the first writer of fantasy. Some forty fantasy writers, who preceded Tolkien, are featured in "Tales Before Tolkien: the Roots of Modern Fantasy" edited by Douglas A. Anderson. About half of the forty, have an example of their work featured in the book.

What I learned from the selections, which range from 1827 to 1930's, is how much the style of writing has changed, even from 70 years ago.

And even though fantasy, you do get a look at what life was like during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Thus as tomorrow's readers will get a look at what life was like in the first half of the 21st century from the fantasy writings of today.

I think I've flipped through that book at the store, BoyScoutKevin. I was mostly looking for people like Lord Dunsany and Clark Ashton Smith.

Any reference to or excerpts from Melmoth the Wander or The Wandering Jew, both from the 1800s?

I just purchased 5 books on Ebay....
the MANSON FILE by Nickolas Shreck(the nut who made the film CHARLES MANSON SUPERSTAR)
3 paperback books by Charles Fort-LO!,the Book of the DAMNED,and another one who's title ecscapes me at this moment...
the FANTASTIC FOUR RETURN-a paperback with reprints of some very early FF stories,drawn by the too cool Jack(King)Kirby!
Can't wait for them to get here!

Did you  know that there are DVD-ROMs out there with  all issues from #1 through the year 2004?

http://talesofwonder.com/product-exec/product_id/40748/category_id/34/sc/1,21,34 (http://talesofwonder.com/product-exec/product_id/40748/category_id/34/sc/1,21,34)

There's an x-men one I'm fiending for, and will need to save up my pennies.   =)

I recently finished Kim Stanley Robinson's Antarctica - not bad but not great either - pretty good if you're into Antarctica like I am.

I'm also rereading Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles.  Still love books 1, 2, 3, and especially 4, but currently rereading Memnoc the Devil and I have to admit, I hate it this time around.  The last time I read it was when it first came out and for some reason, I loved it at the time, but now I realize it's crap.  It's basically the turning point for Lestat - going from cool as hell to some inverted personality and eventually becomes some holy roller.

Most of my reading as of late has been either in photography or reference books; not to mention referencing resources online.

I have two biographies of Edwin Land that I need to read. He was the inventor of the Polaroid camera and polarizers, among 500 other patented inventions. I am wanting to write an article on his life which is why I am reading these books; not to mention that I am a fan of his work. :teddyr:

I have not really sat down in a while and just enjoyed a book. I like the writings of Andrew Weil and have been wanting to read The Marriage of the Sun and Moon; now I don't know where the dang book is.

I've had a copy for years of William Braden's The Private Sea and have yet to read it. I'll make a point to put that on the reading list.

Yeah, there's a combination; psychedelics and Polaroid.

No. A wide selection of authors are included, but I did notice that not everybody or everything is included. Besides the two you mentioned, I noticed that American author Washington Irving is not included. Still, the book is an interesting read, if only for some of its more obscure inclusions.

Regarding the Tales Before Tolkien book, I own it too, but I was somewhat displeased that Robert Howard and Fritz Lieber weren't included as well. It just goes to show that the Fantasy genre isn't even properly understood by the people who edit these kinds of collections.
I did like the collection of Lovecraft's Favorite Horror stories, collected by the same editor. Since Lovecraft actually had lists of his favorite stories, it's kind of impossible to screw up such a collection.

Maybe it was a rights or clearances issue. Whoever published the book might not have been able to afford to pay to carry stories by those authors. Both, especially Howard, are fairly popular in the genre even now, with new editions, collections, spinoffs, and even continuations and pastiches by other authors.

Wonder how many of the people in the book are still in print much less how many of their works are still under copyright.

I just begin reading "The Day The Country Died: History of Anarcho Punk 1980-1984" by Ian Glasper.

I'm reading Barry Miles' biography of Frank Zappa, from the library. So fresh details on facts of Zappa's life, but it repeats in the writing quite often and after reading two other books on Zappa, including his own, I think I've hit the wall on facts of his life. This one does confirm some things about Zappa that I suspected and what kind of led to the end of that phase of being a huge fan.

Should have read the H L Mencken bio I got instead.

Did finally read the Lewis Grizzard bio by his friends I mentioned a while back. Glad they didn't gloss over his faults (mostly), since the timeline of his health problems and personal issues kind of clicks with my getting tired of his writing. He did get bitter as his health and lifestyle caught up to him.

Probably fiction or a stright history next, depends on what I dig out of the stacks.

I just borrowed from a friend: Aliens The Novelisation.  This friend has not only a whole lot of books, but somewhere in that massive pile, he has a copy of Mad Max and Mad Max 2 the novels.  One day I'll find them...

I just read Malamud's Fixer.  He won the Pulitzer for it.  It was quite good, though I found the hallucinatory stuff towards the end didn't really add much.  The whole God and main character bit is probably just something I don't really "get" personally though.

Before that, I finally got around to finishing the Dragon Delasangre.  Which is alright.  Essentially an Anne Rice-like take on dragons.  I like the style of writing better than Rice's, but the storyline and characters aren't as good.  Especially the main character, though he is a bit better by the end.

Before that, I read the Dragon Avenger and Dragon Champion.  Yeah, I'm on a bit of a dragon kicker.  If any of you guys can let me know of more books with dragon (or other fantasy creature) protagonists, I'd love you for it (and preferably not the numerous young adult series, most of which I've read at some point or another anyways). 

Dragon Champion and Dragon Avenger were both quite entertaining.  I like getting a different perspective than is usual in books.  Dragon Champion, in particular, delivers this.  Auron is a sneaky bastard who eats people (he does mellow a bit with age though, the book covering his first 60 years).  Good stuff.

Fantastic covers too.  I'm looking forward to the 3rd and 4th books in the series.

You might try Diane Duane's books _Door Into Fire_  and _Door Into Shadow_.  The second one is quite dragon-heavy, and entertaining.  I don't think she ever wrote more after those two books, but I had wished she had.

Just a heads up, I found out apparently the third book, Door into Sunset did come out.  A 4th one may or may not be, titled Door into Starlight.  If I see the series, I'll check it out.  Thanks for the suggestion!

Aha, you are right, _Door Into Sunset_ is out, years ago... but Twilight isn't out yet.

Heh.  Ordering on Amazon now...

When you read them, PM me if you remember to, and let me know what you thought.

Some of the Discworld books deal with dragons, mostly ones where Sam Vimes' wife appears since she cares for swamp dragons. The one where a swamp dragon in a box with a mirror was used as an explosive device/time bomb was pretty cool.

Started Rumpole of the Bailey the other day, needed something fun after the Zappa bio. Maybe another Discworld or a Flashman book next. Then either a history book or time for some serious literature again.

I want to get back into the Aubrey/Maturin books by Patrick O'Brian, I have several waiting to be read, but I'm not reading at the pace I want to lately. My mind is other places, real life intruding among other things, so I'm going to keep it light for the next couple of books.

But those Doc Savage reprints I found are kinda tempting.......

I used to work for a company that did inventory counts for local businesses.

One time, we inventoried a Waldenbooks and I noticed a series of books that dealt with the alternate reality of Hitler & Nazi Germany winning WW2 and what life would be like now under Nazi rule.
They were in the Fiction section.
There were several of these books there...all different but written by the same author.

Does anybody remember what book series that was and who wrote it?
I've been wanting to pick a few of them up.

I can't swear to it, Ash, but David Weber might be the author you're looking for. He has written several alternate history novels. I haven't read any of his stuff, but I have read the blurbs, and they sound kind of interesting.

Robert Harris wrote an excellent alternate history about the Nazis winning WWII, Fatherland. The Nazis conquered western Europe, negotiated a truce with President Joseph Kennedy, and had a never ending conflict on the Eastern Front where trouble makers were disposed of as cannon fodder. There was a drab cable TV movie with Rutger Hauer and Miranda Richardson made from it.

Don't remember if there were sequels, but Harris wrote other historical thrillers some set in WWII. I know one dealt with the Enigma encoding machine.

Well I got some new ones in the past month at Half Price Bookstore:

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN
ROSEMARY'S BABY
THE STRANGER BESIDE ME
HELTER SKELTER
BOYS LIFE (or something like that)
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
ANDROMEDA STRAIN
EARTH ABIDES (read it - just love it)

Here's something interesting. I love buying enscribed books, not grafitti but books with messages written in them. Earth Abides had an interesting message, you sorta wonder about the people back in 1980 who read it - who they were to eachother. Anyhow, I also love OLD books, the feeling of others who have read through it. So I decided to choose the older looking Rosemary's Baby book over the new one.

I got home and it was without a jacket, clean looking, not a single tear, stain, fold, writing, scuff or anything - very nice! I looked inside and noticed "First Edition" - cool! Then down below..."First printing". huh? After some interest searching I found out I have the random house first edition/first printing of Rosemary's Baby, without dust jacket I have no idea of the value. But it's definately not a book club edition.

I've seen it range between $40 to over $400 on the net.  ($40 was a crappy copy with writing and a ripped jacket. WTF) I tried emailing a dealer who insisted the jacket makes books more valuable. My book is pristine! I guess i'll never know the real value, if any - only that it must be more than the $7 i paid. Kinda cool!


But now i'm scared to read it, i might decrease the value with my improper reading habits.  :teddyr:

Cool find. If I had the money I'd like to collect rare books, but obviously I don't.

The only ones I have I think might be worth something are my copy of All I Need Is Love by Klaus Kinski. It's the version that was recalled due to lawsuits or threats of them and reissued as Kinski Uncut but it was actually. I read that he sold the English publishing rights when he contractually couldn't I also read his daughter supposedly threatened legal action if he didn't remove things about her. Not sure if any of this is true. I found my copy at a remainder store we had in the area for about $3.50. I've seen it listed for $125 to $450 online. The dust jacket has seen some wear but elsewise it's in fairly good shape.

The other rare book I have is Amazons by Cleo Birdwell - really it's by Don DeLillo writing under a pseudonym, he later disowned the book and apparently won't discuss it. Signed copies are very valuable, mine isn't. I found it a few months ago at the local friends of the library bookstore for a whole dollar. Those dear sweet ladies had it stocked in the biography section, it's a novel written as a memoir of the first female member of the NHL.

About the only other books I have that might be valuable are a copy of The Wandering Jew by Eugene Sue inscribed with the date 1899, an early 20th century English copy of Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne inscribed around 1913, or a hardback copy of The Colour of Magic by Terry Prachett. It appears to be a US first edition, no dust jacket but in great shape. However I know the British first editions of his early books are the ones worth the bucks.

Wow...along with a few vhs tapes...I made a killing on some old paperback books at theflea market! They were 25cents apiece...or 5 for a dollar!
.The STEPFORD WIVES by Ira Levin-1973 edition"NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!"
.ROSEMARY'S BABY-1968 edition ...from the backcover..."Now a major motion picture directed by Roman Polanski and starring Mia  Far row and John Cassavettes A William Castle Production"
.DANDELION WINE by Ray Bradbury-1976 ed.
.EVA and ADOLF by Glenn B.Infield-1975 ed. Bio of history's bizzare lovebirds
.FANTASTIC VOYAGE-Noveliztion of the cool-ass movie by Isaac Asimov-1966 ed.
.the STRANGE and the SUPERNORMAL-by Pauline Saltzman-1968 ed.One of those oddball "occult/paranormal" books that were so popular in the 60's and early seventies...I got a ton of those laying around here...
.50 GREAT HORROR STORIES-edited by John Canning-1973 ed.-Big,fat paperback of collected weird stories...all "true",of course...cool grim reaper type guy holding some chicks head and a hangman's noose on the cover.Had this one as a kid.
.DRACULA-Bram Stoker-1971 Scholastic Books ed. Yeah...I have a few copies of Dracula laying around...but this one has got a neat painting of BELA on the cover,so...

And,best of all...(to me,at least...)
.the BEST from FANTASY and SCIENCE FICTION (fith series)-edited by Anthony Boucher-1956 ed!!!!WOW!  An old  scifi comp,with those cool ,far out 1950's style covers...aweird robot/alien type on a strange world,next to some cubist style rocket ! Inside...stories by Arthur C.Clarke,Shirley Jackson(!),Charles Beaumont(!!!),L.Sprague De Camp,Richard Matheson,and more more!!! Too cool.
..6 from WORLDS BEYOND-edited by T.E.Dikty-1956 ed.!!! Another farout,old sci fi comp,featuring the usual suspects plus Robert Bloch!!!AND a cool as hell cover painting of a half nude girl,a giant brain,odd lab eguipment and a big oversize Atom! YAY!

plus....I just won 2(count'em)2 Famous Monsters mags offa ebay for an unbelievable $8.00!!!  #'s 99 and #93...I bid $5.50 and WON! $2.50 p+h!

           
(http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/7476/m187ea4.jpg)
   How many video boxes have had this SAME "Tales from the Crypt " skull on the box?

I recently bought two books The Iliad and Closing Time.  One is obvious a classic, the other is the sequel to Catch-22 which is one of my favorite books.

I have been re-reading Neal Stephenson's _Cryptonomicon_, which is explosively written and unstoppably funny.

And full of interesting geek appeal, in terms of the science and cryptography.  :)

Harry Turtledove has doen quite a bit of alternate history. 
In the Presense of My Enemies had Germany ruling England in the 1960s. 
The Balance series had an alien race appear in the middle of WW2 to invade Earth.  That gets most of earth united to battle the more technologically advanced aliens. 

Right On!

I just got done reading Nam-a-rama. This book is like Catch-22 meets Full Metal Jacket. It is a very funny, but yet very weird novel.

Right now reading Burning Britain: History of UK Punk 1980-1984 by Ian Gasper.

Catch-22 is one of my all time favorites. I gave up on Closing Time, came across as less clever than Heller seemed to think it was, also the characters were like pale shadows of their old selves, but that may have been intentional since they were old men.

I'm currently reading If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. Very clever novel about a Reader trying to read a certain book and getting derailed and misdirected for various reasons, and we the real readers also get to read chapters of the various books he winds up with. Very much like a Charlie Kaufman film, very meta to use an overused term. Shows an enormous amount of talent to write so many dfferent chapters in varying styles and genres, each interesting and intriguing in it's own way.

As a plus, I told a girl I've been talking to about how much I liked it and why, and she was intrigued enough to want to check it out. I may pick up a copy for her. Which is like something out of the book, since the Reader encounters a woman in his question for these books. He wants her as well as the original book (later on the others).

Me, I just want to give a cool book to a cute girl and see if anything develops. The situation, that is, the girl is plenty developed already.

 Went to the flea market yesterday...got books!
.BURNT OFFERINGS-by Robert Marasco...Back cover has a cool pic from the movie of Karen Black, the kid, and Oliver Reed standing in the doorway of their new home.
.2 Robert Heinlan books...METHUSALAH's CHILDREN(1962 ed.) and ASSIGNMENT IN ETERNITY
.a 1951 ed. of DAY OF THE TRIFFADS by John Wyndham
.Boris Karloff ppresents More Tales of the Frightened-Yeah...it's a kid book...but a cool cover anyway!
.GHOST STORY-by Peter Straub!
.2 of those Ghost /occult type books popular in the 60's and 70's...VOICES of the DEAD by Suzy Smith andthe SECOND GHOST BOOK by Lady Cynthia Asquith (?)
.BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE-by Dee Brown-had read this before...one of the best books I have EVER read! :thumbup:
.Rod SERLING's NIGHT GALLERY-Yup...just like the TV show!
.and...the find of the day...a 1960...ist edition of Stories of the TWILIGHT ZONE!!! -the back cover says-'A strange and unusual talent is Rod Seling,the bright young star on the literay horizon, who is already famous for his hit television series Twilight Zone.He can take a hard reality,add a dash of nonsense or a twist of nightmare,and come up with a short story or TV play guarrented to thrill or amuse you, shock you or shake you up."
      " WATCH ROD SERLING'S EXCITING SERIES the TWIGHLIGHT ZONE EACH WEEK on the CBS TELEVISION NETWORK!"
 It's gotta cool pic of Rod sitting near his typewriter with a ciggertte and a cup of coffe on the cover too!  :smile:

     

quote author=sideorderofninjas link=topic=112474.msg144516#msg144516 date=1179896107]

Harry Turtledove has doen quite a bit of alternate history. 
In the Presense of My Enemies had Germany ruling England in the 1960s. 
The Balance series had an alien race appear in the middle of WW2 to invade Earth.  That gets most of earth united to battle the more technologically advanced aliens. 
[/quote]

I LOVE Harry Turtledove's books!  But the best series yet is a six book set based on the premise of the South winning the Civil War in 1862, permanently dividing America into TWO very hostile countries.  He then plays that timeline forward into World War I and now World War II.  As a historian myself, I find his unfolding of events highly plausible.  Makes you very glad the right side won!! I think the first book in this series is called "How Few Remain", followed by "The Great War: American Front."  I HIGHLY recommend this series.

Well, now you've piqued my curiosity.  I read Earth Abides for a class I took on Politics and Science Fiction (which also gave me an excuse to reread The Demolished Man).

I'm currently reading Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, which is somewhat outside the norm for me.  I don't normally read fantasy, but I got a hankering for an epic fantasy novel.  Be careful what you wish for.  It's a good book, but man it's long.

I'm also making my way through the Star Wars universe (it's the fault of Karen Traviss), so I'm currently reading Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter by Michael Reaves.  It's not very good, but don't hold that against me.

I would love to sit down and reread Gravity's Rainbow with annotations, but that's more of an endeavor than I'm looking for at the moment.  I'll probably just read Memoirs of My Nervous Illness by Daniel Paul Schreber instead.  I believe that book was brought to my attention by another thread somewhere on this board.

I have been re-reading (for the nth time) _Protector_ by the great Larry Niven.

I have _World of Ptaavs_ on the shelf waiting to be read next.   Then _A Gift From Earth_, and all the rest of the Known Space books.

=)

Booyah.

This poor thread's been dormant for a while...

I just read The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.  It won't rank among my overall favorites of his, but it's still full of some beautiful work.  I nearly cried at the end of the last story.

Currently going back and forth between The Changling by A. E. van Vogt, and The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany.

I will try not to post on this thread too much, but it will be hard..
Currently munching through this weeks books..
Ghost - John Ringo (at home bathroom book)
We Few - David Weber & John Ringo (at work book)
Sanctuary - Mercedes Lackey (whenever I get a chance book)

Amusing, because in my last post in June I mentioned I was reading Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, and now I'm in the middle of reading it's sequel, A Clash of Kings.  I had taken a break between the two.

Has anybody ever read The Descent by Jeff Long?  It's one of my favorite genre books of recent memory.  Unfortunately, it looks like he's written a sequel, Deeper, which fills me with dread.  I hate it when people tarnish my memories.  Oh well, I'll read it anyway.

Not long ago, finished The Book Of Lost Things - John Connolly (which I've already written a review of)

But at the moment I'm reading:

Secret Societies - Sylvia Browne
The First Casualty - Ben Elton
Fat Land - Greg Critser (just finished yesterday)
Freedom Next Time - John Pilger

I recommend reading all of the Harry Dresden books by Jim Butcher.  The series is REALLY cool, and a lot different from the sci-fi channel version.  The books are exciting and funny, and unlike another popular "Alternated universe when vampires/werewolves exist" that I won't mention (coughAnitaBlakecough) it was degenerated into one sex scene after another.

i would highly recommend "the Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism" by Robert Murphy.  It is very easy to understand but will blow your mind

I started reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls last night. Normally I don't read this kind of material, but my aunt insisted. It's a true story about a girl who grows up in a crazy family and has to get away.

Just finished "Ulysses" and read the better part of "Finnegans Wake"..








                                                                                                                 .......HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Where is the better part of Finnegan's Wake hidden? 

That's one great mystery in literature! Wherever it is, though, it is definitely not in the book!

Seriously, I have never read Finnegans Wake, and I do not intend to... Somehow the concept doesn't work for me. But I'm still serious about finishing Ulysses one time, I have started reading three times now, but could never finish it. That's rather strange, because there definitely is something to this book and in a more general sense, I find it quite interesting. But I just can't finish it, strange....

The reason I came up with this, is that I was at a public talk about James Joyce a couple of days ago and got very upset about it. The women giving the talk wouldn't stop pointing out how professional she is about literature and how entertaining her talk will be and how all the others that have dealt with Joyce's bio totally screwed up. Afterwards she joined the chorus about him being the greatest Romancer of his times, just to announce  a couple of minutes later that she did not read Ulysses nor Finnegans Wake (half of his published novels), because she finds them rather hard to read but still so interesting and glorious if you do/would read it... Not what I call a scientific talk, but then I'm not a humanist.

I was just left wondering, what makes a great author, or what makes James Joyce great?
And why can't i finish this §%$$*** book!!!!!

Not to get all serious here, but with "great" authors, you often must be very familiar with the times they lived in and interested in the school of thought they espoused. James Joyce was "great" in his time as a progressive thinker and innovative writer. However, if you dislike/disagree with his outlook on humanity, his work will be hard to read. Very few authors can be transcendent enough to draw in an audience that is philosophically opposed to the themes that author presents. As an example, I have to admit that William Faulkner was an innovative author, and I like that he "invented" a county in Mississippi and populated it with characters that would appear throughout his stories and novels. However, I hate reading him because I find his view of humanity (at least in the South) as being brutish, mean, cruel, etc., distasteful. There are very few "good" people in his work, and I can't bring myself to espouse the philosophy that humans are universally that diminished and petty and stupid.

Also, if you read much modern fiction, you are unused to the pacing of authors like Joyce. He wrote for an audience that was willing to take the time to stroll liesurely through a novel, considering carefully what was happening and pondering the themes being presented. Today, we want a faster pace, more action and less thought (not in every case, but overall).

And yes, I do teach English.

I read about three hundred pages into Ulysses several years ago. I stopped when I realized that I wasn't understanding over half of the stuff I was reading. The only book I finished by Joyce was Portrait of the Artist.

Right now I'm rereading Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon with a book of annotations. I love the book, but there's fascinating digressions on almost every page. I've also got some other literary discussions on the book and discussions of the times (70's). Basically I'm using the book as a springboard to look up other things I would otherwise not.

Other than that I've got a book on curse words, Why People Believe Weird Things and A Storm of Swords to get through.

I have read only the last sentence of "Ulysses", and actually I rather liked it.  (SPOILER: the last word is "yes").  Someday I hope to go back and read the whole thing.

I'm reading Henry Miller's "Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch," basically a ramshackle collection of essays, and "Love in the Time of Cholera," which I picked up at an airport when I forgot to bring Miller with me on the trip.   

I am America and So Can You By Stephen Colbert.

Also I started the Death Note series of manga.

Saw Colbert's book on Amazon.  Is it as funny as the reviews say?  I hadn't heard of Colbert until that time.

I've read about two-thirds of Finnegan's Wake, I slowly plowed through reading at least three pages a day, the plan was to finish it within a year. I stopped due to personal stuff that left me unable to read for enjoyment at the time. I took it for the mishmash of themes and ideas that I take it for, I could detect the vague "plot" the introduction described, but I've heard other takes on it, some serious some not. There was an essay in the New York Times Book Review several years ago that claimed the whole thing was about fishing. I personally think it can be taken for whatever the reader want to get fromit or project onto it. Maybe this was Joyce's intention, maybe not, I'm not enough of a student of his work to know. I've read Dubliners, which I liked, and I have a copy of Ulysses I intend to take on one day as well. I may go back to finish FW one day soon, I'm tempted anyway, if only to say that I've done it.

Not reading much of anything lately, rare for me, a Discworld book as my hold out book at work, and Graham Greene's Twenty-One Stories as my bathroom book, I like his novels better.

Hey Derf,

the problem I have is less thinking that Joyce gets more praise than he deserves, but rather that I don't really get a grip on his work. His bio is quite fascinating and I tend to find his views on humanity, let's say, interesting. Also, the gradient in the style of his writing from first to last novel seems to be impressive. The main reason for my post was my frustration to be none the wiser after listening to a humanist talk for 90 minutes....


Interesting thought, I always wondered about that. In general terms, I don't think people had more time to spent reading back then. The editions usually ran at surprisingly low numbers (for Ulysses it was something like 3000, if I remember correctly). Earlier the prints of Shakespeare's plays ran considerably lower (just finished Bryson's Shakespeare bio - nice). In fact I wonder if books back then were considered something like an investment for the upper class, because they were so pricey. However, a elaborated circle of financially well equipped persons certainly did read a lot, and often excerpts or cheap transcriptions were available, sometimes before the formal release... But were there proportionally more readers that strolled liesurely through a novel? And were there proportionally less people roaming through early pulp fiction?

Well, I guess I agree that reading might have been more intensive (but also more exclusive?) back then, but I'm not sure about the reasons.
To think that today's upper class could also come together to discuss books instead to go party-hopping....

Authors like Joyce seldom wrote for the general populace; rather, they wrote for the "intellectual elite," and yes, those people who considered themselves in that category did view art and literature (excuse me -- Art and Literature) as something to sit and ponder (and yes, they were either the rich, who had the leisure time, or the poor scholars, who were probably better equipped to understand the works). As literacy rates increased, most readers still did not read Joyce or Milton or Melville; they wanted potboilers, and only a few authors (like, for instance Dickens, who utilized a new marketing strategy for novels: serialization) were able to be both popular and critically acclaimed (and it's the critics who decide which authors join the Literary canon. Today, for example, far more people read Stephen King than read, say Joyce Carol Oates or Flannery O'Connor, but most would agree that King's writing is not on a par with the other authors mentioned. This is not a slight on King; he writes potboilers that titllate his audience, and he does this quite well. Oates and O'Connor wrote more to explore themes and to provoke thought. What we don't take into account is that authors like King have been popular among the literate masses ever since publishing became financially feasible. We don't see their work, however, because it doesn't stand the test of time. Shakespeare is still around because he managed to both titillate the masses with coarse humor and explore human themes and provoke thought in the intellectuals. Few writers can do that.

I have been reading (for several years now, off and on) one of the early vampire novels, Varney the Vampire, first published in book form in 1847. It's pretty dreadful; the writing is bad and the plot is a mess because it was written as a serial and published in pamphlet form. The author (and who that is is disputable) apparently wanted more money, so he kept adding to the story. It ended up being incredibly long with very little substance. It's got some interesting ideas, and some interesting vampire tidbits that influenced later writers, but there is a good reason it is not popular still today while Bram Stoker's Dracula is. Authors like the one who wrote Varney were popular, but their work is weeded out over time, and we are left with Stoker instead, who put more care and artistry into his work.

One last note before I wrap up this too-long post: We live in an entertainment culture, where we can watch a movie and be entertained for a couple of hours or read any of a million books that are easily accessible. Before moving pictures, books filled the role movies do today; they were considered exciting and worth spending time on. No, the poor people who worked 12-18 hours a day didn't have time to read. Among those who did have the time, there were those who considered themselves "above" the masses: the intellectual elite. They would be analagous to the art film crowd today: They like the "deeper" works that most don't understand, and they are willing to discuss and ponder the themes presented. Joyce was an "art film" kind of writer. In this forum, we discuss the dregs of moviedom, and we take great pleasure in watching films we know are horrible. We also watch and discuss movies that go beyond the norm and actually provoke thought and show superb craftsmanship, and we know that it is these sublime movies that will stand the test of time and be looked on in years to come as the representatives of what cinema is capable of achieving. But the site is called "Badmovies.org" because the dregs are simply more titillating. This model also applies to books. Always has, always will.

Thanks Derf for the detailed information. I guess that could be printed like it is.

However, still curious about one thing...



I wonder about the actual numbers, to see if everything has gone as bad as it is often said. No doubt people read tons of junk nowadays, including myself. But as you said, people did so before. So I'd be interested, if the proportion of people reading rather shallow stories than intellectually challenging ones has really changed. Or, more precisely, the proportion of pulp-readers among the people that read anyway (to account for decreasing illiteracy rates). If the proportion decreased, that would be an awfully sad development, given the increased availability of literature and the improved possibilities to communicate it. I would think that the mentioned former intellectual elite vanished, but was probably replaced by interested others, and probably more than replaced by students, scholars, etc. However, I agree that books have lost the "new" flavour and reading generally is not such an exciting and escaping pastime anymore. OK, I'll stop before I get melancholic...

Thanks again, extremely nice post...

You are quite welcome. Karma to you for recognizing my greatness  :tongueout:  :lookingup:.

Here's an interesting Wikipedia article on Victorian-era popular stories published as Penny Dreadfuls (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_dreadful): cheap, sordid stories read by the masses. It taught me a few things about early pulp fiction, and it has some links concerning other mass-market publications such as dime novels and pulp magazines. It won't answer your question (and neither can I), but it might shed some further light on popular versus Literary fiction.

Yeah, it's hilarious. One of my favorite books I've ever read. If you manage to get a copy, it's amazing.

I might have mentioned this before, but I'll do it again..

I HIGHLY recommend all the Harry Dresden books by Jim Butcher (series starts with Storm Front).

I also recommend the Repairman Jack novels by F Paul Wilson.  Jack is a pretty kickass hero I think a lot of us would related (especially with his love of B movies.)  :)

I'm not Derf, but...  I think his analogy about the proportion of people how like art movies now to the proportion of people who liked Ulysses 100 years ago is likely correct.  Obviously it would be impractical and subjective to try to decide what art is "serious" and what art is "shallow" to try to make comparisons, but I start with the premise that human nature doesn't change much through the ages.

The one thing that may have changed the proportion of people who are interested in "high" art, however, is the change in our notion of education.  (I can only speak about American higher education here, although I believe our American ways are likely infecting other countries).

It used to be that a liberal education was the ideal; everyone who be exposed to art and literature, as well as math and science.  Now the dominant focus in education is towards specialization.  People on math and science tracks are exposed to as little art and literature as possible, and vice versa.  The idea that it's necessary to have a well-rounded education consisting of a basic facility in both right- and left-brained disciplines seems to have gone by the wayside.  Therefore lots of smart "left-brained" folks just never got enough exposure to the literary canons to even start developing a serious interest in them.  They're almost programmed to think of art as frivolous.  On the flip side I've noticed an almost shocking lack of basic understanding of science in many of my friends who come from a liberal arts background. 

My apologies for I going off on a tangent.  Carry on.

Oh, I'm also reading AMERICA (THE BOOK) by "the Daily Show."  Funny stuff.   

At the moment, I've put down all the books I mentioned in my last post and am trying to take a more organised approach to reading. The best way to do that, is to start a whole new book   :teddyr:

Right now I'm 100 pages into the 598 paged James Herbert tome "The Secret of Crickley Hall".  I've read a few of Herbert's books (Fluke, The Rats) and I remember enjoying them immensely.  I've probably read others of his, but they were a long time ago and I really don't remember.

However, I have a few nitpicky points about Crickley Hall I'd like to share.  I don't remember Herbert's overall style, so I'm not sure if he's different now than before.  But I think his editor should have taken a sharper axe to this tale.

The story itself is classic horror:  a family loses a child and moves away from their London home to spooky old Hollow Bay in the Devon countryside, ostensibly for the dad's job.  It's only a temporary reassignment, but the family hope to put behind them the harrowing previous 12 months.  They move into Crickley Hall which has secrets and spooky things.   Classic.

What I have a beef with is the style.  Mr Herbert REALLY loves his parentheses.  He uses them with impugnity where a simple full stop would have sufficed.  So there are numerous paragraphs with no less that three lots of parentheses over-explaining things and adding unnecessary trivial info.  If you read those paragraphs out loud, you'd have to take in a huge deep breath and you'd probably be red in the face before you finished it.  I ended up mentally putting in full stops myself thus resisting the need to gasp for air.

After a few chapters, that problem petered out a little, but as I said, I'm only part way through the story.  So, I'll write a better review when I'm actually done.  I'm enjoying the basic story so far though.

Another nitpick:  The father, Gabe is American while the daughters Cally and Loren and the mother Eve are British.  I don't know if Herbert has actually met any real life Americans, or if he's just seen them as cliched tv characters.  Because Gabe has a funny turn of phrase and sounds like an Englishman pretending to be what he thinks is an American.

Gabe's Americanisms (words like gonna, buddy, sport etc) are overused and pepper his speech to the point where I'm saying, "for corn's sake, mate, just speak English!"   Whereas the west country sounding British charaters are written in normal English.

Aside from that, this book is interesting and I can't wait to find out what secret is contained at Crickley Hall.

Wow!  Seriously?  Over the last couple of years the man has become a massive cultural force.  I'm a devoted, loyal member of Colbert Nation.  He was always my favorite Daily Show correspondent but he has totally come into his own on The Colbert Report.  He's always "on" as far as the punditoid character he plays on TV and he's constantly pulling elaborate publicity stunts.  Aside from announcing a run presidency in the state of South Carolina (which crashed and burned) he also spoke at the 2006 White House Press Corrspondent's Dinner, which is one of the funniest bits of stand-up comedy I have ever seen. The guy is a f**king genius, I tell you.

The book is just more of that character, uninterrupted by ads for South Park and Larry The Cable Guy stand-up specials.  I think, however, out of context, it might be lost on people unfamiliar with the Colbert character.  Or for all I know, it might act as the perfect primer. 

Yes, it's that funny, though. 

We get a lot of American stuff over here, tv, fashions, fads, etc.  But the Daily Show is on cable as far as I know and I don't have cable tv.  It's still not a staple and if you have cable tv, the attitude is like, "wow, you must be rich"   :teddyr:

Also as much American stuff as we get, we don't get everything, SNL being a case in point.   :hatred:    So it's not surprising I haven't heard of it.  I'm sure if I took a quick poll around the 350 or so office peons here most people would be in my camp.

I read a review on Amazon and it sounded good, so I thought I'd buy the book for myself. The one and only Borders book store in my town should have it.

I got Clive Barker's "Books of Blood 1-3" trade paperback for a Christmas gift.

I've been re-reading those. Haven't read them in over 10 years.

I've also been reading "The Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe" that I also got for Christmas.

Heh.  I suppose that it's extremely naive of me to assume that everyone here is from America.  How quickly I forget these things.

I'm reading "Punk Is Dead, Punk is Everything" by Bryan Ray Turcotte. Its a huge coffe table book with flyers posters but has articles to read by people who were their. Very interesting.

On the flipside of that, RapscallionJones, when I'm on the net, I assume everyone is American except me!   :wink:

It's always a suprise to find fellow Aussies or even Brits lurking about.

The Lightning Thief, sort of meant for people a bit below my age but still very good.

I started reading "A Scanner Darkly" by Philip K. Dick the other day. It's a sci-fi story about a man who is both a drug addict and a type of cop sent to bust major drug dealers. I'm not quite sure what the twist is because I haven't read much, but it's good. I look forward to seeing the film. I like the animation style.

Hahahahahahahahaha, funny name.  :bouncegiggle:

I saw the movie, it was well done.  But I haven't read the book.  It's kind of a tragic tale and very much in the genre people-are-expendable-and-even-your-friends-will-sell-you-out-for-beer-money-if-they-can.

Robert Downey Jr plays a druggie nutcase very well.  Maybe he's just playing himself!  *lol*
But I found the animation style to be very hard on my eyes (I wear glasses) and by the end of it, I could only see fuzzy for about 2 hours afterwards.

Maybe because of the scramble suits. I haven't seen those animated because I didn't see more than five minutes of the film, but I bet they're hard on the eyes. :P

You should read the book, if you're into adult sci-fi. I'm glad I decided to read it. I heard it turned a lot of recreational drug users off drugs. Crazy stuff.

I do like sci-fi of any kind.  I haven't read any of Dick's stuff though.  I'm reading Jupiter by Ben Bova right now. 

That reminds me of another book.  I read an interview with Weird Al Yankovic once.  He said his girlfriend at the time recommended "Diet For A New America" by John Robbins (of Baskin Robbins family fame) and he said it turned him to a vegetarian.  Apparently it's quite a graphic account of the meat and diet industry in the US.

I've been meaning to get it myself to see if works on me.  But I doubt it.  Books rarely turn me off subjects and I'm a life long carnivore.

Hmm, I'm going to look into it too. I want to be a vegetarian, but it's hard because meat is so good. Damnit.

Right now I am reading Colleen McCullogh's THE OCTOBER HORSE, a novel about the last years of Julius Caesar.  It is awesome; some of the finest historical fiction I've ever read.

I finished reading Jupiter last night.  And now I've started Thud! by Terry Pratchett.  Classic Pratchett.  He has me guffawing already.

Re-read most of Gaiman's works, and have his new short story collection (Delicate Things) saved for upcoming vacation.

Also am re-reading the Goodkind books (_Wizard's First Rule_, etc) because I never read the last three.   Don't tell me not to read them -- I'm going to.  =)  The Wheel of Time books on the other hand I never finished.   Don't remember even which one I stopped on.

I'll think of y'all while sitting on a beach in Kona.  =)

Finished Thud! by Pratchett the other day.  The man has no rival in the fantasy/humour genre.  And I also finished The Art Of The Steal by Frank Abagnale.  It's a little dated right now but it's an eye opener into the mind of the scam artist. 

Now I've started reading Cell by Stephen King.  It seems to be very much Day of the Dead  meets In The Mouth Of Madness type story.  And this time it's the cell phone that turns people into hideous mutant killers.  At the beginning, King even dedicates the book to Richard Matheson and George Romero.  I'm only 31 pages in, but already chaos has ensued and society has broken down and the book hasn't even gone through one whole day yet.

It's quite short by King's standards, only abouit 350 odd pages in the hardcover, but it should still be enjoyable.  I can totally see this becoming a movie.  If it does, I just hope they give the direction to someone who knows about zombie movies.

I like Stephen King's works but I could barely make it a quarter of the way through Cell.
So far, it's absolutely awful!   :thumbdown:

I bought the hardcover edition when it was released, read a bit, put it down and have yet to pick it back up.
The characters are bland and the action is lame.
It comes across as something Uwe Boll might make into a movie.  Seriously.

I have to agree that the idea is a good one.
A "pulse" that instantly turns everyone using a cell phone into a raging zombie.
But the execution so far is all wrong.

Take 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead and populate them with characters you don't care about and action scenes that totally suck and you have Cell.

Since I paid $26.95, I suppose I'll finish it.  It's obligatory.
But never before have I felt such disappointment in a novel when I delved into the zombie world of Cell.   :bluesad:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy I read it a few years ago and it was EXCELLENT!  It's a very funny book and I would advise it for anyone who just loves a good British comedy.


Monty Python British not old classic kind of British.

That's a real shame, Ash.  I haven't read any of King's stuff since the late 90s.  I read so much over the years that I really got sick of him.  All that navel gazing and endless internal tangents the characters go off on, it addled my brain after a while.

I borrowed my Cell copy from the library.  The hardcover is on sale here for $12.99 and I nearly bought it and put the library copy back.  But I figured if I like it then I'll spend the money.  It doesn't seem too bad right now. 

I'll keep you posted.

The Cell was readable, for modern King. I fell away from his writing in the past decade myself. He tends to ramble too much and usually the endings get ridiculous (I really hated Dreamcatcher) but his short stories are more entertaining. King is one of those authors that if you get turned on to him early you tend to stick to reading him, sometimes only him. That can be bad.

I've gone to the bookstore in recent months picking up other books to try other authors. Anything from the "Incredible Shrinking Man" to my "Rosemary's Baby" which i still haven't read because it's a first edition first printing i paid less than $10 for and i don't wanna ruin. lol 

Earth Abides is a great read - i'm into the post apocalyptic stuff

You might like the book Starship Titantic It was written by one of the monty python guys, I believe it was Eric Idle, with Douglas Adams. Altough its much less cycnical then Douglas Adams.

Karma for you, flackbait, I'll look into it.

Thank you, and I was wrong on the author It was Terry Jones.

Currently I'm reading Bad Men by John Connolly.  After my much enjoyed reading of his book The Book Of Lost Things, I decided to try some more of Connolly's books.  This one is a supernatural thirller and very different from TBOLT.

I must say I'm enjoying it immensely.

I'm also part way through Return To Mars by Ben Bova.  Trouble is, it's reading kind of familiar, but not so much as well.  I've read so much of his stuff over the years, I've forgotten most of it.

I'm also quarter way through The Taking by Dean Koontz.  I really love Koontz's stuff.  All the books are different, even though they come under the one subject of supernatural/horror.  He's like a less verbose Stephen King.

I also have a heap of other books to read as well, some fiction, some none fiction. 

Meessa reading:

Dragonball vol.8

Left hand of Darkness (Boooorrrrriiinnngg!!!!)

And a classic, Dracula.

Bees, that's really weird, the only other time I've heard anyone mention Dean Koontz is when my Grandma saw that I was reading Stephen King and she suggested him.  She's done that to my brother too.

I gotta agree with Bees on this one...I find Dean Koontz's books to be VERY entertaing. Try his FRANKENSTEIN series....weird and wild!!!

I've read several of Koontz's books and most of them are pretty good.
Some that stand out for me are Dark Rivers of the Heart (http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Rivers-Heart-Dean-Koontz/dp/0553582895/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205320419&sr=1-18), Intensity (http://www.amazon.com/Intensity-Dean-Koontz/dp/0553582917/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205320332&sr=1-1), Ticktock (http://www.amazon.com/Ticktock-Dean-Koontz/dp/0553582925/ref=sr_1_20?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205320588&sr=1-20), Twilight Eyes (http://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Eyes-Dean-Koontz/dp/0425218643/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205320653&sr=1-1) and Darkfall (http://www.amazon.com/Darkfall-Dean-Koontz/dp/0425214591/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205320864&sr=1-1).

Phantoms (http://www.amazon.com/Phantoms-Dean-Koontz/dp/0425181103/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205320935&sr=1-1) was an awesome book.  Too bad the movie sucked big time.

The only bad thing about Koontz is that he tends to overdescribe things with way too much detail.
Sometimes I like to leave it to my imagination...you know?

I just want to clear this up, I've never read any Koontz books.  I just thought it was weird that I heard about him a couple of years ago from my grandma, and I haven't heard about him since, now I see his name on Badmovies.org of all places.  Doesn't anybody else find it awkward.

Years ago, I read one Koontz book and loved it and then read another and hated it.  And I abandoned him for the longest time.  Then I bought one a few months ago and loved it, so I'm back on track again.

I find him highly entertaining.  I enjoyed the Odd Thomas stories and I'm reading The Taking and By The Light Of The Moon.  So far, I highly recommend both books.  Although in the latter one, he's a little more wordy than I prefer but I'm going to persevere and hopefully my annoyance level will subside.

I've also read The Husband which wasn't a supernatural just a good old fashioned thriller/mystery story.  I also watched a telemovie called Black River based on one of his stories starring Jay Mohr and Lisa Edelstein.  It was a good Saturday afternoon time waster, but I'd like to read the original to see the difference.  And I'm part way through his newest one, The Darkest Evening Of The Year.

He doesn't really have any obvious style that I can discern.  He doesn't seem to repeat standard phrases or grammar styles and if I didn't  know beforehand, I would swear that all his books were written by different authors.  I like that quality about him.  Because then I know that each story will be different and not just variations on a theme.

The same goes for his over descriptiveness.  Sometimes it happens others not.  And sometimes it bothers me, but sometimes it doesn't.  There doesn't seem to be any pattern for my tolerance of his verbosity.  I guess it just depends on whether the story needs it or not.

Overall, I would recommend him to everyone.  He is the most consistent good writer I've come across in a long time.  And it looks like his income will be helped along quite well by me purchasing as many of his works as I can get my hands on.

I totally agree. Phantoms was the first Koontz book I ever read and I got so absorbed in it that I read it in a single sitting. It was the first book to ever give me a creepy vibe. I so wanted the movie to be good and eagerly went to see it in the theater, but man was I disappointed.

I've read about 20 to 25 Koontz books. For the most part I have greatly enjoyed them, though one or two were a little dull in spots.

Won these 3 books off of ebay last week...should be in sometime soon...!

 I read the Richard Cremer bio back in the 70's. EXCELLENT!!!! Been trying to get an affordable copy for years...the whole set sat me back $31 dollars and change...worth it!

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Dean Koontz books are my favorite literary junk food - I buy them, read till 2 AM, and finish them the same day!!  I find King's works more meaty and enjoyable - I tend to linger over them and savor them - but I will say this:  when the man is off, he's WAY off.  INSOMNIA,  HEARTS IN ATLANTIS, and DREAMCATCHER did nothing for me.  But CELL, FROM A BUICK 8, and, most recently, LISEY'S STORY were incredible.

Right now I am reading a neat history book called SEA OF GLORY: THE U. S. EXPLORING EXPEDITION, 1838-1842.  A gripping account of an event I knew nothing about before picking up the book.

I just got done reading Of Mice and Men for history 112. Damn! it is depressing at the end. Pardon me while i go try to cheer my self up! :drink:

Finished Bad Men by John Connolly.  Very good creepy ghost type of story.

Currently reading The Taking by Dean Koontz.  Must say I'm enjoying the bejeebles out of it.  I'm having trouble putting it down but I do have a job and that's getting in the way right now  *lol*

Next one on my list is Death Instinct by Bentley Little.  Heard a lot about his stuff and I'm looking forward to starting it.  I should be done with Koontz hopefully by tomorrow. 

Lately my reading material is coming from the local library.  That's the good thing about borrowing books, the due date forces me to read what I've borrowed.  Otherwise they'd just be sitting in a pile waiting on "some day".

That book was excellent, you're right about the ending though, it was very depressing.

Just finished reading The Taking by Dean Koontz.  Scary and entertaining as usual and not what I expected.

Also just finished Death Instinct by Bentley Little.  This is the first of Little's books that I've read and it won't be the last.  Quite gory but fast moving and the characters are believeable.  A standard serial killer against the cops kind of book, but even though I had the possible suspect list down to 3, it wasn't until quite near the end that I realised who it was.

Currently reading Culture Jam by Kalle Lasn.  Non fiction book about how advertising and mass consumerism is eroding society's values and how we can stop it.  Very interesting and throught provoking.  I am very glad to find out that I am influenced only marginally by mass consumption and all its evils.  Looks like my cynicism is finally doing me some good.

Just finished RIVER OF DOUBT: THEODORE ROOSEVELT'S DARKEST JOURNEY.  I forget the author's name, but it was the story of Roosevelt's expedition down the River of Doubt, a previously unexplored, 1,000 mile tributary of the Amazon, in 1914, shortly after his defeat in the 1912 presidential election.  Roosevelt came very near death on this journey, and emerged from it a broken shadow of his former physical self . . . this is an incredible story of courage, endurance, and hubris.  I LOVED it!

Right now I'm reading "Castles of Steel" by Robert K Massie, it's a history of the English and German navies in the first world war, very well written, you can almost smell the gunsmoke and feel the sea spray. The author gets into the human side of the people involved and shows how their personalities influenced their decisions. He does this for both sides and it shows that history is much more than just a collection of dry factoids. Makes this a very interesting book.

That one is awesome!  I love Massey's style.  One of my best friends wrote his dissertation on U.S. battleship operations in World War One, and Massey cited him as a source in Castles . . . he said that was a high point in his academic career!

Let me guess, had to read it for highschool?
That said your right it is an excellent book and I can see why it's a classic.

Yessir, however I intend to one of these days read it of my own free will.

I've been blessed (or cursed, depends on your viewpoint) with the ability to imagine myself in the same place and situation as the people I'm reading about. This started way back in elementary school, I'd read a line about some event or other and immediately imagine what the event described was like, I've always enjoyed reading about historical events, especially well written ones. They make you realize that history is made by living, breathing people who have all the strengths and weaknesses of the rest of us.

i'm reading two at the moment, as i use them to fill time while i wait for the bus.

1) outrageous fortune, by tim scott-

honestly, it's a little derivative of douglas adams' "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy".

2)misery loves comedy, by ivan brunetti


this one i can only read about 5 pages at a time before being exhausted by how absolutely nihilistic the author is. seriously, i thought i was dark, but this guy makes me look about as serious as a stuffed animal with a bowtie.

Yessir, however I intend to one of these days read it of my own free will.
[/quote]

I was like that with To Kill A Mockingbird.  Read it for high school English and HATED it.  I only skimmed through the story.

Then about 5 years after I left school I read it again and I loved it.  Now I know why it's a classic.

a lot of what we're meant to read in grade school and high school is just trash, unfortunately. more often than not, if something is only appreciated for being a "classic", that's all it has to offer. the generation before you cherished it, and now you will. oh, that other stuff that's been written since then? maybe in 20 years we can include it in the curriculum.

i mean, think about this- you wouldn't be surprised to find students reading "romeo and juliet", but if "a clockwork orange" was assigned, it'd likely cause a s**tstorm of controversy.

I can't believe the school system in this country.  In high school, I had to read, among other things, Romeo and Juliet, Z For Zachariah, The Endless Steppe, Quokka Island, A Tale of Two Cities and other tripe I don't care to remember.

That was between the years 1979-1983.  And now my son is high school and he has to read the exact same trash!!  I didn't understand the relevance then and I don't now.  It's easy for anything to become a classic.  You just have to get enough people to say it and the literary wankers will jump on the bandwagon.

About 2/3 through The Misplaced Legion by Harry Turtledove.  Part 1 of 4 of his "Videssos Cycle".  Good story, well-rounded characters, and plenty of action to keep the pace moving.  Recommended for any fans of historical fantasy/science fiction.

I have a huge Jones for John Connolly right now (can a woman "get a Jones" about something?)

Right now it's Every Dead Thing.  I just love the way this guy writes.  Simple, fast moving and no navel gazing by the characters or verbosity.  So far it seems to be a serial killer story but I wouldn't be surprised if it had a supernatural element to it.

Will post more when I'm done.

Nice to take the iniative.
I think they might have at least toned it down in my area,  because the only classics I was ever forced to read in highschool were, A load of Shakespere and The Oddessey. I couldn't get why shakespere was taught to a bunch of highschoolers who had to have the teacher translate every verse.  I personally wanted to scream every time I saw shakespere on the schedule! The oddessey on the other hand really is a classic. It's probably the only book I've ever been assigned that i would read again.

if i was a teacher, after reading the odyssey, we'd watch "o brother, where art thou?".

Actually my teacher did just that!

Yeah, mine did that last year.  What I really hate about these classics is that the plot doesn't move AT ALL!  That's why I actually like books from the now-time, it actually points out a main idea and I can finish it without saying, "Why am I reading this trash?"  I'll admit, Dickens is one of the greatest literary minds ever, but he wrote in HIS time, therefore I, a person from a different era, am not suited to his style in which 20 pages are dedicated to a judge telling a guy what he has allegedly done.

I get your point. But I gotta ask, did you read the Oddessey in the poetry format or the novel format?

Poetry, but I feel that either way, the only interesting scene is when Odysseus comes home and kicks the living s@#$ out of everybody.

The novel version was much easier to read for me. You might have liked it better that way. But that is definitly the best part! :thumbup:

Well I finished the novelization of the Star Wars Episode IV on Tuesday.  Started Starship Troopers later that night, and I have read about half of the book so far.  I hope to finish it by either Friday night (which is really pushing it), or Saturday.

downloaded a pdf of philip jose farmer's jesus on mars. looking forward to reading it soon.

Finished Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on Tuesday, and started reading Lord of the Flies Tuesday night.

Oh dear, I'm going to have to refer to a quote from one of my favorite books, Pilgermann (guess where I got my username!), by Russell Hoban:  "A story is what remains when you leave out most of the action." 

I think it's wrong that you should think that you can't appreciate something that isn't from "your time".  That's a foolish mistake.  I don't want to be too critical, but the era shouldn't matter, it's just that you don't care for Dickens' style (I think I once tried to read A Christmas Carol and I was beyond bored).

Oh yeah, I'm currently reading The Toynbee Convector by Ray Bradbury.  I was reading The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany, but I kept getting distracted.  I'll finish it eventually...

I like Shakespeare and Dickens as well as modern stuff.  But I'm like that, I can find the good in almost any written material. Even well written cook books can entertain as well as inform. But I can also see why Shakespeare and some of the other so called "Moldy Oldies" turn people off. In some ways they are not relevant to modern readers, and even when they are relevent translating words from 400 years ago is so onerus that it ruins the immediacy of the experience. You can't enjoy snappy patter so much when you have to wade through it like waist deep mud. That material was topical and relevant in it's time. Asking most people to "get" Shakespeare today is kind of like accessing an Elizabethan somehow and asking them to "get" Seinfeld. Sure there are some universal human truths in both, but topicality and language impede the way.

As for a fun recommendation try anything by Tim Dorsey. Reading his stuff is like reading Carl Hiaasen or Elmore Leonard while riding backwords on a roller coaster with your hair on fire.

people seem to be misreading me, I'm just saying that there are some points in old literature that are pure symbolism and really add nothing to the plot.  The main reason I don't like shakespear is probably that my teachers have us read it out loud and some people don't know how to pronounce some "complicated" words.  For instance meager, it's not pronounced me-ay-ger, or determined not det-er-mine-d.  Yes, people can't read.

I like Elizabethan English.  It was a more elegant, more poetic, more . . . passionate language than the stubby, abbreviated, illiterate swill that passes for dialogue in most of the movies we watch.

Even 19th Century English was more elegant than our language today.  Sometimes, after reading what my 8th graders, in mockery of the English language, call "essays", I have to sit down and read something by Winston Churchill just to remind myself of what the English language used to be.


"And so the glory of the world becomes less than it was."

I'm thumbing through, Hey Idiot!  it is just filled with a bunch of summaries of actual stories of people doing extremely stupid things.

For the last week I've been reading The Godfather and it's a really good book.  It's a lot more in depth than the movie is, I'm about half way, and I hope to finish it by the weekend, or the start of next week.

Were starting Dr. Jekal Mr Hyde in school.

I've been meaning to read that.

I'm re-reading the Foxfire series. You never know we might have to go back to living off the land and killing our own meat ... what a minute I already do that.

After finishing The Godfather on Saturday, I decided to start reading Iceman a autobiography written by Chuck Liddell.  From what I have gotten through so far, it is pretty good.

If you liked "The Godfather" then you should check out "Boss" by Mike Royko. It's about how Richard Daily rose to power as mayor of Chicago. The reason both books go together is both title characters used frighteningly similar methods to obtain and then maintain power even though one character is a power hungry scoundrel who rules his empire through illicit means and the other is a mafia kingpin :twirl:

Seriously the similarities are amazing. People talk about how "The Prince" is the ultimate guide to gaining power but either of these books works pretty well too.

I will keep that in mind, when I buy a new book or two in the near future.  I started a new book last night so, it's going to be a while until I finish it, then I'll probably get "Boss".

Currently reading Massacre At Montsegur a history of the Albigensian crusade. After that it'll be back to Barrington J Bayley for something wacky with an abrupt ending. All the while keeping a beady eye on the somethime in the future of this year when Kraken by China Mieville will appear.

Currently reading Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000.  I more less surprised that I am reading since I can't stand Scientology at all.  It is fine so far, but it just sems so dragged out at times.

I was meaning to get into "Battlefeild: Earth" but Ive heard bad things.

I kind of enjoyed Battlefield Earth when I read it years ago. But I was young then.

 Just finished Harry Turtledove's SETTLING ACCOUNTS: THE GRAPPLE - an alternative history of World War II, with the Confederacy murdering millions of blacks in concentration camps while the U.S. Army throws the last CSA forces out of Ohio and begins pushing into Tennessee and Kentucky, and physicists on both sides work desperately to complete the first atomic bomb.  The next book is the last in the series; just waiting for the paperback to come out!  He sure has a way of making you think how things might have been.

I know the move is awful, I'll make sure I have a few drinks in me before I watch it.  I got some slack for telling a co worker I was reading it, but that's about it.

Killer Instinct
by Joseph Finder

I initially picked this book up because the author's name is Joe (the name of my last boyfriend who I'm still not quite over).  Stupid reason, but there you have it.  Also, it was cheap.

It's the story of an electronics sales guy, Jason, who gets into a minor car accident and gets a tow to the mechanics.  The tow driver, Kurt, is an ex Special Forces guy who got a dishonourable discharge for punching his commanding officer.  So out of gratitude Jason gets Kurt a job at his company in their security department.

Once Kurt gets the job, he starts feeding Jason insider's background info on various employees at the company which gives Jason just the leg up he needs to make through the shark tank of electronic sales.  Then seemingly random bad things start happening to anyone who is in Jason's way of making it to the top.

Too late, Jason realises that Kurt is making these things and tries to stop him, but Kurt is having none of that.  So Jason tries to out fox the fox and keep himself and his newly pregnant wife out of harm's way.

I didn't like these characters at first.  Told in first person by Jason, he seemed to be arrogant and pushy and self absorbed and his wife is the epitome of rich girl fallen on hard times who pushes her husband up the corporate ladder so that she can play at lady of the manor.

But I did like Kurt.  Even when he started going psycho, I was rooting for him.  The book was simply written which I liked but Jason seemed like too much of a dumb arse to stay alive to the end.  Kurt, however, was menacing and nasty without being a stereotype.  I read this book in one day, courtesy of boring times here at work.

If you want something easily digested, then read this book.  But Shakespeare, it ain't.

I'd give it 3 our 5 stars

I'm finally listening to the Half Blood Prince on CD right now.  I'm finding it, much like Order Of The Phoenix, a bit slow and dragged out.  Thats pretty much why I stooped reading Order but I'm going to stick this one out so I can finally read the last story. 

I've just finished reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", thought it was fantastic. I was a bit worried I wouldn't even finish it, because I tried hard to like other books by McCarthy like "All the pretty horses" or "Sutree", but couldn't. For me he's one of those love / hate authors. I often like the stories he uses, and his approach, but his prose is so spartan and dry I feel I need to stop before I reach the ending.

Luckily, not the case this time. It's not that his style in "The road" is any different than usual, it's that for some reason I feel it suits the story better than in other books of his. The book is about a young kid and his father, who travel a deserted, apocaliptic America trying to head South, were things may or may not be better.

It's a story Stephen King could easily write one of these days (and considering how prolific he is and that "Cell" touched similar issues, maybe he already has), but McCarthy struggles to move it from the conventions of horror or post-apocalipse novels, and focuses instead on the characters and their relationship. Most of the novel consists of nothing but shallow (or apparently) shallow talking between both characters and descriptions of the landscape.

Think of a deserted place, then imagine one or two haikus depicting it, and pretty much you're done, but McCarthy really excels at those. Not only the book is full of nightmarish imagery (at one point father and son cross miles of ashes and bodies, the place where a large group of refugees were killed by a electric storm), but McCarthy always finds some way of expressing piety for the lost world.

Actually this one just came in to the local library.  Fun novelty stuff inside...

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I just finished Angels and Demons, great stuff.

I'm in the middle of reading "Quake" by Albert Alletzhauser.  No, I'd never heard of him before either.  I bought the book for $2.50 (hardcover!) at a trashy book sale and promptly forgot about it.  It's about what could happen to Japan if an 8.6 earthquake hit Tokyo.  The story follows a handful of characters before, during and after the quake.

I didn't think I'd like a book solely about Japan, but this one is really good.  The author lived and worked in Japan for many years so he knows what he's talking about.  A unique and sometimes surprising insiders look at their culture and social structure.

I also started reading Scott Adams's Dilbert book "The Way Of The Weasel".  I own heaps of his stuff and this one, as usual, has me laughing out loud.  I have to be really careful when reading this one on the bus!

I'm wrapping up Cohesion, the first book in the Star Trek Voyager "String Theory" trilogy. I am such a sucker for Trek books. This one will be the 21st trek book in  row for me.

Actually, I'm reading Jim Butcher' Storm Front from the Dresden Files series. That is my kind of books!

I just finished reading WATCHMEN for the second time, and now I'm reading SPAWN again.

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I just finished Erik Larson's DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY, an account of the Chicago World's Fair of 1892-3 and the vicious serial killer who was stalking the city while it was going on.  An EXCELLENT read!!!!!  This is a book of history for people who don't like history!

I finished State of Fear by Michael Criction a few days ago.  I'm moving on to either a non-fiction book called Monkey Girl Its an account of a town called Dover that decided to teach evolution over creationis or Brimstone by Douglas Preston

STATE OF FEAR was excellent, a real eye-opener.  I love all the Preston and Child books, especially the Agent Pendergast series.

Not a big reader but I am reading Lemmy's White Line Fever at the moment and it is good.

Let's see . . . in the last week I finished TYRANNOSAUR CANYON by Douglas Preston and A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES (that one is an EXCELLENT read; don't let the dry title mislead you!).  I'm currently wading through a very large biography of Alexander Hamilton, one of my favorites of our founding fathers.

I'm rereading SELECTED STORIES AND POEMS OF EDGAR ALLEN POE for the first time since my teens.  The classics "Telltale Heart" and especially the dark "Cask of Amontillado" are still classics, although the lesser stories can disappoint.  I love the fact that it's overwritten; my thought is, if you can actually pull this kind of prose off, you have a duty to do so.

Is it the Ron Chernow book? I'm reading that right now. It's a fascinating read, but it covers a lot of ground. I'm also reading McCullough's book on John Adams.

That's the one!! It was downstairs when I typed that and I was too lazy to go look up the author's name.  McCullough is just hard to go wrong with; his HARRY TRUMAN is one of the finest biographies I have ever read. 

Have you read Jean Smith's GRANT?  That's another winner.

Currently listening to Blood Sinister by Celia Rees.  I just wrapped up Songs On Bronze, its kind of a modern abridged version of ancient myths. 

Finally got around to finishing The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany.  Very very good, very poetic.

Currently going back and forth between White Fang by Jack London and The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson.

I just finished Terry Pratchett's The Unadulterated Cat (very quick read). It's very funny, as you would expect from Pratchett, but is mostly for cat owners. I've started on Chris Elliot's The Shroud of the Thwacker and will follow that with either Elliot's Into Hot Air or Pratchett and Gaiman's Good Omens (which I thought I had read previously, but either I've forgotten it or else I just missed it).

Well, I'm going through the presidents one by one, so it will be some time before I get that far down the line. I'll certainly keep the recommendation in mind, though.

I'm reading a book, The Best Of Horror Comics and World War Z on CD.  WWZ is something just about everyone on this board would like. 

I've been reading some of the last books on detective Charlie Parker, by John Connolly. It's a pity my local library still has to get the first ones, I don't like to start reading series in the wrong order.

Anyway, it's awesome stuff, the style is great, nothing to do with your usual airport best sellers, and the plots themselves are terrific too, they have connections with the occult, and some passages are as disturbing as "Seven".

Highly reccomended, but don't do as I've done and start with the first book. The cases are independent, but there arecurring characters, and Parker often mentions portions of his past.

Lately its been DORK by Evan Dorkin.

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I read Ender's Game a little while ago, like Harry Potter only the word magic isn't used making sound a little less, magicey and more sci-fi-ey.  ( I should have mentioned, he goes into space.)

Lately I've been enjoying this series...
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Its well on it's way to becomming the next Harry Potter but with a greek mythology twist.  Anyone else reading it?

Why yes I am, that's the third one to anyone interested.  The one's that are out in order are
The Lightning Thief
The Sea of Monsters
The Titan's Curse
The Battle of the Labyrinth.

I haven't read the fourth one yet but the rest are pretty good.

I recently picked myself a copy of:
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My friend's mom went apes**t on me.  She's like, "Why are you reading that book?  John Lennon's dead because of it."  She's a huge Beatles/Lennon fan.  Then it led to a whole discussion/argument over the incident.

I just read this one this summer: great fun!  Did you get to it, Derf?  I think it is a definite "not to be missed".

I recently finished IN AT THE DEATH, the concluding volume of Harry Turtledove's four-book SETTLING ACCOUNTS series - an alternative history of World War II between the Union and the Confederacy.  It was truly an awesome read.  This guy really makes you think about what might have been if history zigged when it should have zagged!

I forgot to mention, I just finished Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.  Really makes you think about where we're going as a society even though it was written about 70 years ago.

I've been reading "The crysalids", by John Wyndham. It is sort of a reversal of "The Midwich Cuckoos", because these time we are on the side of the kids. It takes place on a post-apocalyptic Labrador, where all "different" things, from crops to people are erradicated. We follow the POV of David, a kid that has no external mutations, but who can "connect" telepatically with other mutated kids. As he grows up they have more and more difficult to hide their power from the rest of people.

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The Digital Church is a truly unique, apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy tale set in the near future, as the earth races towards an undiscovered black hole in the heavens. The story's central character is Martin Henzel, a dark and cynical Hollywood underground artist in his late-twenties, who doesn't know who he is, where he's going, or why he's here. His nightclub world of alcohol and one night stands will come crashing in around him, when he goes on a date with his co-worker, Megan Jamison, whose rich and powerful father, Nathan, is involved in a plan to commit terrorism on a genocidal scale. Martin suddenly finds himself being contacted by a bizarre spiritual entity that exists within the purple fire of nightmare visions, some of which are all-too-real, as the truth of impending genocide sees city after city around the globe methodically being destroyed. Ultimately, Martin will be forced to answer a deeply troubling question within himself: "Can you love?"

I'm currently ready "THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN". I like it, it's not dated like some books can be

i'm not sure how much this is helping my arachnaphobia, however...

I'm also having to read this pile of boredom:

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I just picked up some books from the library.  One of them is Half the Blood of Brooklyn: A Novel by Charlie Huston.  It's the third novel in a series of books centered around Joe Pitt, a private detective (of sorts) who also happens to be a vampire.  The series is pretty good, it combines dark, gritty hard boiled detective genre with horror.  It deals with (what I like to call) REAL vampires, not these whiny, Euro-Goth trash, "Woe is me" vamps you get in Anne Rice novels. 

If you like your fiction dark in a Sin City/film noir type of way, I highly recommend the series.  The first novel is Already Dead  http://www.amazon.com/Already-Dead-Novel-Charlie-Huston/dp/034547824X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220415518&sr=1-2 (http://www.amazon.com/Already-Dead-Novel-Charlie-Huston/dp/034547824X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220415518&sr=1-2)

That sound like my kind of book.

I decided to put down Battlefield Earth since it was getting too stupid for me to enjoy it.  So I decided to start reading Jurassic Park instead.  I'm just about half way through the book and am really enjoying every bit of it.