Reading anything?

[InformationGeek]

I just got done reading the first two volumes of Y: The Last Man. 

A mysterious plague has hit the earth and wiped out all male mammals except for Yorick Brown, amateur escape artist and his pet monkey.  Yorick sets out to try and find his family (and eventually reunite with his girlfriend who's in Australia) in a woman that's been literally unmanned. 

It's an interesting read, although Yorick does come off as a bit of an idiot at times, especially in a few scenes where he's not very good at keep his identity a secret. 

Anyway, if you get a chance, check it out.

I shall.  I've trying to read nonsuperhero comics.  Fables, which is awesome and you should be reading, is the only one I've tried besides The Walking Dead.  That was a bit disappointing, so I'll give this one a try.  Thanks for the recommendation.

[Killer Bees]

I'm usually an avid reader but I've been really slack and uninterested lately.  But I did pick up Dean Koontz's Breathless the other week.  I started reading it yesterday and so far so good.

I know he's not considered high brow by the purists, but books to me mean entertainment, especially fiction.  So if I'm entertained, I'm happy.

[Doggett]

It was a gift


So far, so good. 

[Sister Grace]

I'm usually an avid reader but I've been really slack and uninterested lately.  But I did pick up Dean Koontz's Breathless the other week.  I started reading it yesterday and so far so good.

I know he's not considered high brow by the purists, but books to me mean entertainment, especially fiction.  So if I'm entertained, I'm happy.

i completely agree on your outlook when it comes to books. yes, books are important and many make great statements about the human condition, social unrest, ect. ect. However, if you aren't entertained then you are less than likely to gain anything from it. I like many different genres. I've been in a bit of a slump when it comes to reading lately though. I read Paluniuk's Snuff, then someone gave me a copy of Thank You For Smoking. Everybody talks about how great Christopher Buckley is, however i haven't been able to make it through the second chapter...

[Killer Bees]

I know what you mean Sister Grace.

I read Richard Matheson's I Am Legend and I disliked it immensely *ducks at bricks being thrown*

I saw the movie with Will Smith and I enjoyed it.  So I borrowed the book.  Matheson wrote well.  He was clear and concise and I enjoyed Hunted Past Reason, but I Am Legend really failed to live up to the....um....legend of him.

I found out about him via this site many years ago and finally gave him a go last year.  I will read all his other stuff and I will probably buy I Am Legend in hardcover just to have in my collection.  But I really was disappointed.  Maybe because it was written in the 50s and things were different then, I don't know.

I didn't understand Robert Neville's actions or motivations.  Maybe if Matheson had written it today I would have enjoyed it more.

[InformationGeek]

I've been raiding the local library's manga section and trying almost any series that has a volume one available.  Here's what I've been reading:

xxxHolic
Fairy Tail
Amnesia Labyrinth
Future Diary
A Distance Neighborhood
Chobits
Nana

[Mofo Rising]

I am currently reading:

The Near Complete Essential Hembeck Archives Omnibus by Fred Hembeck - You may or may not be familiar with Hembeck, his goofy art style used to be the "in-house" humor for Marvel. This giant 900+ page collection is currently sitting in a place of honor on the back of my toilet. At this rate, I will probably never finish this book.

Hembeck example (comic not in omnibus):


A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn - As an introduction for a dialogue, it's okay. As a history book, it's pretty annoying. Interesting exercise; I'm only partially through it.

Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore - So far, his only novel. I'm really liking it, once I slogged through the first "ur-man" chapter. Seems more of Moore's idiosyncratic views on life, but with some awful decent stories thrown in.

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs - Infamous novel of obscenity. Occasionally brushes with brilliance, too often mires down in some admittedly very imaginative muck. I like some of Burroughs' other work much better than his most famous novel.

Mars by Ben Bova - Was in the mood for some good "hard" sci-fi, so I thought I'd make my way through Bova's "Grand Tour." This was the first published, and though I've read it before, I'm starting here again.

[Sleepyskull]

I'm usually an avid reader but I've been really slack and uninterested lately.  But I did pick up Dean Koontz's Breathless the other week.  I started reading it yesterday and so far so good.

I know he's not considered high brow by the purists, but books to me mean entertainment, especially fiction.  So if I'm entertained, I'm happy.

i completely agree on your outlook when it comes to books. yes, books are important and many make great statements about the human condition, social unrest, ect. ect. However, if you aren't entertained then you are less than likely to gain anything from it. I like many different genres. I've been in a bit of a slump when it comes to reading lately though. I read Paluniuk's Snuff, then someone gave me a copy of Thank You For Smoking. Everybody talks about how great Christopher Buckley is, however i haven't been able to make it through the second chapter...

I really enjoyed Thank You For Smoking, but it was defintely different than how many people seemed to describe it... Also word of advice for anybody interested based on the movie: They are very different.  Lots of fun, but in different ways.



I really want to get back into pleasure reading... It seems like I've had a very hard time focusing on pleasureable things for the past 2 years or so... I love books and movies, but can barely read or watch... My goal is to read at least 4 books this year.

[Zapranoth]

I read the first 2/3 of _The Road_.. then couldn't finish it.   Dark, dark.  :(

Gotta say, re-reading Pohl's Heechee books recently on vacation was fun.

If you like big and bad space opera, read _Revelation Space_ by Alastair Reynolds.  That book is awesome.  its sequels are variable but also quite good. 

I have here a copy of _Velvet Elvis_ (Bell) that I'm just starting.

[The Burgomaster]

In addition to a few books I'm in the middle of, I just started reading:

[BoyScoutKevin]

Ye-es.

More miscellaneous, or a couple of short reviews of graphic novels.

"Noir" subtitled "a Collection of Crime Novels." One story with illustrations and twelve sets of illustrations with stories. Each with a twist at the end. But all it does is make me long for a Dashiell Hammett, a Raymond Chandler, or even a Mickey Spillane, all of whom were far better noir authors than the ones in this collection.

Well, if Lincoln could do it, then I guess Pinocchio can do it.

"Pinocchio Vampire Slayer" in two volumes. The second volume subtitled: "And the Great Puppet Theater." Unlike alot of graphic novels, where I find the first volume being better than the second volume, here the second volume is better than the first. The characters are more complex, and the storyline is more complicated, and for once complex and complicated comes off being better than simple and straightforward. And there is more humour in the second volume, which humour is also better intergrated into the story. And I presume there will be more volumes after the first two, as at the end of the second volume we left Pinocchio and his surviving puppet friends in the middle of the sea. Just be aware, when you start to read this, this is the Pinocchio of the original story and not the Pinocchio of the animated film.

As for "Y: the Last Man," I can and will read almost anything once it's in graphic form, but after one volume I just found this unreadable. It's an interesting idea behind the story, but just be aware the whole story goes on for ten or more volumes. Some of which are filled with some fairly graphic lesbian sex. But, what did you expect in a world of almost all women and no men.

Next time: Darren Shan's "The Thin Executioner"

[SpringZhang]

I've read Charles Dickens' Hard Times and Little Dorrit. l like Dickens' works very much, though nearly all are very very long.

Bleak House in on my shelf, but I haven't started yet.

[AndyC]

Kind of lost interest in the Lovecraft-inspired circle jerk, and after a couple of weeks of trying to get back into it, I put it down and picked up Roger Ebert's book, Your Movie Sucks. It's an interesting collection of past reviews, but I'm a little disappointed that relatively few are movies Ebert really skewered. Those reviews are funny, but most of the others are just negative reviews. They're interesting, and I usually agree with them, but they aren't really what the book promised. And I keep running across movies that are so notoriously bad, I expect Ebert to rake them over the coals in a humorous fashion, but the review reads as almost a straight critique.

I'm about halfway through, and so far, nothing has topped the beginning of the book, and the Rob Schneider review from which it takes its title. That one is a classic, but it would be nice if it wasn't the high point of the book.

[The Burgomaster]

I've read Charles Dickens' Hard Times and Little Dorrit. l like Dickens' works very much, though nearly all are very very long.

Bleak House in on my shelf, but I haven't started yet.

Over the past couple of years, I read A TALE OF TWO CITIES and GREAT EXPECTATIONS.  Dickens is my favorite author of all time. 

[Fausto]

Right now I'm reading Fritz Leiber's Our Lady Of Darkness. If you're familiar with Argento's Three Mothers Trilogy (which includes Suspiria, Inferno and Mother Of Tears) or the De Quincey poem on which they were based, then you'll be interested in this. It came out the same year that Suspiria was released, and sort of involves Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness. The book and films aren't related, though I have a sneaking suspicion that Argento read it before he made Inferno, as they have a few thematic simularities. There's also a ton of references to HP Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith (part of the story involves a journal owned by Smith), and various real life occultists. The prose isn't the greatest (Leiber sure loved commas) but the story is really engrossing.