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WHAT ARE YOU READING? Feb? (love and kissies edition)

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Eric P

Member
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rawr
 
E

Eric P

Member
today i had some good luck at my favorite used bookstore in DC

Michael Moorcock - The War Lord of the Air (i love this series he did. blimp pirates! Lenin as Utopian Corsair! Che Guevara!)

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - Definitely Maybe (it's from a series of paperbacks called Best of Soviet Sci Fi and my knowledge is rather lacking in that department)

Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls (picked up because of White Man's previous pimping of the writer)
Fritz Leiber - The Silver Eggheads. I love Leiber and I love coming across books of his I'd never even heard of. This one is about a future where Writers are do nothing dilletantes while computers do the actual writing. The writers rise up and smash the machines to reclaim their talent only to find they've all got writer's block

Thomas F Monteleone - The Seeds of Change. I like this writer and this is a book by him I'd never heard of so I snagged it.

Michael Dibdin - A Rich, Fully Death and Dead Lagoon. Dibdin is probably my favorite mystery writer. He does many kinds of mysteries all of them filled with dark wit. Very cynical, and often twists of conventional mystery tale genres. Excellent Stuff.

I also bought two Ian M Banks books for my friend, but I don't recall what they were.
 
M

Mr. Banana Grabber

Banned
I'm reading The Mist by Stephen King and thankfully it's quite short. Quite shitty and quite short.

I'm about to start a Cormac McCarthy novel because I loved No Country for Old Men so much and I picked The Road at random. I haven't picked it up yet but is this a good choice or should I try another one for my first?
 
T

Trurl

Banned
Democracy: A History by John Dunn is what I'm currently reading. Its prose are kind of difficult to decipher so I can't say I'd recommend it, but it's not long and I feel like I've committed myself to finishing it.

After that it will likely be the Lives of the Planets, or The Sirens of Titan, or How the Dead Dream. After that I plan on returning to Richard Dawkins with either The Extended Phenotype or The Ancestor's Tale.
 
FrostuTheNinja

FrostuTheNinja

Member
The Weird Works of Robert Howard Volume 2.

Starting thumbing through, "On A Pale Horse" again... For about the 9710946120yegqd0q092731st time. I guess I'll have another go around.
 
F

Frank the Great

Banned
Great Expectations: Marraige and Divorce in Post-Victorian America, May
Life in a Medieval City, Gies
White Teeth, Zadie Smith
The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli

yeah, my teachers are overloading me with reading :-X
 
D

demon

I don't mean to alarm you but you have dogs on your face
Mr. Banana Grabber said:
Not to be rude but why are you reading this? Are you a big Kurt Vonnegut fan and you've read the rest or is it for a class? I'm a pretty big fan and I haven't heard much about it. How do you like it?
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I ordered some books (a few of them Vonneguts) through my library system and this was the first that was available, so it was the first that I started reading. What are you, the fucking VONNEGUT POLICE?

I just started it and I'm about a third of the way through. Kinda weird at first, but it's picking up now and I like it. It's not too long either. And no I'm not too familiar with his works.
 
D

dragonlife

Member
Paradise Lost - John Milton
Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche
Vampire Hunter D (1; and I forgot its subtitle :p)

A HUGE Mythology book just to inform myself of other gods, etc.
 
S

Screaming_Gremlin

My QB is a Dick and my coach is a Nutt
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I am just finishing this book up right now. Honestly, I am not really finding it that enjoyable. There are a couple of amusing parts, but at this point I just want to finish it so I can start on the below.

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M

Mr. Banana Grabber

Banned
demon said:
I ordered some books (a few of them Vonneguts) through my library system and this was the first that was available, so it was the first that I started reading. What are you, the fucking VONNEGUT POLICE?

I just started it and I'm about a third of the way through. Kinda weird at first, but it's picking up now and I like it. It's not too long either. And no I'm not too familiar with his works.
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I'm really sorry if I offended you. Believe me I'm not dogging on the book or you at all. I just don't hear about this one as much as the others.

If you get turned off by this one don't get discouraged as there are some really good books of his out there. What else of his have you ordered?
 
D

demon

I don't mean to alarm you but you have dogs on your face
Mr. Banana Grabber said:
I'm really sorry if I offended you. Believe me I'm not dogging on the book or you at all. I just don't hear about this one as much as the others.

If you get turned off by this one don't get discouraged as there are some really good books of his out there. What else of his have you ordered?
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haha I was just kidding about the vonnegut police thing. I can't remember what other vonnegut books I ordered. Before this one I read Man Without A Country, which was more a short collection of assorted ramblings than a novel like I though it'd be. Nice little read though. Have you read Slapstick?

Screaming_Gremlin said:
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I am just finishing this book up right now. Honestly, I am not really finding it that enjoyable. There are a couple of amusing parts, but at this point I just want to finish it so I can start on the below.
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I picked up this book from the library last summer/fall and got about ten pages into it and decided to return it. Can't remember why exactly, I just got a "this isn't going to be nearly as interesting as I thought it would be" vibe from it, and that's something I have little tolerance for.
 
T

Tim the Wiz

Banned
Flashman in the Great Game.

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Rollicking great fun. Just light reading this month, and I'll also be catching up with some classic books that have been in the backlog for a while: Ivanhoe, several Dickens novels, some Alexandre Dumas and a few Alan Moore graphic novels.
 
B

BenjaminBirdie

Banned
51zDi7XhzdL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg


Hm. They changed the font on the published version.

ANYWAY.

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I WILL GET THROUGH A DICKENS BOOK. This I swear.

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Hey, if I can't finish a book, at least I can finish a book about finishing a book, no?
 
P

purg3

slept with Malkin
BenjaminBirdie said:
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Hey, if I can't finish a book, at least I can finish a book about finishing a book, no?
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Haven't read that, but I've read the most of Hornby's books. Definitely one of my favorite current authors.
 
Q

QVT

Fair-weather, with pride!
The Defense by Nabokov. Only he could take such a shitty plot(a kid becomes a chess prodigy) and turn it into fantastically awesome book.
 
T

Tim the Wiz

Banned
QVT said:
The Defense by Nabokov. Only he could take such a shitty plot(a kid becomes a chess prodigy) and turn it into fantastically awesome book.
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Well, I actually find that concept quite interesting, although the quality of typical Nabokov could make that a biased impression. I might just check this out.
 
F

FnordChan

Member
Tim the Wiz said:
Flashman in the Great Game.
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So, so awesome.

Meanwhile, I'm in the throes of serial fiction.

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Blood Lines is the third book in Eileen Wilks' World of the Lupi series. I've mentioned these in earlier reading threads: she's a cop, he's a werewolf, they fight crime! Or, in the case of the second book, she's a fed, he's a werewolf, they fight evil! As the end of the second book was in sight yesterday afternoon I dropped by my local big box bookstore, boldly walked to the romance section without fear for my manliness, and picked up the third and fourth books in the series so I'd be ready to keep on trucking just as soon as I finished the second book (wherein everything goes straight to hell, literally).

These continue to be fun in a magic noir sort of way with their genre classification being essentially arbitrary as far as I can tell; Mortal Danger had one, count 'em, one sex scene at the beginning of the book and was straight up procedural and adventure from there. Strong romantic themes are there, sure, but when I think romance novels I think bodice ripping and that's not really happening with the Lupi books. So, as always, bookstore marketing demographics are interesting in an arbitrary sort of way. Either way, I'm digging the books.

FnordChan
 
M

Mr. Banana Grabber

Banned
demon said:
haha I was just kidding about the vonnegut police thing. I can't remember what other vonnegut books I ordered. Before this one I read Man Without A Country, which was more a short collection of assorted ramblings than a novel like I though it'd be. Nice little read though. Have you read Slapstick?
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I haven't but I also just read through Man Without a Country. It's so tiny I wrapped it up in one sitting. Kurt's a silly guy. I recommend reading Slaughterhouse 5 sometime soon and then Cat's Cradle. They're very different but most Vonnegut fans like one or the other.
 
Q

QVT

Fair-weather, with pride!
Tim the Wiz said:
Well, I actually find that concept quite interesting, although the quality of typical Nabokov could make that a biased impression. I might just check this out.
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Having read more of it, there are a lot of flaws but if you like the concept then it'd probably be even better. It's very good in parts but not particularly compelling in others. He always went through different things with books and this one makes a pretty open reference to Turgenev and I don't think he's wrong in that it's very similar. There are a few hints of pure Nabokov(Luzhin, for example is a great character, but despite being the protagonist we don't see much of him) so again if you're into the concept or like Fathers and Sons you might like this.

I must say that there are much better Nabokov's if you haven't read them already, Mary and Despair are shockingly good.
 
E

Eric P

Member
FnordChan said:
So, so awesome.

Meanwhile, I'm in the throes of serial fiction.


These continue to be fun in a magic noir sort of way with their genre classification being essentially arbitrary as far as I can tell....

So, as always, bookstore marketing demographics are interesting in an arbitrary sort of way. Either way, I'm digging the books.

FnordChan
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the rise of genre romance fiction is really kind of interesting because it's part of an overall rise in genre fiction interest (such as the Brooklyn Mystical Reality writers like Chabon and the like). What's funny though is that you're seeing this rise in Romance (really "women's fiction") is that it's essentially a return to the roots of the break out of women's novels which dealt with fantastical elements.

check out David J. Skal's the monster show which is a very good examination of horror in popular culture starting with the Gothics.
 
J

John Dunbar

correct about everything
Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises
Yasunari Kawabata - The Sound of the Mountain
Willam Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury
Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina

Probably won't finish all of them this month, though.
 
F

FnordChan

Member
Eric P said:
What's funny though is that you're seeing this rise in Romance (really "women's fiction") is that it's essentially a return to the roots of the break out of women's novels which dealt with fantastical elements.
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I hadn't thought about it in those terms, but now that you mention it, sure, that definitely makes sense. Also, I was discussing the series I'm reading with a friend who works at Borders and she commented that a lot more of the romance section is becoming genre romance outside of mainstays such as historical settings. So, yeah, let's hear it for Mary Shelley and Laurel K. Hamilton. Or something.

check out David J. Skal's the monster show which is a very good examination of horror in popular culture starting with the Gothics.
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Sounds intriguing!

FnordChan, who may be doing a phone interview with George Romero this week
 
E

Eric P

Member
FnordChan said:
FnordChan, who may be doing a phone interview with George Romero this week
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will you please pass on that i love Martin and forgive him for Knightriders and i look forward to a day when he can stop making zombie movies all the damn time and take on more interesting stuff like Bruiser?
 
E

Eric P

Member
Prime crotch said:
Question, are the Conan books still a good read nowadays?
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i'm a conan fanboy, so my answer is yes.

check out the recent reprints. or you can most likely find the older reprints (with bonus Franzetta cover art) on the cheap at a used book store
 
W

WrathOfOtaibah

Banned
I'm just about finished with Dawkins's The Selfish Gene. Need more reading material soon.

Francois the Great said:
Great Expectations: Marraige and Divorce in Post-Victorian America, May

yeah, my teachers are overloading me with reading :-X
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That book sounds interesting. How is it?
 
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