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What are you reading thread

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10.30.2013 7:14am

JSG
Registered Member

I'm kind of bouncing between a lot of stuff. Mainly I'm reading Perdition by Ann Aguirre, and also some Conan the Cimmerian stories, and some Elric of Melnibone stories. Also every few days I'll read one of the stories from Catherynne Valente's The Melancholy of Mechagirl.

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10.30.2013 7:48am

(Edited on 10.30.2013 at 7:55am)

Southern Comfort
silently judging all of you

Slowly making my way through Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy (ie. The Girls With the Dragon Tattoo et al.) Surprisingly easier to read than I had expected, being a Swedish to English translation. Currently halfway through The Girl Who Played with Fire. The only downside, Larsson liked to ramble all over the place, before finally settling down to the main plot.

Also reading Towing Jehovah by James Morrow. Irreligious black comedy at it's finest.

In queue, let's see... I've been recommended Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan by a swarm of people, so it's up next. Also, Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, Daemon by Daniel Suarez, and probably the Ringworld prequels by Larry Niven, just so I can say I've officially read every single bit of Niven's Known Space series.

(I have seriously been recommended far too many new series in the past few months. I've probably got a solid six months of reading to go without repeating anything.)

(Boys and girls, don't date people who read more than you do. You'll go absolutely mad just trying to keep up.)

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11.06.2013 3:16pm

Murasame
HALE YEAH

Just finished reading If on a Winter's Night a Traveler... by Italo Calvino which was absolutely superb. Incredibly pertinent book to be reading when I'm striving to focus once more on language studies so that I can read in other languages. The second person perspective was incredibly interesting, as was the genre switching of every second chapter. It got a little bizarre at the end there as genre changes became harder and harder to justify, but it was still fantastic.

Before that I'd been reading José Saramago's The Double, which only became a good book in the last few chapters. Otherwise it meandered and mired and stagnated, which is, I suppose, a way of ramping up suspense for the final chapters, but made the book incredibly difficult to read. I think Saramago flourishes in sentimentality and human relations and dialogue. Most of all, he's really good at writing dogs. Best writer of dogs out there. If you want convincing dog characters, read Saramago.

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11.10.2013 11:38pm

JSG
Registered Member

I don't normally read nonfiction, but I started Brain On Fire by Susannah Callahan a couple days ago and I've been flying through it when I have the chance to read. Super interesting look at a woman quite literally losing her mind.

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11.11.2013 3:56am

Lord Snow
Super Lurker

Southern Comfort said:

Slowly making my way through Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy (ie. The Girls With the Dragon Tattoo et al.) Surprisingly easier to read than I had expected, being a Swedish to English translation. Currently halfway through The Girl Who Played with Fire. The only downside, Larsson liked to ramble all over the place, before finally settling down to the main plot.

Also reading Towing Jehovah by James Morrow. Irreligious black comedy at it's finest.

In queue, let's see... I've been recommended Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan by a swarm of people, so it's up next. Also, Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, Daemon by Daniel Suarez, and probably the Ringworld prequels by Larry Niven, just so I can say I've officially read every single bit of Niven's Known Space series.

(I have seriously been recommended far too many new series in the past few months. I've probably got a solid six months of reading to go without repeating anything.)

(Boys and girls, don't date people who read more than you do. You'll go absolutely mad just trying to keep up.)

I can't speak for everything, but a few thoughts I'd offer, SC:

Of Richard Morgan's stuff, I found the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy (which starts with Altered Carbon) to be fairly fantastic, so if you're into gritty, near future cyberpunky sort of stuff, you're in for a treat.

The book by Daniel Suarez, Daemon..in all honesty, Daemon is ONLY good/worth reading if you read the second one as well and finish off the story.

The first pretty much just sets up this potential world but it's nothing really...ground-breaking? It didn't feel like anything very inventive or new to me.

It's only after I read the concepts of the second book and saw where he was trying to take the world that I really sat up and paid attention to what he was trying to show me.

JSG: With regard to Catherynne Valente, have you ever read her In the NIght's Garden duo?

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11.12.2013 9:59am

JSG
Registered Member

No, I've actually never heard of Valente before. I just grabbed that anthology because it had a cool cover and was a book of short stories. I was kililng time in a bookstore at the time.

I like her style, though. I want to read more of her.

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11.13.2013 2:09am

Lord Snow
Super Lurker

She has a wonderful poetic kind of style and while I'm having some trouble getting into Mechagirl, I first ran into her writing with "The Orphan's Tales: In the Night's Garden" and that....just....blew me the goddamned hell out of my chair and I can't recommend it highly enough.

The two Orphan's Tales books just...the writing really scrapes the soul haha. It's one of those things that I really think needs to be read to be believed.

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11.13.2013 7:04am

Murasame
HALE YEAH

Read The Invisible Man because listening to the Dead Author's Podcast makes H. G. Wells sound cooler than he actually is, thanks to P. F. Tompkins being the awesomest comedian out there. It doesn't quite translate to the modern age, I think. people thinking an invisible man is a spirit is a little old fashioned. The titular man's "madness" seems a little more understandable, considering how victimised he is. His only particularly heinous crime before he is othered is experimenting on a cat, and even then, the dude wasn't viciously and deliberately cruel. I didn't find the horror and the madness of the invisible man to be that logical, until of course, he actually snaps.

Also read Strangers on a Train by Agatha Christie. Christie can drag, but Strangers on a Train was superb. Absolutely superb.

Currently reading some short stories by Ryuunoske Akutagawa which are great. I really enjoy the informal, natural familiarity with which Japanese literature seems to be a large part of. It's also fascinating to see where Rashomon came from.

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12.08.2013 3:51pm

Crono
Crono can cross dimensions too!

I finally finished the Harry Potter series. I've been slowly working my way through them for probably 1.5-2 years. I never felt any urgency to get through them since I'd seen the movies dozens of times but that's not to say they weren't great reads. I loved every book. As I suspected though, now I have a harder time watching the movies knowing how much they left out but it's alright.

Next up.... who knows.

Currently Playing: Dark Cloud 2: 3 hours.
Also Playing: CT, FF VI, Solatorobo, Secret of Mana, Halo 4.
Just Finished: Fable II: 7 hours.

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12.08.2013 4:51pm

Jaran
I'm going to try SCIENCE!

Jhumpa Lahiri has a new novel out called The Lowland, and I will assimilate it into my library

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04.04.2014 3:53am

vinnyvalentino
Hyperion Master

Just finished reading Chariots of the Gods by Erich Von Daniken.

And that, as they say, is that.

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04.20.2014 11:35pm

Mavilu
Yep, still gaming

Hey guys, I've been reading some science fiction classics, a bit of Asimov and Clarke and loved them both (although Clarke a bit more) but it can be a bit disconcerting when the newest technology described in the books is the fax machine and here's talk of giant computers that occupy entire rooms, I'm ready to read something more recent, but there's so much out there, any recommendations?.

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04.20.2014 11:59pm

reido
(\/)(o,,,o)(\/)

Alastair Reynolds:
Revelation Space
Chasm City
Redemption Ark
Absolution Gap
In that order.

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04.21.2014 12:04am

(Edited on 04.21.2014 at 1:00am)

Zubis
Registered Member

Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leviathan-Wakes-Book-One-Expanse-ebook/dp/B004XCGKYQ/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1

I do find Arthur C Clarke to be a little dated, but then I think that datacentres are buildings full of computers, and companies like Twitter still require information through fax machines, so perhaps not as dated as you think.

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04.21.2014 12:22am

Lord Snow
Super Lurker

I'll second the recommendation for the Leviathan Wakes.

And also, John Scalzi writes some fun sci fi, like his Old Man's War trilogy.

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