[Book Chat] "What's Everyone Reading" Thread

[M]

So a few weeks ago I found myself in the situation of unintentionally reading four books at once. I hate this since it means I can't put my full concentration on any of them. That being said it forced me to step up my already brisk reading schedule and as a result I have finished an ass ton of books in the past two months. Here they are with comments.

Rashomon (New Penguin Collection), Ryunosuke Akutagawa: :roarosaur: My favorite author whose work is a little difficult to find in translation. The new collection gives like 10 stories that have never been translated before. Sort of like a Japanese Edgar Allen Poe. His best and creepiest works are those he wrote about modern (20s) Japan before his death. His best story is A Fool's Life - simultaneously his autobiography and his suicide note.

1st Harry Potter Book, J.K. Rawlings: Having graduated college I think it's finally safe for me to read these books. After all I don't want to be one of these people http://thisismynewwebsite.tripod.com...g.w300h285.jpg . It's a good book but not worth the hype if you're 23. I liked a Wizard of Earthsea better.

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad: Great Stylist, slow as hell. Somehow this novella, less than 150 pages, felt like I was reading the war and peace. Worth it if you like Apocalypse Now, just make sure you're ready.

On the Road, Jack Kerouac: One of those hipster diary books. I liked it, made me wanna take a road trip. Timeless because it's basically young folks screwing around until they grow out of it, which everyone sort of does.

Labyrinths, George Luis Borges - almost done: :roarosaur: Phew, really cool. Like H.P. Lovecraft if he didn't write horror. I dunno how I can describe his work in a paragraph. Awesome mind fuck short stories.

The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky - working on: I love Dostoyevsky. A more sympathetic protagonist than he usually has. Still, if you should read Crime and Punishment or Brothers Karamazov first. This man knows how to suffer.[/url]

[Arisa]

Ooh, good thread idea. :3

I'm reading:

Jingo - Terry Pratchett. I've lost track as to exactly how far along in the Discworld series I am; but I'm still enjoying myself quite a bit.

Cat Dancers - P.T. Deutermann. Its a murder mystery. My aunt is an avid mystery reader, and rather picky about her books, but she often tosses me titles she thinks I might enjoy. I've only cracked into the first few pages, so I can't say much about it yet.

Recently finished:

The Hogfather - Terry Pratchett. Perfect for the upcoming season.

The Wall - Jeff Long. Two veteran climbers return to a section of El Capitan that they pioneered in their younger days. It's a very interesting climb read, in addition to being just a bit surreal, with a very nice sting in the tail. I dug it muchly.

Kino no Tabi: vol 1 - Keiichi Sigsawa. An absolutely amazing book. The animated series was astounding and surreal, and the book is beautiful in the same way. The translation is really spectacular, and in general I just can't gush enough about it.

[DMAC]

I'm currently reading:

On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers

I mentioned this book in the previous "What are you reading?" thread back when I ordered it from Amazon but I'm only now getting around to reading it. A really cool blend of historical pirate adventure and voodoo mysticism. It was supposedly one of the big influences on the Monkey Island games.

Tim Powers is the apostle of gonzo history, and On Stranger Tides is as good as story-telling ever gets. He has found a way to bring together powerful Indian magic, black vodun, a British scientist driven mad with grief over his wife's death, and Blackbeard himself, determined to live forever. Opposing them all is John Chandagnac, a one-time puppeteer who has come to the Caribbean to confront the uncle who cheated John's father out of his rightful inheritance. Captured by pirates, John finds himself rechristened Jack Shandy; he also finds that his old skill as a puppeteer can save his life.

I'm also reading Moonraker by Ian Flemming. I love the classic Bond novels. Flemming will write a whole chapter about a game of golf or a bridge match and its just as interesting as a car chase or a shootout.

[Kishmo]

Jingo - Terry Pratchett. I've lost track as to exactly how far along in the Discworld series I am; but I'm still enjoying myself quite a bit.

Good ol' Pratchett. A friend introduced me to him this summer past, and I devoured most of his books. It was great! In my opinion, the City Guard based books only get better as the series progresses!

I just finished reading World War Z by Max Brooks. It's a fictional account of a world-wide zombie plague erupting in the near future, told through a series of interviews. It's pretty good stuff.

[AliasTheJester]

agreed on the 'city watch' discworld books.

I'm currently nearly done with Forge In The Forest by Michael Scott Rohan. It's book two of a tirlogy called The Winter of the World. My friend had better deliver the third promptly upon request, I hate breaking up a trilogy. Pretty old-school straight forward fantasy, but quite charmin'. The hero is a master blacksmith, which is pretty cool.

I haven't read any not fantasy for quite a while, (apart from Trainspotting which I'm reading on the toilet, which I've read several times already, but it's just so good). So I should probably read some other types of fiction soon.

[Arisa]

Ehh.. I'm actually kindof getting tired of reading about the Watch. I'd like to move on to something else for a little while.

Is anyone else looking forward to Gaiman's new collection of short stories, Fragile Things?

[Jale]

Ive had to set aside my Huxley to read some awful book for English Literature..Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy.

Its just poor. It takes so long to get anywhere. And I dont mean things happen but nothing interesting. I mean NOTHING happens for about 200 pages. Entirely nothing. They literally have no advancement of the plot between introducing the characters and the end of book 1.

EDIT:
300th post!!! Wooters.

[willmmmm]

Currently reading Charlie Wilson's War and Chuck Klosterman IV.

Both non-fiction. Will elaborate later. Busy now.

[UncleF]

Grapes of Wrath. I wish I could devote more attention to it, but school reading is just too heavy.

[Michael]

SAS Essential Survival. I can now skin a rabbit.

[Angel_of_Bacon]

The book I'm actually currently reading:
A Feast of Crows. I kept hearing so many good things about this series that I finally gave this series a shot a few months back, despite that most of the time I avoid fantasy books. The series is pretty good, but it is pretty much a medieval soap opera and not high litertaure by any means.

Books I've gotten halfway through and then started reading something else:
Master and the Margehrita: Didn't really grab me like I'd been told it would, yet. Maybe I just got a poor translation?
The Histories: Interesting stuff mixed in with patently flase stuff mixed in with some confusing stuff. I need to read the rest sometime, I need to see if there are any more gems in there like how Egyptians used to kill crocodiles.
[spoil]You take a live pig and hit it a couple times so it starts squealing. You take a big piece of pork and put it on a long hook attatched to a pole. Crod hears the pig, smells the pork, grabs it, gets hooked. Haul its ass on to shore and immediately put mud over its eyes so it doesn't know where to attack. Kill it with whatever sharp objects you have handy.[/spoil]
The Pirate Coast: Pretty interesting, but I started to lose interest around the part where all the factions comprising the makeshift army just cannot stop being whiny bastards.
The House of Leaves: It's definately intriging, and it seems like a fairly fast read when I'm actually reading it, but then I look back and see I'm not covering much ground at all. Weird.

Books I've actually managed to finish recently:
The Man in the Iron Mask: Good stuff, although I like the Three Musketeers better. I was thinking there'd actually be more stuff about the title character, though...it's more accurate to describe it as The Three Musketeers II.
The New York Trilogy: Read this on basis of it apparently being a source of inspiration for the utterly fucked up post-modern plotline of Metal Gear Solid 2, what with the 4th wall breaking at all. It's pretty decent, (probably because the connection to MGS2 is tenuous at best), though not exactly a mind-blowing read. The kind of book you'd want to read while nursing a mild depression is how I'd describe it.
A bunch of Raymond Chandler novels: Oh Marlowe, you are such a dick.

The book I read one page of so far:
From Russia With Love. Bought it after seeing Casino Royale. Waiting for a few free hours around Christmas to burn through the thing in one sitting.

Books I've got queued up:
Don Quixote: I've heard a lot of people hate reading this book, but it goes in the 'I want to feel like I am personally enriching myself' pile.
The Big Sleep: More Chandler. Been avoiding it because I've already seen the movie a bunch of times, but most of the charm of the books is the language anyways, so it should still be well worth reading.

[Michael]

The Big Sleep is super awesome.

[CheerfulBear]

Bacon, did I recommend The Master and Margarita and Raymond Chandler to you? I don't remember.

[Angel_of_Bacon]

Bacon, did I recommend The Master and Margarita and Raymond Chandler to you? I don't remember.

You might have reccommended M&tM; I know Mayday was hounding me about it. I don't recall you recommending Chandler though. I'm just a big Dashiell Hammet/noir fan in general.

[CheerfulBear]

YOU ARE A-OK IN MY BOOK.

[Arisa]

Bacon: Could you say a little about A Feast of Crows? The title has me interested. :3


I finished Jingo and have moved on to The Last Continent, also by Pratchett.

I was also given I, Strahd (P. N. Elrod) to read, so that goes into my stack as well.

[Kishmo]

Speaking of Bulgakov, I just finished his slightly autobiographical The White Guard. It's a pretty good read, especially for those interested in the Russian Revolution.

[Angel_of_Bacon]

Bacon: Could you say a little about A Feast of Crows? The title has me interested. :3


I finished Jingo and have moved on to The Last Continent, also by Pratchett.

I was also given I, Strahd (P. N. Elrod) to read, so that goes into my stack as well.

Ah crap, I just realised it's A Feast for Crows, so I hope I'm not saying things you already know about. :P

Anyways, it's book #4 in The Song of Fire and Ice series. The other three books are A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Storm of Swords.

It's a fantasy novel series that, while containing most of the usual trappings of fantasy stuff (dragons, monsters, knights, swords, magic, all that jazz), the plotline is largely focused on political manuveuring (alliances and breakdowns between city-states and political figures, that sort of thing- I've also heard that it is loosely based on the Wars of the Roses), rather than being purely an adventure story. Instead of a single protagonist or group, each chapter is written from the perspective of a different character, each of whom are pretty much on their own side, pursuing their own agenda. Although sometimes this means that a character might not appear for half a book length, or some character never spoken of previously starts getting chapters devoted to them out of nowhere, it still serves to allieviate the stereotype of anyone person really being the "bad guy'. This is also why I brought it up as being a soap opera- lots of chracters with interwieving plotlines that go on for a long, long time. (Although I have been assured that this series, unlike some I have heard about, will end at some point.)

All and all, it's an enjoyable enough read, but it's obviously not a book written with the intention of being great literature or anything.

[Arisa]

Still haven't heard of it. :3

Hmm... Doesn't quite seem like my sort of thing, but next time I'm out at the book store, I'll give a look for the first one and see what I think after a few pages.

Thanks, Bacon!

[DMAC]

As a big fan of the Song of Ice and Fire series, I definitely recommend the books, but you're going to need to give it more than a few pages. A Game of Thrones opens with a sort of "teaser" of things to come in the series but I found that it took me until about half way through the first book tor really be "hooked" on the series.

There's a large cast of characters and about a dozen major noble families that all play a part in the overall storyline. Once you get to know who everyone is and what their relationships are, you start to become invested in what's happening to them.

It can be frustrating that, like any "ensemble" story, it can take a while to get back to a particular character or plot thread, but I've thoroughly enjoyed the books so far. The only thing that's killing me is that now that I'm caught up, I have to wait for the new books like everyone else.

In spite of the fact that, as Bacon said, the books include magic and dragons, those elements are introduced slowly. Other than a few incidents here and there, they really read more like a sort of alternate history. Good guys die, bad guys get away with doing bad things... I like that it isn't all "happily ever after".

[Arisa]

I'm just not a huge fan of political intrigue. It's never tripped my trigger, and so even in a fantasy setting that I might otherwise be comfortable with and enjoy, politics ends up really souring things for me.

I will keep an eye out for it though, and if I have the cash I'll pick up the first book to give it a go -- if I don't like it, I can always donate it to the library. ^_^

[Angel_of_Bacon]

If it sweetens the pot any, the first book does have a bunch of wolves.

[vanik]

Right now I'm re-reading The Catcher in the Rye, and then I'm going to read Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.. all by J.D. Salinger

[Benjamin]

I'm reading Inside Australia. It's good at presenting current events and the history of Australia in an engaging way. I'm practically an expert on modern Australia (provided nothing really major has happened there since 1971).

[Proxzee?]

Hmm I don't really read that much. I've been meaning to pick up the Color of Magic. I like Hitchhiker's Guide to galaxy style books as well as intriguing fantasy. Any recommendations?

Also haven't read harry potter...something makes me not want to read it either.