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[Helmholtz]

You get

Spoiler

choked up when Ampersand died?

It was a great finish, no doubt, but that part really got me.

Omg, yes. I actually think I shed a tear during those panels :'(

 

[Squirrel Killer]

Quick question: has anyone read The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie (House MD)? It's a new release here in Quebec (Canada) I was wondering if it is any good.

It's a well-written English comedy, more Wodehouse than Douglas Adams. There's a bit of

Spoiler

misdirection regarding the love interest

that doesn't feel particularly well developed, but on the whole, I liked it and would recommend it to someone looking for that genre.

 

[Jamesfrom818]

I just finished reading Ender's Game and I enjoyed it. I had originally bought it just so I had something to do while waiting around O'Hare for my flight back to LA but now I want to read more about the universe.

I was thinking of going Speaker for the Dead > Xenocide > Children of the Mind > Ender in Exile before jumping into the Shadow saga.

 

[S1lent]

 

[Parham]

 

[SCULLIBUNDO]

I just finished reading Ender's Game and I enjoyed it. I had originally bought it just so I had something to do while waiting around O'Hare for my flight back to LA but now I want to read more about the universe.

I was thinking of going Speaker for the Dead > Xenocide > Children of the Mind > Ender in Exile before jumping into the Shadow saga.

The Speaker saga is a huge jump from Ender's Game.

I honestly recommend you go Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hedgemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant, Ender in Exile, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind.

 

[Rayo]

 

[Lafiel]

Half-way through.

 

[chibay]

Just started re-reading Magician by Raymond E. Feist.

 

[ItAintEasyBeinCheesy]

Thats a gooden, shame hes gone so far downhill these last few years.

Just started getting into The Painted Man, diggin it so far, character hopping is a bit extreme but its a first book so i can deal with it.

 

[Space Cadet]

Inherent Vice by Pynchon is great. That is all.

 

[Flo_Evans]

I'm re-reading Asimov's Foundation series. I last read it about 25 years ago, it amazing how much you forget after a quarter century. LOL

I should probably do the same. I read it when I was in high-school, probably didn't understand half of it. :lol

 

[Deadly Cyclone]

Just picked this up, great so far.

 

[ciD_Vain]

Started reading this a couple of years ago and lost it, re-bought it, started reading again, lost it, re-bought it, forgot about it, and now re-reading it from the beginning. I don't know why I kept losing it.

 

[captainbiotch]

Anti-Christ - Nietzsche

 

[Tigel]

It's a well-written English comedy, more Wodehouse than Douglas Adams. There's a bit of

Spoiler

misdirection regarding the love interest

that doesn't feel particularly well developed, but on the whole, I liked it and would recommend it to someone looking for that genre.

Thanks. I might have to pick it up then.

 

[BlueWord]

Started two days ago, a little more than halfway through. Strikes a weird balance between the Space Opera stuff and hard SF. I like it, but I think there might be some more interesting stories that could be told in the setting. I guess that's what the other books are for.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

I asked earlier but wasn't able to get a reply. Can any of you recommend a good horror story, be it novel or non fiction? Something that REALLY gets you anxious.

 

[Mardil]

I asked earlier but wasn't able to get a reply. Can any of you recommend a good horror story, be it novel or non fiction? Something that REALLY gets you anxious.

I read Infected by Scott Sigler, it's not exactly horror but it's very, very descriptive in the way people are hurt... which makes you really anxious.

 

[baultista]

Started reading this a couple of years ago and lost it, re-bought it, started reading again, lost it, re-bought it, forgot about it, and now re-reading it from the beginning. I don't know why I kept losing it.

That's a pretty awesome book cover.

 

[Peronthious]

I was originally going to dive into The Butlerian Jihad, but I dropped by the library earlier today on a whim and saw this sitting on the shelf. Some quick googling confirmed that it was a decent piece of work, so I grabbed it, and it is indeed really interesting.

 

[ciD_Vain]

That's a pretty awesome book cover.

It's a pretty awesome book as well, despite the big controversy around it.

 

[Jamesfrom818]

Just picked this up, great so far.

I heard the Bourne books are much better than the movie adaptations. Is that true?

 

[Mr.City]

 

[ItAintEasyBeinCheesy]

I asked earlier but wasn't able to get a reply. Can any of you recommend a good horror story, be it novel or non fiction? Something that REALLY gets you anxious.

Read Duma Key by Stephen King and let me know if its any good, im thinkin of grabbin it in my next big order

 

[Tim the Wiz]

Finished:

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. An insightful observance of humanity set amidst quietly stunning absurdity and fatalism. Worthy of its adulation, indeed.

Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie. A slick departure into the revenge tale bursting with enough vigor to stand shoulder to shoulder with the best of his preceding trilogy. It twists progressively darker as it reaches its conclusion, and the strength of characterization is entirely admissible with surprising depth and varying turns. Recommended.

Now Reading:

Collected Essays by Gore Vidal. I've been unable to approach it in order. Nonetheless, it's been an enjoyable volume to wander through so far.

Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold. Bujold's prose enraptures, as usual, with the pilgrimage of a resentful former saint which explores the fantasy landscape of previous winner, The Curse of Chalion. It had something of a slow start, but, unsurprisingly, nothing is as it seems and the gods are as intrusive as ever.

 

[Salazar]

Robertson Davies' enormous academic satire 'The Cornish Trilogy'.

This man was a GREAT Canadian.

 

[beelzebozo]

very interesting.

 

[Salazar]

http://birnbaum.themorningnews.org/2009/07/23/histories-of-folk.php

These both sound terrific, too.

 

[Gromph]

Re-reading

The Assassini
Thomas Gifford

 

[oxrock]

I enjoy the Malazan series but it takes me about 1/4th of the book to really get into them. Once i'm hooked though it's quite a ride.

 

[ItAintEasyBeinCheesy]

I was the same when i read Midnight Tides, i would like to read the whole series but the books are so friggen huge.

 

[subzero9285]

I asked earlier but wasn't able to get a reply. Can any of you recommend a good horror story, be it novel or non fiction? Something that REALLY gets you anxious.

I've recommended this book on GAF a few times, it might be what you're looking for.

Here's a brief synopsis;

The men on board, Her Britannic Majesty's Ships Terror and Erebus had every expectation of triumph. They were part of Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition - as scientifically advanced an enterprise as had ever set forth - and theirs were the first steam-driven vessels to go in search of the fabled North-West Passage. But the ships have now been trapped in the Arctic ice for nearly two years. Coal and provisions are running low. Yet the real threat isn't the constantly shifting landscape of white or the flesh-numbing temperatures, dwindling supplies or the vessels being slowly crushed by the unyielding grip of the frozen ocean. No, the real threat is far more terrifying. There is something out there that haunts the frigid darkness, which stalks the ships, snatching one man at a time - mutilating, devouring. A nameless thing, at once nowhere and everywhere, this terror has become the expedition's nemesis. When Franklin meets a terrible death, it falls to Captain Francis Crozier of HMS Terror to take command and lead the remaining crew on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice.

I'd also recommend another two books by Dan Simmons, Summer of Night and A winter Haunting.

A monstrous, timeless entity is devouring children. Adults either refuse to understand what is happening, or are themselves agents for the monster. A group of young boys, in uneasy partnership with an outcast girl, realize they must kill the creature before it devours them all.

Four decades later Dale Stewart, a survivor of that summer, has returned to endure a winter of adult discontent: his wife has left him, his sideline career as a novelist is sputtering and a disastrous love affair has driven him to attempt suicide. Medicated to the gills for depression, Dale seeks inspiration for his next novel in a house that figured in events of the summer of 1960. But remnants of the old malign influence have survived and they manifest as vicious spectral dogs, threatening neo-Nazi punks, cryptic messages that appear magically on his computer screen and delusions that suggest he's losing his mind. Simmons orchestrates his story's weird events craftily, introducing them as unremarkable details that only gradually show their dark side. In a nod to Henry James, whose psychological ghost story "The Jolly Corner" is repeatedly invoked, he blends jaw-dropping revelations of spiritual intrusion with carefully manipulated challenges to the reader's confidence in Dale's faculties and motivations. Though it features its share of palpable things that go bump in the night, this novel is most unsettling in its portrait of personal demons of despair that imperceptibly empower them.

My final recommendation would be Through a Glass, Darkly, which is also a very good read.

"Through a Glass, Darkly" is a modern horror novel that deals with secrets long buried, festering guilt and haunting loneliness. Jack Trent, the most effective CID officer in the history of the department, is having bad dreams. He has seen the murder of a child in a forest at the hands of something indescribable. But these are more than dreams. They are visions of the future that Jack has tried for years to suppress. Something happened to Jack in his childhood; something that means he cannot touch another living person; something that killed his mother, and that has returned to inspire his visions.In a final race against time, events reach a dramatic climax as Jack attempts to save a boy's life in the clearing of Redgrave Forest. Can he face the long-dead Dr Mendicant and the ancient Darkness of Crowman? Can he face the evil living inside himself? And what will he make of the Doctor's final, devastating revelation? "Through a Glass, Darkly" is a brilliant novel from an exciting new writer who is steeped in the traditions and themes of the genre.

* I haven't read it yet, but House of Leaves is very highly thought of on this forum. It's definitely on my to read list.

Johnny Truant, wild and troubled sometime employee in an L.A. tattoo parlour, finds a notebook kept by Zampanr, a reclusive old man found dead in a cluttered apartment. Herein is the heavily annotated story of the Navidson Record.

Will Navidson, a photojournalist, and his family move into a new house. What happens next is recorded on videotapes and in interviews. Now the Navidsons are household names. Zampanr, writing on loose sheets, stained napkins, crammed notebooks, has compiled what must be the definitive work on the events on Ash Tree Lane. But Johnny Truant has never heard of the Navidson Record. Nor has anyone else he knows. And the more he reads about Will Navidson's house, the more frightened he becomes. Paranoia besets him. The worst part is that he can't just dismiss the notebook as the ramblings of a crazy old man. He's starting to notice things changing around him.

 

[FINE-LINE]

I mostly read novels but lately I've been balls deep into lit journals.
Indiana Review
The New York Tyrant
Hayden's Ferry Review
12th Street
The Paris Review

It's turning into an addiction.

 

[Tim the Wiz]

Balls deep, huh? I might give them a try.

Wait, that didn't sound right.

I was the same when i read Midnight Tides, i would like to read the whole series but the books are so friggen huge.

Really? Where did you leave off? I will say that the sequence of Deadhouse Gates, Memories of Ice, House of Chains and Midnight Tides remains the high point for the series, but even at his best, Erikson is somewhat inconsistent.

Conversely, I never truly lost interest in the series. Maybe because I can't resist completing things? Nonetheless, I'll probably wait until next year to read Dust of Dreams and The Crippled God back-to-back. I hate waiting on tenterhooks, although Erikson certainly isn't inconsistent when it comes to producing novels.

 

[shuyin_]

I bought these books last month and i'm almost done with them (i'm half way through A Storm of Swords Part 2). I see many GAFers are reading G.R.R.M.'s A Song of Ice and Fire. It's such an amazing series and i'm glad it gets recognition on GAF. Hopefully G.R.R.M. will release the 5th book in the series this October without any more delays.

@Fireblend & alternade: when you get to reading House of Leaves, please post some impressions. I heard many things about it and i'm curious.. is it really scary? No book managed to scare me, but i did enjoy Matheson's Hell House (and i would recommend it to anyone that wants to read a good horror book).

Can someone recommend an actual horror/scary book?

see above.. word is House of Leaves is scary. Besides that, i'd recommend Richard Matheson's Hell House and Phantoms by Dean Koontz. Another book that i'd recommend is Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami. It's more disturbing than scary and not really horror, but you might like it.

@Karma: What do you make of Cell? Did you read it in its entirety? I received it as a gift from my fiance but i stopped half way through... i found the beginning interesting but i got bored later.

awesome cover

 

[Rimshot]

Trying to read two books this month. Having a lot to do normally I just get around to finishing one book a month but hopefully this will change.

The two are:

And

 

[Lafiel]

Need to break from dosto.

 

[CajoleJuice]

Ripped through Martian Time-Slip, Dr. Bloodmoney, and Wait for Next Year in my PKD collection, and now I'm reading this:

Not that far in, but it's already pretty interesting.

 

[BenjaminBirdie]

Just had to upgrade my olde '96/7 paperback Infinite Jest to the new Eggersdition. The shit was like waterlogged and shit.

 

[Salazar]

Just had to upgrade my olde '96/7 paperback Infinite Jest to the new Eggersdition. The shit was like waterlogged and shit.

I'm imagining you throwing it into a lake, then changing your mind and wading in to rescue it.

 

[BenjaminBirdie]

I'm imagining you throwing it into a lake, then changing your mind and wading in to rescue it.

Yeah, I would totally do that to what I have officially decided over the course of this re-read to be the best book I have ever read.

(Funny image though.)

 

[bengraven]

I need to print these pages out when I'm at the bookstore or library because I keep forgetting the awesome books.

I'm seriously close to just ditching videogames and re-focusing my ADHD on books like it was when I was 10, before I bought a NES.

 

[Manics]

I bought these books last month and i'm almost done with them (i'm half way through A Storm of Swords Part 2). I see many GAFers are reading G.R.R.M.'s A Song of Ice and Fire. It's such an amazing series and i'm glad it gets recognition on GAF. Hopefully G.R.R.M. will release the 5th book in the series this October without any more delay

Not gonna happen junior. Even if Martin *finishes* the book by October, the earliest it'll be in bookstores is spring of 2010.

 

[Caspel]

I need to print these pages out when I'm at the bookstore or library because I keep forgetting the awesome books.

I'm seriously close to just ditching videogames and re-focusing my ADHD on books like it was when I was 10, before I bought a NES.

This is always a thought of mine. Sell the video games and just focus on books -- but then I get a new game in for a review everyday so kind of hard to stop haha.

 

[Anth0ny]

Fantastic biography so far. And I'm only at page 60...out of 750 :lol

 

[Touchdown]

 

[Narag]

I need to print these pages out when I'm at the bookstore or library because I keep forgetting the awesome books.

I'm seriously close to just ditching videogames and re-focusing my ADHD on books like it was when I was 10, before I bought a NES.

I've eased up on gaming due to picking up reading again. If anything, its a good reason for me to be a bit more picky when buying a game.

 

[bengraven]

This is always a thought of mine. Sell the video games and just focus on books -- but then I get a new game in for a review everyday so kind of hard to stop haha.

I've eased up on gaming due to picking up reading again. If anything, its a good reason for me to be a bit more picky when buying a game.

I find books to be way more fulfilling, much much cheaper, and frankly I do not want to be a game developer - I want to be a writer.

Now if somehow the library starts offering games, I may indeed be fucked.

 

[A Penguin]

Heard about this a year ago on GFW radio, finally decided to pick it up.

Seems like an interesting memoir.

Spoiler

ah, who am I kidding? I need better luck with the ladies