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[Comrade P.]

I'm making my way slowly through Dark Tower cycle by Stephen King.

Started Song of Susannah recently.

[underkill]

i've been reading devil in the white city recently, but have had some issue actually picking it up due to how my schedule pans out most days.

[Mechatronic]

Great Expectations. It's pretty good once it gets going.

[Yoink]

I just want to say that Cosmic Banditos was one of the best books I ever finished over the course of a slow evening.

It honestly made my day to see this post.
One of my favourite books.


I came in here to list my current book: Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun.
It's about an insomnia epidemic and its effects on society, and it is actually quite fascinating so far.
Also, I finished Horrorstor (needs an umlaut in there somewhere), which concerned a haunted ikea-style store. It was kinda cool.
Not particularly frightening once things started going down, though.

[itisnotlogical]

I bought Grapes of Wrath for a class that ended up cancelled, but I'm still reading it on my own time.

There's a lot more of the characters going "Gee, I sure wonder what he was REALLY trying to say, hint hint" than I remember from the last time I read it.

[timferius]

Great Expectations. It's pretty good once it gets going.

I just find it doesn't really live up to the hype.




(I didn't actually read it, just had to make that joke)

[TheBiggerFish]

PTW.

Great Expectations. It's pretty good once it gets going.

I just find it doesn't really live up to the hype.




(I didn't actually read it, just had to make that joke)

Heh.

[Emma]

After just over two months of writing I have received Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. It look so beautiful.

[Helgoland]

Reading Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson, the same guy who wrote Fear and Loathing. Yoink, you'd like it, I think.

[Tomasque]

The Yiddish Policeman's Union

 A great book about a detective who really hates chess. Lots of dark humor, and all-around darkness.

[Cthulhu]

Didn't realize we had this thread.

Just finished Black Company.  Sad for a lot of reasons.  For one, I've been reading that series for what feels like forever now and now it's over.

Also because holy fuck the last couple books are real spirit breakers. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Basically everyone dies.  It's easier to name who doesn't.  Most of them die very unpleasantly.  The name of the last book is Soldiers Live.  You might think you're in for a happy triumphant ending until you get into it and find out that the rest of the quote is "and wonder why."

And it never tells you what happens to Soulcatcher.  Is she just gonna bird forever?  Better brush up on her job skills

Overall great series, definitely read it.  Maybe don't read it all in one go like me though.  That's about 3000 pages and some of Glen Cook's narrative devices become too obvious when you see them too much.  Like...

Almost everything that happens happens because characters who should absolutely be killed on sight are left alive until they inevitably escape in the next chapter.  The explanation is Croaker's too soft but...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

He kills an entire world.  He can say he didn't pull the trigger but he knew exactly what was going to happen when he buried the real rheitgeistide under the shadowgate.  I don't buy that he's soft, he's got more frags on his record than his wife as far as I'm concerned.

A general tendency towards anticlimax.  Things are set up only to kind of peter out.  Most important characters die offscreen.  In fact, now that I think of it I can only think of a couple characters that didn't:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Raven and Silent die on-screen.  Sleepy sort of dies on-screen.  Almost everyone else you hear about after the fact, somebody goes by and says "oh by the way such and such died."

What plot isn't driven by Croaker's staunch refusal to cut throats that need cutting is driven by people pulling shenanigans out of their asses at the last second.  Nobody explains what htey're doing until they do it, so almost everything that happens comes out of nowhere.

Likewise, Glen Cook seems to enjoy deceiving you.  A lot of things seem obvious only to turn out to be completely wrong in bizarre ways. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I figured out that the female Shadowmaster was Stormbringer when she destroyed the temple of repose with a lightning storm, then found out that while I was right that she was stormbringer, that wasn't at all what had happened.  Things like that happen pretty frequently

Still a good series.  I'll probably find something else of his to read now.  Instrumentalities of the Darkness or his Not Japan Series.

[Yoink]

Reading Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson, the same guy who wrote Fear and Loathing. Yoink, you'd like it, I think.

It was pretty decent, I read it a few years ago now.
Might re-read it sometime. Should probably read some more of Hunter S. Thompson's stuff, too.
I'm pretty much out of unread books (apart from ones I don't want to read) at the moment. Re-reading The Acid House. I need to stock up on books when I have money to spare... perhaps I'll go op-shopping when I get paid.

[Cthulhu]

Since I'm on a Glen Cook kick now I got the first Instrumentalities of the Night book.  Oh boy.  I don't really know what to do with this one.

Sort of like how the latter books of The Black Company adhere really strongly to Indian culture, IoN is pretty much 13th century Europe with all the proper nouns replaced with mad libs.  The main character is definitely not a janissary in service to what is definitely not the Ottoman empire.  Meanwhile the definitely not norwegians pursue some definitely not christian monks across the sea after their leader is murdered and then taken up by definitely not valkyries.  He may have been murdered by definitely not Denmark, or by the Hidden Folk, which are what's actually interesting about the book.

It sort of reminds me of a more mature, much more dense version of the Golden Compass.  You've got a world that very closely mimics the real one but with magic and shit.  The Holy Land is holy because of the Wells of Irhian which pump out magic.  The farther you get from the central concentration of wells (There are weaker ones elsewhere) the colder it gets until you reach endless darkness and ever-encroaching glaciers.  The world is infested with the Instrumentalities of the Night, which are spirits sort of like the Unknown Shadows in Black Company.   Everything from minor nuisances all the way up to the gods of the world are just bigger or smaller Night spirits.  The aforementioned valkyries, the all-father who sent them, the gods of the definitely not Muslims and definitely not Christians, are all these spirits that are somehow connected to the wells.

Anyway, the main character's band of definitely not janissaries gets attacked by a bogon, a malignant demigod, and in a fit of inspiration he fills the experimental cannon they brought along with silver coins and blows the thing away.  The rest of the book, when it wants to stick to what's actually interesting and not veer off into mind-numbing tangents about the history of the world (which you already know because it's identical to medieval europe), is about the upheaval that comes with that.  The gods of the world are just bigger, smarter bogons.  The genie's out of the bottle, man's discovered a weapon that can kill God as easily as it kills Bill from down the street.

That's why it reminds me of The Golden Compass.  I can't decide if it's good or not.  I think it would've been better if he'd focused on one or two subplots instead of burying you in history.

[jaked122]

I read Ass Goblins of Auschwitz. It was an experience.

Not one I'd recommend to anyone though.

[Emma]

I just got a massive H. P Lovecraft pdf and am currently reading Shadow Over Innsmouth and finding it really quite good. I'm also reading the complete Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and also finding it pretty bloody good.

That's why it reminds me of The Golden Compass.  I can't decide if it's good or not.  I think it would've been better if he'd focused on one or two subplots instead of burying you in history.

This gives me a question, what do you guys actually think about the Golden Compass? I personally find it really boring.