I agree about Speaker for the Dead. I liked that one the best of the series. I doubt I'll ever buy another Card book. I'm not sorry about that.

Any more SF off the top of yer heads, anyone? I bought Pohl's In the Problem Pit and Heinlein's Friday recently. And I'm hoping to round out the Robot Novels before I finish all of Foundation. Also, I've yet to read Delaney's Nova and almost all of his Neveryon books, which got off to a really good start.


edit:

Gravewyrm, I can name you a load of SF books taht haven't been mentioned here that I thinka re top-class, but I don't have time to do ought but post a list at this moment, so stay tuned.

But shit, I have neverness and haven't read it. Seems really interesting.

So, just finished Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine. It was a decent romp, reminiscent of Confederacy of Dunces combined with a dash of Catcher in the Rye but with a less likable narrator. She wasn't particularly annoying, and I know she's supposed to represent the selfish zeitgeist of our time, but her sense of entitlement really digs into the reader after a long time. Eh, it was funny, charming even at times, but I couldn't shake that annoyance.

I'm definitely curious!

Currently a ways through The Claw of the Conciliator and I'm hooked (...clawed? ). The series has gotten better and better. I love the mashing of styles and the unique, high-quality writing. Great imagery, love the surrealism.

Having never participated in the Lit thread, my opinion doesn't mean much but I've read a fair bit of Science Fiction. It's already been mentioned earlier in this thread in relation to conspiracy theories but I always recommend The Illuminatus! Trilogy when people ask for sci-fi recs. It's not your spaceships and aliens or far future sci-fi but it's a really fun mix of drugged out conspiracy theory and sexed up stream of consciousness, time jumping, pov swapping, alternate reality with a lot of counterculture and cult religion content that could appeal to metalheads. It also references Lovecraft pretty frequently and I know he's a favorite around these parts.

I haven't read it in a long time but since you say you're enjoying Asimov, I remember The Gods Themselves fondly. It's a little less straight forward than a lot of his stuff. Other classic sci-fi that I would rec: Vonnegut's The Siren's of Titan (the novel that got me into sci-fi), Williamson's The Humanoids since you enjoyed the Robots books, Bester's The Stars My Destination for the Slough Feg connection and The Demolished Man, Keys's Flowers for Algernon, Dick's Man in the High Castle and Ubik, Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, Haldeman's The Forever War. You know, this is a bit useless since there are a bazillion "Best of" lists out there. But anyway.

I have to second Stranger in a Strange Land. I know Heinlein is super self-indulgent with his over the top libertarianism and he's an obvious old school sexist but that's one of those novels that blows so many minds you've got to read it if only to have the common frame of reference. I'm also partial to his The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and the short story collection The Unpleasant Profession of Johnathan Hoag. (Disclaimer: I was smoking some seriously large quantities of weed when I was an undergrad and first read Stranger. I think I skipped classes for most of a semester and instead read his entire bibliography in a smoky coffee shop when I was 20. My GPA eventually recovered but my mind is still clouded by the experience. It took most of a decade of grad school to blunt my anarcho-libertarian edge.)

I wanted to like Man in the High Castle but I couldn't get into it that much.

I'm working on a story right now, and have been surprised by how much the atmosphere is affected by the sheer act of reading. Sounds kind of elementary, but it's subtle. Clipped sentences or long. Focus on the adjective or on the verb? Tuning language, I guess one could call it. Sounds like zeit-girl was a whiny violin?


Nahsil, chuffed to hear you're liking the claw. I love hearing that book get respect.

Fla Pack / Abominatrix - Thanks / staying tuned.

Illuminatus Trilogy is a classic of nutty post-modern, critical thinking lit imo. I still need to read Foucault's Pendulum, got a copy a while back.

Just got this a couple days ago because it keeps coming up around here.

Is the Illuminatus! actually worth reading? I never got that impression as much as I like Wilson.

Having recently rediscovered my love for the horrific, the grotesque, and the genre of horror in general, I picked up my sole, well worn volume of Lovecraft. It has that wonderful musky aroma of an old paper back. I'm not even sure when I bought it, I may have even been in middle school (an astounding 8 years ago). It's called Waking Up Screaming. I'd like another recommendation to further explore Lovecraft's work. Are any of the Cthulhu anthologies worth picking up? On that note, any of the Cthulhu mythos inspired by Lovecraft (written by other mortals) I should check out? I don't want to shell out for a complete works, nor do I have a kindle or other e-reader (not sure if Lovecraft is public domain yet).

Looks like Ang Lee's gonna direct the movie adaptation of The Life of Pi.

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

only Uwe Boll can give that book the treatment it truly deserves.

there are lots of good compilations of other mythos writers which are worth getting. In fact all of the ones I've read (I have 5 or 6 of them) have 3 or 4 stories which make the price of admission worth it. My favorite mythos writers are Thomas Ligotti and T.E.D Klein if that helps.

What are the titles of the compilations you have? I have really been meaning to check out Ligotti, from what I can gather he's a mixture of horror-genre and "literary" writing that should be right up my alley.

Any reason for this, like a preview or something? or is this just first blush hyperbole?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Hjrs6WQ8M

looks neat!

Yeah, doesn't look so bad (obligatory preview schmaltz factor not withstanding) .. what's the deal, 'kiiro? Why does this make you want to evacuate the planet or commit suicide?

So I'm almost done reading The Know It All by A.J. Jacobs, and I really like it. It's a fun, creative non-fiction about this journalist guy who embarked on a project to read the entire encyclopedia, and he summarizes some of it here with anecdotes about his own life as well as various musings and interpretations...it's a lot of fun. It's a very punchy, well written and humorous book that has some really memorable bits, despite cramming so much information in. Jacobs is a funny guy. He has an instantly likable writing style that goes well with the oddball premise. It just goes to show you that old parable - truth is stranger than fiction.

And I just checked out James Joyce's The Dubliners. I really enjoyed reading "The Dead" in class last year so I figured I'd go deeper into his stuff on my own. I dig the rich language and the complex style. Will have to report back after I've read more.

It's Ang Lee. He's infamous for skipping on character development and for being overly sappy, and he's working on a movie version of a book that is 95% character development and deconstructs the notion of sappiness.

Besides which, I didn't see the zebra, the hyena, or the orangutan on the lifeboat...the trailer might have just skipped that part, but they're pretty instrumental to the plot. Oh well, I'll probably see it when it comes out, the book was quite good.

"Pretty instrumental" is an understatement. Without the hyena, the orangutan, and the zebra, the story does not work.

Sure, but I don't want to spoil it for people.

I'm halfway through reading Knut Hamsun's Hunger. It's one of the only books I've read that manages to be interesting while being almost entirely plotless. It's incredibly depressing and Hamsun's prose is amazing.

I'm going through a steampunk, apocalyptic phase. I read 'Boneshaker' by Cherie Priest which i highly recommend. Currently reading 'One second after' by William Forstchen

Reading "bring up the bodies" by Hillary Mantel at the moment. Its the sequel to Wolf Hall which you may recall won the Booker Prize a few years back. Really very good, and unlike most historical fiction (especially about Henry VIII) doesn't turn it it into a bodice-ripper a la "the tudors".

I just started The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams. It has all his quirky wit seen in the Hitchhiker Guide series. His line of thinking is sort of like this sarcastic silly logic that uses such out there examples but makes sense at the same time. He's fun to read.

Yeah, I've never read it, but the preview made me want to. I'm just kind of running with the assumption that the book is better.

I just want to jump in on the Heinlein discussion and recommend 'Job: A comedy of errors' as a very fun religious satire. I've read 'Stranger' and while somewhat engrossing there are to many aspects about it that just annoy me. I'm hunting down Farnhams freehold at the moment.

It's a great collection, though I must say that , for me,"The Dead" is the best story there by far - of course, that doesn't reflect the quality of the others so much as the incredible power of that particular tale. I encountered the book in a uni lit class as well - though this was, oh, about five or six years ago - and found the imagery and emotional resonance quite breathtaking; it really bears re-reading, especially once you get into Joyce's other works (this was the first piece of writing by him that I'd really read properly) - it shows another side to his imagination that, once you realise just how well he observes nuances of feeling and mundane tragedy here, becomes easier to find and hold onto in his more abstract, linguistically playful pieces. Anyway, my other favourite stories of those in Dubliners were The Sisters, A Painful Case and Grace, so I'd be curious to hear what you (or anyone else who has read them) thinks...

Read the first two stories finally, they were both very interesting. Could have had stronger endings (both just sort of stopped cold, like he just didn't feel like writing anymore), but I did think it was cool how they were basically just little slices of life. Like little photographic snippets of reality. Joyce's writing is really powerful and he can string together prose that is relatable, complex and easy to read all at the same time - it's the subtle nuances that do it, the little details that capture how people act and think. He takes mundane subject matter and makes you interested. It's easy to get into first because it's so relatable every-day stuff and second because the writing is just damn good.

Good to hear. I passed it up, wanting to hear more opinions of the guy before buying more ..

Yeah man, Heinlein is a tough one to peg for for me, I don't hold his 'classics' in such high regard personally (moon, stranger) but some of his others are simply amazing to me, well worth checking out, and I don't know how deep you have dug into SF authors so far, but another to definitely look into is Jack Vance, I will always appreciate his unique humour and ability to connect the audience with his main characters in odd ways. And just a great storyteller overall.

*noted. thanks!

Just got done reading "The Quiet American" for a course at Uni - really a great read.

Anyone know of any books I may like if I like Fight Club and The Dark Fields (the books)?

Try Naked Lunch, Snow White and Russian Red, Battle Royal

Heinlein evokes such weird reactions. There are people like you who like the really out there stuff in his later novels when he completely gives himself over to solipsism. There are people that think he lost his mind sometime in the late 60's and all his later novels are complete shit. And then there is the large contingent who are completely repulsed by his staunch libertarian individualism or his sometimes overt sexism to the point that he could have written Ulysses and they would still call it crap.

Heinlein is my brother's favorite author. Definitely a weird phenomenon. I've only read Starship Troopers but I'm gonna get to Stranger eventually, my roommate loves it.

Reading a translation of The Egyptian Book of the Dead just now - It's fascinating for it's insight into ancient Egyptian spiritual and religious practice, and frankly, it also feels really awesome to be reading something with such age behind it. I'm going to read the whole Bible in the near future too, just to see what all the fuss is about, and to get a better understanding of it.

On the side, Aside from demolishing the occasional Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel, I'm reading Ecstasy, by Irvine Welsh - a trio of novellas which blend the macabre with the beautiful, often with a hefty dose of Scottish banter.

This is what you'll find:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19597_8- ... bible.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_15699_th ... erses.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_16546_th ... bible.html
http://www.cracked.com/funny-3778-5-bib ... mythology/
http://www.cracked.com/article_16429_5- ... shame.html