Loved that one.

Another fan!

Yes, it's one of the few modern novels that managed to stick with me past reading, where the scenes would slowly come back when I was thinking alone. Plus, it's an excellent look into how mundane evil things can be, even when Max vomits at the thought of the camps, or cries at the death of a Jewish boy, or that he will never love his sister, he still just allows awful things to happen.



Even if he did it out of self-defense, or out of self-loathing, it shows how truly callous he is to the suffering in the world, and how his position of recording all the deaths in the war has made him stone cold to it.

I'm currently reading Lever's Sade and it's quite fascinating. I'm not a big fan of Sade's books, as they are mostly drivel wank-material for sickos, mixed in with the occasional philosophical statement, but I am absolutely fascinated by him as a man and as a figure for the epitome of Western "freedom" unhinged by God or King. Thus, this excellently written biography is wonderfully intriguing. Even if you hate everything he's written, this book just goes to show how unbearably interesting he is a man.

Hell Yeah! Just today the second novel of the "No Man's World" series calles "The Ironclad Prophecy" arrived... WW1 meets Edgar Rice Burroughs-like scifi. I especially like the cover showing the helmet-mask of a WW1 british tank soldier
Book one (Black hand Gang) was a real blast and I have the feeling this one will stand nothing behind!

Been plowing through the Legend of Drizzt books by R.A. Salvatore. Just started book 10. Don't remember enjoying a series this much in a long time and would highly recommend it to any fantasy fans who aren't already familiar.

Also just started The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss which seems like it's going to be great as well.

I'll second the rec on those Deathlands books, Dragunov. Read a few of those a couple years ago and enjoyed them, action packed and easy reads.

@Dragonov:

Ok, here are a few "WW2 meets occult" novels I could recommend to you:

"Bitter Seeds" by Ian Tregillis


the follow-up to Bitter Seeds is also available and called "The Coldest War" btw...

then there's the very, dense, tensioned and gloomy yet also action packed:

"Shadows in the Mist" by Brian Moreland


"The Keep" by F. Paul Wilson


and for a total exploitation check out this hillarious, absurd comic. Not sooo good drawings but a totally insane story

http://www.amazon.com/War-The-Undead-Br ... the+undead

Has anyone else read Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series? I'm almost finished with the first one, and I have to say, the protagonist is one of the most complex and interesting characters I've ever read, period. The juxtaposition between Covenant and the world he enters and quest he adopts is beautiful (in that it's terrible).

I haven't, but I've been interested for about 10 years now, haha. Should I move these books up on my priorities list?

As for what I'm currently reading: Dracula. Rereading, I should say. I've been in a strange mood for vampire stuff lately, so I figured, why not revisit the best? And it is absolutely as good as the first time I read it two years ago.

Why the hell can't I write like Gene Wolfe. His use of metaphor and imagery is incredible.

Yes.

Just got The Kindly Ones in the mail. I thought I'd give it a try after seeing what you guys said about it. Only 70 pages in, but I'm really liking it. I found the 25 page intro/prologue to be really effective and awesome. Definitely got me wanting to dig in to the story. I read slow as fuck but I'm gonna be tackling this book fairly hard given its girth in an effort not to dwell on it too long, much like I did when reading The Brothers Karamazov. In any case, it seems like its going to be a hard book to put down thus far.

This sounds interesting. I looked it up further and it's now on my to-buy list. Man dankt.

Currently reading Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch. I borrowed the book from a friend, who was very insistent about me reading it. It's solid so far, English humorous urban fantasy, although I'm not really that hooked.

Before that I had finished Neal Stephenson's Anathem. It's one of those really creative and thought-provoking speculative works that I treasure, not always with the best narrative choices, but compelling from start to finish because of the concepts and mysteries involved. I also like Stephenson's sometimes mischievously facetious style alongside the grand themes, like a less ridiculous and less self-deprecating Zelazny. Gonna have to check out Snow Crash as well.

And even before that were Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, both of which I greatly enjoyed. Obviously for different reasons. This has to suffice for now.

Definitely worth the effort!


I just finished Angela Carter's The Inernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman which was.. weird. Very well written, and I like how she effortlessly creates several totally strange and yet believable societies/worlds just to abandom them again. Many times an author won't 'move away' from her/his creations, here, there were no strings attached. Kind of reminds me of A Voyage To Arcturus, now that I whink about it. But it's still a very, very weird book.

Next up: Some Borges I think.

I've thought the same thing myself. I concluded that I would never be able to no matter how long or hard I tried and decided to never even hope to. It's not fair, but there it is. Think you'll pick up Urth of the New Sun after the Book proper? I'm still trying to motivate to get back into Long Sun... not that I don't want to read the damn thing, but I need to, like, go to my job and achieve goals and spend time with my girlfriend, none of which I can reasonably do while reading Gene Wolfe.

What makes Gene Wolfe especially good is how he's very very good at determining how smart his readers are, providing just enough clues to his puzzles that they're not frustrating, but not so many that they're too easily solved. Hell, if you read The Sorcerer's House, it's all told through letters, and thus necessarily filtered through the perspectives of their writers, and as they are mailed to different people, the writers style themselves differently for each recipient. I nearly missed the entire import of the climax, because by its very nature it's not something the protagonist wants to divulge. I finished it thinking "well, that was kind of anticlimactic," and set the book down. Then the next day I just felt that I owed Gene Wolfe the benefit of the doubt, thought about it, and damned if I didn't realize I'd nearly missed the whole thing. I loved it too, once I got it.

I have to write a 4 page memoir in personal narrative about an event that occurred in my life. I can't.. fucking.. think of anything! I'm seriously about to just start writing a story about being abducted by aliens. It's due in like 30 hours.

Edit:

I fucking did it! 14 pages, about a personal narrative about the morning leading up me me writing the personal narrative! It turned out to be 14 fucking pages! Now I have to type it What a morning, man. what a morning.

I just read 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'. God, what an insane novel. It starts out quite differently from what I thought it would be, but the plot revolving the dissapearance of a female character turns absolutley CRAZY when the novel ends. I highly recommend it, honestly, one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. I've always been fascinated with crime novels and crime history (i'm a huge fan of the American TV show 'Cold Case Files') and this novel is totally up to par with that. Crazy crime scenes are awesome.

Now I'm currently reading Harry Turtledove's 'Into the Darkness'. Has anyone else read this? It's this fantasy novel that apparently has something similar to WWII. Honestly, I'm not getting it at all. I've only gone through the first chapter and it's really confusing. Has anyone read it enough to tell me it's worth the 600+ page endevour?

The 2011 US movie was great, too, though it did skimp on telling us what the scandal our main protagonist was involved in at the start was all about.

Currently planning on seeing the Swedish version on Netflix, would like to see the US version too now that you mention it.

The Kindly Ones is blowing my mind so far....like 210 pages in and despite having around 700+ pages left, so much shit has happened. Can't even imagine whats coming next. And yes, I'm updating here mid-read because well, its the reading thread and it doesn't get much action, so fuck it. Plus I'm extremely enthralled with this book thus far and know I'll be reading it for the next 2 weeks at the very least so I need to praise it somewhere.

DUDES AND DUDETTES! I invite to to read my own personal narrative. I wrote the entire thing this morning, revised and retyped it tonight! I wrote it as a college assignment but I've become so fond of it, I want to share it with the lot of you. I read it like ten times over myself and it's pretty much perfect. Mods, I think it meets your standards of quality

It's a tale involving heavy metal, anguish and despair, and humor!

Check it out for yourself

Huh, the access is restricted, dude.

weird. I wonder how I can fix that.

Is it very long? Because you can put it on pastebin. Also, dropbox, mediafire, etc...

I made the access to anyone who has the link. It should work now.

Try it now

The link in my previous post should work too. Yeah, it all took place this morning. I wrote it, revised and retyped it all today. It's brilliant if I do say so myself.

This story is titled: I couldn’t think of a personal narrative to write, so I waited till the last minute to
write a personal narrative about the morning leading up to me writing the personal narrative

When is it due again? I'm a writing tutor at my uni, and I noticed some grammatical/whatnot errors in my very brief viewing of it. If you want me to make revision suggestions, I wouldn't mind. I do this shit all the time.

I appreciate the offer. I proofreaded it this morning, and indented it. It came out much better when I made the final revisions. I feel like we wouldn't want to be going over things twice. So perhaps I'll revise the paper myself in google docs and then if you could look at it, cool. I'll message you when it's fully edited. That is the original unedited version after all. I just attached it to an email from my other computer and sent it to this one. Probably won't be till a while from now, though.

We're just doing revisions, the final draft isn't due for some time.

I seriously need to read it again, and soon. All this reccommending it and now hearing about it again makes me want to give it a go...

But great you're enjoying it!



Really? I must say I was rather let down by the series. I read all three novels some years ago when they were all the rage here in Denmark and I was pretty disappointed, especially with the characters (!) and the writing. The story itself is pretty good and the crime elements are decent, but still.

The Swedish movie is quite good though.

@Metaldiscussor666

Just read your personal narrative. I always enjoy reading about people's daily life so in that case I could be considered a snoop I kind of like how the narrative takes on a different turn and suddenly focuses on the music you bought, it kind of brings a different element and how the main character (in this case, you) reacts to a situation. Also, sir, pumpkin spice coffee sounds very, very awesome.

The new Humble Bundle features phantasy/sci-fi eBooks. Recommendations?

I have never read any of those books, but Neil Gaimann is a pretty good author, I would totally root for that guy if I had to chose any.

I enjoy reading "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" by Gary Zukav. An outstanding piece about modern physics and quantum mechanics as it's intertwined, related to, and compared to Chinese spirituality.

Another great work is "The Tao of Pooh" by Benjamin Hoff. What a helluva way to describe and teach the principals of the Uncarved block and the basic understandings of Taoism without some boring, flat, put it down in 10 minutes for coffee type book. It's a book I have stuck to quite a bit.

No, I am no Chinese philosophy geek, nor do I pretend to be one. Just so happens these two works are Chinese related.

On my recent Star Trek book kick, I am still reading The Undiscovered Country, though I find it interrupts what I know from seeing the movie (I am a huge Trekkie geek and yes, have all the films, VHS and DVD as well as the original series). It does give good insight and depth into the relationships that the Klingons have with eachother that really isn't expressed in the movie (Azetbur and Kevla having an intimate relationship that in no way is expressed int he film). Overall an interesting take on a good story. The novel also goes into some detail regarding Kirk's baby momma Carol Marcus; how she died and her relationship with Kirk.

I think that is about it.

Just read two books for my Canadian literature class:

Sheila Watson - The Double Hook
This was an uhh.. interesting one. It's written in a very obscure way, the text is written almost more like a screenplay than a novel. It's about all this messed up stuff that happens in a town in the B.C. interior. She's obviously a brilliant writer, but it can be a bit hard to follow at times. Overall a worthwhile read, even if some of it was a bit over my head.

Emily Carr - Klee Wick
I only knew her as a painter, but apparently she was a writer too. Really weird woman, my prof was telling us that she used to go out on the beach collecting clay in a really weird baggy dress, smoking while pushing a baby monkey in a shopping cart. This book is about her times visiting the native reserves. Pretty interesting, a bit hard to read at times (some pretty fucked up stuff), her writing technique wasn't amazing or anything, but it got the job done. Not the best book ever, but still fairly interesting.

Ditto on the other response. I'm familiar with a lot of Neil Gaiman's work. I recommend Anansi Boys.

Re-reading Illuminatus! by Robert Anton Wilson/Robert Sea. First read it when I was 18, didn't fucking dig it - thought it was a pretentious, deliberately confusing piece of shit that paraded its faults as some sort of esoteric 'wisdom'. Read Schrodinger's Cat after that, liked it a bit more, still thought it was a pretentious fusion of Tim Leary worship and Robert Heinlein worship, but good for a few chuckles.

But after reading Prometheus Rising, Cosmic Trigger and Quantum Psychology - I finally get the way this guy works. Those three books had a profound impact on me, and I attribute a lot of positive change in my life to those books. Re-reading Illuminatus! is quite rewarding, and I'm going to re-read Schrodinger's Cat soon, too.

His fiction novels are quite Joyceian, and of course will not be appreciated (or fully understood) by those acclimated to the traditional Victorian novel. I never got Joyce until I read RAW (the aforementioned books as well as various essays), and you won't get RAW until you read his more grounded, "non-fiction" (I suppose) books. Again: Prometheus Rising, the Cosmic Trigger series, etc.

He's slightly mad, but quite brilliant. I've learned a lot from him. And he's mellowed the severe paranoia I've dealt with since I was a child.

I should read his non-fiction. I enjoyed Illuminatus! and I feel like I grasp a decent bit of its message, but there's probably a whole lot I don't understand.

Oh and hail discordia, hail eris etc.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19942975

Possibly unknown Kafka works in the wings.

I'm not quite sure anyone understands Illuminatus! 100% except the authors. At least, I can't imagine it. But what we each get from those books is what's important, I suppose, and for me it has been a revelation.

Hail discordia, indeed. Anyone that reads this is a pope, etc.

On the topic of discordia, I love that, despite his vast intellect, RAW and the lot were not above hilarious gags, slapstick humor and an all-around jolly time. The whole concept of 'discordianism' is hilarious.

Illuminatus! sounds interesting. Fiction or non-fiction though?

Fiction. Though they cram in a lot of social and psychological commentary.

For me, the story is not as important as the way it is told. It throws a lot of interesting concepts your way, a lot bullshit concepts, a lot of intriguing theory, and a lot of laughable theory. The way your mind must operate outside of it's normal comfort zone to analyze and interpret this information is the rewarding part of the book, for me. It also has so much symbolism and inside-joking going on that I'm pretty sure anyone could read the book five times and still come out with a totally different conclusion each time.

A lot of it is just a good belly laugh, too. I'd still strongly suggest reading at least Prometheus Rising before Illuminatus!, though. PR was Wilson's PHD dissertation.

Read Illuminatus if you have time. I agree with thinking no one understands it. I read back in high school so obviously I didn’t understand any of it. It inspired me to changing my writing style though. Some of my creative writing won awards which was exciting at the time. I tried to go back recently and reread but ultimately didn’t have time to focus enough.