Favorite books / What are you reading?

Been enjoying the comic and the series Walking Dead.
Right now I am mostly reading for school.
On my desk
Walter Opello and Stephen Rosow- The Nation State adn the Global Order
Nick Reding- Methlad- Death and life of an American Small Town
Michael Sodaro- Comparative Politics - a Global Introduction.

For fun, Cherie Priest, Boneshaker. Someone said it was the ideal Steampunk book. I figured I would try it.
Just finished The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo. Was ok, but not worth the hype.

 

Thought I'd re-read The Hobbit, will be interesting to see how the film(s) turn out.

 

^ They will need to approach it a fair bit different to Lotr if it's going to turn out well...I mean in terms of hack-and-slash-Aragon-ownage scenes, the Hobbit's fairly lacking minus the battle of five armies.

 

^
But i think that Boromir profited in the movie , with all that hack-slash-COME AT ME BRO

 

Not a big fan of LoTR or the Hobbit, really. But then I grew up on the original Conan. Its a completely different esthetic.

 

Hobbit's a lot more light-hearted than LoTR. I actually liked it more than the trilogy. But agreed, they'll need to take a completely different approach to making the movie if they want it to be any good. The story is in a completely different mood from LoTR.

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Anyway, I'm starting to re-read Zelazny's Lord of Light. One of his hardest to read books, let's see if I can puzzle out more this time compared to 5 or so years ago.

 

So far it's good, and it's getting better. I'm about the middle of the book, and I really like it, it's definitely better than Great Hunt or Eye of the World.
But I had a feeling that Jordan would drain most of the "good stuff" overtime, and it really seems so, as this book is really fast-paced.

 

I haven't yet read the Conan books, now I'm interested though. I did read the comics and saw the films.

Now eyeing a book called Hiroshima by John Hersey. A landmark book about the subject, somehow I've missed this until now.

 

If you're finding it to be fast paced and you consider this a bad thing, just wait till you get to book seven...the pace seems to suffer an exponential slackening each chapter. Said slackening continues throughout the subsequent three books. Jordan is the only author I've ever seen pull of the feat, of creating a book where nothing happens. I kid you not, by the time you finish book ten you will be amazed (yet bored) that you have just read 700 pages of...nothing. It's hard to explain how he achieves this, I guess the level of irrelevant, encyclopedic description of incredibly minor characters and plot lines gets turned up a notch (or thirty).

 

No, no, I don't find "fast-pacing" a bad thing. I say it's good, but it can lead to bad things e.g. slackening,, as you said, because when "fast-paced" he drains the "good stuff".

Never used so many quotes in two sentences...

 

Just finished reading 'Unseen Academicals' of Pratchett. The german version though because i still think i might not be able to understand enough when reading it in english - quite strange that i don't dare to try because i recently read Bram Stookers 'Dracula' and Kevin Mitnicks 'The Art of Deception' in english and had no problems reading them...

I enjoyed the book even though they used some new translator who has some bad habits and dropped some style the earlier translators used.
The idea of female dwarfs developing the need to distinguish themselves from male ones is quite entertaining for me. Than again i think the whole Discworld lost a bit of momentum after that many books.

 

I am reading William Burrough's Naked Lunch,

 

Read a Lovecraft short story called The Shunned House. It's a vampire story and a nice antidote to all the pop culture stuff where vampires are good looking angst-ridden teens. No one would want to be a vampire like the one in this story.

 

Apparently, if you want stuff to make sense today, you have to read Lovecraft stories.

 

It's surprising just how many references you notice if you're familiar with his work.

 

Too many... But, is it good, or bad?

Anyway, read Dragon Reborn from Robert Jordan, great book.
Now I have to buy next book online, argh, such a pain in the ass...

 

Reading Red Mars right now, so far so good.

 

I'm only about 75 pages in, but it focuses on the voyage and colonization of Mars. Really, really good characters so far and the writing is extremely vivid. It's widely considered the best of the series and there is a good amount of believable science, tech, and engineering. The author clearly did his homework.

 

Pretty harmless, I'd say. Better than seeing Anne Rice or Twilight references everywhere, am I right?

I saw a South Park episode the other night where the goth kids help Cartman summon Cthulhu. Pretty funny.