Books you're reading now

[Yaxley]

Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies by Chris Kluwe.

[Metcarfre]

I'm reading through Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, and it's endlessly fascinating. If you think you know the value of things and make informed choices when shopping, give it a read.

[Bebop Man]

"David Lynch", by Michel Chion, for my thesis.

[Volafortis]

Currently rereading Fahrenheit 451 and reading John Dies at the End for the first time.

[JustAName]

Rereading Dandelion Wine. It is still great.

[Metcarfre]

Drinking dandelion wine. Still gross, but gets you liquored!

[Yaxley]

Just picked up MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood. It's the third book in the MaddAddam trilogy, which is kind of weird because most trilogies aren't named after the last book in the series, but whatever. The first two were fascinating, so I have high hopes for this one.

[tak197]

Just finished "The Silver Linings Playbook" and about to start "Happy Hour In Hell: Volume Two of the Bobby Dollar Trilogy"

[LogicSword]

I started reading the FRINGE novel. It reads like bad fanfiction and now I am sad

[Yaxley]

Just finished The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. The gist is that a guy created a true AI that gave itself nearly omnipotent powers, but could not violate the Laws of Robotics. So if it can't, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm, it has to make everyone effectively immortal. And when death has no consequences, people get into some fucked up stuff. Fascinating, but the violence would probably turn some people off.

[Thysane]

Currently wading through Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson, and I use "wading" in the best, most positive sense of the word. Enjoying piecing things together, and the plot ticks along at a good pace. This is the way I like world-building: not up-front, but filtered in through the characters and their journeys through the setting. I can see why people might not like that approach, I was confused as all hell for the first few chapters, but this is, as Daisy in Spaced would say, the good shit.

[Jenelmo]

I read the Gardens of the Moon series (Malazan book of the fallen) a few years ago and the series is very good, it is a little hard to read if you like me has a problem with names, but it is a good and well written series with great characters.
All this is being said with having read the last book as it hadn't been released when i read the other ones and i feel that before i read that one i have to re-read the other 9 which is 10000 pages and i do not have the time right now.

I am currently reading Bram Stokers original Dracula and it is very good so far.
The suspense about what kind of creature Dracula is and what he wants isn't there as it would have been had it read it without knowing about Dracula but that is impossible in this day and age

[iamafish]

I just finished reading 'the seven basic plots: why we tell stories' by Christopher booker, which is an absolute doorstop, but well worth getting through, especially if you're a writer or are interested in storytelling

[Bebop Man]

Just finished Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut. I'm starting Cormac McCarthy's Child of God. I was very enthusiastic about McCarthy once upon a time, but I fear my fanboyism has run dry. Or maybe I'm just sick of the same description of the shitty '20s American midwest. We'll see.

[Volafortis]

So who here has read Catch-22? I'm rereading it now, and damn, I forgot how amazing this book really was.

[Geoff_B]

Started Assassin's Creed Renaissance. It follows the game very closely while providing a bit more background information to explain motivations. Plus it helps to explain the timeline a bit more - apparently in the game three training objectives that can be accomplished in ten minutes takes two years.

[Kthanid]

Slowly working my way through the Culture series by Iain M. Banks. Some of the best hypertech space opera I've ever read.

[Bebop Man]

So who here has read Catch-22? I'm rereading it now, and damn, I forgot how amazing this book really was.

I've come close to buying it several times but something has always kept me. I loved the film though.

[katykjersen]

Currently reading Mortal Instruments. The movie moved me to do so.

[JackSlack]

The best thing movie adaptations can often do: Drive interest to the source material.

Also, Katy, you may want to introduce yourself in the introductions thread.

[Sieg Reyu]

Wild Cards, a collaborative book series thing created by good old George R.R. Martin

[Drecon]

So who here has read Catch-22? I'm rereading it now, and damn, I forgot how amazing this book really was.

I got it one of my birthays and it is still one of the prides of my collection.

[Mara Kalat]

Finally got a big bag of belated birthday presents, mostly books (yay!).
Now eating my way through The Long War (Baxter & Pratchett) and Snow Crash, both are awesome so far.

Mara.

[JustAName]

Snow Crash is great.

I'm reading stories assigned in my Experimental Fiction class. This is very fascinating, and also very hard to read for long periods of time.

There are no nouns in Tlön's conjectural Ursprache, from which the "present" languages and the dialects are derived: there are impersonal verbs, modified by monosyllabic suffixes (or prefixes) with an adverbial value. For example: there is no word corresponding to the word "moon,", but there is a verb which in English would be "to moon" or "to moonate." "The moon rose above the river" is hlor u fang axaxaxas mlo, or literally: "upward behind the onstreaming it mooned."

[AdmiralMemo]

I'm currently finishing Volume 2 in the ReDeus series of short story anthologies, which I think are great. I started reading them due to a combination of circumstances. I bought them at Shore Leave, and had them signed by several of the authors. I sat on them for a little while, reading other books on my "To Read" list.

Synopsis of the back-story, with no spoilers - Click to Expand

They are about a hypothetical present and future where the Mayan "Doomsday" prediction came true in a surprising way: the gods returned. All of them. From every pantheon. It's interesting to read about how much changes and how much doesn't in this new world order. The gods are trying to cope with a world they have no concept of. They want people to come back to their "native" lands of their heritage and not travel much anymore. This means a mass exodus of about a third of the US, while the First Nations gods try to divvy up the land among the few remaining tribes. The gods quickly adapt to many forms of technology, but abolish others. Most adapt to newspapers, TV, and radio, as those are forms of communication they can control. However, they have no idea what to do with the Internet, as when they try to shut down a site they don't like, two more pop up. Christianity and Judaism have become very minor religions, almost overnight, as the Judeo-Christian God didn't manifest Himself like the rest, so most took Him to be mythical, compared to the gods they could see and touch, like Zeus, Odin, and Quetzalcoatl. (Not to spoil anything, but some of the stories give indications that He is indeed doing something, if very indirectly.)
And then, what of atheists, when the gods are so clearly plain to see?
Also, the gods have no idea of what to do with those of mixed ancestry. If you've got German, Greek, First Nations, and African ancestry, which gods do you worship?
But so much is the same. People still worry about their jobs and families. Crimes still happen. People still go to parties, watch movies, listen to music, etc. Life of the ordinary people goes on, even with such major shifts in who's in charge.

In any case, I'm loving them, and I was somewhat spurred to bump them up on my reading list by a sermon that one of the elders at my church did on "The Gods of the Nations". It was fascinating sermon, and I mentioned this book series to him after church. He was quite interested in it, so I told him I'd loan it to him once I was done reading it. I finished the first book and have one story left in the second. Here's hoping the third is just as good as these two.