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Yeah, given how obsessed he was with alchemy before he realized it wasn't real... it's not science gone to far, it's how far an obsessive man can take science or any other powerful tool.

Oh no Jane Eyre whyyyyy. I liked it so much when I started it, but then it was just another Fall In Love With A Byronic Hero novel. I hate it when that happens.

Just finished Trigger Warning, and, interestingly enough, it did hit one of my two triggers in the last story. For being subtitled "Short fictions and disturbances", it definitely delivered. There are a couple stories I can see coming back to haunt me in my sleep, but likely not tonight. Good collection, though I'm not sure I'm impressed enough to own it at any point, we'll see.

The trigger it hit? Panic attacks caused by depictions, graphic or otherwise, of cats being mutilated, harmed, or killed. For what it's worth, it either didn't hit my rape trigger, which is more of an adrenaline-rage than panic attack, or I managed to block it out if it did.

Tomorrow, I start in on The Book of Jhereg. I've read about 3/4 of the Khaavren Romances, but this is my first dive into the Taltos series. Looking forward to it!

Reading "Ariel" by Sylvia Plath.

I read Prey by Michael Crichton, my first by him.

Might be my last for a while.

Like, I like how deeply scientific he gets, but boy does this take a while to get going, and the machinations aren't much different than in any other random airport novel you might see. There's a lot of stuff you can tell where they're going way ahead of the characters, and it's just kinda dull otherwise.

At least I finished it.

Jurassic Park was pretty good though.

I started reading Jhereg last night, and I'm really enjoying the character this series focuses on, Vlad Taltos, quite a bit. He's kind of like a smarmy, Sherlock-level deducing assassin. With a familiar jhereg (a small snake-like flying reptile, full grown of a wingspan smaller than an arm) that he talks to psionically, and who calls him "boss". It's first person, in a kind of "let me tell you what happened" way, but it works really well.

Since I've read most of the Khaavren Romances, I do enjoy Brust's style, but the Romances and the Taltos series are written differently, as you may know the Romances are "historical" accounts of what happened, by some academic, and the Taltos novels are definitely Vlad telling the story. His style still definitely comes through, though, as the characters are witty, charming, and distinct, lots of showing, minimal telling, and plots that are slightly absurd, but believable for the world they take place in.

Also getting back into Dragaera makes me want my own tiassa again (it's like a winged puma).

Bebop Man wrote:Jurassic Park was pretty good though.

Yeah, I enjoyed it too, and it even had a decent influence ony book. But I tries reading Eaters if the Dead/The 13th Warrior shortly after, and just couldn't make myself finish it.

Volafortis wrote:I just started it, so I can't say much about it, but I've enjoyed what I've read so far.

Really enjoying 1Q84. Just had the reveal of how the stories intersect. Thanks for the recommendation Volafortis!

Finished Ariel, liked it a lot. First time I ever read anything by Sylvia Plath. Also read Mark Millar's Wanted. Weird read. I can't tell if the guy's being facetious or rally takes his message seriously.

RoboNixon wrote:

Volafortis wrote:I just started it, so I can't say much about it, but I've enjoyed what I've read so far.

Really enjoying 1Q84. Just had the reveal of how the stories intersect. Thanks for the recommendation Volafortis!

Yeah, I've found it has a very nice flow, it's done a very good job of pulling me through the novel. It feels like I'll just pick it up and all of a sudden I've read almost a hundred pages in one sitting.

Finished Doctor Thorne. Early into it I realised that I had started it before. I could not remember how it turned out but I quickly figured it out. It came together a bit too neatly in the last couple chapters.

In preparation for moving to England in a couple weeks I am rereading Lawrence James' The Middle Class: A History.

Still getting through The Book of Jhereg (which is an omnibus of Jhereg, Yendi and Teckla). Finished Jhereg and read over half of Yendi last night. I would describe Jhereg as a very solid story. Some action, some comedy, strong personalities, and great characters. On the contrast, I would say that Yendi is a rollercoaster of absurdity, and I am loving every moment of it. I have to finish Teckla by Sunday (library loan limit), but then I'll have The Book of Taltos (Taltos and Phoenix omnibus) waiting for me on hold, so I can jump right in.

If you like fantasy, I highly recommend the Taltos series.

Finally got around to starting House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewsky. About 100 pages in, and I gotta say, the narrative structure is brilliant. The page structure, however, is gimmicky and just an excuse for Danielewsky to show off. Still, it's philosophically invigorating with its blend of existentialism and romanticism, and, even beyond that, the idea of a sort of psychedelic, surrealist Paranormal Activity is pretty heavily my style, as is the legitimately unnerving sense of horror throughout.

House of Leaves is definitely one of the best books I've read in the past year. It sets the atmosphere absolutely perfectly, and all of the characters are incredibly well written. Beyond that, it's truly unnerving and suspenseful and the formatting, while some may claim it's a gimmick, I feel it does well to help the reader experience the house first hand. Although after reading Infinite Jest, I was accustomed to reading with footnotes and frequent flips to the back, so that probably helped me enjoy/understand the formatting more.

Well, that was one of my issues with Infinite Jest, too, really. The things that really add to the world tend to be things that could easily have been fit into the actual prose, and the things that aren't are just painfully didactic. The same thing is happening in this, so far. That said, I do really like the idea of a book that actually uses the fact that it is a book to enhance the story, so at least it gets bonus points for that. Strange that literature took so long for it to reach that point when younger mediums like film and video games have been doing it for quite a while.

I dunno, I suppose I like it because it allows the author to make connections between points in the novel or to world build, or to show related events, whatever, while not breaking the flow of the bulk of the novel or info-dumping through a token info-dump character. Several of my favorite parts of Infinite Jest were in the footnotes, and in many cases, I can see why they weren't put in a the bulk of the novel; they'd disrupt flow.

House of Leaves does it for a different reason though. In House of Leaves, the formatting changes with the house, or at least, that's how I saw the formatting. I'm not going to go into specifics, because spoilers, but I dunno, I guess I just really like the odd formatting and footnote heavy style, and just ergodic literature in general.

Currently skipping back and forth between two books right now. The first is Imaginary Cities by Darran Anderson - a non-fiction essay-style book about theoretical and fantastical architecture, from historic myths to Le Corbusier to modern sci-fi. It's pretty great. Covers a lot of ground, and the references and sources are mountainous.

The second is Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories, China Miéville's new, voluminous short story collection. As always, incredibly imaginative, often disturbing, always well-written and original stuff. Also, I think I'm beginning to sense a theme in my reading habits...

I read Deception Point by Dan Brown while I was on 'vacation.'

As far as silly, mostly lightweight and entirely disposable action book fare... I thought it was great. It's got constant shifting stakes and bad and good guys, which I always appreciate. It takes 100 pages to get to what the giant world-changing revelation is, and BOY do they just tease that one until you scream. But it's quite fun.

Thysane: I could NEVER read more than one book at a time. I don't know how someone can do it. I'd just get mixed up.

It's interesting - there are people who will only ever read one book at a time, and there are people who will read many - but there doesn't seem to be any correlation of reason by that person's attention span or ability to multitask, (that I can tell). I will often have half a dozen or so books on the go at any one time - ordinarily my memory is appalling, but my brain seems to make an exception for books, and lets me keep track of them all.

Volafortis wrote:

RoboNixon wrote:

Volafortis wrote:I just started it, so I can't say much about it, but I've enjoyed what I've read so far.

Really enjoying 1Q84. Just had the reveal of how the stories intersect. Thanks for the recommendation Volafortis!

Yeah, I've found it has a very nice flow, it's done a very good job of pulling me through the novel. It feels like I'll just pick it up and all of a sudden I've read almost a hundred pages in one sitting.

Murakami will do that to people, a few years ago I read everything he had written at that point within a few months of discovering him.

1Q84 is VERY Japanese, which sounds obvious, but I have to keep reminding myself that when certain things happen. If you've ever seen any anime and read this you'd know what I mean. Does Murakami have a similar style to all his books? It's a good book, though the dialogue repetition is constant.

King Kool wrote:Thysane: I could NEVER read more than one book at a time. I don't know how someone can do it. I'd just get mixed up.

I'd usually be the same, but luckily these two books are so profoundly different to each other, and both feature fairly short-form self-contained chunks of writing. No overall plotline to lose track of.

Just finished The Martian by Andy Weir (Ya kinda late I know) and am moving on to A Promise of Blood, a book about magic in an industrial setting.

Fun fact, did you know Andy Weir also wrote the short story The Egg?

Finishing The Body Artist by Dom DeLillo. I like it, hadn't read anything quite like it in a while.

I got a signed copy of Terra from Mitch Benn after his show at the Stand, its quite a good read for a first book, I'm definitely going to get a copy of the sequel at some point

I'm reading The Great Gatsby as I'll be teaching it later in the semester. We'll see how this 8 years later re-read goes.