Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[Juana]

Kill the Dead by Richard Kadry. Absolutely fucking hilarious.

[Cramulus]

Reading The Big Book of Pain, which Richter recommended to me. It's excellent nightmare fuel. Seriously. Disturbing as hell.

What really sticks out about it, in my mind: (repost warning)

one of the points they repeatedly make in the book is that in the history of public executions, it's often not the case that the leaders were these twisted sadistic fucks... it's that the CROWDS demanded the worst possible punishments for lawbreakers.

If a magistrate was seen as being too light on crime, it was very possible for the unruly mob to turn on him. The pillory, the breaking wheel, the ducking stool ... these weren't purely a tool of fear to keep the commoners from rising up. They were used to slake the public's demands for torture and death.

So having read that, I get quite a chill watching all these people cheering for the death penalty...




Also reading a book about ARGs which is too hung up on defining "what is a game" and other academic masturbation to say anything of meaning.




Hey jason --

Also read The Stranger by Camus. I'm not ready to discuss it yet.  

so are you ready yet? :P what did you think?

[Faust]

I read warren ellis's SVK there, its a indie thing and comes with a weird blacklight that adds stuff into each page. I'd call it gimmicky but the story is genuinely good enough that it creates a good sense of immersion in the story and builds on it.

[Luna]

Shit.

I have this tradition, see...  When there's a new book in a series coming out, I re-read the series.  (I read stupid fast, so, for most new novels coming out, this is doable.) 

There's a new Discworld novel coming out.  This one would be...  Book...   39...

[Jasper]

Luckily I have reread almost all of them in the last year.  My brain has a big appetite for absurd British humor, I guess.

[Cramulus]

that's crazy talk

I know I'm missing out on lots of great literature, but I just plain do not have the patience to wade through that much text.

A few years ago some friends finally convinced me to read the first book of Wheel of Time. When I finished it, I felt frustrated... the author didn't resolve any of the conflicts he put on the table. Everything was left hanging.

My friend said, "Ah yeah, you've gotta read another 8000 pages before they even START to wrap any of that shit up."

fuck that noise! I don't even like fantasy. A thousand pages is pushing it, if I knew the whole series was gonna be like Lost (ie, a tease with an extremely delayed payoff), I never would have picked it up to begin with!


/rant

[Cain]

I would say the only reason to read that series is for the incredible breath of fresh air Brandon Sanderson brings to the series after 500,000,000 interminable pages about insanely aggressive women and intricately detailed life stories of minor characters who then die five minutes later.

Gotta give the dude props - he's readable.  Enjoyable, even.  Robert Jordan had mastered some kind of Epic Boredom - a grand, wordy and ultimately mind-numbing style of writing that makes you want to beat yourself to death with the book in question (a very real possibility, given how wordy such authors can be).

[Cramulus]

Robert Jordan had mastered some kind of Epic Boredom - a grand, wordy and ultimately mind-numbing style of writing that makes you want to beat yourself to death with the book in question (a very real possibility, given how wordy such authors can be).

fucking troof

Most of Eye of the World is like the beginning of Fellowship - nothing happens except a bunch of boring characters prancing around in circles. It took me four tries before I got to anything cool happening. I'm not the kind of guy who needs an instant payoff, but if you read 100 pages and nothing interesting happens, then an editor needs to take a machete to the manuscript. Are there any redeeming female characters in that series? The ones in Eye of the World were all annoying as fuck. I have a hard time sympathizing with anybody whose only dialog is scowling and shrewish screeching noises.

[Cain]

All of Jordan's female characters are like that.  Not just in the series - in everything he ever wrote, I am reliably informed.

And there was more than just a bit of LOTR around the start of the book, wasn't there?  In some ways, Sanderson was an inspired choice for his replacement, as Sanderson can write good female characters and writes less...orthodox fantasy series.  And he doesn't have a stick up his arse about what a genius writer he is, like Jordan was (reputed) to.

[Disco Pickle]

Just finished re-reading Swan Song, because I remember it being a pretty decent post apocalyptic horror story from my youth.

I really did forget the overtly christian undertones to the entire thing, which soured me on it forever.

But hell, it was fantasy fiction and it was nice to revisit a book I did really like when I was but a wee lad.

Starting Joe Abercrombie's "The First Law" tomorrow to fill my fiction spot. 

Cain, you are recommending too many god damned books for me to keep up in my non-fiction requirements.

But keep it up sir.  Keep it up. 

It just means I am falling behind.

[Luna]

Okay, break from EVERYTHING.

Just got my hands on a copy of the original Harlan Ellison script of the City on the Edge of Forever.  Including the forwards and afterwords with Ellison discussing how Roddenberry and Shatner screwed him over.  Had a copy of this, ages ago, and I think an old boyfriend swiped it.   

[Jasper]

Rereading Phantoms In The Brain because it is the best popular cog-neuroscience book I've ever read or heard of.

I want to meet someone with Cotard's Syndrome. 

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

MSPA Problem Sleuth, an extremely surreal film-noir and videogame themed webcomic where objects belligerently change into other objects, windows and doors only lead outside when they are plugged in, the mob kingpin's only weaknesses are romance novels and diabetes, and women's underwear can change your height.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I just started reading "Intimacy & Desire".

[Luna]

Back to Discworld.

I want a Feegle!

http://www.pjsmprints.com/badges/index.html