Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[Bu🤠ns]

Aghora: At the Left Hand of God - Robert Svoboda - first volume.

[Xooxe]

I'm going to read Romance of the Three Kingdoms soon (Cain kind of set the ball rolling by talking about it before.)

I bumped into a two-part Chinese film called Red Cliff which is based on part of the book. Both are on youtube (watch in HD to see subs), and I didn't think they were too bad. The music was pretty crap in places and it gets too sentimental but it was actually alright.

Can't wait to read the books.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=DC1978DBF9202E54
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4DFB0C4AA203A507

[leonard koan]

i'm reading the first part of michael moorcock's pyat series of books, Byzantium Endures   in the wake of a failed attempt at reading Pynchon's exhaustive and exhausting Gravity's Rainbow, i like his (pynchon's) style and a lot of his humour ("a SNAFU for Rocketman"), but after 5 weeks of trundling through it, i decided it wasn't for me (sometimes i still pick it up from where i left off and read a few pages- maybe in a year i'll have actually finsihed it, if the book hasn't fallen apart). though the crying of lot 49 was fucking ace, which i read previously, and which was the impetus for me picking up gravity's rainbow which is about a writer who compiles the writings of an unreliable and opnionated russian expat, up to and (in the other books i hear) during the war.

Drew

[leonard koan]

i'm actually looking for a good modern british writer who deals with esoteric knowledge much in the style of umberto eco or pynchon, i know moorcock deals with this sort of stuff, but he seems to be the only one. good modern british writers are few and far between. please don't mention will self...he's not my tea, he really doesn't do taste for me.

[Z³]

Well, i 'm maybe a quarter of the way through Gravitys Rainbow and I have to take a break, I has job now, and also my local library has a couple books on hold for me. So for now I'm going to read Grimscribe, His Lives and Works by Thomas Ligotti, and I'll try to pick up on Gravitys Rainbow in a couple weeks (the annual Berkshire Hathaway stockholders meeting is coming up, and its a pretty busy time for all the restaraunts downtown here, so next week is going to be fucking crazy for me.)

So far, I like Gravitys Rainbow, but I DO see what all the fuss is about.

[Pariah]

Kingdom of Fear-Hunter S Thompson

[Cain]

Now reading Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium by Sandy Mitchell

It's funny how like Episkopos Cain the main character is.

As my change in name suggests, I have managed to locate and download some of those books.

Oh dear.  This may result in me being even more me-like than I was before.

[popjellyfish]

Accelerado by Charles Stross, and Jingo by Pratchett. It's been awhile since I've read a novel... enjoying.

[megatron]

The Master and Margarita. It's super fantastic, at least the forty pages I've gotten through. My attention span has been dwindling.

in the wake of a failed attempt at reading Pynchon's exhaustive and exhausting Gravity's Rainbow, i like his (pynchon's) style and a lot of his humour ("a SNAFU for Rocketman"), but after 5 weeks of trundling through it, i decided it wasn't for me (sometimes i still pick it up from where i left off and read a few pages- maybe in a year i'll have actually finsihed it, if the book hasn't fallen apart). though the crying of lot 49 was fucking ace, which i read previously, and which was the impetus for me picking up gravity's rainbow which is about a writer who compiles the writings of an unreliable and opnionated russian expat, up to and (in the other books i hear) during the war.

I loved the Crying of Lot 49! A friend of mine and I had a challenge of sorts to finish Gravity's Rainbow by the end of the year but I think we both kind of forgot.

[BADGE OF HONOR]

The Madness Season by CS Friedman.  It has vampires and aliens and yet still works.   

[Cain]

The Modern Prince - Carnes Lord
Nietzsche's Machiavellian Politics - Don Dombowsky
Mercenaries: The History of an International Norm - Sarah Percy
Plan Like a Grandmaster - Alexei Seutin

[AFK]

I've been reading the Book of Subgenius again.  It was initially thereputic reading while I was going through the turmoil surrounding my job.  I almost wish there was a book that split the difference between that and the PD.  The Book of Subenius is great until it goes into all of that stuff about the aliens and 1998.  The PD is great when it isn't so obsessed with being jokey. 

[Cain]

I think that book is called "The Thief of Time"

[LMNO]

I've been reading the Book of Subgenius again.  It was initially thereputic reading while I was going through the turmoil surrounding my job.  I almost wish there was a book that split the difference between that and the PD.  The Book of Subenius is great until it goes into all of that stuff about the aliens and 1998.  The PD is great when it isn't so obsessed with being jokey. 

I think that book is called "The Thief of Time"

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I'm rereading Mona Lisa Overdrive for the nth time. I'm also partway through Flow My Tears the Policeman Said.

I have taken to the habit of making copious yet cryptic notes in my books while reading, because for one thing, I occasionally pick up on something subtle in one reading that I may not get at all in another (especially word choice trends), and for another, occasionally I pick up on something that ends up on later readings to seem to be an entirely illusitory connection. By making notes and making them cryptic, I benefit from both. In this rereading of Mona Lisa Overdrive, I've taken this to the next step, colour coding words with coloured pencils on my hardcopy categorizing by metaphor system.

I intend to get back to reading Games People Play and Blood Music (which I was nearly finished with when I stopped reading it... I just never got back to it).