Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[Reeducation]

I'm reading:

John Dies at the End by David Wong.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.
Fuck It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way by John C. Parkin.
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

[LMNO]

I've started The Man Who Was Thursday (PBU Cain), and it's pretty funny¹.  I'm interested in seeing how it will all play out.








¹LOL, organized anarchists.

[eighteen buddha strike]

Breakfast of Champions is beautiful and sad and true and hilarious.

I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.
So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.
What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.
And all music is.

Breakfast of Champions it is then. Thanks Sig.

Mother Night is better.

Breakfast of Champions is my favorite so far, but I haven't read Mother Night yet. Curiously, you're the second person I've seen suggest Mother Night this week, so its going on my list, but I have to knock out City of Thieves by David Benioff (obligated to, since it was a gift), and I'm planning on starting on A Game of Thrones, which I still haven't read.

[Juana]

Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey. General atmosphere: Bruce Campbell has a baby with a punk goddess + B-movie grit + the occult

Life sucks, and then you die. Or, if you're James Stark, you spend eleven years in Hell as a hitman before finally escaping, only to land back in the hell-on-earth that is Los Angeles.

Now Stark's back, and ready for revenge. And absolution, and maybe even love. But Stark discovers that the road to absolution and revenge is much longer than you'd expect, and both Heaven and Hell have their own ideas for his future. Resurrection sucks. Saving the world is worse.

A really good book. I picked it up for Christmas, started it on New Year's Eve after I got back from a late-night party, and couldn't put it down. It's a relatively quick read - the sun was just beginning to rise when I finished it.

Obviously, I'm re-reading it.

[Freeky]

Just finished reading all of Transmet. Dunno what to read next, maybe Hey Rube by HST.

[Jasper]

The "Planetary" series is pretty good, if you want more awesome speculative-fic comics.

[Doktor Howl]

The "Planetary" series is pretty good, if you want more awesome speculative-fic comics.

I loaned her Planetary for 6 weeks and she never read it.

[Freeky]

The "Planetary" series is pretty good, if you want more awesome speculative-fic comics.

I loaned her Planetary for 6 weeks and she never read it.

Sorry. I was on a not-reading binge. As long as I can KEEP reading now, I won't get back in that habit.

[Disco Pickle]

I started Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, but meh..  maybe Im just not far enough into it to hold my attention.

About halfway through The Art of War as translated by Ralph D. Sawyer.  It has a different focus from one Ive previously read and is pretty decent.

[Jasper]

It's a good one.  Along the same lines of investigative journalism, except with less journalism and more Weirdness.  A lot more.

[Don Coyote]

The Jungle Book

[Cain]

Currently reading Neuropath by R Scott Bakker which is, by turns, annoying and terrifying.

Basic premise: In the near future (I'm guessing 2035-50 or so), a former neurosurgeon for the NSA, tasked with experimenting on terrorist suspects to get them to tell the truth, goes rogue.  He starts kidnapping people at random and performing dangerous, experimental brain surgery on them, and killing them.  His former best friend, a professor of psychology, is contacted by the FBI and asked for help in trying to figure out what he is doing and track him down.  Meanwhile, there is a serial killer in New York who is not only murdering people in horrific ways, but also extracing their spines...

The annoying: the first couple of chapters are disjointed, and seem to be trying to portray the professor as a deadbeat, hopeless dad too much.  It's jarring in how it is done, and irrelevant to the plot (so far, at least).

The terrifying: where the FBI reveals to the psychologist how the neurosurgeon attached an implant to the spinothalamic and spinoreticular pathways to one of his victims, to induce uncontrollable pleasure, and then handed her a piece of broken glass....

Yeah, that sounds like Bakker. If he follows the pattern of his Prince of Nothing series, the deadbeat dad professor will ultimately redeem himself, despite all his flaws (okay, flaw, singular, that one flaw being his status as a despairing sadsack), as one of the most humane and sympathetic characters.

And, again, if he follows the pattern, the story will come together and become compelling enough to prompt a re-read at some point in the future just to make sense of the jumbled first few chapters.


I'm telling you this so you can let me know whether or not he follows said pattern, basically.

Well so far, he's definitely the most humane and sympathetic character, but that's because all the others are either

insane neurosurgeons who tortured people for the NSA
some guy who can't remember anyone's faces anymore and consequently hates humanity
hardass FBI agents
his bratty kids
his ex-wife, who cheated on him with his former best friend (see person #1 in this list)

The ending of this is pretty intense.  It's like three Wham moments crammed into less than 50 pages.

Now reading Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory.  The basic conceit of this story is an alternate Universe where "demonic possession" happens.  No-one is quite sure why, various psychological schools have differing opinions and may be even actual demonic possession.  All that is known is that certain "personalities" can take over human bodies for a while and control them.  Some of these actions, like those of the personality known as The Painter, are harmless.  Some, like the Hellion or Fat Boy,are selfish, but not intended to harm others (as the name suggests, the Fat Boy likes to eat...a lot.  Like, 10 pounds of chocolate in a single sitting).  And some, like the Truth and the Piper, are dangerous and sadistic.

The main character was possessed by the Hellion, a kind of Dennis the Menace personality, as a kid.  However, since then the Hellion has never been confirmed to be possessing others.  And since then, on and off, he's being hearing sounds in his head, and sleepwalking.  He thinks the Hellion is somehow trapped inside him, struggling to get out, and he is looking for a way to do that.

Also the book features Phillip K Dick.  Well, Valis actually, who is possessing Phillip K Dick.

[LMNO]

Wow.  That sounds like a pretty cool book.

[Cain]

It's not bad, though the format makes it hard to read.

Other interesting things about the alternate Universe: the US has invaded Kashmir instead of Iraq, Eisenhower was assassinted by Japanese nationalists, O. J. Simpson claimed he was possessed when he killed his wife (the demon Truth, who kills people who tell lies, turned up at his trial and tried to kill him for that - maybe) and Nixon probably wasn't possessed, but some people like to imagine that maybe he was. 

Valis also has a little speech about the difference between science fiction and fantasy somewhere in the book which sounds like it could've been repeated word for word by Elizier Yudowsky.

[LMNO]

Amazon offers a kindle edition.

Hmm...  Maybe after I crank through some of the LessWrong Sequences.