Currently Reading

[CimminyCricket]

I am now reading A Clash of Kings. I don't know what took me so long to pick these books up.

[Jinx]

Currently reading American Psycho. I'm strapped in for a crazy ride!

[Shiny]

Currently reading The Predator Paradox: Ending the War with Wolves, Bears, Cougars, and Coyotes by John Shivik. It's research for a film I'm working on.

Also going to start reading Psycho by Robert Bloch.

[Pumpkin]

Still Mort! It's a really short book but I haven't been reading it

[Casey]

Reading 'Slight Edge' only a few pages in and it's a self-help book...

[I Took the Red Pill]

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan

[Mercen-X]

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West... I started by reading the sequel Son of a Witch, which I couldn't really finish, so I finished it by listening to it as a book on CD. I also originally listened to Wicked as an audio CD, but couldn't follow it. So I had to pick up the book. lol

[Del Murder]

Ender's Shadow

This is the parallel story to Ender's Game starring Ender's little friend Bean. I really enjoyed the psychological morality themes as are inherent in all of the Ender books. This one really expands Bean's character and although I enjoyed that, I did feel like it was retconning it at times, especially during the interactions of Bean and Ender that are also chronicled in Ender's Game. The parts of the novel dealing with Bean's backstory or exploits at Battle School not involving Ender were really good, but any time he was with Ender there was too much trying to fit it into the more complex character that Card created for Bean. Stuff like 'Ender didn't realize Bean was being sarcastic...' or 'Bean played along because that was what they expected him to do...'. It's clear that the original Bean character was meant to be a younger, smaller version of Ender whose purpose was to show Ender what it was like to be the one teaching a gifted student rather than being teached. Only in this novel Bean turns out to be much more than that, and the opposite of Ender in many ways. Overall I thought this concept was pretty cool and fortunately those types of interactions were not the majority of the story. The stuff involving Bean and Achilles in particular were pretty great.

[chionos]

Finishing Son, the fourth (last) book of The Giver quartet. Loved the simplicity of the books so far.

On the opposite end of the simplicity spectrum, I'm on the last book of the Earth's Children saga (first book is Clan of the Cave Bear, was made into a movie in the 80's I believe) by Jean M. Auel. They are long ponderous books, very slow at times, interesting at times, at times enlightening, and generally entertaining. There are great characters (including Whinny and Wolf) and plotting, but I could do without the never-ending lists of fauna and flora--it feels sometimes like the book's trying to be a pharmacopoeia, and it does get a little, I dunno, preachy at times. The first two books were the best, and by book five I'm ready for it to be over, I think. I'm hoping it ends well. I hope book 6 actually concludes the saga. I don't typically go for abridged versions of books, but I will say that this is a series that might need it. The exact same thing could be said in about 100-150 less pages. And I mean that literally. Auel is the most repetitious author I've ever read.

[Jinx]

Reading Valley of the Dolls. One of my favorite books of all time. So trashy, so depressing! I first read it during my senior year of high school when I was dealing with a lot of stuff, and I really connected with the bleak and pointless tone of the book. Ever since then, it's held a special place in my heart and I reread it every year or two.

[Shorty]

The Fried Twinkie Manifesto by Ryan Moehring. Did not love the first chapter, not at all. But I figure I'll ride it out until it becomes unbearable. From what I've read, he's supposed to be a funny dude, so I'll see how the rest goes. Just not a great first impression.

Also reading Nerd Do Well by Simon Pegg. It's entertaining and is okay, but I feel like he's written the book as if he's written a screenplay. I can perfectly visualize what he's communicating, but the way he's communicating it does not strike me as good writing, it strikes me as what would be entertaining visually. There are also these incredibly distracting chapters between his memoirs of him writing a silly comic story about him being an equivocally nerd batman with an incompetent robot butler and I'm not loving those. I know they're supposed to whimsical and charming, but I'm here for your life story, man, knock it off.

I'm on an intense self-deprecating humorist essay kick.

[fire_of_avalon]

I just started All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy and that'll probably mark the end of my ASoIaF break and I'll read A Dance With Dragons. McCarthy will be a good foil for Martin - firstly as McCarthy's veiled dialogue, limited person and random, beautiful, stream of consciousness descriptions are the opposite of Martin's fastidious, meticulously detailed style. Secondly - McCarthy is just better.

I finally read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and was left disturbed, bemused and angry at the lack of justice. I recommend everyone read it once and then never again.

[Jinx]

Gone Girl is excellent. I want to read it again, but...I just don't think it will have the same impact it did the first time.

Currently reading Push, A Novel by Sapphire. I'm about 40 pages in and I hate it. Probably a top contender for Worst Book of 2014 (that I've read, that is), but we'll see what I think when I finish it today. And Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood made me want to claw my brain from my head, so who knows? This book is very much doing the same thing to me, though.

[Shorty]

My sister recommended Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs to me. I've been avoiding him because I read his memoir Running With Scissors and I didn't love it. But in reaching the 29th page of Possible Side Effects, I've just had to wipe my eyes from silently crylaughing so hard at work. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find someone to live up to David Sedaris, but Augusten is doing a wonderful job.

I quit The Fried Twinkie Manifesto. Blech. An entire chapter devoted to attempting to humorously shame his religious family, to explain how he is superior for being an atheist, and to profess explanations for why he is an atheist. 1) Slamming on religion is old. It is literally everywhere. It's all over social media, it's in the regular media, it's in daily conversation. There is nothing new that anyone could ever say to me about religion that would make me laugh, because it's old, and it's a cheap trick. It's an easy subject to get a lot of nods of approval from a specific niche of people, and that's boring. And 2) People who write explanations for the way they feel about things leave me with one conclusion: That they are attempting to convince themselves more than they are attempting to convince their readers. Don't write me a chapter explaining why you're an atheist, please, because I could not care less about reasons why you are an atheist when I am reading this book of yours detailing out what are supposed to be the humorous antics of your life journey.

[Kalevala]

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This is my second outing with Dostoyevsky. My first involved getting a couple hundred pages into The Brothers Karamazov before becoming distracted by work and other books. I'm playing through Silent Hill 2 and am told the two are (strangely) quite compatible, so I figured I'd give it a go. Two chapters in and I am digging it so far. Very engaging read.

Also recently started Brave New World. I don't know how I've managed to go more than two decades and through 17 years of school without having read it. I'm about 50 pages in and pretty satisfied. Loved the section where Huxley keeps snapping back and forth between five or six different scenes taking place throughout the hatchery. The last time I remember a scene of that nature being so effective was in Johnny Got His Gun, another favourite. This is a good sign.

tl;dr classics