What Do you Read

I just finished Fight Club and Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk. Excellent, excellent books. I love the rhythms of Palahniuk's writting. The entire thing seems to beat in an almost pallendromish way. All of the main characters are fully three dimensional to the point that I could see myself meeting any of them in the right situation. I heartily recoomed them both.
 
Just went on a book buying spree: two Kinky Friedman mystery novels; A Case of Lone Star; Armadillos and Old Lace, Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen, The Vesuvius Club by Mark Gatiss and Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami.

Burned through the 150 page A Case of Lone Star in a couple of nights. Very funny, as expected from Kinky. His deadbeat, wisecracking, witty New York mysteries are wonderfully engrossing, and beautifully written.

I'm currently working on the Vesuvius Club. Gatiss (of The League Of Gentleman fame) is a superb writer. A truly impressive, often hilarious turn of the century secret agent tale. Lucifer Box indeed.

Can't wait to wrap my mitts around Kafka on the Shore. Murakami's possibly my favourite author, and I've been wanting this one for a while.

Skinny Dip I took a risk on. Never read anything by Hiaasen before, but I've heard he's good. It was either this or Cloud Atlas by somebody something, which had a gorgeous cover and an interesting premise, but seemed a bit pretentious when leafing through it.
 
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I'm reading The Chronicles of Narnia. :D
 
I like mythology a lot, so right now I have "The Norse Myths" which I'm reading, by Kevin Crossley-Holland. But if you want a book on mythology that'll knock your socks off, go read "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods & Heroes" by Edith Hamilton.

After that, I want to read something about the Egyptian Gods. If anyone has any suggestions, that'd be great.
 
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ProjectX2 said:
Yes, the book is worth reading. It's very well plotted and written. I'm reading Angels and Demons now. :D
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ok, so i got around to read the de vinci code, and its was an ok book, it threw me off in a couple places. but it was still a good read.
 
Steve GMan said:
I like mythology a lot, so right now I have "The Norse Myths" which I'm reading, by Kevin Crossley-Holland. But if you want a book on mythology that'll knock your socks off, go read "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods & Heroes" by Edith Hamilton.

After that, I want to read something about the Egyptian Gods. If anyone has any suggestions, that'd be great.
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Kevin Crossley-Holland has some of my favorite versions of Norse mythology, to the point where I bought my own copy of his book so I didn't have to keep stealing the library's copy. :oops: I'll have to look for Hamilton's book, as I'm not familiar with it.

For Egyptian gods, I have a couple of possibilities, if you're looking for non-fiction versions: Complete Gods and Goddess of Ancient Egypt, by Richard H. Wilkinson, and The Gods of Ancient Egypt, by Barbara Watterson. I haven't read either of them, but they have several good reviews in my library's online catalog.

On a different note, I liked American Gods, despite the rather "adult" nature of some of the scenes. I've just started Anansi Boys. (By the way, could someone else look at the author's picture on the back cover of American Gods and tell me if you think Gaiman bears a striking resemblence to Bryan Hitch's drawings of Ultimate Loki? :wink: )
 
Seldes Katne said:
Kevin Crossley-Holland has some of my favorite versions of Norse mythology, to the point where I bought my own copy of his book so I didn't have to keep stealing the library's copy. :oops: I'll have to look for Hamilton's book, as I'm not familiar with it.

For Egyptian gods, I have a couple of possibilities, if you're looking for non-fiction versions: Complete Gods and Goddess of Ancient Egypt, by Richard H. Wilkinson, and The Gods of Ancient Egypt, by Barbara Watterson. I haven't read either of them, but they have several good reviews in my library's online catalog.
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I'll be sure to check those out after I'm through with the "Norse Myths," thanks a lot. And if you're big on the Greco-Roman Myths, you can't go wrong with Edith Hamilton's "Mythology."
 
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Right now I'm reading Altered Carbon, a Tech-Noir by Richard Morgan about a UN Envoy (Think dedicated killer with lots of pys-ops training) named Takashi Kovacs who is asked to investigate the suicide of a 500 year old billionaire. By the Billionaire. Its good stuff.
 
So I'm now working my way through Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami, my favourite author. I'm pleased to say it's a lot more accesible than some of his work (Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, A Wild Sheep Chase), and as usual, I found myself deeply interested and genuinely moved by the characters and their acts.

So far, the book is following two separate stories, like the above mentioned Hard Boiled....., and I can see both stories coming together at some point. The one focuses on an elderly gent named Nakata, who due to a strange accident at childhood, is not quite so sharp, but can communicate with cats. Nakatas story is very sweet, and I find myself carng immensely for him. The other story follows 'Kafka', an intelligent, wordly 15 year old runaway, who is now residing in a library in a small province far from Tokyo. Unusually for myself, I find myself liking a child character.

As tends to be a regular occurence with Murakami, there is the occasional element of the surreal and bizarre, and it was, as always, handled well. If it continues at this pace, I can see this book up there with his seminal Wind Up Bird Chronicle.

Recommended.
 
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Title: Airborn
Author: Kenneth Oppel


Matt Cruse is a cabin boy aboard the airship Aurora. He loves the feel of the ship as it flies, knows every inch of it inside and out, and wants nothing more than to work his way up through the ranks and live his life aboard her.

One night while on lookout, Matt sees a hot air balloon in peril. After assisting in the rescue, he meets the sole passenger, an old man dying of exposure and pneumonia. But before the old man dies, he tells Matt of a race of strange creatures he encountered days earlier, catlike animals that no one has previously seen. Matt believes that the old man was hallucinating, and thinks nothing more of the incident.

A year later, the Aurora has set sail on another voyage, but this is no ordinary cruise. Matt is due for promotion from cabin boy to assistant sail-maker, the crewmembers who keep the airship's fabric "hide" intact so that the hydrium gas is contained and the ship can fly. Matt also watches as an ornithopter docks with the Aurora, bringing two wealthy passengers aboard: Miss Kate deVries, who is Matt's own age, and her chaperone, Miss Simpkins.

To Matt's disappointment, his promotion doesn't go through; the assistant sail-maker's position goes to the son of the airship's owner. However, Kate provides a surprising distraction: she is the granddaughter of the old man the Aurora crew rescued the year before. She is aboard hoping to find the island over which her grandfather saw the mysterious flying creatures. Matt isn't sure he believes they exist, even after he reads Kate's grandfather's journal. But he agrees to point out the place where his ship encountered the old man's balloon.

Unfortunately, all plans go awry when the ship is boarded by air pirates who steal the passengers' valuables, then disable the Aurora. The airship veers off course and is "shipwrecked" on an uncharged island -- the same island Kate's grandfather sketched in his journal when he wrote about the mysterious flying creatures. Kate and Matt find not only evidence proving the existence of the creatures, which they call "cloud cats", but also the location of the air pirates' stronghold! And the pirates know Kate and Matt were aboard the Aurora. The two must warn their shipmates of the pirates' existence before it's too late.

Airborn provides a page-turning glimpse into a world that is much like the age of sailing vessels on Earth, full of uncharted lands, mysterious creatures, pirates, and adventures at sea. My Young Adult book discussion group really liked this one, and I'm told the sequel, Skybreaker, which has recently been published, is just as good as the original.
 
I'm not much of a reader. (well, for comics yes, but with the pictures they keepmy attention :) ) But when I have read I like the book "The Giver" and for school I just got done "The Lord of the Flies". That was an amazing book. Am I crazy for liking that book?
 
At the moment, I'm reading The Subtle Knife, Part 2 in the His Dark Materials trilogy. All I can say is, it's good, but not as great as Northern Lights. That is one of my favourite novels, and I love the character of Lyra. Whereas, I don't particularly like Will.
 
I've been working my way throught Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Retrieval Artist series, which is sort of a mystery/detective subset of science fiction, if that makes any sense. The series has domed communities on the Moon and Mars, spaceships, aliens, and other SF elements, but can also be read by mystery enthusiasts.

Her series starts with The Disappeared. People in the future need to vanish for various reasons, usually because they've offended or broken the laws of one of the alien races. (Their crimes wouldn't be considered criminal under human law, and are often the result of misunderstandings, not ill will.) Companies called Disappearance Agencies have been formed to give these people new identities. Retrieval Artists specialize in finding the Disappeared, usually because the fugitives are either no longer in danger, but also for other reasons.

In The Disappeared, Miles Flint and his partner Nicolle DeRicci are assigned to three cases that don't seem to be related at first (a multiple homicide, a pair of kidnappings, and an attorney who's gone missing), but as they assemble the clues and investigate, they find the cases do have something in common: someone in each is either a Disappeared or is trying to Disappear.

As the series continues, Flint and DeRicci part ways, but often find themselves working on complimentary cases. Each of the four novels in the series involves someone who has Disappeared: one person resurfaces at the annual Moon Marathon, held on the Moon each year; another appears as a corpse on Mars, which touches off a mass panic among the Disty, one of the alien races; the third is a woman who has been pardoned by the alien government who convicted her, but whose reappearance results in getting her family killed.

Quite a good series, with just enough science and lots of human (or alien) drama.
 
I've bought and started Northern Lights, the first in His Dark Materials trilogy.

I also want to try out Mortal Engines.
 
Currently reading The Alphabet of Manliness by Maddox, an easy read but hilarious. I'd suggest this book to any person of the male persuasion, females not so much.
 
Iceshadow said:
Currently reading The Alphabet of Manliness by Maddox, an easy read but hilarious. I'd suggest this book to any person of the male persuasion, females not so much.
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Damn, I want to read that. I heard it's "so manly even it sentences don't have periods", but what is it actually about? More of his crazy and hilarious rants?
 
Reading Vonnegut's Galapagos, and Nick Hornby's High Fidelity.

:D

Hoorah for working in a bookstore!
 
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