xkcd

by **AvatarIII** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 8:08 pm UTC

Currently reading
The Martians by Kim Stanley Robinson (read The Mars Trilogy prior)
Neuromancer by William Gibson

being pesters to read
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin

by **Mister_Penguin** » Tue Apr 19, 2011 9:10 pm UTC

Gravity's Rainbow:

"Now there grows among all the rooms, replacing the night's old smoke, alcohol and sweat, the fragile, musaceous odor of Breakfast:flowery, permeating, surprising, more than the color of winter sunlight, taking over not so much through any brute pungency or volume as by the high intricacy to the weaving of its molecules, sharing the conjuror's secret by which -though it is not often Death is told so clearly to fuck off- the living genetic chains prove even labyrinthine enough to preserve some human face down ten or twenty generations. . . so the same assertion-through-structure allows this war morning's banana fragrance to meander, repossess, prevail. Is there any reason not to open every window, and let the kind scent blanket all Chelsea? As a spell, against falling objects..."

Holy crap. I love that.

by **cv4** » Wed Apr 20, 2011 2:01 am UTC

Mister_Penguin wrote:Gravity's Rainbow:

"Now there grows among all the rooms, replacing the night's old smoke, alcohol and sweat, the fragile, musaceous odor of Breakfast:flowery, permeating, surprising, more than the color of winter sunlight, taking over not so much through any brute pungency or volume as by the high intricacy to the weaving of its molecules, sharing the conjuror's secret by which -though it is not often Death is told so clearly to fuck off- the living genetic chains prove even labyrinthine enough to preserve some human face down ten or twenty generations. . . so the same assertion-through-structure allows this war morning's banana fragrance to meander, repossess, prevail. Is there any reason not to open every window, and let the kind scent blanket all Chelsea? As a spell, against falling objects..."

Holy crap. I love that.

Book is next on my list. Pretty stoked for it.

by **PatrickRsGhost** » Sat Apr 23, 2011 12:49 am UTC

Currently reading Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. A lot better than the movie. Next on the list is Howl's Moving Castle, then maybe A Stir of Echoes.

by **Microscopic cog** » Sat Apr 30, 2011 7:55 pm UTC

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. This is brilliant.

But I'm sad I have to read it in English.

by **AvatarIII** » Thu May 12, 2011 2:50 pm UTC

currently Reading Le Guin's The Dispossessed it's a very easy read, and i'm flying through it (relatively speaking, i'm quite a slow reader on the whole)

by **Metaphysician** » Mon May 16, 2011 11:23 pm UTC

Just finished "Fate of the Jedi: Omen" not one of my favorite SWEU authors but she was ok. Looking forward to reading the next in the series as it's written by Troy Denning, the man who has penned some of the most defining moments in the SWEU particularly in the NJO series and beyond.

Right now though, I have finally decided to check out "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

by **Zarq** » Fri May 20, 2011 10:45 am UTC

Finished Terry Pratchett's The Light Fantastic (Discworld #2) this weekend. Now I'm reading some Lovecraft short stories (Call of Cthulhu and other Weird Stories) while waiting for Equal Rites to arrive.

by **Sweeney_Todd** » Sat Jun 11, 2011 7:33 pm UTC

I'm reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything now. I recommend it to anyone who wants their science explained to them in a not too dumb but not too technical way.

by **AvatarIII** » Thu Jun 16, 2011 11:38 am UTC

Just started Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock, mostly because it's the thinest book on my bookshelf so quickest to have had read, but also because the premise seemed fascinating

by **Bufo_periglenes** » Sat Jun 18, 2011 11:47 am UTC

Just finished R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Karel Čapek. Now I have seen where the word "robot" first entered English!
Reading The Making of a Sonnet, an anthology of sonnets organized by century. Also, more slowly, Principles of Mathematical Analysis by Walter Rudin.
Listening to the original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series. Most excellent.

by **modularblues** » Fri Jul 15, 2011 10:48 pm UTC

Tao of Physics! Will read Douglas Coupland's JPod soon.

by **Chuff** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 6:01 pm UTC

The bible!

It's, uh, mostly genealogy, so far.

by **hrabanus** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 11:56 pm UTC

Chuff wrote:It's, uh, mostly genealogy, so far.

Wait till you get to the temple inventory parts!

Myself I'm reading Paloma by Friederike Mayröcker and I'm also reading the Pessoa thing, but I got stuck fairly early. I intend to resume, though.

by **no-genius** » Sun Jul 31, 2011 9:57 pm UTC

Sweeney_Todd wrote:I'm reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything now. I recommend it to anyone who wants their science explained to them in a not too dumb but not too technical way.

I've read it twice, years ago. Just read Mother Tongue, wasn't sure if I'd read it, but I think it was just he mentioned some of the same stuff in Made In America.

Also read The Graveyard Book and Fragile Things, both by Neil Gaiman. (Feeders and Eaters was so sick, thinking about it nearly made me ill. I think guessing the twist somehow made it worse) - if you've read American Gods, worth it for Monarch of the Glen.

Nearly finished Oblivion: Stories by David Foster Wallace, then I'll probably finish Dawn of the Dumb by Charlie Brooker, and maybe start Neverwhere.

by **Adam H** » Tue Aug 02, 2011 6:47 pm UTC

Making my way through several P.G. Wodehouse "Jeeves" books that my dad loaned me. LOL. No, seriously, just thinking about it made me throw my head back and laugh loudly.

by **themoneyspider** » Wed Aug 03, 2011 11:54 am UTC

I am reading the Game of Thrones books am in the middle of the Temeraire series and am dabbling along with The Name of the Wind by Philip Rothfuss.

by **emceng** » Wed Aug 03, 2011 3:11 pm UTC

Man, I cannot get motivated for my next book. I finished The last Dresden Files novel, and now I'm stuck. I've got a chapter and a half left in The 13th Element, but it's gotten deep into chemistry that I don't understand at all. I could just read it and not comprehend any of it, but that seems stupid. I'm about 1 chapter in to about three other fiction books, but none have really grabbed me yet. I just look at them and can't find a reason to keep reading. Then I got most of the way through the prologue of The Black Swan. It was ok, but then I misplaced the book. Blah. I have 100 books(no exaggeration) on my shelf that I haven't read, and can't be motivated to read a single one.

by **mind404** » Tue Aug 09, 2011 5:55 pm UTC

Dennis L. McKiernan The Iron Tower reread, a pretty good lil' series. Now looking back I see inconsistencies and things that bother me more now that I'm older, but still good.

by **no-genius** » Mon Aug 15, 2011 10:46 pm UTC

Burning Chrome by William Gibson.

by **Adalwolf** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 4:59 am UTC

I'm about to start "The Philistines and Aegean Migration at the End of the Late Bronze Age" by Assaf Yasur Landau. I'm looking forward to it.

by **topquark** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 10:03 am UTC

I'm re-reading "A spot of bother" by Mark Haddon, which is one of my favourite books.

I'm also reading a book called "Moon Daisy" that my mother gave to me, but struggling to get into it - hence why I keep skipping back to the Mark Haddon.

by **Felstaff** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 11:18 am UTC

Hee, it's a good book, but it is so achingly quaint and woolly middle-aged-middle-class ('quintessentially British'), I was a little disappointed after the wonderful heartbreaking work of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

by **topquark** » Wed Sep 14, 2011 8:10 am UTC

Hee, it's a good book, but it is so achingly quaint and woolly middle-aged-middle-class ('quintessentially British'), I was a little disappointed after the wonderful heartbreaking work of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Aw, but that's why I love it. It's a book I can relate to.

by **Sonata** » Fri Sep 16, 2011 7:34 am UTC

I'm reading A Game of Thrones, and also 'Un Lun Dun' which is a kid's book but it's very good. About an alternate London.

by **topquark** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 1:26 pm UTC

I just finished "blueeyedboy" by Joanne Harris. Seriously, seriously weird, and dark. All narrated via on a fictional website called "WeJay" which is blatantly based on LiveJournal. Layers and layers of deception and false identities. I think I need to go back to the beginning and read it again.

by **modularblues** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 4:22 pm UTC

Oliver Sacks - The Mind's Eye

by **Inugami** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 9:46 pm UTC

I've been reading Roger Zelazny's "Creatures of Light and Darkness." It's... Very strange. I can honestly say that I never expected to read the phrase "copulate with yon purple lizard" at any point in my life.

by **Kewangji** » Mon Oct 03, 2011 11:05 pm UTC

I would be more impressed if you expected never to read it.

by **Inugami** » Tue Oct 04, 2011 4:19 am UTC

Kewangji wrote:I would be more impressed if you expected never to read it.

Uh... Is that not what I said?

by **Kewangji** » Tue Oct 04, 2011 3:49 pm UTC

The difference, and I may be projecting things into language that isn't there, is that the one I said had you come up with the idea of that sentence and then dismiss it, rather than it just never entering your head until you read it. I hope I'm making sense.

by **jawdisorder** » Tue Oct 04, 2011 5:10 pm UTC

I noticed the difference if that counts for anything.

by **Inugami** » Wed Oct 05, 2011 1:56 am UTC

Oh, I see what you mean now. And to be slightly more on topic, while I'm still reading "Creatures of Light and Darkness," I recently read a short story titled "The Concrete Jungle" which is part of the "Laundry series" by Charles Stross. Quite an interesting extrapolation of the whole "sufficiently advanced mathematics are indistinguishable from magic" aspect of the Cthulhu Mythos, although I'm not sure I care too much for the choice of analogy at one point in the story...

by **Sean Quixote** » Sat Oct 08, 2011 6:02 am UTC

"The Most Human Human" by Brian Christian, for nonfiction. If you got me started, I am sure I could think of more to say about it, and I'd probably never shut up either :roll:

, but what I will say is that I believe I have finally picked a good book to help me get more into the habit of actually reading. I'm a book hoarder, and as such I possess more potential knowledge and/or culture in my mind than, well, actual. But if all nonfiction writers were as good as this one, I wouldn't have had nearly as much trouble as I have put myself through.

For fiction, I recently bought "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" because I don't have Showtime but ever since I heard of it I've been quite sure that it's something I would enjoy. I'm certainly right, so far.

And for the in-between, I also got "This Is A Book" by Demitri Martin, who is kind of one of my idols. I haven't picked it up in a while now, but ever since I read "Zombie Spaceship Wasteland" by Patton Oswalt early in this year I've realized that books written by stand-up comics are another area of literature I can always fall back on, as far as that whole practicing the habit thing goes. At the same time that I bought Demitri Martin's book, I also got both of John Hodgman's books, as well as "Love All the People" by Bill Hicks, who was not only a brilliant comedian and satirist, but is also just one of my favorite people, like, ever, period.

I think I'm even going to start a "wish-list" of sorts, for whenever I'm ready for something else. Inspired by nothing more than a thread over in FG :mrgreen:

, I've decided that I'm going to read "Finnegans Wake" at some point, and obviously, likely other works by James Joyce. Also, inspired by nothing more than a passing mention of Emily Bronte in an episode of Criminal Minds, I'm putting her and her siblings on my list as well.

by **natraj** » Sat Oct 08, 2011 7:30 am UTC

It is 3:30 in the morning and I should have been sleeping but my friend I am visiting handed me her copy of The Hunger Games around midnight when we should have fine to bed and I accidentally the whole book. I really hope she has the sequels. Or maybe I hope she doesn't, because then I will get nothing done tomorrow.

by **modularblues** » Sun Oct 09, 2011 11:03 am UTC

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris... don't read when extremely demotivated. But apparently the second half is supposed to be much better than the first half, so I will hold out...

by **charliepanayi** » Fri Oct 14, 2011 7:20 pm UTC

I'm reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides after being recommended it by a friend, and enjoying it so far. Being of Greek Cypriot origin makes it interesting to read about the narrator's background too.

by **Nattlinnen** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 9:27 am UTC

Eating cold bule cheese pizza and reading Decamerone!

(and really, sucky sex jokes seems to be timeless)

by **emceng** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 12:50 pm UTC

Ahh yeah, I've got a copy of that sitting on my shelf. Read it back in high school too.

Currently re-reading/skimming Towers of Midnight. I couldn't choose a book to read, and wanted to reread one scene from it, so now reading the good parts. Sorted my bookshelves recently, so now I have three shelves that are the higher priorities - books I should read sooner rather than later. Still need to do some sorting though.

by **An-D** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 3:05 am UTC

I'm reading Clash of Kings (Game of Thrones wooo!) right now...mostly.

Also reading random bits of Hunter S. Thompson books (ones with all his articles).

Classy stuff.

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