[quote="terra"]Referring to a discussion that started in the movie thread... @Lesser_Hamster, I'm halfway through [i]A Princess of Mars[/i]. It's all right. I'm not really into the writing style, it's kinda dry. I'm trying to stick it out though. I'm letting go the 'superior earth man' BS as a relic of its time (or is it supposed to be a poke at the attitudes toward Native Americans?). [/quote]


Yeah, the prose took some getting used to. It wasn't [i]bad[/i] necessarily, but it is a little antiquated.

Just finished Scar Tissue the other day, Anthony Kiedis' (vocalist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers) autobiography.

Was a totally compelling read from cover to cover, a surreal and totally frank retelling of a completely outlandish and bloody unlikely life. The guy basically started doing drugs with his dad (a dealer to lots of stars in the 70's) in Hollywood, had sex at 13 with his dad's 18y/o girlfriend, started a lifestyle of badassery including: child acting (once alongside Sly Stallone), doing almost every drug under the sun, meeting lots of rad people and celebrities (he was once babysat by Cher, whom he watched undress as well), going to tons of concerts and jumping off of buildings into pools, staging seriously crazy pranks with his best friends (Flea mostly), having tons of sex, going on cross-state (skiing, adventuring) trips sans parental supervision with his friends, and a ton else before the age of 18. Then went to UCLA for a year, got hooked on cocaine and heroin, and dropped out.

Then as he was living in squalor, in his car, or at girlfriend's or friend's or boss' places and copping drugs from the sketchiest parts of LA, his friends started jamming together and asked him to come to a show of theirs. Then he wrote a song and they made a tune out of it, and he became their vocalist from then on. They started playing shows and getting naked on stage, doing everything they could to be noticed, called up EMI record label and made a demo, then started taking off on tours and making records. Soon enough he was traveling the world and partying with famous people of all types, dating models and scoring hard drugs everywhere he went--with tons of craziness in between, with no training or even knowing how to play an instrument. The sheer amount of insane/ballsy things he's done were obviously the precedent for his amazing luck, and the hellish nightmare parts of his life (heroin addiction/getting severely injured/getting into car-wrecks whilst high/contracting dengue fever). Leave it to say that the motherfucker should simply not be alive, and has had Lady Fortune smile on him in ways that can be hard to even conceive of. Some of his best friends (including Hillel Slovak, River Phoenix, and to an extent Kurt Cobain) were not so fortunate. Still, it's a fantastic read if you like RHCP and want to get a firsthand account of the fast-life of drugs and rockstar fame (and if it gets slow he includes some choice topless pictures of his girlfriends at the time, lulz)

9/10

Been reading a lot of Comic books / Manga crap

Started Civil War the marvel thing.
It's interesting. Enjoying it.

I got done reading Death Note not too long ago.
The ending was honestly crap.
For someone that's able to escape so many problems he gets caught so quickly at the end.

The story kind of felt like it was dragging near the end honestly. I enjoyed it, it was just dragging.
A bit overrated honestly.

[quote="terra"]I also just finished the Mistborn series recently, by Brandon Sanderson. It's no substitute for Jordan or Martin but in terms of world-building and magic and COMPLETING a reasonably epic story in only three novels, that's clearly planned and has callbacks to the first book, it's pretty good. His prose is a bit flat, but I'll take that over Pat Rothfuss, who has beautiful prose but can't tell a story (I must have ranted here about that before... all I'm going to say is Felurian... ugh).[/quote]

I know I've said this before but Sanderson's one of my favorite writers bar none, and Mistborn is at the top of the heap for me. The setting isn't quite as compelling as it could've been, and some of the secondary characters are forgettable, but there's probably not a single writer out there who can match his talent for plotting and creating a deep backstory. The way that the final scenes of The Hero Of Ages ties everything up is one of my favorite moments in anything I've ever read.

The Alloy Of Law spinoff set in the same world is still very much worth reading, as is pretty much everything he's written. I think that of his books, Elantris is the only one I haven't read yet.

Here's my advice: read The Night Land: A Story Retold and John C. Wright's Awake In The Night Land collection. It's one of the most fascinating settings in all of science fiction, criminally underrated, and shockingly original when Hodgson's The Night Land came out in 1912 (read A Story Retold instead, the prose of the original is tough to deal with.) Among other things, Hodgson invented Cosmic Horror, the Dying Earth subgenre, and force fields. Read it.

[quote="ThinlineTele"]
Here's my advice: read The Night Land: A Story Retold and John C. Wright's Awake In The Night Land collection. It's one of the most fascinating settings in all of science fiction, criminally underrated, and shockingly original when Hodgson's The Night Land came out in 1912 (read A Story Retold instead, the prose of the original is tough to deal with.) Among other things, Hodgson invented Cosmic Horror, the Dying Earth subgenre, and force fields. Read it.[/quote]

I'll bite... added it to my list.

[quote="Lesser_Hamster"]Yeah, the prose took some getting used to. It wasn't [i]bad[/i] necessarily, but it is a little antiquated.[/quote]

I just couldn't get into it. I finished the book, albeit sloooowly. I won't be giving any more Burroughs books a try. Somehow I could deal with Jane Austen's archaic writing but just not this.

Recently finished the MaddAddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood. Some of the best dystopian sci-fi/speculative fiction I've read. The first and second books are tangentially related, and then they tie together in the third. There isn't a lot of action most of the time, there's a lot of flashbacks, but the world-building is excellent and the characters are interesting. And I actually went back and reread the first book to better understand how the books tied together.

Hmm, I haven't really posted here in a long time. I'll give some updates then.

I reread Ender's Game and started Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. I'd recommend both. Pratchett is like a fantastic, wizard version of The Hitchhiker's Guide. I've gotten up to book 6 in the Discworld series, [i]Pyramids[/i] and I've bought the Discworld collection in paperback form from eBay. Unfortunately, having to move around a lot now, I don't have the resources to lug around the books, so they're just kind of chilling at my sister's house.


That being said, I've decided to start reading up on some classics [more specifically, banned books] that I've missed out on and so I've read Orwell's [i]Animal Farm[/i] and I'm just now beginning the quintessential banned book, [i]Lolita[/i]. I'm not that far in, but so far the prose is very good, if a little bit high-handed at times. Looking forward to reading more of it.


Does anyone else have any recommendations to banned or fucked-up books? (Not gore or thrillers like [i]Silence of the Lambs[/i], please.)

Animal Farm is fantastic. My wife said that Lolita was a very good, but weird book, I think.

My most recent big read was the Foundation trilogy by Asimov, which was absolutely amazing. Blew my mind with how much I enjoyed it, and I already loved him from short story collections. Can't recommend those books enough.

I also read a short book of what is basically amazing prose by Khalil Gibran called The Prophet. I'm not sure how to describe it exactly, but it was a beautiful read. I've got it and Thich Naht Hahn's short book The Miracle of Mindfulness on my iPhone for reading to help get me through rough/boring workdays lol. I'm planning on re-reading Island by Aldous Huxley again at some point in the near future, because it's probably my favorite novel these days, and also need to get around to checking out this book on body language, What Every Body is Saying, which I've heard is really interesting.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/erinlarosa/book ... .yvea4ZWbb

I've read Catch 22 and Cat's Cradle from that list. Has anyone here read any of the others and can personally recommend them? I'd be interested in crossing some of those books off my reading list.

If you haven't read the Giver yet somehow, hop on it, that book is beautiful.

And Crime and Punishment?

Crime and Punishment is so good that I had to read it bit by bit and just stop to think and take it in and FEEL all these different things. It's a book that made me cry more times than I can clearly recall, both at the beauty of the prose and the beauty of ideas and the sadness of humanity's failings. It's a book that tears you down and builds you back up with more compassion and shows you what forgiveness is at its purest, and why that's such an important act for people. I would say that it's one of the best books I've ever read, up on the top tier with Huxley's "Island" and Asimov's "Foundation" novels, although it makes you think and feel in completely different ways from either.

I'm not always one for the "classics" of literature, but Dostoyevsky's works are amazing and I feel that everyone should read at least one of his novels at some point.

I was reading [i]Jubilee Hitchhiker[/i]--the biography of Richard Brautigan-- by William Hjortsberg. I really love most all Brautigan wrote, and read [i]So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away[/i] for the first time earlier this year, and it really touched me. So, I figured I'd try to delve into the man's story.
The biography is really written in an interesting style--really great, sometimes because it's really awful. Hjortsberg allows quite a bit of poetic license at the beginning of the book, which in detail shows us Brautigan shooting himself in the face (apparently on 9/16, although he wouldn't be found for over a month, decomposed beyond recognition (also described in gruesome detail), only to be positively and absolutely identified after having his molars sent in and compared to his dental records).

I was finding his life story very interesting but then I had to return the book to the library...and then the library closed for renovations, so I will have to wait to get back reading it.

[quote="Marekenshin"]
And Crime and Punishment?

Crime and Punishment is so good that I had to read it bit by bit and just stop to think and take it in and FEEL all these different things. It's a book that made me cry more times than I can clearly recall, both at the beauty of the prose and the beauty of ideas and the sadness of humanity's failings. It's a book that tears you down and builds you back up with more compassion and shows you what forgiveness is at its purest, and why that's such an important act for people. I would say that it's one of the best books I've ever read, up on the top tier with Huxley's "Island" and Asimov's "Foundation" novels, although it makes you think and feel in completely different ways from either.

I'm not always one for the "classics" of literature, but Dostoyevsky's works are amazing and I feel that everyone should read at least one of his novels at some point.[/quote]

Coincidentally, Crime and Punishment was the latest book I read. My father recommended it to me. To be honest, for me, it was quite a struggle to get through. I would rate it three out of five. The writing style did not really resonate with me, unfortunately. That said, I really enjoyed Huxley's "Island". I think Ursula Le Guin's "The Dispossessed" is in the same vein as Huxley's "Island". Nice book .

That said... I want to read a new Murakami book! Anyone has a suggestion for a book that is similar to the style of Murakami? (effective imagery, eye for detail, short clear sentences, a calm tranquil atmosphere, quotidian descriptions, a bit surreal)

edit: oh damn! I just discovered that a translation for 'Hear the Wind Sing/Pinball, 1973' is out. Gotta get my hands on this!

Never heard of Ursula Le Guin before, I'll have to look that book up and maybe give it a read. Haven't ever run across another book quite like Island so far. Thanks!

just for added context, Le Guin is a *canon* scifi/fantasy writer, many awards n accolades under her belt. She also wrote the Earthsea trilogy, which apparently Goro Miyazaki botched.

I read her The World For World is Forest this summer. Was alright.

I've read only the second Earthsea book. It was a really good read.

Lolita was probably the best book I read last year. It's really an astounding novel. Nabokov is an absolute giant for writing something like that in a second language. I've rarely felt so intellectually engaged in the process of reading. A Prayer for Owen Meany. a superbly funny and emotional novel, was a solid second, and Alice Munro's first short story collection was a respectable third. I've had to reread a number of books for private lessons at my ESL school (yeah, the most advanced students can opt to read novels--look, ma, I'm using muh graduate degree!), and Kurt Vonnegut somehow managed to go up in my estimation while James Joyce, at least in Dubliners, has fallen.

Rereading Catch 22, the Sirens of Titan, and more Joyce right now while slowly wading through Midnight's Children.