1963, by Alan Moore (and co).

The Thousand of Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Overall, I fell for this book hard (even though"historical-fiction" is usually not my thing). While I thought that the opening section was by far the best section (seeing as it basically stuck with one point of view the whole time, which is something I miss in modern novels), the majority of this book was just beautiful, fun, and immersive. The one issue I had was that the ending seemed uncertain. There are five parts to the novel, and the last two parts only run a total of about 20 pages (of a 480 page book), so in those final two chapters the focus moves from beautiful prose and description, towards a lightning round of plot points and irrevelent wrap-ups.

Even with the ending though, it is my favorite book of 2010, so far.

Played the game: LOVED it, took me right back to the beat-em-ups of my childhood.
Saw the movie: Liked it. Kind of a bit too schizo for me at times, but I lust Mary Elizabeth Winstead so hard between her and some of the visuals I allowed my jaw to go a bit slack

Now for the comics.... Should I bother having done this in the completely wrong order?

I've been a huge video game, music nerd since I was a kid but am only mildly interested in comics. Opinions would rule!

The books and the movie are very similar, though the books have a lot more breathing room. I don't know. I dug them, but if you're not terribly into comics and you weren't terribly into the movie, then maybe they wouldn't be worth your time. On the other hand, they are very quick reads. You could blow through one of them in an hour or so, depending on how focused you are. And they seem to be good gateway-comics for the uninitiated comic reader.

So, why not? Read one of them and see what you think.

Supreme: The Return, by Alan Moore (and co).

Tom Strong, by Alan Moore (and co).

Smax, by Alan Moore (and co). Taking a brief break from Tom Strong, which is good and gorgeous but easily my least favorite of the ABC line so far. Blowing through Smax right now. Alan Moore playing around with a bunch of fantasy cliches. Very funny, and surprisingly moving at times.

I finished Super Sad True Love Story yesterday and it was, well, a pretty big letdown.

It's hard to wrap my head around why exactly I didn't love it, because I read it over the period of two days which means it certainly wasn't a painful or slow experience. I think, in the end, it just didn't offer enough character or depth, or maybe even humor to stay with me.

It might have also been the fact that somewhere in the book, the characters are listening to "an old Arcade Fire song." Oh, the future!

Reading this for an essay I have to write for uni. About half way through and it is pretty fantastic and overwhelmingly grim at points as one would expect.

The Hunger Games....

What is the deal with this, is it a good read, or is it more for "young adults," I stopped reading for a few years, now I am playing catchup.

It is definitely young adult, at times very girl targeted (boys, clothes). It's plot borrows heavily from other sources, Battle Royale, Stephen King, and the themes are pretty straightforward. It is not nearly as good as the Harry Potter series.

But I still enjoyed the first two books and will be getting the finale tomorrow. The books are well written at the YA level. The plot moves along nicely. Some good characters. There is some good action. While often predictable, there were enough surprises to keep me interested.

I was curious from a pop culture perspective to read these and I'm glad I did.

Hm. Yeah I want to go at it from a pop culture perspective as well, I imagine they are quick reads, so not a ton to lose. As I said I am YEARS behind on current reading, I am kind of pecking at This list (already read a few, reading some now), but are there any other universally agreed upon or absolute earth shattering personal favorites on this board? I much prefer fiction, and am not super into graphic novels, I know book recommendations are difficult but I am ready for some opinions.

Promethea, by Alan Moore and co. Also reading The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, by Michael Chabon. First novel I've read of his (not counting that Final Solution crap). Liking it better than his short story collections so far. Very light read, but enjoyable enough.

just finished this. started it 5 years ago and lost track. Once i saw the film was going to be released, i reread and finished it.
Completely loved it.

Finished Millhauser's collection Dangerous Laughter. Some brilliant stories, some ok ones. It was a little dissapointing that the majority of the stories seemed to follow the same pattern. Millhauser introduces an interesting idea then twists that idea to the extreme. As individiual stories they all work, but to read more than three back to back can become somewhat tiresome.

At least four or five brilliant movie ideas in the book, though.

dark star: an oral biography of jerry garcia
not really knowing much about the dead or garcia i really enjoyed this. had no idea the extent of his influence on surrealistic pillow (<-- should have known this)...or even that he was a heroin addict. dude was in bad shape during his last years. no shorts for jerry.


next up: acid dreams the complete social history of lsd: the cia, the sixties, and beyond by martin lee/bruce shlain

Also reading Eric Powell's The Goon, alongside both Promethea and Tom Strong. This book is hilarious and fantastically illustrated. If you like comics at all, I recommend you check this book out.

Holy shit. A friend of mine got the new Kindle today, my first hands on with an e-reader ever. I'm sold for someone who doesn't have the storage space for an incredible beautiful bookshelf, this thing is great, e-ink is way better than I thought it would be.

Wilson, by Daniel Clowes. This was mildly amusing, I suppose, though it's mostly the same joke told over and over again. And Wilson's a huge, unpleasant asshole. Didn't really get a whole lot out of this.

Have a decent flight this weekend, looking for something to entertain me while on vacation. How is Franzen's "the corrections"? Just got in under my name at the library.

is Kindle better than B&N's Nook? what are the advantages?

Honestly it was my first exposure to e-ink and I got all giddy, I don't know which is better I know the Kindle is "newer" so it likely has better contrast, either way it is incredibly readable, and my guess would be the Nook is too.

I'd been kinda anti-Kindle (and the like) until I saw these images. Now I kinda want one.

The iPad looks like a nightmare.

Kindle:


iPad:


Kindle:


iPad:


Newsprint:


Magazine:


Book:


Newsprint:


Magazine:


Book:


From Bit-101.

I've read around a dozen books off of my iPad and it is perfectly fine.

Finished off Sheffield's new Talking to Girls about Duran Duran a few nights ago - standard pop culture fare but he's really entertaining...some really nice passages about spending time with his aging grandfather as the book ends - tender nail clipping. Hell, I'm just glad to finish a book I've picked up -- I'm probably well below the Mendoza line the last year or two in that regard. I've started & stopped I don't know how many recently...in fact, I started this one last night - Egger's Zeitoun. The storm hasn't arrived yet.

Again and again.


Also enjoying (short stories kick lately):

just finished this. pretty phenomenal, and better than cuckoo's nest imo

Anyone else?

Reading Sellevision by Augusten Burroughs at the moment. It's pretty entertaining, thus far. It's humorous look at the people working for a television shopping network.

I still lack the desire to read off of a kindle or ipad or whatever. Someday maybe someone will convince me, but I just prefer to remain old fashioned for now. I like the feel of holding a book and flipping the pages. Unless I'm reading an 800 page book, I don't see what's so hard about carrying it around versus one of these other devices. I don't need that many books at my fingertips at any given moment.

For me it is more about living situation. Don't really have the space for a big ass bookshelf.
And I tried the library for a bit, but I just can't read on a deadline when renewals aren't an option

kinda hard to ignore the buzz from Oprah and the media about Oprah choosing this book even after he dissed her original endorsement.

i got such fricken long list of books to read. I actually stepped up my reading over the past few months.

July
The Monkey & the Fish - Dave Gibbons (non)

August
Prince of Thieves - Chuck Hogan (fiction)
Bird in Hand - Christina Baker Kline (fiction)

Sept
the Christian Atheist - Craig Groeshel (non)
Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell (non)

Currently reading Crazy Love - Francis Chan (non)

am finally gonna get around to reading the Given Day by Dennis Lehane (fiction) since i'm seeing him speak in Milwaukee mid November

Finished:
Mark Twain: Man In White - The Grand Adventure Of His Final Years, Michael Sheldon. Enjoyed this book immensely, despite the overarching sadness in the last years of Twain's life. He went out, not at the peak of his powers, but at the height of his notoriety (having received an honorary doctorate from Oxford about 18 months before his death). He was a keen observer of people and their motivations, as well as a superb critic, a dedicated amateur scientist. People raised their eyebrows at some of his choices in friends (he did like the company of younger women, and he was close with one of the leading "robber barons" of the day), and his fashion choices (wearing white suits simply because he'd lost so many people in his life, hated funerals, and black clothes reminded him of the losses). He made some serious blunders (taking people at their word, which nearly cost him his life's savings more than once), and listening to a chorus of advice regarding treatment of his youngest daughter's epilepsy. But in the last 7 years of his life, he managed to pack more 'doing' in than I'll ever manage.

Now Reading:
Where Men Win Glory, Jon Krakauer. There's a lot of invective around Krakauer's books and there's a good reason for it. He's judgmental and makes no apologies for it (except when he's in the wrong, as the revised edition of Into Thin Air showed) The edition I'm reading came out this spring-- it's been revised in the light of recent congressional testimony and information from FIOA requests. I didn't read the previous edition, so I don't know where the two diverge. He does an interesting job spinning twin narratives-- Pat Tillman's biography and the rise of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, etc. There's a bit of hero-worship and "these guys are evil", but Krakauer does his best to keep Tillman human as possible. I'm not quite halfway through-- Tillman and his brother have just gone to Ranger school, not yet deployed to Afghanistan. I'm sure I'll be plenty pissed off after I read about the resulting coverup after Tillman was killed by 'friendly fire'.

Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals - It's just fun to read a Discworld book, even if it's about Foot the Ball.



Charlie Stross' The Fuller Memorandum - Imagine Len Deighton writing H.P. Lovecraft pastiches; a low-level functionary in IT Services at a fictional British intelligence agency ("The Laundry") and his "Wet Work" specialist wife (who's weapon of choice is one of Erich Zann's violins) face off against Cultists who're trying to bring about the end of the world by releasing soul eating horrors and who have inserted moles into the Laundry itself, a Post-Cold War Russian Occult spy service searching for a Russian White Army General's undead assistant, and searching for his "missing" boss (who may or may not be the semi-mythical "Eater of Souls").



Simon Reynolds' Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 - a damn good overview of some dozen different styles of music that rose after the implosion of the Class of '77 Punks: DIY, No Wave, Two Tone Ska, Mutant Disco, Industrial, Synth Rock, etc. I wish I could find the British version since it's supposed to have several chapters and nearly 200 pages of information edited out of the US version.

Hm, this book is mentioned here...I wonder if Sheldon used all the 'good parts' already.

I had about a minute to find a book to read on a ten hour flight the other day, saw this one, glanced at the back for a sec, and bought it. It turned out to be one of the most enjoyable books I'd read in a long while, and the long trip flew by. I'm just a big sappy sap.

It's a translation from the original Russian written in 1916 or something. I'd recommend it, plenty of humor and generally an interesting account.

Thomas Pynchon, "Inherent Vice". Here's Pynchon taking his ambitions down a few notches with this wacky lil' hippie detective story. I went through the first chapter thus far, reminds me a bit of "The Big Lebowski".

lebowski by way of didion's the white album. make no mistake, inherent vice might be less ambitious than most of pynchon's work, but if anything, it's weightier than his digressive, doorstop fantasias. the ending is tonally perfect, and even though i lost track of the plot halfway through, it came together wonderfully.

i'm on william vollmann kick right now, reading poor people and you bright and risen angels. just finished this, which was unbelievably good:



my friends are probably sick of me rambling on about it, but if they'd read it, i have no doubt they'd want to talk about it too.

The Dwarf, by Pär Lagerkvist. Rereading this incredible book and hoping to turn some of you folks on to it.

It is incomprehensible that he should want to have these futile people here, and still more incomprehensible that he should be able to sit and listen to them and their stupid chatter. I can understand that he may occasionally listen to poets reciting their verses; they can be regarded as buffoons such as are always kept at court. They laud the lofty purity of the human soul, great events and heroic feats, and there is nothing to be said against all that, particularly if their songs flatter him. Human beings need flattery; otherwise they do not fulfill their purpose, not even in their own eyes. And both the present and the past contain much that is beautiful and noble which, without due praise, would have been neither noble nor beautiful. Above all, they sing the praises of love, which is quite as it should be, for nothing else is in such need of transformation into something different. The ladies are filled with melancholy and their breasts heave with sighs; the men gaze vaguely and dreamily into space, for they all know what it is really like and realize that this must be an especially beautiful poem.

pg 11-12.

Storytime! Switch on the strobe...do watcha' like...let's have a ball...down at The Globe. His other one (Shadow of the Wind) was fun so I grabbed this in a bookstore a few weeks back. I'm enjoying it! Nice bedtime reading - gets the I-had-too-much-to-dream machine rev'd up & chugging.

I tried so many times to get through Sometimes a Great Notion - hell, I think I brought it to summer camp when I was, like, 10 or 11 then kept trying for another 10 yrs to get through it & failed. I know there's a hand in a tree by a river in the opening passages...or something similar to that.

Does this title page of the book make any sense? This isn't 'Precious based on the novel Push'...this IS the novel Push.

read this based on my dad's recommendation and was surprised how good it was. first boyle i've read, i'm looking forward to checking out some of his other stuff

now working on this now:

since that post was a failure, i'll point out that it was referring to 'drop city' and 'the man in the high castle'

drop city is a great, great book. wish they'd make a movie (or better, mini-series) out of it. it reminded me of the epic stephen king books, with the camps of good and evil setting up for the eventual final conflict. except here good isn't that good, and they're all hippies and crazies. it's been years since i read it, but god, i used to push that book on everyone i knew. boyle's got a lot of other good stuff, and some not so good stuff. everything i've read has been worthwhile, though.

have you read riven rock? just read the description, and it sounds awesome.

would definitely like to see a drop city movie. i'm enjoying pondering who would be best to direct it.

A must read...or rather listen, since it's read by him in his gruff New York way. A fascinating story. Life lessons and an amazing life. This guy knows everyone.

A very useful one volume account of nearly two centuries of these Christian/Muslim frontier wars. Reads like an adventure novel too.

The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño.