Now Reading

  On 12/29/2011 at 11:46 PM, iep said:

rude. also, cunt.

agreed

Matter by Iain M. Banks

Part of the "Culture" sci- fi series. Brother introduced me to this author, and although it isn't AMAZING, it is fairly creative/thought provoking for a sci-fi book.

The Vampire Armand, Ann Rice

I bought this for a dollar on a whim from a Thrift Store, having only read Interview with the Vampire. I have to say this might be the gayest book I've ever read.

The Restaurant At The End of The Universe, by Douglas Adams. It's not as funny as I thought it would be, but it's fun nevertheless.

Good shit. Historically accurate, bloody as fuck, great characters..

  On 12/30/2011 at 4:34 AM, Danny O Flannagin said:

Matter by Iain M. Banks

 

Part of the "Culture" sci- fi series. Brother introduced me to this author, and although it isn't AMAZING, it is fairly creative/thought provoking for a sci-fi book.

I read Look to Windward a long time ago and it was one of my favourite books, I've been meaning to read them all for far too long now... Thanks for reminding me.

On new kindle touch.

now reading:

just finished :

foundation was a little meh for me. the setting seemed cool enough but you don't get a close enough look at anything or become vested in the characters (at least i wasn't). do the other books expand in more detail or are they just more small veins of asimovs galactic history?

"gave up" on finishing You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers, and replaced it with Slapstick by Vonnegut, which I'm enjoying a hell of a lot more.

  On 1/5/2012 at 12:33 AM, theSun said:

 

 

foundation was a little meh for me. the setting seemed cool enough but you don't get a close enough look at anything or become vested in the characters (at least i wasn't). do the other books expand in more detail or are they just more small veins of asimovs galactic history?

Just finished it recently as well, I had read the rest of the series but not this one. The rest of the trilogy invests more on the characters, I think, but they're all made up of "small veins of asimovs galactic history", and foundation and empire's first half is super boring, they're all hella cool, tho.

the sequels and prequels of the original trilogy are definitely more detailed and character centric.

---

I'm halfway through 1Q84's third volume and I still have no idea what is it about, it seems to be permanently building up to something that never happens.

i want to return to stanislav lem..

this is my current reading-on-the-go list.

  On 1/5/2012 at 12:33 AM, theSun said:

now reading:

I read the second book when I was younger, really good memories.. going to start at the beginning when I'm done reading A Brave New World..

just finished the Death Gate cycle, pretty decent fantasy. enjoyed it.

when i was a kid..

*takes seat by the fireplace*

take a seat by the fireplace will you..

when i was a kid, i lent ex-voto my copy of Voyage to Arcturus

earths shifted, moved in their courses and eventually collided or disintegrated...

and then ex-voto started reading the book.... son, that's how cosmic its timescale is.

he also trashed my copy of stephenson's cryptonomicon.

now we mostly read academic literature... but back when novels ruled the sky, robocop carrying ghosts up mountains, sup doing a backflip on a spike with CUP watching from the afterlife muttering "one love".

that's when supspension of disbelief was knig

currently reading the Lilith's Brood series by Octavia E. Butler. Absolutely fantastic. Truly great. Only on book one but man. So good.

other than that i just re-read snow crash and tried to re-start the baroque cycle but i wasn't feeling up to it. will probably read the diamond age after i'm done with lilith's brood because fuck i love that book.

also read some non-fiction book about a lady who's mom was one of those munchausen by proxy people and almost killed her and that was depressing but not all that good. and a book about queer transgression in medieval english lit. and a dance with dragons. didn't really care for it, GRRM seems to be letting shit slide. and before that it was our magnificent bastard tongue which was interesting but nothing i didn't know.

there were more but i dont feel like continuing.

  On 1/8/2012 at 2:49 AM, iep said:

when i was a kid..

 

*takes seat by the fireplace*

 

take a seat by the fireplace will you..

 

when i was a kid, i lent ex-voto my copy of Voyage to Arcturus

earths shifted, moved in their courses and eventually collided or disintegrated...

and then ex-voto started reading the book.... son, that's how cosmic its timescale is.

 

he also trashed my copy of stephenson's cryptonomicon.

 

now we mostly read academic literature... but back when novels ruled the sky, robocop carrying ghosts up mountains, sup doing a backflip on a spike with CUP watching from the afterlife muttering "one love".

 

that's when supspension of disbelief was knig

A Voyage to Arcturus, mmmm

  On 1/8/2012 at 9:26 AM, disparaissant said:

currently reading the Lilith's Brood series by Octavia E. Butler. Absolutely fantastic. Truly great. Only on book one but man. So good.

other than that i just re-read snow crash and tried to re-start the baroque cycle but i wasn't feeling up to it. will probably read the diamond age after i'm done with lilith's brood because fuck i love that book.

also read some non-fiction book about a lady who's mom was one of those munchausen by proxy people and almost killed her and that was depressing but not all that good. and a book about queer transgression in medieval english lit. and a dance with dragons. didn't really care for it, GRRM seems to be letting shit slide. and before that it was our magnificent bastard tongue which was interesting but nothing i didn't know.

there were more but i dont feel like continuing.

The Diamond Age is seriously underrated.

fuck yeah, we're doomed

finished up lilth's brood, it was amazing.

now reading perdido street station by china miéville

also been reading bits and bobs of sister outsider by audre lorde

  On 1/8/2012 at 11:11 PM, baph said:

The Diamond Age is seriously underrated.

not by me! haven't read it in years though.

currently:

dense & well-researched book on currently existing solutions for planet problems. still towards the beginning; there's some very cool stuff in here.

still working through Infinite Jest

side project of The Moral Landscape by sam harris. really enjoyable book.

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

About a 3rd of the way through. Had a great beginning but definantly starting to slow down. Very sad story

  On 1/5/2012 at 11:31 PM, o00o said:

 

this is my current reading-on-the-go list.

You should put Gunslinger last though. Or you'll have to splice the rest of the series in before moving onto the next book here.

I'm reading Black Hawk Down, the book the movie was based off of. It offers more perspective on the individuals that participated. As well as some Somalians.

-Fred Kempe's Siberian Odyssee, for the nth time. he travelled with my father thru remote siberian lands that were just opened up for non-soviets. mesmerizing writer.

  Quote

Since the expedition was organized to be journalistic and ecological, and carried a letter of safe passage from the KGB--and because the author is obviously tenacious--Kempe was allowed to visit Tomsk 7, a self-contained city where nuclear weapons material is produced, although he was refused access to the reactors. He also stopped at vast industrial areas where the pollution is so severe that half of all newborns have chronic illnesses; and he spent time with Gulag veterans and aboriginal Siberians, including nomads who herd reindeer 100 miles above the Arctic Circle. With no pretense to finding the "Russian soul," Kemp makes vivid the populace's self-defeating acceptance of sudba , or fate, and its repressed anger at the Communist lie, as well as his compassion for "a people who had been so anaesthetized by suffering and exhausted by hardships that they had lost much of the spirit they needed for the free market and democracy."

-Chingiz Aitmatov "Mother Earth and Other Stories", ancient Siberian folk stories translated into english. some nuggets of gold in there.

-Gerard Jacobs "De Goden Hebben Honger"

  Quote

Stalin built the remote Soviet goldfields of the Kolyma, in eastern Siberia, on the back of convict slave labour. In today's market-oriented Russia, conditions remain almost as hard, for miners and mine-workers, pioneers and immigrants, native Siberians and ex-convicts alike.

-Colin Thubron's Samarkand/Het verloren Hart van Azie

  Quote

A land of enormous proportions, countless secrets, and incredible history, Central Asia--the heart of the great Mongol empire of Tamerlane, site of the legendary Silk Route and scene of Stalin's cruelest deportations--is a remote and fascinating region. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of newly independent republics, Central Asia--containing the magical cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, and terrain as diverse as the Kazakh steppes, the Karakum desert, and the Pamir mountains--has been in a constant state of transition. The Lost Heart of Asia takes readers into the very heart of this little visited, yet increasingly important region, delivering a rare and moving portrayal of a world in the midst of change.