What book are you reading?

[ColOfNature]

Recently I read Un Lun Dun by China Mieville (brilliant, wonderful book) and Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. (You may discern a theme if you're familiar with these books - though they do not play out very similarly at all).

Un Lun Dun I can only describe as having the same effect on me as the first time I watched Spirited Away. I'd been somewhere else and I was absolutely exhausted. Brilliant characters, great plot, great dialogue, easy to read but not stupid for an instant.

Neverwhere was a lot of fun but didn't quite leave the same impression on me - I suspect that's something to do with the writing style. Deeba, the perspective character in un lun dun, is someone we're allowed to get a lot closer to than Richard, the protagonist of Neverwhere. Still, it had some utterly brilliant characters (Hunter, and Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar spring to mind...) and was pretty sad in places too.

Now I'm onto The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross, fourth in the Laundry Files series, which seems to be getting rather more serious. The first two books had very much an adventurous feel to them (for me) where even though the stakes were high it felt light. The Fuller Memorandum definitely had hints of the more grim direction the series was banking towards, but this book seems to have kicked it up a notch. This is not surprising, considering, as the title implies, the plot is moving headlong into the apocalypse.

My brain seems to be leaking: these were almost exactly my thoughts (except that I thought Hunter was pretty unintersting).

Just finished The Quantum Thief. It would have benefited from some more development of some of the concepts (particularly the Dilemma Prison and the ramifications of breaking the gevulot (the whole panopticon thing was expertly dealt with in Charlie Stross's Glasshouse)) but it's a brilliant first novel and I have high hopes for the sequels.

[Fumarole]

Silmarillion , its a timeless classic , cant go wrong with that :D

I've tried several time to get into this, but have faltered each time; and I love The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

[Similar]

Reading The Three Musketeers by Dumas. I recently found a local second hand store that sells three paperbacks for what amounts to ~1.5 USD and needed to find a third book and since I've never actually read this one, I thought I should try.
He certainly uses a lot of words; if something can be said with two words, you can be certain he uses at least ten.
That might get a bit too annoying. So far it's okay, though.

Also got Good Omens by Gaiman and Pratchett from the same store, in the exact same version a partner of mine once borrowed and which I never got back again, so it's nice to have it 'back' and it's still a great read too.

Red Storm Rising by Clancy was another I got. It's quite messy (could have done with some proof reading, at least), but it was okay, if probably mainly because it made me feel like a teenager again; it's very much an eighties book (1989, but it feels like early eighties).
I suppose it's positive that cold war stuff feels so outdated now.

And Crusader Gold by Gibbins. Sort of like Dan Brown, just not as annoying. Main problem with it is that the characters follow in the foot steps of some long dead vikings and these vikings sort of feel more alive than the characters. But it's entertaining enough in a kind of b-movie way.

[Lambchops]

Also got Good Omens by Gaiman and Pratchett from the same store, in the exact same version a partner of mine once borrowed and which I never got back again, so it's nice to have it 'back' and it's still a great read too.

This is the only book I've bought twice, for similar lending and not getting back reasons.

[Ian]

On the subject of Clancy I'm reading Rainbow Six and rather enjoying it.

[Similar]

On the subject of Clancy I'm reading Rainbow Six and rather enjoying it.

yeah, Red Storm Rising did make me want to try some of his others (I'm pretty sure I have read some, but it must have been 20-25 years ago, so I don't remember anything). It just felt a bit ... unplanned or something. In the foreword he says it's based on some wargames he and a friend played and it is a bit much like the game came before the story or such.
This feeling gets stronger when you notice that he mixes up the characters sometimes (I thought it was me, there's quite a lot to keep track of, but then I reread a section and he actually did use the wrong name).

[noaru]

Just finished reading the Dune trilogy and while I'd reread Dune anytime, I can't say the same for Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, which is a bit sad as I had better memories from when I read them as a kid.

Now I'm going through Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon. Light reading, but enjoyable and fun, also it has a good bit of history and lore to prepare me for the release of GW2.

[Theblazeuk]

I liked Un Lun Dun but Neverwhere is a classic. However this probably has more to do with the age I first read it than anything else. You may like a book called Roofworld, less metaphysical but a similar theme and an admitted influence on Gaiman. Hoping to start the latest Laundry Files book asap, got Mieville's Iron Council to get through first

This is the only book I've bought twice, for similar lending and not getting back reasons.

This is the only book I am going to buy again, for similar lending and not getting back reasons.

Bastards the lot of em eh (mainly i want another copy to lend out, sad as that is... Never learn)

[VassiliBat]

I'm reading Closing Time, by Joseph Heller, the sequel to Catch 22. I'm a big fan of Catch 22, but this is somewhat different. Catch 22 was dark, but was balanced with absurdist humour. Set much later this book manages not only to have less humour but to somehow set the first book back to reality. It's focus on the inevitability of death just removes the joke from 'trying to live forever or dying in the attempt.' It's still a very good book, and so far no terrible, incongruent chapters like the Rome one; but although I would recommend Catch 22 unreservedly to someone, this I can't.

[anark10n]

I've currently been taken under by the Last Ringbearer: Kirill Yeskov and The Way of Shadows: Brent Weeks. I started the latter because I was close to the finishing the former. I hate it when things end ...

[Stense]

With the Mars Science Lab mission successfully landing the other week, I decided to re-read War of the Worlds, just so I know what to expect for when those wacky Martians retaliate for such an insult. Its still a brilliant read. Still one of the most effective alien invasion stories out there.

[sabrage]

I'm struggling with Stephenson's Crytonomicon. Struggling in the sense that I don't think I'm nerdy enough for this book, and before opening it I had considered myself pretty damn nerdy. "...as vast and unfathomable as the global Internet..." I keep throwing the book down in disgust at lines like that, and I'm barely 100 pages in.

[Space Indaver]

Totally broke expectations and got Ready Player One. Really easy to read, lots of well thought-out ideas about the future of games/MMOs/the internet. Liked it. Three out of four.

[Nalano]

I'm struggling with Stephenson's Crytonomicon. Struggling in the sense that I don't think I'm nerdy enough for this book, and before opening it I had considered myself pretty damn nerdy. "...as vast and unfathomable as the global Internet..." I keep throwing the book down in disgust at lines like that, and I'm barely 100 pages in.

O brave new world, That has such people in't.

The greatest, most ground-breaking and society-changing communication device ever in the history of mankind was invented in your lifetime and you're already bored of the implications?

[sabrage]

"In the Tolkien, not the endocrinological or Snow White sense, Randy is a Dwarf. Tolkien's Dwarves were stout, taciturn, vaguely magical creatures who spent a lot of time in the dark hammering out beautiful things, e.g. Rings of Power."

I just know shit writing when I see it. But I suppose the nerd-pandering would explain Cryptonomicon's sacred cow status on this wondrous communication tool.

[Nalano]

"In the Tolkien, not the endocrinological or Snow White sense, Randy is a Dwarf. Tolkien's Dwarves were stout, taciturn, vaguely magical creatures who spent a lot of time in the dark hammering out beautiful things, e.g. Rings of Power."

I just know shit writing when I see it. But I suppose the nerd-pandering would explain Cryptonomicon's sacred cow status on this wondrous communication tool.

You haven't really given any indication that you would know shit writing when you see it, and I'm not exactly ready to take your word on it.

[sabrage]

The ramifications of your disapproval will keep me up for minutes to come, I'm sure.

[Unaco]

The ramifications of your disapproval will keep me up for minutes to come, I'm sure.

lol.

I finished my re-read of the Malazan Book of the Fallen (and the ICE Novels of the Malazan Empire) sometime last week*. However, I am continuing with the Steven Erikson/Malazan World, and am currently reading Forge of Darkness, the first book of the Kharkanas trilogy. I'll try not to spoil anything, but for those who are interested - It goes back to however many hundreds of thousands of years before the main Malazan sequence, and seems to be dealing with the Tiste peoples, the whole Mother Dark, Father Light, Shadow situation, and those things that have become known as the Elder Gods. Again, I don't want to spoil anything, but it is definitely revelatory in many ways, and I really like what he's done with the book and the history... it fits in really well, I think, with the way that history, myth and legend are in the Malazan world.

*I effused about them in several posts, earlier in this thread.

[Shane]

*I effused about them in several posts, earlier in this thread.

Yea, you convinced me to give this series a go. Have ordered Gardens of the Moon over the internet, it should be arriving in a day or two.

[Drinking with Skeletons]

Just finished re-reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman and am getting ready to re-read its spin-off, Lucifer. If you are a fantasy fan and haven't read Sandman, it comes with my highest recommendation for content, style, and accessibility.