Reading Tab

I'm reading and enjoying this one:


And also this one, written by someone I met on a writing forum:


Yeah, I know -- I'm a bit schizo, apparently.

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Not at all!

I tend to balance my historical stuff with silly off-the-wall comedy, as well.

Recently I was reading excerpt from Homer's The Iliad, while balancing it with Chris Moore's excellent Island of the Sequined Love Nun.

Alas, at this point I am on to...

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I Am Legend - by Richard Matheson 10/10
GREAT book, very well written (surprisingly so!), the movies rape this book and turn into something its not. I repudiate the movies.

Civilization & Its Discontents - by Sigmund Freud 7/10
Hmm. Interesting reading for a morning, but, in all of this Im quite surprised by sheer number of times he assumes facts not in evidence (as it were). We are often supposed to just take his theories as fact, or, he speaks as though the entire audience completely agrees with his supposition, and for that reason, he never really backs up what he has to say. I need to read the Libinous Types one.

Victory Conditions - by Elizabeth Moon 4/10
I've long since thought that Liza was just "getting thru" this series as best she could, and hated having to complete it. This was a mere closure for sake of the publishers requirement. Too bad.

The Complete Sonnets & Poems of William Shakespeare 10/10
Found an old bookstore down the street from my house, and it was AMAZING the books people give away! HOW could they give it away??? I must have spent 100 buck on used books, but wow - Barnes & Nobles and Borders has nothing on old books. There's something good about dusty old books - they have thoughts in them that arent tainted by modern editor thinking. Anyway, this one is a great read so far, and now I've learned something about the sonnets at least that I didnt know before.

Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart


Just finished:
Making Movies by Sidney Lumet

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If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

Johann von Goethe

I am rereading Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges. I think it has all his short stories. Just finished the first volume: A Universal History of Iniquity (originally published 1933). I call these 'short stories' in the loosest sense. Often they are imitations of works of scholarship, biography or bibliography distorted or with fictionalized sources. Book reviews for books that don't exist, strange essays on the metaphysics and languages of imagined worlds... well most of the weirder stuff comes in later volumes. A Universal History of Iniquity is a collection of brief, fictionalized biographical sketches of "real life" rogues: The Disinterested Killer Bill Harrigan (Billy the Kid), The Widow Ching - Pirate, Monk Eastman, Purveyor of Iniquities, The Uncivil Teacher of Court Etiquette Kotsuke no Suke (a retelling of The 47 Ronin, or Chushingura). I don't really have a favorite story, but one that I think a second reading helped me appreciate more than the rest was the penultimate entry: Man on Pink Corner, which is the only unsourced story and a good example of an untrustworthy narrator.

The Island of Doctor Moreau, second in the collection of five novels by H.G. Wells that I took out from the library. It was good but a lot more flawed than The Time Machine, which I don't think had a boring moment or description. Also fairly grotesque and suspenseful, it still easily rivals anything I've read by Michael Chricton, at over 100 years old.

Best book EVER

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I used to be addicted to crystal meth, now I'm just addicted to Breaking Bad.

7/10
It's pretty banal but still it's very intense

Just finished this book for about the 5th time. It is a classic and needs no introduction. I love it

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The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. I liked it. I really liked the fantasy aspects of the novel, the eyewitness descriptions of Martian technology and harrowing accounts of survival in the aftermath. The speculative applications of Darwinism and diagnoses of late 19th century society weren't as interesting, as you would expect. Overall: worth reading.

Ah, finally someone else who has read a Matthew Reilly book! Have you read anything else by him? The two books of his I've read (Temple and Contest) were fantastic. Full of action, and, IMO, would make excellent movies.

As for me, I read this this morning and *loved* it.


And I just started this one tonight. It's book four in "The Asteroid Wars" series.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson




Best cyberpunk novel I have read (and re-read) exploring memes, viruses and ancient Sumerian mythos while you are driven along with Hiro Protagonist through a future where the country has been divided into distinct enclaves each one with it's own laws. Visit the virtual reality of the metaverse where data takes form and you move in avatar form. Finally order a pizza cos the mafia has gone legit and you know that it will be delivered on time.

Here is the summary from Wiki ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_crash


LOL just noticed that this is the second Stephenson book on this page

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Actually you have read his first two books that are stand alone novels

I am reading Seven Ancient wonders now and after that i plan to read the sequel The Six sacred Stones

I just picked up a book by E.B. White, "Essays of E.B. White," and it's awesome. He's clear and straightforward with simple analogies that get the point across. I've only read the first one and I'm already hooked.

Essays of E.B. White by E.B. White


I've still got my eyes out for "The Pride of the Bimbos," but for some reason whenever I go into a book store my memory goes away and I look at directly what's in front of me and move from one idea to the next until a book matches any given thought. It sucks. Same thing happens at a record/CD store. As soon as I step out the door I remember what it was that I originally went there for.

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Indeed, and they were fascinating. I'm not really interested in getting started on a new series at the moment.

I just started reading the autobiography of Frances Farmer. So far so good!

Vamped by David Sosnowski 10/10
Ok - this one is TOTALLY humorous, and spins the entire Vampire story on its head. I was leafing thru it at the library, and just had to take it home it was so funny. Basically, Vampires "vamped" the whole world, so's there are only few living humans left, and all of them can expect to become Vampires some day. So what you have is a whole new..everyday vampire, with everyday vampire problems. Enter human girl adoptee of vampire father. All of sudden you have problems like: where is she gonna pee now that all houses have no toilets?

361 by Donald E. Westlake 5/10
This is one of those hard case crime books - very gritty, bloody-knuckles and man-style (which I liked), but definitely had a 60s/70s mindset to it, and was very grim. Not a bad read, but I've read better.

Black Alley by Mickey Spillane 10/10
A Mike Hammer novel. Now THIS guy Mickey can write! This dude takes hard crime (think Sin City blood sport type thing), and makes it poetic and appealing, yet still very man's mannish. I find it very interesting how he takes simple words, and simple speech, and simple men and makes them transcendent somehow. This guy can turn a phrase. Good book.

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something witty goes here......

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.

So incredibly bleak so far. Not holding out hope for anything to change in that regard any time soon. (I'm about halfway done.)

World War Z by Max Brooks.

If you liked the whole social commentary prominent in zombie films, you'll love this book. Only about eighty or ninety pages in but it's excellent satire.

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Factoid: That's Mel Brooks's son.