Books motherfuckers, do you read them?

[Eschatos]

Just read Snow Crash and Ender's Game for the first time.  Both are fucking amazing.  Now reading Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut.  Quite good, and it's given me an interesting quote I think I'll use to piss off people I don't like at my school.

"The main difference between President Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected."

A bit harsh, but amusing anyway.

[fyre]

Started Anathem. It's interesting so far. Scarily long though.

[Surf314]

Started Anathem. It's interesting so far. Scarily long though.

It gets really good.  Really really really good.

[KarthXLR]

Read Animal Farm for my english class. Good book, short as it is. A really ironic way to describe the russian revolution.

[Surf314]

Started Anathem. It's interesting so far. Scarily long though.

If you are pretty far along in the book this link will blow your mind.  If you aren't then it will either confuse you or be a minor spoiler.  If you have begun to figure out what the eff is going on it should be alright to click.

[at0m]

Finished reading The Forever War by Joe Haldeman not too long ago; it was amazing. I also bought The Accidental Time Machine by him at the same time, but my GF stole it and is reading it first so I haven't gotten a hold of it yet. It had a foreword by John Scalzi, who wrote Old Man's War, which is really similar to The Forever War and also a title I want to read.

Right now though I'm reading The Electric Sheep The Android's Dream (edit: realized I had the title wrong) by John Scalzi because it was on clearance at the bookstore, and they didn't have Old Man's War. Its been pretty addictive so far: it starts with a trade representative managed to kill an alien ambassador by farting so badly that it offended the alien until he had a stroke. Then keeling over and dying of a heart attack because he was laughing so hard about it. Odd, but makes sense in the context Scalzi builds for it in the first dozen pages.

Before that I read Rolling Thunder by John Varley. Another clearance purchase, but this time not a diamond in the rough. The story was sorta interesting, but since I hadn't read any books in his universe (Rolling Thunder turned out to be the third in a series of four books called the 'Thunder and Lightning series', all set 20 years apart). It had a bit of a word learning curve, which was annoying. It seemed to me like it was written to be a teen novel, but the protagonist is female, and the writer male, so there are a lot of stereotypical girl-isms that she does which are kinda dumb. There were also a couple of gaping plot holes, I had to reread a couple of chapters to try to figure out where the story jumped, and never managed to work it out.

Before I read Rolling Thunder, I'd actually run out of new books to read (was waiting for The Forever War and The Accidental Time Machine to come in - perks of having a GF who works at a bookstore is discount!) so I re-read The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King. While I think that series will always hold a place in my heart and mind, I couldn't stomach the epic task of rereading it. Its long and starts to lose all coherence towards the end because the universe in the novels is literally falling apart at the seams and turns into meta-fiction (Stephen King and characters from his other books in the story? WTF?).

However, after I read The Forever War, I read Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Niel Gaimon. EXCELLENT. I'm thinking about reading the discworld series now, but I've got to make sure that I have a lot of spare cash and time on my hands, because once I start reading a decent series I just read them back to back to back and tear through a book every 2-3 days.

Next on my list (in no particular order):
The Accidental Time Machine, Joe Haldeman
Forever Peace, Joe Haldeman (quasi-prequel to The Forever War)
Forever Free, Joe Haldeman (an actual sequel to The Forever War)
Return from the Stars, Stanislaw Lem. I've been trying to branch out and try new authors, Wikipedia suggested that this would be good if I liked The Forever War.
Old Man's War, John Scalzi. Another wikipedia suggestion, although it is also mentioned in the foreword from the printing of The Forever War that I have.

Also Eschatos, if you liked Snow Crash you should read Diamond Age or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer also by Neal Stephenson.

[Eschatos]

Also Eschatos, if you liked Snow Crash you should read Diamond Age or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer also by Neal Stephenson.

Read it before Snow Crash, actually.

[Dave]

Anyone know any good zombie or ww2 books?
preferably a mix of the two.

survival horror books are also awesome
eg:
dawn of the dead.
I am Legend
The last man on earth

[Eschatos]

Anyone know any good zombie or ww2 books?
preferably a mix of the two.

survival horror books are also awesome
eg:
dawn of the dead.
I am Legend
The last man on earth

Monster Island and Monster Nation.  Both excellent.

[Surf314]

[quote author=Dave link=topic=1145.msg73113#msg73113 date=1238103469]
Anyone know any good zombie or ww2 books?
preferably a mix of the two.

survival horror books are also awesome
eg:
dawn of the dead.
I am Legend
The last man on earth

Zombie Island and Zombie Nation.  Both excellent.
[/quote]

oooOOOOOooo OOOooo  OOOOOoooOOOO OOOoo OOOooo  OOOOooo

[Scary Womanizing Pig Mask]

and



Both highly recommend, the later standing up to the test of time far more than I would have thought.

[Surf314]

The graveyard book was amazing and totally deserved the newberry.  Trying to make it through book 4 of Dune currently, it's like school work.  I really need to go book shopping so I can get something else to read.

[rumsfald]

[SBCrystal]

I should take some pictures of my library. ^_^
I'm currently reading House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski; it's a mindfuck and a half, for sure. It irks me because I notice a lot of spelling/grammar mistakes and I want to correct them but I know that they're meant to be in there.

For my birthday I got Seeing by one of my favourite author Jose Saramago and I'm looking forward to reading that as well.

And my dear friend Michael gave me ALL of his Walking Dead collection that I pretty much pop a boner to when I look at them -- so stoked to re-read them.

[fyre]

How is it? I have never read Pynchon.

[rumsfald]

How is it? I have never read Pynchon.

I don't possess sufficient command of the language to express how great this book is. This was/is a true Great American Novel that inspired me to run off and buy 6 other seemingly similar books (other authors) while I was reading it. This was my first Pynchon, but will definitely not be my last.

[at0m]

V. != V, yes?

[rumsfald]

V. != V, yes?
[/quote]

If I understand the question correctly, V. is not at all related to this

[Surf314]

Here's my thing about Thomas Pynchon, I've tried to read The Crying of Lot 49 twice and stopped each time in the same spot (we have a copy lying around the house).  His treatment of the main character is so bad I just ended up getting angry and not reading anymore.  It was like he hated her and wanted us to have as little respect for her as possible.

But I hear his books are great.  Any way someone can help me get over this?

[Surf314]

I usually don't go for this kind of book, but based on this description and excerpt, Lowboy seems like a really good book.