What are you reading? (Page 5 of 11)

Also, a recommendation for you, Teague--Info-bloody-quake. Read it, you'll thank me (I hope).

I fear I have condemned you to a terrible fate.

Just finished Serling: The Rise and Twilight of TV's Last Angry Man.  Interesting book...i wished it'd focused more on the Twilight Zone years, but it was more of a straight ahead biography.  He wrote 92 of the 156 episodes of that show...unreal.  the dude was a machine.  smoked 4 packs a day...also unreal. 

Rod Serling, Gary Larson, and Bill Watterson pretty much shaped me into the odd person that i've turned into.

Re-reading Blade of the Immortal, which is actually a manga with pictures and stuff, cuz I can't read. Seriously though, I read all day for my job (I'm a copyeditor by trade) so these last 5 years or so I find it a struggle to pick up and read a book. Which is actually more of a shame than you might think, because I love to read.

Blade of the Immortal, for what it's worth, is one of the finest comics you'll ever read and is a sprawling epic about an immortal ronin with, and this is the shocker, blades (yes, more than one!). So really the title is misleading. Why is it so great? Because the dialogue's poignant and funny, one moment it's ghastly dark and the next it's just really romantic, there's a fair amount of action, and the artwork is stunning in that it's very well staged and you can clearly see emotions on characters' faces, you can see what they're thinking. I bet if you read in its original Japanese, you could understand the gist of what was going on. In my experience, 99% of comic artists cannot draw expressions that go beyond 'I'm angry' or 'I'm attacking', which are usually drawn the same, and neutral.

I've been reading a ton of books since January, the most of which have been the Scott Harvath series by Brad Thor, and the Mitch Rapp series by Vince Flynn.  They're both essentially world espionage thriller books.  A ton of fun, very addictive, and occasionally so badass you find yourself laughing at the insanity.

I also read a few Michael Crichton books which I was surprised I didn't like as much as I though I would.   

As per the release of the Ender's Game movie, I went and read the first 3 of the books from the Ender's quartet.  Ender's Game was just brilliant.  I can't even explain.  The first sequel, Speaker for the Dead, was a very interesting intellectual read.  However, the third one,  Xenocide, started to really go to s$#* so I stopped reading the series lol. 

The creme de la creme, though, was reading two of the Bob Lee Swagger novels by Stephen Hunter, of which, Point of Impact was the basis for the movie Shooter.    Damn...damn, if you want to read a well written, funny, intense, and expertly clever book, read one of those novels.

I have that one. The hardcover is like a foot thick so it's a bit daunting. Been meaning to check it out though.

I'm still reading The Eye of the World, but I finished This Book is Full of Spiders. It was fine, meandering about as much as as John Dies at the End but, to me, less entertaining. JDATE lacked any kind of real narrative arc, and being just a collection of episodes in the characters' lives that was perfectly fine. TBIFOS, though, is a story about one event from beginning to end, and as such I would've liked it if there was more of a, you know, point.

I also read Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story, which got into the genesis, rise, and fall of the cartoon that was a big part of my childhood, and has arguably influenced animation (mostly for the better) moving forward. Pretty cool information, including some info about the development behind certain episodes. The author is not afraid to share his opinion on animation in general and Ren & Stimpy in particular, nor to declare most of it (including a number of episodes of R&S) complete garbage. I would've preferred maybe a more clinical tone, but whatever. There are also a number of occasions where he uses a word that looks like the one he wants to use but isn't, like he wrote the book on an iPhone and got autocorrected here and there. The editor seems to have been a bit asleep on the job, but again whatever. You can still make sense of the narrative just fine.

Currently listening to True Grit, a bit over halfway through (it's a short book -- 6 hours audio unabridged). I haven't seen the John Wayne version, but the Coens nailed it. I am still planning to go over to 11/22/63 next, and possibly Under the Dome after that, just out of curiosity.

This sounds awesome. I'll have to check it out

In March I read Christine (King) and the first three Easy Rawlins books by Walter Mosley.

I didn't love Christine. It wasn't bad, but it sort of had the feel of King just going through the motions and writing exactly the kind of book he's expected to write. Never helps that I have no love for cars and car culture of course. Maybe I'm just starting to feel some King fatique, I don't know...

I had to read the third Easy Rawlings book for a Crime Fiction class I'm taking this semester, but I didn't want to jump into a series on the third book, so I decided to audiobook the first two. I liked them okay and will probably look into some more of those books eventually.

Currently reading Red Dust (Gillian Slovo) and Harlan Ellison's Watching.

Trey...sell me on Mary Roach in one sentence. Never heard of her, curious what gets you this excited.

Finished up 2012 by reading LOTR for the millionth time.

Just finished House of Leaves not too long ago. Pretty cool concept and well-executed.

Before that was 11/22/63 by Stephen King. Amazing, to be honest, but I'm a sucker for King. I just finished his Nightmares and Dreamscapes collection of short stories. Not so awesome but there were a few gems.

Last week I burned through The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (twice). If you consider yourself an artist, read it. No question. It's brilliant (minus a bit of esotericism that crops up during the latter third of the book).

Now I'm reading an amazing book on Coltrane. I'm too lazy to go pick it up and look at the author's name, but it's cool because it's both a biography and a musical analysis.

Gulp is now officially on my reading list. Thanks!

I've just finished The Sun Also Rises by Earnest Hemingway. It's very character based without much actual plot similar to films in the style of American Graffiti that leave me going "I liked that but I don't know why..."

It follows the character of Jake Barnes, an american journalist living in Paris in the mid 1920's and his relationship with Lady Brett Ashley a promiscuous english lady whose feelings for him are genuine knows they can not be happy together because of a vaguely described war injury means he can't have sex.

The book seems to follow a pattern of them going out and having a big meal then getting terrible drunk.

Hemingway writes about nothing in particular in great detail with as few words as possible in such a way as to be far more readable then it deserves to be and the characters subtly as the story moves to spain for the running of the bulls.

As the book was written in the twenties there were a few times where I tried to figure out a turn of phrase but not nearly as much as you'd expect in fact in a lot of ways it all feels rather modern.

I am rather curious about the movie that was made in the fifties as i'm not sure how the small amount of plot would lend itself to screen.