I'm reading The Hot Zone... Omg, you guys. It's horrifying. If you have a strong stomach and are interested in the Ebola virus this is the book for you. But seriously. OMG.

Oh fuck. I read the first couple chapters back when it came out and nearly gave myself psychosomatic ebola.

Mmm. I started getting actually sick this morning with either Ebola or the common cold. If the former, it was real, y'all.

Now I'm reading Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Kinda interesting. It's one of those your-understanding-of-X-is-all-wrong books. Normally I hate those. Not this one.

Last edited by oTom (2013-02-05 09:13:39)

Time for my monthly update of what I've read and what I plan on reading.

The Revolution was Televised – Alan Sepinwall
Not much to say about this one. If you care about television (which I do A LOT) it is interesting, but not necessarily providing a ton of new information. I've followed Sepinwall's blog for several years now and while I don't always agree on his qualitative judgements, he's always a good read.

The Gunslinger – Stephen King
I read the Original (not revised) edition of this one and it didn't grab me the way I thought it would. It's decent enough, but I'm in no rush to read the other Dark Tower books (not that I would have read them next anyway, since I'm going through King's entire bibliography in order). This actually felt like a substantial step backwards in terms of the quality of King's actual writing; there might be more unnecessary adverbs in this one book than in all the other King books I've read combined. Maybe I'd just hyped myself up too much before reading this, it might grow on me in time though.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales – Edgar Allan Poe
The only real enjoyment I got out of these three short stories was seeing how Poe established certain trademarks of the crime genre that are still there today. As stories, I found all three short stories somewhat lacking, though 'The Purloined Letter' wasn't that 'bad'.

The Hound of the Baskervilles – Arthur Conan Doyle
This is the first Holmes story I've read and it was pretty much exactly how I expected it to be. I liked it quite a bit and I'm definitely going to check out some other Holmes stories at some point.

The Talented Mr Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
I'm a bit torn on how I feel about this one. It is definitely a pageturner and it kept me moving forward at a brisk pace as I wanted to see what would happen, but I don't feel like it left me with anything substantial. It's a book I will never revisit and I'm not even sure I'm that interested in reading the sequels, but I guess I liked it?

Current plans for February: Some Raymond Chandler novels, Divergent (Roth) and Different Seasons (King)

Speaking of comics, I actually tried to get in to the Green Lantern New Guardian series, which actually was pretty interesting, but then I spend hours researching what all I have read.

Also just read the new Star Trek prequel movie comic.

Other than that, back to school books

The best comic I've read lately is 'Saga' by Brian K Vaughn

Now I feel like reading it again myself...

Worth noting that, despite the publication order, it's essentially his first novel.

Lately I've read:

Packing for Mars - as good as Trey said, although very little to actually do with Mars. It's more a general book about the challenges and history of space exploration with a bit of "And the trip to Mars is even longer, so it would be even worse" tacked on at the end of each section. Still a very cool book.

The Self-Made Myth - a brief book rebutting the myth of the self-made American, showing how it's actually our collectivism that makes us successful. Kind of superficial, actually; for a really meaty, deeply-sourced history I would recommend The Way We Never Were instead. But a handy, and timely, primer on the subject.

The Magicians - this book was a complete waste of time. I appreciate what it seemed like Grossman was doing -- basically writing an anti-Harry Potter about how even with magic, life is bullshit and people suck -- but it made for a dull, meandering read. He also pulled the punch at the end and decided to make it an evil-battling adventure after all, but too little too late. Not only am I not interested even a little in the sequel, but if it were possible to pay extra money to un-read a book, I would.

I'm currently reading The Eye of the World, since the Wheel of Time series is at last completed and I can power  straight through without enduring the waiting of long-suffering fans like my roommate, though I'll probably take breaks in between anyway. Also listening to This Book is Full of Spiders.

Next up, I think, will be my reconciliation with Stephen King through 11/22/63, though I haven't decided if that will be a read or a listen. That'll warm me up for The Wind Through the Keyhole.

I loved 11/22/63. Good luck with it.

Yeah, wasn't huge into Cell, and Under the Dome... meandered. I was *so into* the concept of Under the Dome, but, eh. I couldn't stick with it after the 2,000th page.

I liked Under the Dome until the (surprise!) unsatisfying ending.   But up until then it was a solid example of King's "small town gets hit by a supernatural whatsis and everybody goes batshit" sub-genre. 

What can I say, that's my favorite King genre - see also Salem's Lot and Needful Things and many of the Derry stories.

I've read more books!

The Big Sleep and Farewell, My lovely by Raymond Chandler.

Loved the deliciously hardboiled language and atmosphere of both of these, but preferred The Big Sleep for the story and characters.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

I'm happy to have read it, but it didn't really engage me beyond its historical and cultural significance.

Different Seasons by Stephen King.

Shawshank was the only one of the four novellas in here that I knew anything significant about beforehand, but I ended up mostly loving all four of them. Not even sure if I'd be able to pick an absolute favorite, but it would probably be either The Body or Apt Pupil. I guess I should finally get around to watching Stand by Me.

Divergent by Veronica Roth.

Didn't know anything about this before I started reading it and can't even remember where I had it recommended to me. Unfortunately, I wasn't really able to get into it. I Never fully bought the setting and the plot got some problems. To me this mostly reads like a book that primarily got published because of the success of the Hunger Games. I personally vastly preferred those to this.

Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg.

I ended up reading this in practically one sitting and enjoyed it a lot. Not much to say beyond that, really. A good mystery that unfortunately spoils a significant aspect of the final reveal by opening the novel with a quote from

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson.

Got around to this after hearing Teague bring it up and recommend it in multiple episodes and figured I should read it before he outright spoiled the whole book for me. Very happy I did since I ended up loving it. This is pretty much exactly what I want my science fiction literature to be like and I desperately need to find and read more books like this.

Next book I'm reading is Christine (King), but after that I don't really have any specific plans. I guess I'll be looking at what others are reading and see if anything looks interesting.