Im reading the Martin Beck detective novels at the moment.

Just finished Nunaga: Ten Years Among the Eskimos by Duncan Pryde and On the Road to Kandahar by Jason Burke, both were excellent.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. Superb book from start to finish. I'm thinking it was the pregnant woman (with the 3 men, towards the end) that 'provided' the meal that was roasting over the fire. Good lord...

Powerclown, I finished that book a few months ago and I loved it. The imagery combined with the completely unique writing style did it for me. I really hate that they are making a movie out of it; they will ruin the intrigue by explaining how the world ended. That was one of the things that made the book so great: you don't know what happened, it just did, now deal with it! Grrrrrrrr, I hate modern Hollywood.

AAAAAANYWHO, I just finished Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk. I'm really sorry to say I was horribly disappointed. The writing style was definitely different, and made for real entertainment while reading it, but that isn't enough for how it ended up. I saw the ending coming by page four. I was really hoping he'd pull a Chuck P twist and not make it so sappy and predictable, but he did not. It really felt like he was rushed to finish it, or he just wrote himself into a corner. Either way, I appreciate the Chuck P formula, but this latest one really hurt.
If you're curious for spoilers, message me.

Last week, I finished God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre by Richard Grant. It was an entertaining travelogue. The Sierra Madre is definitely a place to avoid. By the end of the book, I was a bit tired of the author's repetitive "and then I ignored all advice and did this unbelievably stupid thing" stories.

I liked the writing style as well, how he kept you on edge throughout the story. Every time they had to go into one of those damn houses... Theyre publishing the book with actor Viggo Mortensen on the cover, and there is a website for the movie now as well. I hope the movie stays faithful to the book...if it can convey half of the dread and suspense from the book it will be a decent movie I think. I enjoyed The Road so much I picked up Blood Meridian today.

I liked The Road. Blood Meridian was ok. I enjoyed The Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain) more than Blood Meridian.

The Border Trilogy sounds good based on what little I read on amazon.com. Blood Meridian is solid so far. Good to know there is more quaility stuff from this author for future reading. Travelougues sound interesting, Ive never read one...scratch that I did read one about a guy kayaking solo somewhere but I forgot the name of the book and the author.

I'm reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver right now and I am completely enamored of her writing. I've read her essays previously, but not her fiction. This book she narrates in the voice of five different characters and it is brilliant.

Just read a moment ago...in the voice of a distraught mother and missionary's wife:
there is black humor, as well...
The other four voices narrating are her children and they all are telling the story of their experiences in the Congo just before and during the Congo Crisis of the early '60s - trapped there by their lunatic husband and father who is intent on 'saving the souls' of the desperately impoverished members of the small, remote village they are living in.

It's an epic-ly successful novel. I'm so glad I picked it up during this break.

i'm reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.. and wow, means there is no way one could not feel pulled by this kind of work. Filled with ennobling thoughts making one uncomfortable to the core.

Now reading the Captain Alatriste series by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Swords, men of honor, history of Old Spain, an eye-opening look at the 17th century.

Here is an excerpt from the 2nd novel in the series, Purity of Blood:

:thumbsup: Really good reading.

You just made my facebook status with the last two lines of that quote. Good stuff. May have to track it down.

I just finished reading "Columbine" by Dave Cullen. He was given unbeliveable access to records, journals, court documents and spent over ten years researching the Columbine tragedy. It was very in depth and informative.

Last week, I read Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. It's a collection of short stories mostly about Indian/Indian-American marriages. It was excellent.

This week I read World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. I enjoyed it as well. It was structured around interviews with survivors of a global zombie pandemic.

Over the past couple of weeks, I read the entire 12-novel Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind.

I had heard people absolutely swear by this series, so I was quite curious to read it; I ordered the books for myself as a birthday present, and went through them one by one, without reading anything else at the same time, which is unusual for me.

I enjoyed them. Quite a lot. I was kept spellbound, and I will surely re-read them through the years.

I thought they were excellently crafted in terms of story arc, scope, breadth, and everything fitting together. Goodkind is not one to leave loose ends: what doesn't get wrapped up in one novel will surely come round again in the next. He is also one of the best I have ever seen for constructing elaborate and unpredictable catastrophic chains of consequences for his characters. In the sheer scope and detail of his work, he reminds me something of George RR Martin. He also reminds me of Martin in his utter willingness to make his antagonists unrelentingly, bestially cruel, and to describe their depravity with sickeningly unflinching meticulousness. He might take the prize for most stomach-turning antagonists, ever.

His main character, Richard, is comparatively well-developed, but other than that, Goodkind's main flaw is his heavy-handed lack of character development. He has a propensity for telling rather than showing, and most seriously, his characters tend to do most of their expository development in long monologues or socratic dialogues wherein they explain to another character the revelations they have had about the meaning of life or love.

Goodkind is very driven by his desire to convey to the reader his philosophy of life, which seems to be a somewhat Lockean, deeply and passionately Libertarian embrasure of life as an inherent positive, individual rights, and free choice, with a pronounced anti-communitarianist streak. Which is dandy, and certainly no worse than some of the odd philosophies sci-fi and fantasy writers have attempted to convey with their writings, but Goodkind unfortunately suffers from periodic preachiness of a slow-down-the-plot variety. It manifests most frustratingly when, at crucial moments in plot development-- such as battles and duels-- the action pauses for a character to elaborate on the philosophical meanings of their motivations. These sections can sometimes meander on for a couple of pages, which after a while I found myself tending to just scan, looking for where the action picked back up again. I didn't feel like I missed anything.

So, I guess the short version is that the books are eminently worth reading, and are worth appreciating for their superb crafting and their vivid breadth of detail and imagination. One just has to know going in that unless one happens to be deeply fond of libertarian/individualist rhetoric, there are places in every book one will need to skim through.

Goodkind is very, very talented. He is, as I mentioned, worth comparing with George RR Martin. But he's no Tolkein or Herbert.

I say...7/10. Maybe even 8/10.

BTW, the TV series they claim to have "based on" these books does not resemble them in any way. The unremitting suckage of the series is a deep, deep disservice to the books, which are epic and dark and cunningly executed. If you saw the series and were dismayed or contemptuous, don't let that put you off reading the books.

:thumbsup:
Here is the list of books in the Captain Alatriste series (all are still in print & can be found most anywhere):
1. Captain Alatriste
2. Purity of Blood
3. The Sun Over Breda
4. The King's Gold

Perez-Reverte is also the author of:
1. The Flanders Panel
2. The Club Dumas
3. The Seville Communion
4. The Fencing Master (one of my favorites)
5. The Nautical Chart
6. The Queen of the South
7. The Painter of Battles

Happy reading!

Currently reading Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan. I haven't enjoyed the last 3 or 4 books as much as the first 6. He is just so long winded with these books, and the unneccesary side plost are excruciating, but at this point i'm invested in the series and the first book of the ending trilogy comes out soon. After this book I will be reading Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind. He is probably my favorite author, and this book is a change in direction for him since he's only ever written fantasy before.

Just finished reading Gulliver's Travels after taking a multi-year break from it. Worth reading, but not all that great.

Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy. As good as but different from The Road. "A vision of the Old West full of charred human skulls, blood-soaked scalps, a tree hung with the bodies of dead infants." What more can you ask for?

Yesterday I finished Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and The New Face of American War by Evan Wright. It's a non-fiction marine platoon level account of the invasion of Iraq. Very little analysis of the war as a whole. It was both sad and funny. I enjoyed it. At times, it reminded me of The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer, especially in regard to how officers and enlisted experience war differently.

The Good, Live Hard, Sell Hard: 8/10.
Over the top humor. Loved the Will Ferrell scene.

Inglourious Basterds: 10/10.
Some oddly dark humor. Brad Pitt was funny and yummy. I've never seen or heard of Christoph Waltz until now but I am impressed by him, especially with his multilingual fluency.

Just finished reading "Skin Trade" by Laurell K. Hamilton. Currently reading "Summer Knight" by Jim Butcher, "Wildwood Dancing" by Juliet Marillier (for the 2nd time), and "Personal Demons" by Kelley Armstrong.

Finished The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The story of a young girl in WWII Germany. Death is the narrator. The book may qualify as "Young Adult", but it was a very enjoyable read.

Wrong thread. :)

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

I thought I'd finally participate in this thread.

I just finished reading Jeffrey Gitomer's Sales Bible. I'd go as far as to say it's a must-read for anyone who does any kind of selling. Though I will say that the layout was annoying, and I'd edit the shit out of it if I could. Don't read it for the writing; read it for the information and tips.

I just finished "Supreme Courtship" by Christopher Buckley. Basic rundown is about a supreme court nomination of a Judge Judy-type judge who is selected out of desperation when two other nominees fail to be sworn in. It is politically quick and funny.

I've been reading Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat. It started out very delicate and subtle, but is starting to become a little heavy-handed. I enjoyed the stories in Krik? Krak! more. At her best she is a very evocative and poetic writer.

Just picked up Boomsday the other day. Chris is definitely my favorite Conservative. He's a laugh riot is a quick and sneaky way.

Shutter Island - Dennis Lehane. 6/10. Barely above average, nothing spectacular. The 'shock surprise ending' wasn't very. Not as disturbing as say, The Ivory Grin by Ross MacDonald.

Child of God - Cormac McCarthy. 6/10. A sick, perveted and demented little book. Just not overly so...like Blood Meridian for example. One of his early, first works. While the prose was well written, the richness of story found in his later works isn't there yet.

All The Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy. 8/10. Very impressive read. A story of forbidden love between a chica from a prosperous Mexican family and a young, headstrong cowboy from Tennessee who fights everyone and everything to be with her.

I just finished The House Sitter by Peter Lovesey. It's a "Peter Diamond" mystery. Dull. None of the characters were particularly interesting.

Before that I read the following books by Ursula K. Le Guin:
A wizard of Earthsea
The tombs of Atuan
The farthest shore

People compare her to Tolkien (who I have enjoyed) and C.S. Lewis (who I don't particularly like). All three were quick easy reads. All related to a wizard named Ged. She (the author) has an interesting voice, but I wasn't blown away by any of the three. Not enough character development.

I began A game of thrones by George R.R. Martin. I couldn't get past the first 60 pages.

The little book by Selden Edwards. Heavy handed Freudian time travel. Meh. Double meh.

The girl with the dragon tattoo by Stieg Larsson. A swedish financial/murder mystery. Well-written, but dry with some very dark sexual scenes.

Storm front by Jim Butcher. A modern day wizard detective. I believe that they made it into a series on SyFy. A good, quick read.

Gravity's rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I have only read the first 75 pages ... twice. I really like it, but I rarely find the energy required to read it. (At least in the time allotted to me by the library).

I am almost finished with "God is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchens. I prefer his writing to that of Richard Dawkins.

My light reading is "Dyer Consequences" by Maggie Sefton. It is about the comings and goings of a yarn shop in Fort Conner (standing in for Fort Collins) Colorado. When I say light, I mean fluff!

Savage Season - Joe Lansdale. 7/10. First of the acclaimed Hap & Leonard mystery series. How can you not like a guy named "Hap" and his gay, black Vietnam vet buddy?

Just finished Pretty Good Years by Jay S. Jacobs. Have a lot of books to chose from, I'll post back when I decide.

Currently reading "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. Pretty good. Previously read "The Outliers" (great book) and "The Tipping Point" (just OK) by the same author.

Okay, Gonna read The Bell Jar. Might have to post about it later in the thread about depraved novels...

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad. 5/10. The book that inspired Apocalypse Now. The movie was much better. An exploration of hypocrisy, ambiguity, imperialism, moral confusion and absolute power corrupting absolutely, or something. The longest 100 page book I've ever read.

I also had a really hard time with this. The second half is so abstract and vague I didn't know what was really happening. But it provoked me into picking up and reading King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hothschild - a nonfiction account of one of colonial Africa's nastiest secrets. It's not a very happy read but it pulls what Conrad seems to be hinting at with Heart of Darkness into sharp focus.

Right now I've somehow found myself in the middle of loads of books: Moby Dick by Herman Melville, The Getaway by Jim Thompson, Chickenhawk by Robert Mason, The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck and Swann's Way by Marcel Proust. That last one is really REALLY hard so I'm going to leave it until I get a little older and wiser before continuing. The rest should be done in a couple of weeks though.

Friday night, I picked up Stephen King's latest, Under the Dome.

Wow. :oogle:

Massive book, utterly engrossing. Read 200 pages Friday night, and another 450 last night. I expect I'll be up till 3 a.m. again tonight finishing the last 400 pages.

:rolleyes:

For other King fans out there, I highly recommend his last book - a collection of short stories - Just After Sunset. There's so much energy and creativity in it that some of his more recent works pale in comparison. Intense, fast-paced, horrible, thought-provoking, darkly humorous... a nice sampler of King's short-story writing genius.

Jackie Stewart: Winning is Not Enough - The Autobiography. 9/10. A great sports bio from the wee Scot. This guy gets life and people in general. It helped that he had a solid family life as a kid. Besides being a champion race car driver, target-shooter, successful international businessman and iconic television commentator...his humility, wit and sense of humor tranlsate excellently into writing. Over 500 pages - never a dull moment.

The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith. 8/10. Infuriating to see Matt Damon's face on the cover of such an excellent book. I would have saw through the ruse real early, but this is a well-written and enjoyable crime novel. Enter into the mind of a perfectly well-mannered maniac.