I’m thinking of ordering McCullers’ The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter in a few minutes.
Edit:
ordered Ellison’s Invisible Man while at it 
I too am a writer and purchased your book upon reading your post. Thanks for sharing that.
I haven’t had a chance to write anything new since that post due to some serious work problems, so I’m not sure if there’s going to be a sequel to that story anytime soon. At this rate, it looks like the next thing I write won’t come out until my next day off.
It’s been too long since I read a new manga, so I decided to check out Future Diary. I gotta tip my hat to the writers for taking the direction that they did for the story, incorporating so many different genres and plot twists, yet still balancing it all out to create an extremely satisfying ending and a rather entertaining mix of characters. Despite being Carnage with PMS, I rather enjoyed rooting for Yuno during the times she was the face, and the evolution of Yuki made me root for him too in the end.
Realized I haven’t read a good novel in a while. Gonna have a butt load of free time on my hands now that I’m finishing up college for good, figure I might as well pick something up when I finish my next cycle of checking out my regular comics at the library…
…
…not sure what to get though.
So I finished A Storm of Swords last week and my god what an amazing book that was. Even though I had a few things spoiled there were still so many surprises throughout the whole thing and it was just an emotional roller-coaster haha
So far A Feast for Crows has been so uneventful that it almost feels like a chore to keep reading but finally seeing how things are in Dorne with the Martells and Aryas journey have kept me hooked. I guess its also a good thing since i’m going through this one a bit slower than the last which would probably make the wait for Winds of Winter shorter.
Then again I can’t complain when there are those who waited 10 years for half a story o_O
I feel like I should start reading a Shakespeare play of my own accord instead if just for school. Any recommendations? I’ve read Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Othello already. I feel like I should read a comedy by him next.
If you’re looking specifically for comedy, I’d recommend Much Ado About Nothing, but Hamlet is the most essential reading.
Read my third Robert Anson Heinlein book in a row, Starman Jones.
It’s one of his early sci-fi works, published in 1953, a year or two before “The Puppet Masters”, and four years before “Starship Troopers”. It’s a good piece of 50’s style science fiction. Fast-paced, entertaining, but reasonably straightforward. A young boy that lives on a farm decides to become an astrogator (essentially a navigator for space ships), fakes his way onto a ship, and experiences adventures there.
It’s no classic, and doesn’t contain any particularly unique or complex ideas, but is a good, enjoyable read nonetheless.
If you like fantasy read The Haunted Lands trilogy.
Excellent varied collection of books peeps read around here! ‘Neuromancer’ is definitely a-must read. The first paragraph alone catches your curiosity imo:
'The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.‘
I’m a big fan of Steinbeck also especially the short stories one most notably Of Mice and Men; straight to the point and concise. If your into Star Wars, I highly recommend the Timothy Zahn novels especially the Thrawn trilogy. This dude should really be part of the upcoming new trilogy SW movie.
The books I recently finished in the past few months and recommend:
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky- not as long as Crime and Punishment but just as good. Covers varied topic including the existence of God, free will, morality, social class.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins- this book will either strengthened your belief that there is no god or the opposite. As logical as his reasoning is; It did the opposite to me. His counter-argument against St. Thomas Aquinas’ work though is awesome.
REAMDE By Neal Stephenson- mmorpg+terrorism+cyberpunk, whats not to like?
East of Eden by Steinbeck- long-winded at times but enjoyed it despite its depressive setting.
Steve Jobs bio by Walter Isaacson- its amazing how much an LSD-experience influences a person. Some of the chapters makes me wish I grew up in the 70s.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick- best novel from him imo.
I’m currently reading Freakonomics; good stuff so far.
I thought The Brothers Karamazov was way fucking longer than Crime and Punishment. Maybe number of words or pages was less, but it felt so slow in comparison. I’m just surprised someone thought the opposite.
My dad really liked the Steve Jobs bio because it takes place when and where he grew up (the bay area). When he was explaining it, it was like a walk down memory lane with fond emotions of a time long lost and still longed for. If I read it, I’d probably find it boring as fok.
I found a large portion of a Feast of Crows to be quite good, but then there were chapters that felt like they took forever to read and too long for the characters to do anything interesting. Finally finished that and moving on.
I wonder how Cormac McCarthy compares in No Country For Old Men and The Road.
I’d have to re-read Moby Dick and the other two to really be able to think about that.
It’s a fun, breezy read. I read it in early undergrad as a math major, and now do economics research in grad school. Even back then though, my gripe was that they didn’t show the reader the numbers and actual research behind their conclusions. Other than that, it’s a good book. Should probably check out the sequel at some point.
You are a glutton for punishment. I couldn’t even get through it the first time!
An entire chapter about the color white. An entire. fucking. chapter.
Fuck that book.
Hell House is a sexy reed…
Question about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Is Mercerism kind of an allusion to mass media and the effect it has on our lives?
Deckard was basically depressed and wasn’t really into Mercerism at first. The people who weren’t plugged in to the device like everyone else-- Androids-- were singled out from the normal population by the empathy test, then hunted down. Deckard spent enough time away from the Mercer device thing, that he started to feel empathy for the people he hunted. He spent so much time away, he was accused of being an Android himself. Then he went back to Mercerism and was awakened of whatever.
The school shooting over the weekend. I read the headlines, but that hit wayyy too close to home, and I wasn’t in the mood to watch TV news reporters shove mics in the faces of traumatized children, and do other horrible shit (like identifying the wrong person as the perpetrator on national TV) in the name of ratings and awards. I said fuck the media and I skipped their wall-to-wall TV coverage. So I didn’t experience what everyone else experienced. As a result, even though I’m horrified by that event, I don’t share the exact same empathy as everyone who was glued to the TV.
Am I on to the point of Mercerism in the book? I used to think it was a criticism of organized religion, but was it targeting mass media and how it keeps us ‘in the loop’ and separates everyone who’s out of the loop? Or am I completely off the mark?
@Taito: I view mercerism as a combination of religion and a mass ‘manipulation’ device of some sort. It’s a way to give people hope and give them comfort in an otherwise hopeless,abandoned world.
Going through these classic books, I’m now reading Catcher in the Rye. It’s boring so far but I’m only 15 pages in.
I’ve not read the book in about a year in a half, but I kind of looked at Mercer and Buster Friendly as being two opposing quasi-religious media outlets.
read it recently as part of my own effort to go through the classics. I wouldn’t really say it “picks up” after the beginning.
I’m going through Jeffery Deaver’s Carte Blanche Bond novel. I can’t write just how much I enjoyed his writing style simply because of how much it mirror my own. The Top Gear references and jokes were an added bonus too.