What are you reading right now?

I'm just about to start The Treatment and The Cure by Peter Kocan. He tried to assassinate the Opposition Leader in 1966, and was first sent to prison, and then ended up in a mental hospital. I picked it up because I have a morbid fascination with mental institution novel and biographies. This is technically a novel, but it seems to be based on Kocan's experiences on the mental health maximum security wing.

I generally despise semi autobiographical novels, but since this is one is interest based I'm going to give this one a go.
I'm halfway through A Fan's Notes and that's mildly amusing as a loony bin/alkie pseudo-memoir. The author actually was an alcoholic diagnosed with schizophrenia but claimed the book was a fictionalized version of his experiences.
 
I'm just about to start The Treatment and The Cure by Peter Kocan. He tried to assassinate the Opposition Leader in 1966, and was first sent to prison, and then ended up in a mental hospital. I picked it up because I have a morbid fascination with mental institution novel and biographies. This is technically a novel, but it seems to be based on Kocan's experiences on the mental health maximum security wing.

I generally despise semi autobiographical novels, but since this is one is interest based I'm going to give this one a go.
Ever read The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut? Yes, the son of that Vonnegut. It's a really harrowing account of schizophrenia from the inside, by a hippie who more or less probably instigated his own insanity due to hypersensitivity to psychoactives like marijuana. He has some goofy theories about this in this book (some of which he recanted later), but it's really illuminating on what the experience is like, and he actually has writing skills on the level of his father.

Despite being declared incurable, he went on afterwards to graduate from Harvard Medical School and is currently a pediatrician.
 
Rereading the Silmarillion since I barely read any fiction. First time I read it I was like 13 and kind of retarded so revisiting it as an adult is nice. It's a lot more straightforward and readable than I remember as a kid, excluding the one or two chapters where Tolkien just spergs about the geography of Middle-Earth rather than talk about what the elves or Morgoth are doing.
 
chapter_xxx.png
 
All The Way Down by Eric Beetner, a crime thriller. Beeter, who in some of his other novels that I've read, has a knack of cinematic action set-pieces, only in text.

In an unnamed American city, Dale Burnett is a dirty cop who sold himself out little by little until he was a full-on lackey for crime boss Tautolu “Tat” Losopo, who has a hand in any sort of dirty business he thinks will turn a profit. Dale's slipped up, his dirty deals found out, and as he goes into a meeting with the Chief of Police, thinks he's definitely prison-bound. Instead of getting arrested though, the Chief offers him a deal. Reporter Lauren O’Brien was working on a story about Tat, and she's been kidnapped and held on the top floor of an abandoned 14-story office building that Tat has turned into his headquarters. Lauren is also the daughter of the ethically shaky, weak-willed mayor. The building has been transformed by Tat's people into a fortress. The police feel Ms. O'Brien's chances of survival are better with a one-man stealth rescue, with a dirty cop known to the gang, as opposed to a raid by an army of heavily armed SWAT team officers. And if Dale fails, well that's no great loss and there's still the SWAT option.

Getting in and freeing Lauren from Tat’s clutches proves to be cake for Dale. It’s getting out of the fortified high-rise that’s the challenge. Every story has Dale and Lauren come face-to-face with new challenges and seemingly impossible situations. Only by confronting Tat will they find freedom, and maybe in Dale's case, redemption. Meanwhile, Dale’s wife Dahlia is having a day from hell, as Tat's goons attempt to abduct her and she goes on the run, the jelly-spined mayor is being easily manipulated by his sleazy aide who has his own agenda, and various other characters get caught up in the mix, from a high-school garage band to accountants to caged slaves to heavily armed line chefs.
 
'Look Alive 25' Jannet Evanovich.

Evanovich has been writing the Stephanie Plum series for thirty odd years. Stephanie is in her early thirties, and is a spectacularly inept bounty hunter who never ages and never learns. Each book is basically a rewrite of the first. It's interesting reading the series back to back, because you can watch the technology evolve from landlines, to pagers, to mobile phones etc.

The series is completely without intellectual merit. I have been reading the books since they first came out in my early teens. The very definition of popcorn reading. Extremely entertaining.
 
The series is completely without intellectual merit. I have been reading the books since they first came out in my early teens.

I read the first five or six as they came out, then I couldn't stomach them any more. They're formulaic pap. Women are the biggest consumers of crime fiction, and this has spawned a shedload of women crime writers, but there really aren't any that I enjoy. Some of Faye Kellerman, perhaps. Patricia Cornwell. That's really about it.

But while we're on the subject of crime fiction, let me commend David Gordon's Joe the Bouncer books. Best I've read in a while.

 
I'm reading Treasure Island rn to take a break from The Stormlight Archive, while I really like Sanderson in certain aspects I find the prose annoying and current year sometimes. The story and characters are good but it feels so diluted. (will read the entire series though). I don't know if I just haven't read much, but I really like the writing level of older titles. Even if I'm not engrossed in the story or characters the prose just makes Treasure Island a joy to read. I'm about halfway through and it's an obvious reccommendation.
 
I'm reading Treasure Island rn to take a break from The Stormlight Archive, while I really like Sanderson in certain aspects I find the prose annoying and current year sometimes. The story and characters are good but it feels so diluted. (will read the entire series though). I don't know if I just haven't read much, but I really like the writing level of older titles. Even if I'm not engrossed in the story or characters the prose just makes Treasure Island a joy to read. I'm about halfway through and it's an obvious reccommendation.
That's very eerie because I started reading that yesterday
 
Recently finished reading Twilight's Last Gleaming which was a fun book. It's a Tom Clancy type of meme, but where the USA ends up finding out they overplayed their hand on the world stage. The book is conveniently divided in 5 parts which lets me review it by saying that the first 3 are very good but the last 2 feel a bit too optimistic and cross into uncanny territory as being way too nice which is a shame I could have used something a bit more realistic. The author also seems like a complete character since he is a unironic druid.

Now I am reading Arc Light by Eric Harry, which is nice so far.
 
I am currently reading Count Zero by William Gibson. I’ve been indulged in cyberpunk books as of late and have already read Neuromancer by Gibson, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan.

I plan on finishing the sprawl trilogy by William Gibson. My next books will be Gibson’s Bridge Trilogy (Virtual Light, Idoru and Tomorrow’s Parties) and I also plan on reading the remaining two books of the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy (Broken Angels and Woken Furies)
 
About halfway through William C. Davis's biography on Jefferson Davis (no relation). I find I like his writing style, and I am retaining a lot of information and learning more things about both the CSA's sole president and the buildup and causes of the American Civil War. The author also writes extensively about Davis's personal life, and he also takes the time to bring up the seeds of war being planted in the decades before Fort Sumter being attacked, one of the biggest being the Nullification Crisis which happened under President Jackson. John C. Calhoun was the one pushing back against Jackson on that, and Davis was a Calhoun man despite being fond of both him and Jackson.
 
Finished Atonement by Ian McEwan. I really enjoyed it, bit of a slow start but the pace really ramps up and things get more interesting about halfway through and keep it up right to the end. Might have been the most affecting epilogue I have ever read, too. Never has an epilogue changed my view of an entire story like that.
I am currently reading Count Zero by William Gibson. I’ve been indulged in cyberpunk books as of late and have already read Neuromancer by Gibson, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan.
How did you find Snow Crash and Altered Carbon? I'd like to read more cyberpunk literature but I found Neuromancer a bit of a slog at times.
 
Finished Atonement by Ian McEwan. I really enjoyed it, bit of a slow start but the pace really ramps up and things get more interesting about halfway through and keep it up right to the end. Might have been the most affecting epilogue I have ever read, too. Never has an epilogue changed my view of an entire story like that.

How did you find Snow Crash and Altered Carbon? I'd like to read more cyberpunk literature but I found Neuromancer a bit of a slog at times.
Snow Crash was a bit of a trip, almost a satire. But a fun engaging read.

Altered Carbon is a hard boiled noir meets cyberpunk, set in a first person point of view. You’re in the shoes of Takeshi Kovacs. He’s investigating a murder. I personally enjoyed Altered Carbon
 
The Haunting of Camp Winter Falcon by Jonathon Raab

A group of veterans are gathered at the titular former military camp; they're supposed to be there for experimental treatments for PTSD but these people, each dealing with their damage in a frank and honest depiction soon find everything's off. Attempting to leave the facility is met with threats, the doctor in charge of their "treatment" includes among other activities the viewing of disturbing footage of occult rituals and military experiments. As well as the green fog seen now and then, and purple lights in the night sky. Raab unleashes a potent story of Deep State machinations meeting up with cosmic horror juju.
 
“The 48 Laws of Power” by Robert Greene. Been meaning to read this one for a while.

To anyone else who’ve read it, how legitimate is the rules listed?

It's been about 15 years since I read this and I remember laughing at some laws thinking they were really meme-y ("develop a cult-like following" being one of the ones that stand out in my memory), but the more I look back on it nowadays and consider the state that the world is in, I would definitely say a lot of these are pretty legit.
 
Back