What are you reading right now?

[FieldPiece]

Been meaning to go back and read some of the Chuck Palahniuks novels I hadn't read yet. Just finished Rant.

Fucking weird ass book but I liked it. The format makes it really easy to get immersed but I do think it could have dropped the NAME - SHIFT - PROFESSION thing after a bit, at least for main characters.

The premise is utterly psychotic and didn't end up being anything like what I imagined it would be based on the back of the book. In a good way mostly. I think a lot of the stuff with Echo could have been cut. As usual with Palahniuk lots of weird little factoids spread throughout.

I'd put it up there with some of Palahniuks better stuff like Fight Club and Survivor. Definitely the most fucked up version of a time travel story I've seen. Are any of his newer books any good? I've only heard bad things.

 

[Hazel Motes]

Been meaning to go back and read some of the Chuck Palahniuks novels I hadn't read yet. Just finished Rant.

Fucking weird ass book but I liked it. The format makes it really easy to get immersed but I do think it could have dropped the NAME - SHIFT - PROFESSION thing after a bit, at least for main characters.

The premise is utterly psychotic and didn't end up being anything like what I imagined it would be based on the back of the book. In a good way mostly. I think a lot of the stuff with Echo could have been cut. As usual with Palahniuk lots of weird little factoids spread throughout.

I'd put it up there with some of Palahniuks better stuff like Fight Club and Survivor. Definitely the most fucked up version of a time travel story I've seen. Are any of his newer books any good? I've only heard bad things.

I read Adjustment Day a few years ago. I enjoyed it, partly because it feels like a microcosm of 2016-2020 right wing internet, but it drags (despite being 300 pages) and is bloated with characters who are not interesting beyond the surface level. Palahniuk writes it in the third person also, when his style only really works in the first.

I really enjoyed Palahniuk's travel book of Portland.

 

[david wellington]

Paradise-1 by David Wellington.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

Actually made it through Dune after having it on my shelf for ages. Granted I never read so writing could be timeless but it feels so contemporary. Modern language (or I guess just full of personal quirks by Herbert). I want to read Messiah as well but I hear it goes downhill after even the first book, and there's what, 6? Maybe I should cut losses.

 

[Cemetery Support]

I've been on a zombie movie kick recently, so I started reading some post-apocalyptic stories, especially Zombie ones.

Most are pretty standard, but I stumbled the "Newsflesh" Trilogy. And it alternates between being mind-numbingly boring and hilariously bad. It's supposed to be after a zombie apocalypse where bloggers and independent journalists replaced big media.

Seemed like it had potential, with bloggers able to get reports from "Hot Zones" and such.

But no. It's a "Political Thriller" about a presidential election. The main character is a "Quirky, but smart girl" who is a blatant author self-insert.

And her relationship with her brother is written so awkwardly that there's no way it's not incestuous. What's hilarious is that not sure if the author intended it that way or not.

I finished the first book somehow and I'm about halfway through the second one and struggling to finish it because all the main characters are idiots.

I wouldn't recommend it. It's a zombie series with almost no zombie action. Any GOOD zombie fiction recommendations?

obligatory World War Z if you havent read it. I only read it once in high school, so I’m uncertain if it holds up on re-reads, but its worth a shot. I certainly enjoyed it on my first read.

If you’re looking for dumbfuck kind-of-creepy macho-man-reads beach-media, look no further than John Ringo’s Black Tide Rising series



If you’re not sold on this pulpy ass cover, then I have to revoke your man card. I didn’t finish the series, its irredeemable pulp, but I thought it was fun when I read it.

If anyone else has zombie recs, I want them too. I fucking love zombies.

 

[Tomo]

The God Deletion by Richard Dawkins and The Sexual Contract by Carole Pateman

 

[Commander X]

Doan and Carstairs: Their Complete Cases - a collection of the handful of stories featuring pulpster Norbert Davis' snappy comedic hard-boiled detective stories featuring the titular PI Doan and his partner, Carstairs.

Doan is a short, broad man in rumpled clothes, cursed with curly blond hair and a cherubic baby face that altogether gives him a naive appearance.

At first glance–and at the second and third for that matter–he looked like the epitome of all the suckers that had ever come down the pike. He looked so harmless it was pitiful. It wasn’t until you considered him for some time that you began to see that there was something wrong with the picture. He looked just a little too innocent.

He is, in fact, an operative for the Severn Detective Agency located in Bay City, a fictional burg located somewhere just east of the Rockies. According to his boss, J.S. Toggery, the diminutive detective is “the most dangerous little devil I’ve ever seen, and he’s all the worse because of that half-witted manner of his. You never suspect what he’s up to until it’s too late.” Doan is a master con artist, using his seemingly harmless appearance to cheat and scam his way through life and complete his assignments. When it comes time to get physical, Doan proves to be much tougher than he looks, and then there's the .38 he usually carries for when it's needful.

Carstairs is a pedigreed fawn-colored Great Dane about the size of "a yearling calf". The latest in a long line of purebred show dogs, Doan won the big beast in a card game. Carstairs seems to be possessed of an intelligence above that of the average dog:

...a champion, and he had a long and imposing list of very high-class ancestors. He was fond of Doan in a well-bred way, but he had never been able to reconcile himself to having such a low person for a master. Whenever they went out for a stroll together, Carstairs always walked either far behind or ahead, so no one would suspect his relationship with Doan.

A real winning pair, and it is sad their appearances were limited to the two short stories “Holocaust House” and “Cry Murder!” and the three novels The Mouse in the Mountain, Sally's in the Alley and Oh, Murderer Mine.

 

[LordOfZhbagva]

Actually made it through Dune after having it on my shelf for ages. Granted I never read so writing could be timeless but it feels so contemporary. Modern language (or I guess just full of personal quirks by Herbert). I want to read Messiah as well but I hear it goes downhill after even the first book, and there's what, 6? Maybe I should cut losses.

For me, Messiah might be a bit better than Dune (and more of the same), Children is quite a bit worse (but I still wouldn't call it bad or unreadable, just a slightly unwelcome shift in tone and direction), but the GEoD is exceptional and for me, a must read if you're willing to continue reading Dune. I'd call GEoD the best by far of all the Dune books I've read (the first 4).

 

[timewave0]

Actually made it through Dune after having it on my shelf for ages. Granted I never read so writing could be timeless but it feels so contemporary. Modern language (or I guess just full of personal quirks by Herbert). I want to read Messiah as well but I hear it goes downhill after even the first book, and there's what, 6? Maybe I should cut losses.

I’d recommend reading through God Emperor at least. The third one kind of sucks compared to the others but still worth reading imo

 

[Cheesegirl78]

Re-reading these two books:

The best book about the Chernobyl disaster,
and the biography of Gia Carangi, one of the big late70s/early 80s models. Heartbreaking story.

 

[Zashaiba]

The Quran LOL

 

[Donut Coma]

Midnight in Chernobyl is excellent.

I've been reading everything I can get my hands on by Gerald Kersh. One of my favorite noirs is a film called Night and the City, so decided to check out the novel it was based on. Turned out to be a dramatically different story, but my love for the novel doesn't interfere with my love of the movie...maybe because it is so much its own entity. I think you could fairly call his work mid-20th century Dickensian. Besides Night and the City, the novels Fowler's End, Prelude to a Certain Midnight, and The Thousand Deaths of Mr. Small have been some of the best reads I've found in the past coupla years.

 

[Gilgamesh]

Just finished Count Zero, the Neuromancer sequel. Pretty good, very strange seeing some new social phenomenon predicted in '86

 

[CowPox]

Been meaning to go back and read some of the Chuck Palahniuks novels I hadn't read yet. Just finished Rant.

Fucking weird ass book but I liked it. The format makes it really easy to get immersed but I do think it could have dropped the NAME - SHIFT - PROFESSION thing after a bit, at least for main characters.

The premise is utterly psychotic and didn't end up being anything like what I imagined it would be based on the back of the book. In a good way mostly. I think a lot of the stuff with Echo could have been cut. As usual with Palahniuk lots of weird little factoids spread throughout.

I'd put it up there with some of Palahniuks better stuff like Fight Club and Survivor. Definitely the most fucked up version of a time travel story I've seen. Are any of his newer books any good? I've only heard bad things.

I thought snuff was good.

 

[Dick Johnson]

Just finished Count Zero, the Neuromancer sequel. Pretty good, very strange seeing some new social phenomenon predicted in '86

Hah, I just read that a couple months ago. The most striking thing for me was that he seemed to have perfectly nailed kitchen aesthetic trends of the 2000s, with his references to 'turn of the century' granite countertops and stainless steel appliances (I may be misremembering the appliances). I don't know if those were starting to gain popularity in the mid 80s but it was just neat seeing something so specific and so accurate.

 

[Gilgamesh]

Hah, I just read that a couple months ago. The most striking thing for me was that he seemed to have perfectly nailed kitchen aesthetic trends of the 2000s, with his references to 'turn of the century' granite countertops and stainless steel appliances (I may be misremembering the appliances). I don't know if those were starting to gain popularity in the mid 80s but it was just neat seeing something so specific and so accurate.

Yea I remember that. I remember reading a few others where I was like "woah!" but can't get any off the top of my head right now.
Is Mona Lisa Overdrive good?

 

[Dick Johnson]

Yea I remember that. I remember reading a few others where I was like "woah!" but can't get any off the top of my head right now.
Is Mona Lisa Overdrive good?

Haven't read it yet. Count Zero is only the second Gibson book I've read after Neuromancer. Third, if you count a graphic novel that he wrote some years ago (whose name I don't recall). It was OK, but kind of undercooked.

 

[AnOminous]

Just finished Count Zero, the Neuromancer sequel. Pretty good, very strange seeing some new social phenomenon predicted in '86

Fun fact: William Gibson isn't terribly fond of modern technology and wrote the original Neuromancer on a 1927 Hermes manual portable typewriter. Also, he had never even used a computer at the time he wrote it.

Haven't read it yet. Count Zero is only the second Gibson book I've read after Neuromancer. Third, if you count a graphic novel that he wrote some years ago (whose name I don't recall). It was OK, but kind of undercooked.

I read Count Zero when it was serialized in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. I believe the first thing by Gibson I read was Johnny Mnemonic in Omni.

 

[Gilgamesh]

Fun fact: William Gibson isn't terribly fond of modern technology and wrote the original Neuromancer on a 1927 Hermes manual portable typewriter. Also, he had never even used a computer at the time he wrote it.

I read Count Zero when it was serialized in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. I believe the first thing by Gibson I read was Johnny Mnemonic in Omni.

I think his attitude on tech has changed in recent years. I've heard somewhere about his switch to a word processor (or maybe it was Asimov...) but he's on Twitter and sometimes annoying.
I would of killed to have read Asimov's mags when they were coming out, I'm sad that form of science fiction print media has all but died out.

 

[AnOminous]

I think his attitude on tech has changed in recent years. I've heard somewhere about his switch to a word processor (or maybe it was Asimov...) but he's on Twitter and sometimes annoying.

It was one of those early word processors where it was just a word processor.