What fiction book are you currently reading?

[Sukerkin]

Both really hit the spot. I was in no mood for the likes of Dorian Gray or Shakespeare .

. Sometimes all a book needs to be is entertaining, my friend. I'm currently reading "The Stars at War II" by David Webber and Steve White. It's pure space-opera and ninety percent battle descriptions and reports that I can see. In fact, I suspect that it is a fictionalised account of a gaming campaign for a system akin to Starfire .

 

[Blindside]

. Sometimes all a book needs to be is entertaining, my friend. I'm currently reading "The Stars at War II" by David Webber and Steve White. It's pure space-opera and ninety percent battle descriptions and reports that I can see. In fact, I suspect that it is a fictionalised account of a gaming campaign for a system akin to Starfire .

Actually, I believe it is based specifically on the Starfire game.

 

[Sukerkin]

Ah - thanks for the additional certainty, Blindside :tup:. It must've taken them months to run through all the battles give how long it used to take us to complete an engagement .

 

[mrhnau]

I've been reading a lot of classics lately... "Firefly's First Flight", "Mirror Me", "On the Farm", "Bible Stories for Children". I'm not too intellectually challenged by them, but at least my son is enjoying them

 

[crushing]

I thought that Invisible Man was such a good read that when I turned it back in to the library I picked up Juneteenth.

 

[CoryKS]

Reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, fast on the heels of Atlas Shrugged, which I enjoyed very much. I like her writing style, except for the plodding John Galt speech, which took as long for me to read as any three other chapters.

 

[SensibleManiac]

Next by Michael Crichton

 

[LoneRider]

Republic Commando: True Colors - Karen Traviss.

 

[Cerradura]

The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss

 

[Jade Tigress]

I'm reading Duma Key by Stephen King. I used to be huge King fan. Back when his books were good. Then he seemed to go into a "crank them out for the contract" mode, and they sucked. This one is very good, I'm almost finished and hope the ending doesn't disappoint.

What do I mean by disappoint? That it doesn't turn out the way I want it to? No. Remember It? Pennywise the clown, scary. And it turns out to be a big damn spider? C'mon.

I will say, the ending on this one is shaping up to be satisfying. I'll let ya know in about 75 pages.

 

[Omar B]

My favorite author is Ayn Rand so I always have all her books on a constant loop. I'm about 20 pages from the end of Atlas Shrugged which means by tomorrow I'm gonna be back to We The Living. She's my favorite as a philosopher and an author.

Last week I read Devil May Care by Sebastial Faulks, that's the new James Bond book. It was good but falls short of Fleming (of cource), Amis, Gardner and Benson. What can I say, Bond and Batman are my favorite fictional characters, I have everythng on them in print.

 

[pesilat]

I'm reading Duma Key by Stephen King. I used to be huge King fan. Back when his books were good. Then he seemed to go into a "crank them out for the contract" mode, and they sucked. This one is very good, I'm almost finished and hope the ending doesn't disappoint.

What do I mean by disappoint? That it doesn't turn out the way I want it to? No. Remember It? Pennywise the clown, scary. And it turns out to be a big damn spider? C'mon.

I will say, the ending on this one is shaping up to be satisfying. I'll let ya know in about 75 pages.

I liked Duma Key quite a bit and, personally, didn't find the ending to be disappointing.

Right now I'm reading "Man with the Golden Torc" by Simon R. Greene, "Tarzan the Terrible" by Edgar Rice Burroughs and "Recursion" by Tony Ballantyne.

"Man with the Golden Torc" is shaping up to be a good story. Like most of Greene's writing, I find the writing itself to be somewhat redundant - he repeats the same phrases quite a bit (often within the same page and sometimes within the same paragraph). But, also like most of Greene's stuff, I find the story to be very entertaining and enjoyable.

"Tarzan the Terrible" is good. As always, it's important to remember that Burroughs was way more concerned with telling a good yarn than with any sort of historical, geographical or scientific accuracy.

"Recursion" was Ballantyne's first novel and is shaping up to be an incredibly good first novel - and, I would say, a good novel by any standards. Set in the future, it covers three story lines that span several hundred years. It's about human vs. self-replicating artificial intelligences. As the tag line says, "The future was everything we hoped for - and more than we bargained for."

 

[pesilat]

What can I say, Bond and Batman are my favorite fictional characters, I have everythng on them in print.

Do you have "Captured by the Engines" - a Batman novel by Joe R. Lansdale?

If so, you'd be one of the very few people I've run into who do

If you don't, then I'd recommend picking it up - if you can track down a copy. I'm a huge fan of Joe's work. I wouldn't put this one among the best of his work but it's a fun read. He also did some writing for "Batman - the Animated Series" on T.V. - if memory serves he wrote the episode with Jonah Hex and co-wrote one or two other episodes.

Mike

 

[Omar B]

Yeah, I have it. Got it used for $0.25. Used book sale on my street every Saturday.

 

[Ahriman]

Jade Tigress: one of my favourite books from King is It... If you can remember, the spider was the base form in the physical realm as It's true material form was so alien that the human mind couldn't understand it thus their weak little minds rendered a more understandable image. The absolute form of It was left nearly totally unharmed and untouched (yes, they slayed the "spider" and with it the connection of It to the material world, but they merely escaped that light out there - a bit Lovecraftian, eh?), thus the AFAIK two further mentions of Pennywise in later books (Tommyknockers and Dreamcatcher). I like that in most books by King the evil never dies, the good boys never win fully - how could anyone possibly truly defeat powers so much greater than them?
Oh, and did anyone realize whose lesser avatar was Mr. Gaunt in Needful things?
...
And to be on-topic:
All works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Select works of Edgar Allan Poe
Péter Zsoldos: A distant fire
(yes, I really read more than a dozen books simultaneously)

 

[girlbug2]

hmmm, could it be...Satan?

 

[Ahriman]

Nah, that would be very cheap...
Put it this way: who has acces to the plateau of Leng at any time; who is in the same "family" as the wife (nice relationship, 1000 children, some not likely from the not-to-be-named one and they're still together) of one of the inhabitants of that plateau; who likes to corrupt and defy humanity either on large or small scale; who dares and survives mocking Yog-Sothoth (Gaunt's car in the garage, graffiti on the wall); who is arrogant enough to do a little "hunting" for pleasure when he should be carrying out orders from his superiors, the Outer (or "Other" for purist HPL fans ) Gods?
...
He's the crawling chaos, the three-lobed burning eye, the messenger of Azathoth, the soul of the Other Gods, the Black Man: Nyarlathotep (who is thought to be the devil by some HPL fans, so after all we got back to your idea).
Uh, OK, not really him, only a manifestation of him.

(While it is likely that Flagg, Stark and Gaunt are linked to some level, the lack of reference for this would imply that either there is no actual link or that they are indeed lesser avatars - lesser to the point where they stop being linked directly to Nyarly, thus losing much of his power and knowledge while aiding the work of him; this would be a logical reason for their apparent short memory and lack of logic in some cases)



edited to add: I looked this up in the wiki about 2 minutes ago and to my surprise I found a theory like mine there. Damn. I hate when it looks like I'm copying the wiki. :S

 

[irishwolf08]

The Host by Stephine Meyers

 

[Big Don]

Death and Honor by W.E.B. Griffin

 

[pesilat]

Yeah, I have it. Got it used for $0.25. Used book sale on my street every Saturday.

I'm impressed I enjoyed "Captured by the Engines" but didn't think it was a particularly good sample of Joe's work. If you haven't read any of Joe's other work I would highly recommend it (in fact, I'd highly recommend Joe's work to anyone who enjoys a good yarn; he's written stuff in just about any genre you want to mention) - with the caveat that he is pretty raw at times so if you're easily offended then you might want to close your eyes while you read it He also wrote the novella that "Bubba Ho-Tep" is based on (a great movie starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis). Also, the short story that "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" is based on (this was the episode that kicked off the first season of "Masters of Horror" on Showtime and this was the best made-for-cable horror flick I've ever seen).

Mike