I always though it was ironic that Lol Fail was a bestseller and won so many awards.

I had a ready holiday.

I read The Throwback by Tom Sharpe for the umpteenth millionth time.
I read The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman which is on part with the best children's books I've ever read.
I finally got round to finish Lolita by Vladamir Nabakov, and I most defintely belong to the camp who think Humbert Humbert is a monster.
I read Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman which was ten times as funny and neary as good as American Gods.
I found The Gropes by Tom Sharpe for two euro and read it in a day, the ending was the most blatent author troll I've ever seen.
I read half of Tehanu by Ursula LeGuin before it got packed up in my suitcase.
And finally I read roughly two thirds of Shadowrise by Tad Williams on the plane home, which was wonderfually inventive epic fantasy.

I am reading Startide Rising by David Brin again

A friend borrowed me a copy of Niezwyciężony by Stanisław Lem and I must say I am really impressed.

And after I have seen Stalker (1979) by Tarkowski I started to read Пикник на обочине (Roadside Picnic) by Arkadi and Boris Strugatski
Try to consume both if you haven't yet. Great experience.

I finished the divine comedy followed up by a succesion of short books and have just finished to kill a mockingbird, got to be the best book out their. Now I am reading the cloud spotters guide!!!! Freaking great, ooh look cumulus calvus, ooh look, a kevin helmholtz cloud, ooh a horshoe vortex yummy!

READ MOAR.

I've been reading Plato's 'The Republic'. I highly recommend it.

I don't.

Why is that? 'tis Plato. What a hoot he is.

(bare in mind I wasn't really recommending it, but that's what people do in these threads/bookclubs, attach I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT to the end of every statement about a book they've read?)

Well.

At least he's better than Descartes.

Does Descartes have a sense of humour? I can't recall reading that much about him.

Lao Tzu and Chaung Tzu are two of my favourite philosophers of late, they can be quite sarcastic in their methods, quite enjoy reading up on them from time to time.

Read the art of War, I finished the Republic a while back before the other books actually, makes some interesting insights.

i read harlan ellison's i have no mouth and i must scream, true horror.
and i am going through laugh track, i like his style but he's just a damn pervert sometimes.

The pot that called the kettle a white woman raping nigger.

i also liked how he shows the feelings of every character, one particular part i like is at the beginning of IHNMAIMS when AM Talks to the 5 humans:
"HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE."

Yes. Everybody likes that part. To the point where it's tiring.

The Art of War I've never quite finished, its not even that long. Sun Tzu's so-so, or at least the translation is, who knows? I don't.

Somebody gave me A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam. It's actually very interesting. I do think that Islam is a good religion, although I don't believe in it myself.

I agree, even though I'm a Christian, they are supposed to be good people, even if many reject the true illustration of what God intended for them. I have another book I read, the Bible, even if you don't belief in all that good stuff, I suggest reading it for the history and the life lessons/parables.

If I could just steer you away from a touchy subject... again...

I'd recommend reading it for the murder, rape, treachery, and downright idiocy contained within it. It's very entertaining.

No, it's not.

I learnt a lot from the rape.

I'm currently reading Agatha Christie's And then there were none.

I know, I don't read a lot. So far I'm liking the book.

I read that for the first time a couple of months ago.

For such a famous and critically acclaimed novel, I found the twist a bit disappointing.

I finally got around to reading The Stand: Complete and Uncut Edition by Stephen King recently. I hadn't gotten into a Stephen King book in years and I kept putting that one off for a long time because I didn't like the television miniseries movie. But I'm glad I read it. It was pretty good. Trashy at times, silly at others, but a decent enough read.

Except for the climax, which was so disappointing it nearly physically moved me to tears.

Seriously, King? A sub character who brings nothing else into the overall plot brings a volatile nuke into the bad guy's city and kills all the bad guys and all the good guys except the main character who couldn't go because he sprained his ankle?

I don't want to spoiler tag that it's so stupid.


The rest was good though, King just can't write endings.

I thought that guy was being drawn over by the "good" side? And it was "the hand of god" that exploded the bomb?

And that's any better?

No, really. The end of The Stand was fucking stupid. Not as stupid as the end of Black House, but still. It was pretty fucking stupid.

I read about half of the Stand. I'm a huge fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, but somewhere in the middle of the book it just went downright bizarre, I had to put it down. I feel guilty for not having read it all, but whatever it was that was in the middle onwards was enough to turn me away. Something about destiny or God or something, I dunno. Maybe I'm wrong and should read it all and then judge whether its shit.

A Brief llustrated guide to Understanding Islam?

Seriously?

What's their take on the depiction of prophets? :confused:

No, no. Much of the text is about why a lot of the things explained in the Qu'ran back then are enforced by recent scientific discoveries. There are a a lot of diagrams that help to demonstrate this.

Oddjob converted.

Oooh, now that does sound like a good read.

I'm always impressed by ancient civilisations, and their religions or cultures, and their somewhat unsettling detail to the universe and world around them, that we have only just stumbled across ourselves..

Yeah the ending of The Stand was probably the best example of Deus Ex Machina ever. But, overall, it was a pretty good book. Not my favorite King book, but probably one of the best.

King is obsessed with Deus Ex Machina. He has ruined almost every book he's written with a Deus Ex Machina ending. But holy shit, is Black House the worst. I wanted to like that book so much because of how much I loved The Talisman, but goddamn it.

Never read Black House. The Tailsman is pretty good, though.

Honestly, I normally don't have a problem with Deus Ex Machina endings. If they have been properly alluded to and set-up or make sense they can be pretty good. I really like how The Shining was resolved in the book. But sometimes it really does feel like it could have been a much better book when he does things like that.

Yeah, well, at the end of Black House all of the "good guys" shot laser beams out of their school rings even though they didn't know they could. That's how they beat the bad guy.

The Talisman was almost perfect. There's just one weird writing error somewhere near the end which I'm convinced isn't a casual error and is actually King breaking style.

It's very jarring.

The Glass Bead Gamez By Herman Hesse because I so kool.

Anyone have an ereader? We just got one for mum, and I was pining quite hard for one up until the point I actually used it. eInk is a fucking lame baby technology atm, basically a convoluted calculator display. Plus the resolution is so balls on all ereaders in the market that parsed pdfs can't be fully displayed, aka scroll around the page with the crushingly slow refresh rate.

I will stick to using university printing credit to read my illegal pdfs and epubs.

We have to read Chineese Cinderella for English.

The dog ate her duck D:

It's surprisingly good! I read it in year 7

I'm reading the Night Angel Trilogy, by Brent Weeks.
Its awesome.
Yay.