What Are You Reading?

[Fe 26]

Just finished "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Philip K. Dick and am currently reading "Tishomingo Blues" by Elmore Leonard. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle" is next. Reading has supplanted iPod and GBA SP for train ride entertainment.

What is "Tishomingo Blues" about? As the song of the same name is about a town that I have lived in the longest of any place ive ever lived. Catchy little song, you should all hunt it down.

[Sqoon]

It's a pretty sad fact that there's only one thread devoted to lit. and it can't even stay alive, though I admit that up until recently I've had a hard time reading consistently. There's so much that can be explored and discovered and said in a single book, to the point where it's absolutely paralyzing.

And fiction blows. I just cannot 'waste' my entertainment time w/slow books. I mean, I can get an engaging, interesting story from Lost in Translation in a 2-3 hr. movie or Sandman Mystery Theatre in a 20 minute comic or The Shield in an hour of TV. Why spend a week reading what will probably be a less-than grade A story? At least w/a bad movie I'm only out 90 minutes.

Also, I feel bad wasting precious reading hours NOT improving my knowledge on some subject. Well-researched non-fiction is great for teaching me something new on a subject I know nothing about. That, to me, is time well spent.

Don't reproduce.

Recently finished Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy) and finished Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon) about two hours ago.
Jude the Obscure was golden for the first three hundred pages, which is really proof to Hardy's prose since the main characters talk about the same things over and over (marriage, religion, education) without growing repetetive. Then there's a disaster that should've altered the main characters drastically, but Hardy fails to deliver and the narrative falls apart. I'd still recommend it because the event I'm talking about (wish I could tell you but dont want to spoil it), however ridiculous and absurd it was, literally made my jaw drop.

Curious Incident is about an obnoxious autistic kid trying to solve the murder of a dog. The main character is vividly drawn and created, to the point where you can't deciede if you're emphatic for him or want to strangle him for being such a retard. A decent read. It'll go by quickly.

Think I'll start Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Dai Sijie) next.

[MVS]

I'm about 700 pages into The Stand (Unabriged Version).

Probably hit the book store and pick up 2 or 3 new books to read post that.

[Captain Vegetable]

I just started the Dark Tower series. This is my first King reading, and I'm really enjoying it.

[Tommy Tallarico]

Reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail right now. Afterwards, I'm going to reread the Dark Tower series so that I can read Wolves of the Calla and the new one when it comes out next month.

[Regus]

I just finished TheCaves of Steel by Isaac Asimov, going to finish off the series with the The Robots of Dawn next.

[Captain Vegetable]

Reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail right now.

The first half of the book is great, but in the second half, such profound leaps are made to connect certain, obviously disparate subjects with no accredited backing, that I never finished it.

[bandit]

I'm reading "The Davinci Code". Next book is probably "The Rule of Four". Mind you, I'm not a book reader cuz my mind usually wanders off, but I'm hooked on Davinci Code. Rule of Four is suppose to be similar to DC.

[Mode7]

I'm currently reading Foucault's Pendulum and am hating it quite a bit. Basically I'm only sticking with it because I've come this far and I tend to be pretty bloody-minded about these things. A severely, mind-numbingly overwrought piece of fiction.

[AstroBlue]

Just finished "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville, read the first four stories in "The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami