Which book are you reading currently? #7

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You've got to be kidding me. Being crazy is the only way you can have a family. You obviously have never had kids....

 

Reading "Best Served Cold" Abercrombie's latest novel. It is well worth the read but I think Joe has gone overboard with the "grit". Good novel, a bit different but I think he won't join the greats. He is part of what I like to think of as "the second tier" of writers. Not superawesome as Martin, Erikson or Hobb when they are at their best but still good quality novels that challenges and expand the way to write fantasy. Quite a lot of them now; Abercrombie, Rothfuss, Lynch, Morgan and several more.

 

Continued the "well-written tragic love story" theme by reading Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. Once again, you feel the emotion even more because it appears so understated.

On my 28-hour train ride from Guilin to Beijing, I also finished "Running with Scissors" by Augusten Burroughs. Must agree with the general comments at the start of the book. Funny yet extremely disturbing at many times. I can't imagine actually having lived that man's life.

 

Le Carré's A Most Wanted Man.

 

"Turn of the Screw" by Henry James... it was... meh, at best. Not sure why it's such classic horror. Perhaps I need to take another gander.

 

The Brothers Karamazov - so it turns out that, indeed, the accumulated literary wisdom of over a century is quite correct: Dostoevsky is ****ing great.

 

This particular book is his greatest IMO. Out of a nothing but great books

 

World War Z by Max Brooks, basically a series of interviews with survivors of a zombie apocalypse. I'm only a hundred or so pages in but I really like it.

 

The Other by Thomas Tryon. I read the last 200 pages in 2 hours today. It is a good book, great horror novel.

 

Amber & Blood ... It seems to be picking up a little from the first two volumes. Although, it did start out great I seem to be getting to a dry spot a quarter the way through. I'm hoping it will pick up again...

 

I am reading some of the stories from The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. I read The Pit and the Pendulum (pretty good), and have to read The Cask of Amontillado (which I already like), Ligea, and... one other that I cannot recall at the moment.

 

@Saber: does it include William Wilson? This story is one of my favourite with The Masque of the Red Death. Great short stories.

 

I need to steal my dad's copy of that and read it again. First time through I couldn't go straight, because even though I loved it, it just wasn't a book that I could read for hours at a time or had a great desire to pick up again. Even then I recognized the brilliance.

Just can't imagine how an author can combine a great story, thought provoking ideas, and such writing skill (kudos to the translator as well) in one piece.

Considering reading through the LotR again. Haven't read the last two in 7 years or so, and about 5 years since my last trip through the Hobbit and Fellowship.

 

We don't have to read any of those for my class, but I will definitely check them out. It does include William Wilson. (It is the complete works of Poe )

 

The Pit and the Pendulum and The Mask of the Red Death are my favourites Poe stories. Definitely read the latter if it's in this compilation.

 

Ah, just looked at my assignment sheet - I have to read "The Raven," "William Wilson," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Masque of the Red Death," and "Shadow -A Parable," as well, so looks like I'll be hitting up some of the ones you guys recommended.

"The Premature Burial" is the one I forgot the name of, but that was decent. Love "The Cask of Amontillado," so short, yet so sinister.

 

Talking about sinister and scary, I have The best of H.P. Lovecraft. I only read one or two short stories in it, but I want to keep it for when I'm in a cabin in the woods at night, or something...

 

You can't have the best, there is no best!

Everything he wrote was pure gold.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

So get the complete works asap! I have the three volume Omnibus Edition (Volume 1 At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror, 2 Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, 3 The Hunter in the Dark) and it was the best money I've ever spent.

Nevertheless I'd wish to commend you on "the cabin in the woods" idea.

 

Reading Brotherhood of the Wolf, book 2 in the Runelords story. Book one was good, I liked the pace that it moved at, though the story in book 2 is slowing down, but the writer seems to be adding more depth to some of the characters. We'll see.