suzi

Mazoo
Oh, you're a pianist Suzi? Exciting! I'm unable to focus on that many keys at once. Kudos to you, my friend. I have great respect for pianists.

Ahhh, thank you...Yeah, the pieces I'm working on right now are for college auditions in the winter - I'm going to major in Music, possibly double major, or minor, in Art. I envy all my classmates who are just beginning to think about college, this summer before senior year, and I've already been working on my audition pieces since February :p Such is life.

The more you bone up on it now, the better for you later.

Especially after you get to college, realize it is impossible to get out in four years without kicking your own tail to do it, and then see what kind of hellish practicing schedule the music department has in store for you.

Ahh...memories.....

But good luck, ne'etheless. :wink:

On subject, though:

I love Robin Hobb's series, the Cycle of Fire series from Janny Wurts (her other one is beginning to look very Robert Jordanish...bad sign :evil: ), the Darkangel Trilogy from Meredith Ann Pierce, and the Belgariad and Mallorean from David Eddings
*pause*
(The poor man is the only one on the list...wow...)

I haven't had time, nor inclination to pick up another book for quite a while now. College and the overabundance of education has spoiled my appetite for it, which is a pity. I'm hoping that's another phase that will pass when I've graduated. :?

death_monk666
...2)I read a (not horrible, but not good, either) book about a pianist...(it was made by RL Stine...)I recommend it for those who can not take the "gruesome" tales of Stephen King or "nior" plots of Dean Koontz(is that correct? I do not have one of her books with me...)...I forgot the name of it...sorry... :(

death_monk666
...2)I read a (not horrible, but not good, either) book about a pianist...(it was made by RL Stine...)

death_monk666
made by RL Stine...

R.L. Stine? No. Sorry. Nope. R.L. Stine's work is not, nor will ever be, entertaining and/or thought-provoking literature, and shouldn't even be referred to in the same sentence as Koontz or King (mainstream as they may be themselves). So don't mention him here.

I mean, what next? Animorphs?

~IJ

PS: Another crisis averted... thanks to... the SNOTTY LITERARY ELITIST! Up, up and awaaaaay!

RL Stine...where have I heard that name?

*Wikis RL Stine*

Oh. "Stephen King for kids" says the article, but if I remeber anything about that guy's books, they were crap. When I was a kid I read one about a camp which was secretly run by a giant tub of goo...

I have a feeling that this guy was smoking something.

By the way, I like the red text there Ian. It gets the point across well.

yeah, RL Stine's books weren't that scary to me even as an kid. it was more like gross or just bizzare.

although he did write some good ones.. like "Shocker on Shock Street"... man, that one had an twist to it that I didn't expect.

and the other one I don't remember the name... but it was about the boy discovering that there was this creepy guy in his neighbored who held aliens in his basement for experimentions, considering that the creepy guy was an scientist for the government who was hunting down and trapping aliens for studies.
anyway... when the boy found out, the creepy guy trapped him in the freezer where the aliens were in too, so that the boy wouldn't escape and tell the others.
but overnight, the aliens huddle up with him to keep him warm... the creepy guy comes back and sees this. he becomes disgusted and grossed out... and we find out why when the boy escapes.
as he is on his back home to his parents, the boy goes behind a bush and actually starts laying alien eggs or something. seems that the aliens were doing more than huddling up with the boy. yay for underage alien sex.

man, the guy might had been trying to be scary but failed lamely, but I liked his stories regardless..... when it wasn't about monster goo. the ones with goo stuff was just lame.

Ugh, I hated R.L. Stine, even as a kid. I could never get through one book of his. Crappy crap crap. I even saw a show that was made from the series and it was one of the most retarded things ever.

Want scariness and snooty elistism stuff? Go read The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. (It's actually a good read, albeit very graphic and an "Oh look at how amazing I am by putting all these famous authors into one novel! Oooooo!" air.)

death_monk666
...And that is why at age 5 I read them and tossed them into a corner...But for people who can not handle King's work, they should read Stine's. And that is the biggest insult I have thrown into any forum...that is you cant handle King's novels, read Stine's(and anyone who has read any stine laugh at it because it is not scary the slightest...)

death_monk666 (secretly, to himself)
Phew! Covered my ass there.

No, seriously, it's all in jest. Everyone's different, so what some might consider trash lit others would consider treasure. And Stine's work does have a certain cheesy 50's-monster-movie quality to it, which is pretty funky.

~IJ

Vixus
Quoting is damn fun.

Concurrance!

Today I took David Copperfield out of the library, to get started on that for summer reading. Now, I knew it was big, but JESUS CHRIST...

this post was completely superfluous.

Recently I've been a bit busy to do alot of reading, but if I have to pull a list off the top of my mind, it would look something like this:

Good Books:
- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (series) by Douglas Adams (Comedy) OH GOD YES!
- Dark Elf Trilogy by R.A.Salvatore (Action/Fantasy)Actually, all his stuff is good.
- Wheel of Time (series) By Robert Jordan (Action/Fantasy)
- Ender's Game (series) by Orson Scott Card (Action/Sci-Fi)
- A Song of Fire and Ice (series) by George R. Martin (Action/Fantasy)
- Xanth (series) By Piers Anthony (Comedy/Action/Fantasy)

These are all great series by great authors.

Radec
- Xanth (series) By Piers Anthony (Comedy/Action/Fantasy)

You know, coincidentally, I recently picked up one of Mr. Anthony's Xanth novels at the library (the 2001 release Swell Foop-- 25th in the series), drawn in by the descriptions of how "hilarious" it was on the jacket flap. I got about three chapters in and couldn't go any farther. But before I explain why...



Okay. So, basically, when I started to read the book, the thing that struck me first off was that Piers' sense of humor and my sense of humor were obviously seperated by a wide and intractable mental river. You see, the magical land of Xanth runs on puns-- you know, little plays on words (like a popular beverage called "boot rear" instead of "root beer", or a giant magic-fueled computer named "Com Puter"-- a-ha-ha, a-ha-ha, a-ha) that Piers seems to find extraordinarily witty. The truth is, though, that for about the first two pages, I was decoding the puns and thinking, "Oh, ha, I get it", but after that I was decoding the puns and thinking, "Please, Lord, make it stop." Now, don't get me wrong: When circumstances provide, I will never miss the chance to unleash a real groaner of a pun into conversation. But puns, like saturated fats and pan flutes, should be used only very sparingly. If used en masse like this, they're revealed for what they are: cheap, tawdry imitations of humor.

Also, Piers' characters, while described physically and manneristically in excruciating detail, were noticeably lacking in emotional depth. They all talk in this flat, formal, vaguely medieval-sounding dialect, so it's hard to gauge any personality in them (unless they acutally say how they're feeling, like "I'm sorrowful at hearing that remark." Reading tripe like that makes me so irritated). At other points Piers will stop dead in the middle of a suspenseful scene to drone on and on about some ridiculously irrelevant topic-- he once took up a whole page explaining the age of one character named Cynthia Centaur. (And many of the characters in the book are named the same way-- Cynthia's beau Che Centaur, Roxanne Roc, Zyzzyva Zombie, etcetera. And everyone in a certain species has the same last name... except the humans, of course, because that would be weird. Piers, did it take you, like, three seconds to come up with this?) It destroys the suspense, it irks the reader (or, at least, it irked me), and it makes getting through the book that much more tedious. By the time I hit Chapter Two, I began to hope that all the main characters would die horribly before the book was over, crushed by a large rock or something.

Overall, I don't know about you, but I thought Piers' writing was weak and uninspired, and his jokes were totally off. This is the twenty-first century, dang it! I'm jaded and cynical, and I expect way better stuff than this "classic fantasy" throwaway crap!

~IJ

PS: A couple of good books I got from the library:

~Epileptic, by David B. The true story of the author's childhood shared with his epileptic brother. Beautiful and moving.
~The Brightonomicon, by Robert Rankin. A young teenager with no memory joins a self-proclaimed metaphysical detective to solve a series of mysteries based on constellations found in the road map of Brighton (a small town in England somewhere), in the eventual hopes of recovering a television built by a Benedictine monk that allowed people to see into the past. I can't make this stuff up.
~Book One: 1986-2006, by Chip Kidd. This massive coffee-table book offers insight into the career of one of the most popular book dust-jacket designers. Surprisingly more interesting than you may think; it's crazy to see how many books he's done the covers for over the years. Also, lots of pretty, pretty pictures.
~Samurai Cat Goes To Hell, by Mark E. Rogers. It's about a cat (who is also a samurai-- note this) who goes to hell and beats the living shit out of everyone in his way. This is apparently the end of a six-book series, and it's the only one my library system has, but it is so awesome that I am considering buying the other five (most long out of print) off of Amazon. Bizarre jokes, heaps of pop culture references, total obliteration of the fourth wall, and blood, blood, blood.

48 Laws of Power, Art of Seduction --- Robert Greene

The Game --- Neil Strauss

Real Ultimate Power --- Robert Hamburger (I think its really maddox)

I just got that Alphabet of Manliness by Maddox. Havent really read it yet. Still reading real ultimate power.

Man this thread kinda died.

My mom randomly got two books in the mail the other day, so I decided to read them, since they looked pretty interesting.

One book was called The Lost Painting, By Jonathon Harr, and was ok. It's a "historical fiction" I think on how Caravaggio's The Betrayal of Christ was found. It was a quick, informative read, but not something all that entertaining. Essentially you read it to think "oh, ok, that was an interesting little tidbit on Caravaggio" but that's about it. The only thing that really kept me reading it was that I found it ironic how last year I had copied a piece by Caravaggio for a study in Painting Class.

The other book was by Simon Winchester (who I almost mistook for Simon Singh. Oops) called A Crack at the Edge of the World: America and the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake or something to that effect. It was pretty good. Winchester's got a quirky sense of humor which is nice in all the geological mumbo-jumbo. One of the most memorable things when he talked about San Francisco in 1906 was how sympathetic he was with the Chinese. Now I know it was horrible racism that America should be shamed of (the Exclusion Act was in effect until the 50's!) but he got a little hung up on it. At least he didn't dwell too long on it though. I liked him enough that I'm thinking on trying to find some of his other stuff.

I mentioned Simon Singh before, and I bet most of you are like "uh, who?" He's the author of a book a read a while ago "Big Bang" which you hopefully can guess what it's about. He did an amazing job at simplifying extremely complex concepts of astronomy and physics (or "dumbing down for us regular folks") and kept the whole book clean from any digression. I reccomend it highly.

I'm now going to start Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, and from there I'll have to start on some stuff for APUSH. I don't even want to think about school, but I guess that's what I get for taking AP courses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves [en.wikipedia.org]

house of leaves is my all-time-favorite book.

it's a story about a guy who found scraps of paper from a dead guy's place and pieces them together to read a review about a movie that never existed.

the interesting part is the way that it's written. some pages are just spirals of words and stuff. it's crazy.

I just started reading The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb. I also saw 'A Game of Thrones' by Martin for $3.99 today. I think I'm going to go snag that up.

However, two of my favorite books that I own have to be Battle Royale, and Flowers for Algernon.

I'm actually starting to get into reading as a 'recreation', not as a 'oh shit, I have an assignment due tomorrow, I guess I better read the chapter' disaster.

I'm slowly getting into it, but I think I'm going to pick up Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan, and American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

bigfishcomic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves [en.wikipedia.org]house of leaves is my all-time-favorite book.

it's a story about a guy who found scraps of paper from a dead guy's place and pieces them together to read a review about a movie that never existed.

the interesting part is the way that it's written. some pages are just spirals of words and stuff. it's crazy.

Dang. That's definitely going on my must-read list.

~IJ

Been reading more Prachett. In the last few days I read:

Feet of Clay
The Last Continent
and
Mort.

I must say, Prachett gets better with time, but also with subject. The books centering around Commander Vimes seem to be the best, better than the stand alone ones. And The Last Continent wasn't as good as the other two. So if I had the rank them...

Feet of Clay was the best,
then Mort,
then The Last Continent. Still, all of them are good. I'm awed by Prachett's expansive world. And the Grim Reaper (or Death, for short) is incredibly cool.

Ian Jay

bigfishcomic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves [en.wikipedia.org]house of leaves is my all-time-favorite book.

it's a story about a guy who found scraps of paper from a dead guy's place and pieces them together to read a review about a movie that never existed.

the interesting part is the way that it's written. some pages are just spirals of words and stuff. it's crazy.

Dang. That's definitely going on my must-read list.

~IJ

I hope you enjoy it...otherwise I'll probably just think less of you.

bigfishcomic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves [en.wikipedia.org]house of leaves is my all-time-favorite book.

it's a story about a guy who found scraps of paper from a dead guy's place and pieces them together to read a review about a movie that never existed.

the interesting part is the way that it's written. some pages are just spirals of words and stuff. it's crazy.

I really have to reread House of Leaves since it's been a while since I last read it (and when I did, it was for a summer course so I had to read the whole book in 2-3 days.) However, I think it's sort of up in the air on whether or not the documentary actually existed or not. It's also questionable whether or not Zampanò's manuscript existed and whether there's tampering and if so by who, etc etc.

But yeah, the book is WONDERFUL. I loved how the physical book itself is incorporated and that there's so many layers you can dig through. Regardless of whether or not the documentary exists, it's still rather spooky (especially if you're like me and read it at 4 AM with a dark hallway beside you.) For those of you too lazy to click on the link, the documentary is basically about a family that discovers their house is bigger inside then it is outside. As time goes on, the house rapidly expands inside and crazy things start to happen.

And for anyone buying the book: don't be cheap. Buy the full colour version.

Unfortunately, I've been reading not so great books lately. I used to be a big fan of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series...but the latest book has really made me wonder if she should just be an erotica writer instead because sex seemed to be a more pressing issue in the book then the actual plot. (Which tragically, could have made for some fresh ideas and interesting things happening in the series. But sorry, the main character's too busy having sex.)

I'm currently reading Terry Goodkind's Phantom. All my misgivings about the Sword of Truth series is put aside for now because of the sole fact that Goodkind is finally ending the series.

I do recommend Who Has Seen the Wind, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, and The Handmaid's Tale.

.: Black Kitty :.

im big into the Ted Dekker series, he's an awesome suspense writer. But all of his books have christian twist, so i can see why someone wouldn't like them.

I just read Umberto Ecco's In The Name Of the Rose. It had a really crap murder mystery... But on the upside, it was very educational about 13thC-14thC monastic life, heresies, and schisms in the Catholic Church.

I’m currently reading Europe: The Dictators, 1919-1945 by Wiskermann. A nice little examination of the political situation in Europe during the early 20thC. Just a plain history, but Wiskermann is extremely knowledgeable and not at all dry to read.
It's good to know a lot more about the real causes for a lot of today's political troubles, as well as a lot more background about the things that led to the second world war.

Has anyone read Gene Wolfe? I've read The Book of the New Sun, The Wizard Knight, and am about 200 pages into The Book of the Long Sun.

I'm totaly loving this guy. I had no idea that Science Fiction could be so resonating and important. Truely the best books I've read in a long, long while.

BUMP NO JUTSU!

Really, this thread was great, what happened to it? don't we read books anymore?

Anywhoo I'm currently reading lolita again(I get half into it then forget to read it/lose the book/read a different book all the freaking time) there is no single book i've read that has creeped me out half as much.

the last good book i've read was "the talented mr. ripley"...just cause the movie was good and it was for class. a book and movie class. What I found interesting was that the character in the book did not have any gay tendencies...weird how hollywood made it like that.

I actually tried to read the series of mr. ripley books, but they weren't that good. I was trying to find all types of NOIR source materials... good thing I found 100 bullets.

I just got done reading "Catalyst" I forgot the authors name but it was pretty good.

Believe it or not, the big book I'm reading right now is none other than House of Leaves. It's a witty tome with a lot of clever little twists to it, but, overall, the thing's just too dang dense for the modern casual reader. I definitely think that, with some judicious editing, House could have easily been condensed into a 200-page summer afternoon read.

Two other books I'm reading right now:

Too Weird For Ziggy, by Sylvie Simmons - a short story collection about the rock music industry. Funny at times, creepy at others, but always insightful.

The Worms of Kukumlima by Daniel M. Pinkwater - This guy is probably the polar opposite of Mark Z. Danielewski: he writes light, airy, goofy novels aimed at kids but read by all ages. This particular story concerns a kid on an expedition with his grandfather (insanely rich inventor of the salami snap) to find some gigantic talking earthworms in a hidden volcano crater somewhere in Africa. It is physically impossible not to have fun while reading this.

~IJ

The last book I read was Catch-22, though I want to read I am Legend. In English this year, we're going to read The Odyssey and Lord of the Flies.

I don't like reading. I was always like that. Fiction...she bores me. Until Catcher in the Rye. I was actually hooked on it, encountering it in school coursework. Omigosh, it's cool. Kosher even. Although my inner child screamed "EEEEMMMMMMMOOOOOO! as I read it though.

What I'm really interested now is these Stephanie Plum novels, after taking a peek inside 'Ten Big Ones'. It's funny. There's a bunch in books in my bookshelf (for once), with books four to eleven of it. It's really funny.

I've also read the Curious Incident of the dog in the night-time. Really interesting looking through the eyes of a fifteen year old with Asperger syndrome .

After fifteen years of denial, I can admit that I like books.


"Have a hoot, read a book!"

AQua_ng
I've also read the Curious Incident of the dog in the night-time. Really interesting looking through the eyes of a fifteen year old with Asperger syndrome.

Asperger's syndrome? I thought that was where you maniacally obsess over one single thing, like dinosaurs or Sonic the Hedgehog (usually used as an excuse for major nerdiness on the Internet). The kid in the book, as far as I've heard, just has plain' ol regular autism. Still, though, I'm no medical expert, so your guess is probably as good as mine.

It's great to hear that you like books now, though! (The trick is to read what you want and not what other people tell you to. I'm especially wary of books people call "classics"-- if it's such hot stuff, why do you have to tell other people to read it?) Reading, in all its forms, is awesome.

~IJ

Ian Jay
The Worms of Kukumlima by Daniel M. Pinkwater - This guy is probably the polar opposite of Mark Z. Danielewski: he writes light, airy, goofy novels aimed at kids but read by all ages. This particular story concerns a kid on an expedition with his grandfather (insanely rich inventor of the salami snap) to find some gigantic talking earthworms in a hidden volcano crater somewhere in Africa. It is physically impossible not to have fun while reading this.

~IJ

You have to pick up Pinkwater's book 'The Snarkout Boys and the Avacado of Death'. It's one of his greatest books, and it's incredibly funny.

The only book I'm reading at the moment is "The Scarlet Letter" for AP English. Sure, it's got a ton of symbolism and contrasts and all that jazz, but it doesn't make me like it. 2-Page analysis' of every chapter doesn't help.

Also I've been going through Watchmen again to see what I missed on the first 3 reads. That book is amazing.

Ian Jay
Asperger's syndrome? I thought that was where you maniacally obsess over one single thing, like dinosaurs or Sonic the Hedgehog (usually used as an excuse for major nerdiness on the Internet). The kid in the book, as far as I've heard, just has plain' ol regular autism. Still, though, I'm no medical expert, so your guess is probably as good as mine.

I think it's the obsession thing plus amazing intelligence plus the inability to develop social skills. Some people think Einstein and Newton had it.

And also, a good book I read for English last year was The Giver. We were assigned to read the first two chapters... I got hooked and read it all in one night.

The single best book I've read this year was Kafka on the Shore. I'm too lazy to find the author right now, but it was just incredible... I love the genre (magical realism), but this book just blew it out of the water. It was like a mystery, beautiful prose that kept you turning pages, even though you were never quite sure what was happening, or why, or was was real and what was in the characters' heads. I read a couple hundred pages in a single night before I made myself put it down, just so I could savor the rest of it.

I love books.

Right now I'm reading The Princess Bride, just because I never have before. It's very chuckle-worthy... totally fluffy, though.