I don't know what the heck to call this thread!

[Puma]

Currently reading "Demon Lexicon", a Young Adult title for work. So far it is an interesting look at magic and it's practioners, with a pretty entertaining storyline.

[Karl O'Neill]

The Cay By Theodore Taylor.

Excellent book. It's only 104 pages long/short.

I have a craving lately for LOST/CASTAWAY type of books and this fills a nice gap as it was both short and consise.

There is some nice commentary on Rascism. Young white boy. Old black man. Together on an island fighting for survival.

I like that the writer made the boy blind as a tool to show how vision impairs our judgement when it come to how people look: I.E skin colour and ethnicity. The boy and the old man come to depend on eachother on the island in many ways and you can clearly see that skin colour is irrelevant.

Well worth a read.

[Agent Helix]

Currently reading Beevor's The Fall of Berlin 1945, having recently read his excellent Stalingrad : The Fateful Siege. Really great, but god is it depressing. As an American, we're so indoctrinated to the idea of WWII being such a heroic effort by the Allies, and the Eastern Front is so frequently just glossed over and romanticized or just ignored completely. Reading about what an utter nightmare for everyone involved it was is really eye opening.

[Infra-Man]

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

Going Solo by Roald Dahl

[Karl O'Neill]

Reading Hunter S Thompson's Hell's angels.

It is a wickedly interesting book. His style of writing makes this non-fiction worth the time considering I don't read much non-fiction.

[Deathstroke]

I finished reading the Lee Child novel Gone Tomorrow.

[a. non]

Continuing with Banks' Excession

Hope to start Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon

[dupersuper]

Finished yet another Star Trek novel, started the 6th (non-Douglas Adams) Hitchhiker book.

[Slam_Bradley]

Finished up A Touch of Death by Charles Williams. This was released as a Hard Case Crime book, but was originally a Gold Medal paperback from 1954.

Williams was one of the very best Gold Medal writers and it's great that at least some of his work is coming back into print. and A Touch of Death is a doozy. Claustrophobic noir with a nice pay-off. Madelon Butler is a femme fatale's femme fatale. Very nice tight quick read.

[Deathstroke]

I finished the new Jon Land paperback thriller Strong Enough To Die yesterday.

Introduces his new character, Caitlin Strong, a female Texas Ranger.

It was a really good read.

[Gothos]

I'm plowing my way through Sade's JULIETTE for some damn reason. Maybe I think that if I finish it, it'll be a grand gesture of despair like the porting of the big boat in FITZCARRALDO.

There are some clever touches here and there, but jeez, this guy does not read well in the long novel form! I've never seen anyone make orgies seem so dull!

[Slam_Bradley]

Finished Waylon: The Autobiography by Waylon Jennings and Lenny Kaye. I usually find autobios to be marginally interesting. Sometimes they can lend some insight in to an artists view and reflect some of what goes in to his art. Usually they're not as useful as a well written and documented bio.

In this case I respect the artist as a performer and a songwriter enough that it was worth the effort. And it paid off at least a bit. There was some nice insight in to Waylon's relationship with Buddy Holly and how it effected his view as a Nashville outsider. That in turn led to his being the founder and leader of the "outlaw" movement.

Frankly it got bogged down at times in his drug use. But there was enough here and it was an easy enough read to make it worth the effort for the insight in to his music.

[JeffreyWKramer]

I'm plowing my way through Sade's JULIETTE for some damn reason. Maybe I think that if I finish it, it'll be a grand gesture of despair like the porting of the big boat in FITZCARRALDO.

There are some clever touches here and there, but jeez, this guy does not read well in the long novel form! I've never seen anyone make orgies seem so dull!

The word sadism was derived from the author's name, but the act of reading his stuff is definitely an exercise in masochism... save that masochists generally get off on what they endure, whereas the payoff for reading Sade is pretty much nonexistent. It doesn't take long for the shock-value of his writing to wear off, and once that's there, the tedium quickly sets in. The fact that he renders sex completely unerotic, and even the most loathesome of acts boring, is bad enough, but the philosophical interludes between the repetitive sex acts are intolerably bad. Imagine a thirteen-year old fan of the worst heavy metal being shit-faced-high on cheap pot and trying to explain his revelation of the deep meaning of some old Motley Crue lyrics. Now imagine something twenty times more trite and self-indulgent than that, and you'll be approaching the awfulness of Sade's philosophical insights.

[jessecuster3]

Right now I'm reading Hardcase, the first in a series of three crime novels about ex-con and unlicensed PI Joe Kurtz by Dan Simmons. At turns funny, bleak and brutal, (the tale of how the Alabama Beagle Boys got their name manages to be all three at once) it's basically an homage to the hardboiled crime stories of guys like Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane and Donald E. Westlake, to whom the book is dedicated. (Actually it's dedicated to Richard Stark, the pseudonym under which he wrote his Parker novels.)

The book doesn't set the genre on its ear or anything, but its a damned entertaining read.

If The Terror hadn't gone and bored me to tears, I'd say there was no genre Dan Simmons couldn't master!

Sounds awesome! I am a big Westlake(Stark) fan, so I will definitely try to pick this up.

[dupersuper]

Still not done the 6th Hitchiker book at home, but just finished another Star Trek novel at work and started in on Fragile Things; a book of Neil Gaiman short stories.