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

[Juggernaut Punch]

Currently reading "The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" currently on "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe".

[Slam_Bradley]

Gotham City 14 Miles: 14 Essays on Why the 1960s Batman TV Series Matters ed. Jim Beard.

A book of essays on the 1960s Batman TV series and its impact and influences. As with any essay collection the quality varies, but overall it's a very good read, particularly for someone, like me, who owes their comic reading to Batman. If I had one complaint it would be that the essays aren't terribly balanced. Nobody really goes off on the show's faults. There's plenty about how heinous the last season was, but the essays are generally very complimentary.

I don't disagree with them overall. But a bit more balance might have made it more interesting.

[Libaax]

True Crime by Max Allan Collins, book two in shamus award winning PI series.

This is quality historical hardboiled PI series that blend seamlessly documentary part of the Chicago 1930s setting,real historical characters,facts with down to earth PI that feels like it is written in 1930s without the crazy,convoluted plots of Chandler type PI.

[Karl O'Neill]

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

Great book.

[Moriarty]

The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma

[ChadH]

Re-reading Pattern Recognition by William Gibson.
I just finished re-reading All Tomorrows Parties by the same.

[Nimrod's Son]

Stephen King Blitz:

11/22/63 - As with most King epics, it's incredibly addictive and you end up devouring the book in a couple of days. Shows his wonderful skills of characterization too. It drags a bit in places and there's an awkward genre shifts between sci-fi and historical fiction but overall a very solid book by King, even if it doesn't cover very much new ground in the sci fi genre.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - Relatively minor work in King's career, but still an entertaining little novel about a young girl getting lost in the woods. The protagonist is very charming and King writes as good a tale as ever. It's short too (215 pages) so it doesn't suffer from the kind of decompression he's normally accused of.

Currently trying to read The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger for the third time. Can anybody tell me if this series gets better after this novel? King writes in this weird half way house between his casual normal prose and some kind of aping of classic authors like Tolkien.

Also re-read The Rules Of Attraction. Cements itself as one of my favourite books again.

[Karl O'Neill]

I had trouble continuing The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon after 40 pages. I just find it dull and uninteresting.

[Nimrod's Son]

I had trouble continuing The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon after 40 pages. I just find it dull and uninteresting.

Yeah it was the same with me too and I gave up the first time. Once she gets lost, there's a stretch of her just wandering through the woods, not doing anything particularly interesting, but I thought that once she realizes that she's not getting rescued and the survivalist stuff comes in to play,it picked up the pace. It probably helped that I found the protagonist so engaging and could identify with her family background.

Have you read The Dark Tower novels? I'm giving em a try even though I don't really like fantasy. Fools errand?

[Nimrod's Son]

double post

[Deathstroke]

I just finished reading the Star Trek Titan novel Fallen Gods by Michael A. Martin.

[CaptainCanada]

Haven't updated in a while:

The Singapore Grip by J. G. Farrell

The only novel in the "Empire Trilogy" to not win the Booker Prize, but it's my favourite of the three. All three novels have the same basic formula (various characters fiddling while figurative Rome burns, and various follies and tragedies are exposed), with this being the most overtly political of the three, in the sense that one of the characters periodically gets into arguments with everybody else about the nature of British economic policy and its effects on the locals. I'm seen some reviews that found this a bit heavy-handed, and that's probably not inaccurate, but I didn't really mind; I don't mind a bit of tract in a novel (consequence of all those big 19th century ones I've read). Farrell successfully juggles a large cast of characters, including a number of historical figures (his depiction of Arthur Percival is especially compelling). Ends on an effectively ambiguous note (unlike the other novels).

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

A proto-1984 from 1940, albeit one set in the actual Soviet Union, rather than in an analogy. An extremely compelling read.

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

Beginning a return to Greene's oeuvre (I'd read three others previously), this is arguably his most acclaimed novel, and one can see why on reading it. It's a strong treatment of a largely forgotten episode in recent history.

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

I'd seen bits of the recent movie version of this. It's got some strong passages, but even at less than 200 pages it feels a little long for the amount of what goes on in it.

The Quiet American by Graham Greene

Not Greene's most acclaimed piece of writing, as mentioned above, but I think this is my favourite. I watched the 2002 film version shortly after, which is also good. A lot of the interest, of course, comes from examining this novel in light of America's subsequent history in Vietnam.

Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti (Nobel Laureate #56)

A wide-ranging book on crowd psychology and the nature of power (power relations, as Canetti's contemporary Foucault would have said), with an eye to addressing the roots of totalitarianism ("the command", as he puts it). Crammed with anecdotes about behaviour by tribes and cultures from throughout human history (which can get a little repetitive after a while, admittedly), it's an impressively varied work -- in the midst of a discussion about human survival instinct and satisfaction in triumphing over others by outliving them, we get a brief rhapsody on the merits of literary immortality, for instance.

One Earth, Four or Five Worlds: Reflections on Contemporary History by Octavio Paz

Having previously read Paz's collection of writings on Mexican identity, this one is a reflection on the state of global politics written in 1980, which is an interesting snapshot both for Paz's opinions, many of which are quite relevant still, and to compare how things actually played out in the thirty years that have followed.

[Moriarty]

Gangster Squad by Paul Lieberman

[Lee Kaye]

Big Machine by Victor LaVelle. Half way through and it's OK, but might give up. It's got great reviews, and is interesting to a point, but I am reading it, and part of me doesn't care what happens at all. I will give it a bit more time.

[Amacent]

after the quake by Haruki Murakami