Just finished Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler.  Now I'm reading The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten.

I'm still!! reading Robert Musil's "Man Without Qualities" and haven't even hit the halfway point yet. it's really good though.
 
Right now I am flipping through one of those small Penguin sampler books on the "Tales Of Cu Chulaind" (cuchulainn cuchullain) irish folktale stuff. It's surprisingly excellent!
 

It was Cu Chulaind's gift, when he was angry, that he could withdraw one eye so far into his head that a heron could not reach it, whereas the other eye could protrude until it was as large as a cauldron for a yearling calf.

I don't know what this means but it's pretty funny!

Book 6 of the Wheel of Time, A Crown of Swords I think?

I'm still digging the series.

I'm about well i haven't looked at in a while but I'm on the third book, and i also have the 4th one in a bag somewhere. and yes it is a good series. it doesn't feel as hard to read compaired to lotro, not as wordy.. tch tbh i can't describe what i'm on about but reguardless it's a good book series.

Just started A Clash of Kings after finishing up A Game of Thrones. Loving it so far since it just feels like I'm continuing the first book which really grabbed me at the last hundred or so pages.

I am jealous of you guys, because I just now got to this point. Which is upsetting because I ended up seeing the entire first season before even realizing it all came from a series of novels to begin with. I started reading the first one so I could get to where the TV series left off (I wasn't sure, but the more I read, the more I realized that the entire first season was going to follow along with the entire first book pretty reliably), but with the way that particular story is presented, it really, REALLY sucks to read when you are in the position of already knowing what's going to happen at the very end the ENTIRE TIME YOU ARE READING IT.

I cannot emphasize this enough, if you EVER imagine yourself reading Game of Thrones at some point in your soon or distant future, for the love of god don't you DARE watch the show first! (unless you happen to be the kind of person who like things being completely ruined for you. To each his own I suppose.)

I'm reading and almost finished The Lies of Locke Lamora. It's so great

Just finished Red Seas Under Red Skies, the sequel to Lies of locke lamora.. now waiting for the third book and i have no idea what to do with my life.

hey should I get a kindle for cheapness or buy alot of books in hardback and put them on a bookshelf so I look cultured/more attractive to womens

yes I am that fucking vain


I think I'll try to buy em anyways because I'm getting some art for my walls and some books would fit. I'm gonna get some of those books that cata name dropped in the crazy art thread and maybe some TS elliott (I really like that poem about the end of the world(thats TS elliott right?)). And probably some more vonnegut, I really like kurt vonnegut. And WWZ too because I read about it and it seemed really good for a zombie novel.

Hey what was that book that steel kept name dropping and said was the best book he ever read or had read in awhile? It had the word "fortune" in the title I think.

also some book suggestions would be cool.

Fuck a steven king though I can't stand steven king his shits like a grown up version of goosebumps. Fuck a dean koontz too. I read one of his books about a murderous doll and some alien girl and that shit was better than king (just because it was so fantastically stupid).

Also maybe lovecraft, lovecraft is a badass

Lovecraft makes steven king look like a dumbass little 4 year old with a pencil and dehabilitating fear of clowns and crazy fat ladies

The thing that upsets me most about Lovecraft is the fact that I know exactly why I have gone on for this long without reading anything by him.

I took one look at his last name and assumed that what he wrote would be out of my genre. With a name like "H.P. Lovecraft", I would expect him to exclusively write stuff that J.K. Rowling or Stephanie Meyers to be inspired by, (only hypothetically speaking, of course. It would be  absolutely preposterous to presume that Stephanie Meyers has ever read anything ever) long before I would ever expect it to inspire someone like Stephen King.


For pete's sake, it sounds exactly like a cross between "H.R. Pufnstuf" and a MMOCPG (massivley multiplayer online cooperation playing game, which is a lot like a MMORPG, but everyone gets along and nothing ever gets killed)

If it's actually a pen-name, I swear I am going to punch a hole in the wall. Although I couldn't help but respect the guy for picking that name out. (that is, if there existed a trophy for most ironic pen-name ever conceived)

No I have read several books by steven king when I was younger and I didn't like any of them. He tries to instill fear and suspense in a genre where you have to have some crazy ass/unimaginable shit going on to actually entertain people on a level that other mediums can do much easier. But his subjects are fucking boring as hell. TBH I only read "misery", "it" (only a few chapters before junking it), and some book about some incredibly old but terrible ass geriatric lady on some new england island (I think it was one of his books that wasn't actually horror related but also the worst imo).

I never read that dark castle series or whatever they're called, the ones that go on and on and are supposed to be some of his best works so maybe he pulled some creativity out of his ass in those I never saw.

Lovecraft is a master of horror and has been since the early 1900s. Dude mastered writing and storytelling on a level that barely anyone can meet decades later and did it all before he hit 30. Just like poe he instills fear not with gruesome tales or outright "physical fright" but with incomprehensable ideas and themes that make your skin crawl just thinking of them. It doesn't matter who inspired who steven king is horrible compared to those guys imo.

Also mary shelley but I've only read frankenstein by her, but that alone rivals most other authors entire collections. But I don't read as much as I should anymore.

If you've never sat down and read lovecraft you should def do it. The only thing is he's an old school writer so some of his word usage and descriptions are hard to understand. Well the criteria itself is pretty fucking mind boggling. Like, cthulu has multiple different personifications because the way he writes is just so openly interperated. There was some fan novel called the "necronomicon" or something by a canadian guy I read that is a first person novel written in the lovecraftian universe and thats what originally got me interested in his work.

They should definitely make a lovecraft game or mini-series that shit would be wicked.


I think the reason I like lovecraft so much is because alot of what he writes about is this scifi-theology thing that old pagan gods are infact some superdestructive aliens half of which view mankind as a nuisance and the other half just don't give a shit at all. There are central characters, places, and themes but they pretty much jump from place to place and are pretty much totally insignificant to the larger skew of things. I think its "Call of Cthulhu" which is about a steam ship expedition or something like that which stumbles on some pagan ritual meant to ressurect the evil god Cthulhu. Some of the crew or something end up barely escaping the temple alive but all get killed when they get to the ship and a lone surviving 2nd mate ends up running the ship across the sea trying to escape from the giant tentacled asshole cthulhu drawing him to the old americas (or something like that).

And that is an example of a hopeful and optimistic lovecraft story from what I've read. Its mostly very oppressive, hopeless, and horrifically epic.

Like from what I remember, lovecraft's interperatation of the center of all existance and the god to all gods is some fucked up/dark cathedral in the center of the universe full of sadistic devil gods worshipping a central king god who is completely insane, personifies the very concept of insanity and dwarfs your very understanding of what insanity is. And is like a offputting vortex of all chaos and destruction.

Really the way he wrote it reminds me of the quantum physics theory that in the middle of all existing star patterns, planets, galaxies, is one big ass black hole. And I think in a way that is what lovecraft was trying to describe.