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[Vattic]

Finished Neuromancer. I have to say, I really like some of Gibson's descriptive writing. The description of the matrix the first time Case jacks in is a good example. I'm not entirely sure how I'd describe it, sort of stream-of-consciousness descriptions I suppose.

I absolutely adore Gibson's style of writing. I dunno, I just had a great time reading Neuromancer.

The style is essentially that of the Beat Generation, though his stuff is fairly tame stylistically and thematically as compared to the more extreme Beat stuff (some of it I found actively difficult to read, not because of the themes which can be tough, but because of the structure). Stream-of-consciousness is exactly how I'd describe it. I found it always took some time to adjust myself to the rhythm, but usually worth it. Though not really a Beat author himself Hunter S. Thomson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has a lot of the same style.

Just saw this. I really enjoy Borges stuff. It's out there but still readable. The Library of Babel is one of my favs.

That one stood out to me too. Had encountered a similar idea where if you had every possible arrangement of black and white pixels on a high enough resolution display one of them would be a picture of you.

[Arcvasti]

Just finished Reaper's Gale, Seventh Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Beak's death near the end had me crying. My feels were hit for maximum damage by that.

And now I'm on to Toll the Hounds, Eighth Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. I WILL finish this series dammit.

[Drakale]

Read The Dark Forest, second book of the Three-Body Problem trilogy by Cixin Liu and it did not disappoint. It's very hard to discuss it without giving away spoilers, but this is truly one of my favorite modern science fiction stories so far. The ending is fairly complete so I'm not sure where the third book will take us, but I can't wait to find out.

[NJW2000]

Right now, I'm rereading George Saudner's collection, 10th of December. His stuff is just amazing, but kinda horrible at times.

[TheKaspa]

Just finished Reaper's Gale, Seventh Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Beak's death near the end had me crying. My feels were hit for maximum damage by that.

And now I'm on to Toll the Hounds, Eighth Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. I WILL finish this series dammit.

I'm behind you, currently reading Return of the Crimson Guard, as I want to read all of them

[Arx]

I've just bought the first book of his new series, since I still haven't seen Midnight Tides (or whichever is the first one, if not that) anywhere.

[nenjin]

Just finished Treasure Island and now I'm moving on to the complete works of Conan The Barbarian.

[Akura]

Just finished Brisingr, the third of the Eragon books. Plot holes, plot holes everywhere. And for crap's sake, is everyone a goddamned Mary Sue now? Like, every goddamned individual mentioned in the series?

Spoiler: At least it confirmed two things I already figured out since before I finished the second book (click to show/hide)

Namely, that Eragon's father is exactly who I thought it was, and the elves are assholes. Okay, so I didn't need the third book to tell me that, I knew it already. It's just that it was heavily implied that the elves basically enslaved or exterminated a major city right towards the beginning of the book. For like, very little reason.

[Flying Dice]

Just got Wise Man's Fear in the mail after pounding out the first doorstopper in the trilogy over the course of a couple hours on a lazy afternoon. Rothfuss's writing is refreshing, the genre's filling up with too many hacks and incompetent these days. His characters are fun, he persistently breaks expectations and ducks clichés, and the framing device he used is inspired both in terms of being relatively unique (seriously, when was the last time you read a genre novel written as a story-within-a-story?) and because of how he uses it to worldbuild -- the story being told is the past from the perspective of one of the characters and the present that it's being told in is consistently less mysterious and more concrete; it's a rather subtle way to demonstrate how the character has grown up, by contrasting the looseness and relative ignorance of both he and the reader's knowledge of the world in the two times.

Also finished Naomi Novik's Uprooted on that same Saturday. I enjoy her writing, but good god am I glad to see something from her pen that's not more Temeraire -- I like it, but I'm sick of it. It's fun, cute, and captures very well the feeling of faerie tales: the plot is driven almost wholly by character flaws both long-past and present, the whole truth of the matter doesn't come clear until the very end, and concludes with a very strong sense of cyclical continuation intermingled with irreversible change. Also features the 17 year old protagonist and the multi-century-old wizard mentor figure falling in love, if that puts you off too much.

Picked up a bunch of Heinlein's shorter novels, novellas and short stories that have been impossible to find--apparently Baen's been doing a mass reprinting of them--and I'm working my way through those as well.

[Spehss _]

Got lots of books started but not finished.

For fun I'm rereading Isaac Asimov's I, Robot during time before college classes when I got nothing else to do.

For learning for fun I'm reading Ray Kurzweil's How to create a Mind and I'm currently trying to work through The Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Dalai Lama's Meditation on the Mind and The Universe in a Single Atom. The problem with these three books, much like the Bhagavad Gita As it Is book on Krishna-ism, is that they are all pretty dense and slow for me to chew through. Not to mention college classes are stealing time away.

[RedKing]

Recently read a translation of "The three body problem" (三体) by Liu Cyxin(刘慈欣), a science fiction novel which is basically Contact in the Chinese Cultural Revolution era. Interesting characters and it's the first time I read a novelized account of life in 70's china. Very interesting stuff, I think the following novel will be translated fairly soon. Fair warning, it's not a novel where a lot happens, it's more of a slow burner, but it's the kind of novel that you keep thinking about a long time after you read it.

That one's on my to read list! I believe the second book has already been translated, but I could be mistaken. If it isn't it will be very soon.

I just grabbed a copy of this one myself! And yes, the second book has been translated into English.

Also reading Old Man's War and Redshirts, both by John Scalzi. The latter promises to be a fun read -- basically a Star Trek expy that deconstructs it by viewing it through the eyes of the expendable security teams, who are seemingly the only ones with any common sense.

Have now finished all three of the titles listed above. All good reads, though in different ways.

The Three-Body Problem was one hell of a mindfuck. This is old-school "big idea" sci-fi mixed with a hefty dose of Chinese literary themes (micro/macro cosmology, the power and peril of "mass action", and a critical look at the Cultural Revolution, its causes and its effects). Greatly looking forward to reading the sequel.

[miauw62]

...I have to read The Fault in Our Stars for my Dutch class.

I'm already a quarter through it because I read pretty quickly but eh

EH

[NJW2000]

"Will you be quiet, please" by Raymond Carver.

It's kinda hard to see what's going on, but it seems very good.

[Tack]

"What if" By the XKCD guy.

It was the only thing I was even remotely interested in buying at the airport. Shitty selection really.


Basically all of the stuff you get on the 'What if' XKCD website.

[Arcvasti]

I. Finished. Toll. The. Fucking. Hounds.

Dear god that took far too long. Well then, on to Dust of Dreams, Ninth Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen.