What novel are you reading?

Visual Novel Community Off Topic
#1

Not visual novel… the book and/or nook kind. :wink:

Currently reading The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin. Really embarrased to admit, this is my first time touching it (never saw the movies either). Great book by the way. Clearly something all ero Dark Side players should read… even though I’m so slow in doing so myself.

Just finished The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya (both books) by Nagaru Tanigawa. Also I’d like to add: Kuyou Suou for the win. Other girls in the series, are just pathetic. Kuyou! Kuyou! Kuyou!

#2

I can never limit myself to reading just one at a time … I get a ways in, then pick up another and start reading that … next thing you know I’m jumping back and fourth between four books and probably only ever finish two of them.

Let’s see … recently I was rereading the “Dying Earth” anthology by Jack Vance; “The Electric Church” by Jeff Somers; one of the “Flashman” books by Harry Paget; rereading “The Eisenhorn Omnibus” by Dan Abbnett; and debating between rereading “House of Leaves” by Mark Danielewski or starting “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. (I actually finished The Electric Chruch and am debating on starting the sequel or not … In the anthologies I’m just reading bits and pieces)

I must have 20 books half or 2/3 read in my bookshelf right now … I’m too easily seduced by new books.

#3

I was super stoked for A Dance With Dragons. Until I started reading it. It’s by far my least favorite; I haven’t even bothered to finish it yet. Even though my favorite characters weren’t in book 4, because they were split off into book 5 … and this is book 5, so I’m seeing my favorite characters for the first time since book 3 - they’re not doing any of the things that made them my favorite characters and the story is just not as exciting as what came before.

:frowning:

#4

I mostly read nonfiction, but I’ve been hearing so much about the Song of Ice and Fire series lately that I decided to give that a try. Just finished the first book, waiting for the second to come in at the library. Good book, but very depressing.

#5

The first Three books in the “Song of Ice and Fire” series are excellent … I’d stop after the third. Seeing as, originally, it was going to be written as two connected trilogies, with a 10 year gap between, the first trilogy ties most of the plot points up pretty well. (or rather, gives them good places to stop for that 10 year gap that never came) For whatever reason he changed his mind about skipping those years and it really shows … he just doesn’t seem to know what to do with the story or characters any more. I get the impression he realizes he made a mistake not sticking to the plan and is now treading water until he can come up with something to inspire him again.

#6

He says that there were too many flashbacks to stuff that happened in the gap between his original book 4, and the first three. So he decided he needed to cover this time.

I personally still liked 4. But 5 just … It’s not bad (he’s too good of a writer for that), but it seems like 5 is a series of plot points that need to happen in order for the rest of the story to make sense – but that these plot points aren’t interesting enough to hold a whole book together. It’s the sort of stuff that makes an okay middle section, where the characters are going through struggles leading up to the kickass conclusion. But when you make an entire thousand-page book about this … It just doesn’t work nearly as well as the first three.

The fourth book at least had a lot of intrigue going on, and some good development for the characters that were in it. Five doesn’t even have that.

#7

None at the moment, I’m playing Pokemon White. :wink:

A week or two ago I spent the whole weekend reading The Windup Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. It’s definitely interesting,but I can’t really see what what purpose the WWII subplot was supposed to have.The teaser summary claimed it was an excavation of the buried secrets of WWII and it cites several books used in writing,but I didn’t really see a purpose. Also I feel like it’s…the companion to HBWATETW. Hard-Boiled was a sort of reflection into the mind itself,and Windup touches on an issue I’ve pondered before being how much can you ever really know someone?

One part that comes to mind is Toru goes to buy some tissues and buys a blue box of them. Kumiko(his wife) asks him why he did that and tells him that she hates blue tissues,telling him she never bought any in the six years they were married.

#8

I was so impressed by Wind-up Bird that it only took me two days to read it, and at the end of that time I was in a trance and wrote my Japanese teacher an long and embarrassingly effusive email about it. Then I went ahead and read five other Murakami books before I started coming down. Sputnik Sweethearts was a big disappointment and After Dark was a big waste of time. My problem is that while there are were so many mysterious things going on in Bird, my experience with his other works is that I don’t think he’s serious about the supernatural elements in his stories. I’m now convinced he just throws them in for fun, or as exercises in “magical realism” and that you’re not supposed to take them literally. It may be a shortcoming of mine, but I can’t help taking what i read literally, so when something in a story that seems magical just turns out to be a symbol for something more prosaic, I feel cheated.

Right now, I’m reading The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells. I had a dream about it a few days ago and I took that for a sign.

#9

I am reading The time machine by HG Wells and The interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freund.

#10

Reading The Time Machine, too? What a coincidence! Or would Jung call that synchronicity?

#11

Don’t know that mate. H.G Wells is amazing for one, and I don’t know if its just me but all of his works can be interpreted in multiple ways. Country of the blind for instance, we can just take a world full of socialists and in comes an entrepreneur… viola. Timeless genius.

Just started with “The Goal” By Goldratt. More contemporary and more related to my studies.

#12

Just finished reading a very odd little book called Wizard of the Pigeons. Not coincidentally, I just bought several other books by the same author off of Amazon.

Info here: http://www.sfsite.com/05a/wp151.htm

Interestingly enough, the book is so ancient (over 25 years old) that it’s got a blurb on the back from someone who’s been dead for over a decade. But when Roger Zelazny says your book “is one terrific book. It moves with force and with grace. It kept me guessing, and it cut deeply”, you probably want to put that on the cover …

Also been reading a lot of graphic novels. Got into Preacher, The Boys, 100 Bullets, and I’m currently working my way through a very strange one called The Filth.

#13

Currently reading Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar. It makes me feel dumb.

#14

If anyone here hasn’t read Bridge of Birds, you really should. It’s excellent. Unfortunately, the series didn’t make it past book three, and it’s a crying shame, because book 1 is awesome.

#15

I decided to do a little seasonal reading, so I picked up Frankenstein and Dracula. The last time I read Dracula was back in the Seventies: Leonard Wolf’s Annotated Dracula. I remember it included a pretty good recipe for chicken poprakosh in one of the notes. The one I have currently is The New Annotated Dracula by Leslie Klinger, with an intro by Neil Gaiman. We’ll see how it compares. Of course, I have my H. P. Lovecraft, too, and someone recently gave me a collection of horror stories written by Robert Howard. Looks like I’m in for a pretty good Season of the Witch. Boo!

#16

I was watching a special on the history of video games (I know,I know). It mentioned how Half-Life and some other games as well had stories written by professional novelist.Have there been any eroge released in Japan that were written by professional writers as well(I imagine they would use a pseudonym though)?

Edit:I would kill hippo with my bare hands to play an eroge with the scenario and characters created by Haruki Murakami. :stuck_out_tongue:

#17

The Count of Monte Cristo. My favorite, I pull it out at least once a year. I’m also waiting for the next Vampire Hunter D novel.

Mostly I read non-fiction though.

#18

I know he just died and all, but reading the new Steve Jobs book… and wow… turns out he really was an anal retentive egotistical elitist dick who thought the rules didn’t apply to him. He raged against the system in childish ways and used his wealth to hurt people. In introspect, looks like Karma got him in the end. :expressionless: Strongly recommend reading a library copy (not something I’d exactly keep).

#19

It’s no news to me.I’ve known that both Jobs and Gates are both dicks after seeing the movie Pirates of Silicone Valley.The movie was based on the book Fire in the Valley,and had a few inaccuracies,but a lot of it was spot on.Jobs stood on the shoulders of Wozniak,the real genius of Apple, a man who revolutionized PC hardware.He also likes to take credit for things that a team of programmers worked on even when they were exhausted.Of course, Bill Gates will probably never be exposed for his ruthless past.He bought the basis of MS-DOS from someone else for 50,000 dollars(not an illegal action I know,but it’s a safe bet he didn’t tell the guy he was planning to use it in a corporate deal that would make him obscenely rich),stole the GUI system from reverse engineering an Apple computer,and later in the 90’s used his money and connections to drive Netscape to the brink of extinction in order to ensure Microsoft remained the king of the hill.Just because he’s giving away his fortune slowly now,doesn’t change all the people he stepped on to get there. :expressionless:

#20

I have known this for a while too. Read a book called the Macintosh Bathroom Reader that had all these stories in them. It was published prior to his return so it lacked all “Steve-worship.” Still, got to give it up for the guy, making computers that are actually worth using. I don’t consider a generic block of plastic by HP with a fan that runs constantly, which I’ve owned before, to be worth using.