What are you reading?

If we have a thread like this I can't find it. Which surprises me because I could swear we had one, but if we did it must have disappeared.

I'm reading Daemon by Daniel Suarez. I'm about 150 pages into it and I can already tell it's going to be fucking awesome. Suarez is one of the rare technothriller authors who actually knows his shit. He's also created a superb concept for an antagonist because the antagonist happens to be dead for the entire novel.

Various blurbs have told me not to expect that I have any idea where the plot is going, so I'm looking forward to completing this. I'll probably end up breaking one of my rules and buying the sequel in hardcover.

On the non-fiction side I'm reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It's already made me consider a number of issues from angles from which I'd never considered them, so I'd strongly recommend it with the sole reservation that I think the author has a bit too much faith in markets. Then again his suggestions for containing and averting crises are eminently reasonable and if the people in charge listened to him we'd be vastly better off as a society.

also, in b4 NO JOHN YOU ARE THE DAEMON

Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury. One of my favorite books, if not my absolute favorite, ever. Ray Bradbury does such a good job with visualization, and it reminds me what it feels like to be alive. It's a novel, but it's almost more like poetry. <3

Just finished The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester, which was great. I thought the centrality of Freudian psychology was a bit jarring at first, but the general criminal-versus-detective dynamic between the protagonist and antagonist was top notch. Not sure what I'll be reading next but I'm now very much in the mood for cyberpunk, so maybe something by William Gibson.

Muh, I don't read as much these days.

Reading Planet Google (pretty sure the title's properly translated) and some biography on Einstein.

Currently reading The Sandman: Book of Dreams.

It's an anthology of stories based on the Sandman comics series. I've only read the first two so far, TBH, but it looks interesting.

re-reading all my kelley armstrong books cause im bored.
Prob gonna then move on to my anne rice collection and finally christopher paolini

L said:

christopher paolini

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Don't bother, .

Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks, the Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post. I have another book by Ricks that follows US Marines through boot camp, and (I thought) he gave a very balanced and credible perspective on the relationship between the Marines and America heading into the 21st century. That credibility is what makes Fiasco so gutwrenching, as Ricks is absolutely merciless in his scathing critique of the Iraq war. Covering the war from its inception up until 2006, Ricks names every name and pulls absolutely no punches, castigating just about every top official involved in the operation (even including a "cast of characters" in the foreword). Great read and accessible even if you're not very familiar with the US military.

Programming Perl by Larry Wall. Need to learn Perl for mah job at least as well as I know Java.

Dune... but I'm having the same problem as with I try to read LOTR: I already know the story and the first 100 pages are a major drag, so I always end up losing interest.

"War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning"
Chris Hedges
An analysis of the addictive nature of warfare, and how humanity can kick the habit. Explodes some myths. Very readable and interesting.

"Intensity" by Dean Koontz
Mindless thriller to ease the brain.

the thriller novel Wiseguy and a sketch tutorial.

Chun-Li said:

"Intensity" by Dean Koontz
Mindless thriller to ease the brain.

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Oh God, I loved that book.

Noob Saibot said:

Oh God, I loved that book.

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Mindless

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I loved that book.

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John Adams by David McCullough

Been re-reading parts of Unseen Academicals (a Discworld book about the footie foot-the-ball), cos of the World Cup, and parts of Night Watch, because...

Because...

It's awesome. Truth! Justice! Freedom! And a hard-boiled egg!

Cthulhu said:

Don't bother, .

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Read em all before, actually don't mind the books as much as i hated the film.

Started reading historical fiction lately. Right now I'm reading Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell. Its really good. I especially love the way it portrays the war. It shows it for the hell it was.

I'm reading two books right now.

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte and His Way: An Unauthorized Biography Of Frank Sinatra, by Kitty Kelley.

Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium

An anthology of three novels and three short stories set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

To protect your sanity squad morale, I shall post a link to the wikipedia page, rather than the TVTropes page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciaphas_Cain

Stuff I've recently read:

Noam Chomsky - Hopes and Prospects. It goes without saying that this is chock full of important information that conveniently gets left out of mainstream media outlets; anyone who's read one of Chomsky's book-length volumes before should know what to expect. Needless to say he's not a fan of the current administration and he makes it clear just how far they've descended into the same lawlessness practised by the Bush administration. I'd say this is pretty much essential reading for anyone who wants insight into why the country hasn't improved as much as so many of our media types believed it would. And, as is par for the course with Chomsky, the documentation for his claims is quite thorough, so you can figure out where he's getting his information pretty easily with a trivial amount of googling of the sources listed in the endnotes.

Daniel Suarez - Daemon and Freedom&#8482;. After a famed computer game developer's obituary is posted in the news, a computer program activates that begins killing former employees of his company, and later law enforcement officials who attempt to investigate his property. And that's only the beginning. I'm not going to disclose any of the plot beyond this because Suarez takes delight in constantly confounding the reader's expectations, especially in the first book. I will say that this is a technothriller with no letup on either the techno or the thriller that was written by a person who clearly understands the technology he's writing about, which is a nice change of pace for the usual entries in the genre (Dan Brown I'm looking at you). All of the technologies described within either exist in real life or are expected to exist within short notice, and the fact that Sobol was a multibillionaire who spent a lot of his fortune on R&D makes the existence of anticipated technologies more believable. I will also say that Suarez has a superb grasp of the issues facing mankind and many of the solutions he has for them are things I'd never even thought of before. Whether they're realistic will be up for the reader to decide.

Current reading includes:

Nouriel Roubini & Stephen Mihm - Crisis Economics. Roubini has a reputation as the economist who predicted the current economic crisis in perhaps the greatest detail, and the analysis here goes a long way towards explaining how he was able to do it. The authors contend that financial crises are entirely predictable based on certain behaviours in the market, and go into exhaustive detail describing some of these behaviours. The authors then review how various schools recommend dealing with crises (Austrian, Keynesian, Marxist, etc.), going into the strengths and weaknesses of each, and then make specific policy recommendations for how to deal with crises in the future, most of which seem to be eminently reasonable (I've only skimmed through this part of the book at this point). Recommended reading.

John Twelve Hawks - The Traveller. Since the final volume of the trilogy finally came out in paperback this week, I just picked this up in the book store based on a recommendation from customers who seemed to know what they were talking about last year. Thus far the surveillance depicted within makes Orwell look downright complacent. If the rest of the series is as good as the first few chapters were then this trilogy is going to be must reading.

I have a lot more stuff I'm reading at the moment (working at a book store basically ensures that I never have fewer than ten books in progress at once) but I'm too lazy to talk about it now. Maybe later.

Gender Trouble - Judith Butler
On my reading list for next semester. Absolute key text on feminism and queer theory. Especially enjoying explorations of identity and sexuality atm.

Pride and prejudice and zombies
Pride and prejudice and zombies (part 2 that i cant remember the full name of, prequel to the first book)
Jane Slayer
Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter
Mr Darcy Vampyre

Castiel said:

Pride and prejudice and zombies (part 2 that i cant remember the full name of, prequel to the first book)

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Dawn of the Dreadfuls, IIRC

Have you also tried Queen Victoria, Zombie Hunter and Henry VIII, Wolfman? I haven't picked up any of these myself, but seeing them in Waterstones makes me LOL.

Still reading Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium.

I finished The Traveler. It was superb. I'm now fifty pages into the sequel. Quite a dark opening to say the least.