Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ferocious j]

Is Nevermen the older book they were talking about on the History Channel that was pretty graphic? Like lots of innocent death and sort of "twist" kind of endings?

I highly doubt it.  It's pretty new.  ::checks::  The first trade was published in January 2001.

[CortJstr]

Is Nevermen the older book they were talking about on the History Channel that was pretty graphic? Like lots of innocent death and sort of "twist" kind of endings?

I highly doubt it.  It's pretty new.  ::checks::  The first trade was published in January 2001.

Crap, now it's going to bug me until I figure out what I was thinking of.

It's a hard life I lead. ::goes back to reading Tick Omnibi::

[wombat]

Janet Evanovich's To the Nines was pretty funny.  Better than Hard Eight.

I was disappointed in this one.  But perhaps the fact that I spent the summer reading all eight previous ones in order was not fair to the author.  There's not much funny stuff that could stand up to that sort of treatment (aside from the Achewood archive, just to make a random connection here....)

[Choop]

What I'm reading (right now)

Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Ken Foster, The Kind I'm Likely to Get (stories)
Neal Stephenson, Zodiac
Hiroki Watanaki, The Elephant Vanishes (stories)
Neil Simon, The Odd Couple I and II (screenplays)

Jeez, didn't realize there were so many Ne(i|a)ls on the list. I'll have to do something about that.

Also great (for any time):
Chuck Pahlaniuk (sp?)
Terry Pratchett, the Discworld series
Stephen King (hush!), the Dark Tower books.

[AugustWest]

Well Wombat in general, I think the series is starting to age.  I mean, Evanovich has got great characters and a good formula, but the forumlaic nature of the series is becoming apparent.

Not that I mind, really, so long as the books stay funny.  They aren't supposed to be great literature or anything

What I can't understand is why there hasn't been a Stephanie Plum movie yet.  Seems perfect to me -- pretty girl, fighting crime, trucks exploding, funeral homes burning down.  What could be bad?

[slink]

Hiroki Watanaki, The Elephant Vanishes (stories)

Also great (for any time):
Chuck Pahlaniuk (sp?)
Terry Pratchett, the Discworld series
Stephen King (hush!), the Dark Tower books.

Erm, Elephant Vanishes is Haruki Murakami. Unless some other guy has written a short stories book called that as well.
And yea, I been reading Palahniuk as well. Read all but the last two - Lullaby and erm, the newest one, Ghost Story or something, which I must get round to picking up.
His writing more recently has kind of reminded of Douglas Coupland, in a good way. Both Inivisible Monsters and Choke had moments that really made me think of him. Coupland's very good too, Microserfs is one of my all time fave books (the geek I am) and more recent ones like Miss Wyoming and All Families are Psychotic are great.

[andalucia]

Vonnegut is one of my faves too, altough Galapagos is one of his few books that I actually just couldnt get into for some reason... and I've even read some of his (pretty bad) newer books.

Yay American Gods!   My sister recommended it to me, and I think it's just amazing.

Douglas Coupland is a weird, weird guy.  Having read a few of his books, I went to see him talk when he came to a university near me.... and he froze up onstage and started crying.  His books have made me a little uncomfortable since then.

My summer reading list is too long to transcribe... I work in a used book store in a quiet little town:  all I do is read 8 hours a day... it's grotesque.   Recent highlights are Orlando, Thomas Pynchon, and copious amounts of James Joyce, my all-time fave writer.

[slink]

Douglas Coupland is a weird, weird guy.  Having read a few of his books, I went to see him talk when he came to a university near me.... and he froze up onstage and started crying.  His books have made me a little uncomfortable since then.

Woah! Yea, Coupland's a real freak! Kinda probably why I like his novels
We've been trying to get him to come to the conference to do a reading, but 2000 he was already fully booked up. We were going to try again but now I'm thinking it might be a little too odd... Thanks for the warning!

[CortJstr]

Vonnegut is one of my faves too, altough Galapagos is one of his few books that I actually just couldnt get into for some reason... and I've even read some of his (pretty bad) newer books.

Yeah, I'll never understand why all his books say "From the author of Hocus Pocus!" As if that's a huge selling point.

But I think the only one I really had to slog through was Player Piano.

[wombat]

Not that I mind, really, so long as the books stay funny.  They aren't supposed to be great literature or anything

What I can't understand is why there hasn't been a Stephanie Plum movie yet.  Seems perfect to me -- pretty girl, fighting crime, trucks exploding, funeral homes burning down.  What could be bad?

I wonder can they stay funny once Stephanie and Morelli get married and have babies, which seems imminent.  Maybe she will have the grace to end the series.

I also wonder about the movie thing.  If you look at her web site, she seems to make a more than adequate living off the books.  Maybe she just doesn't want anyone messing around with them.

[wombat]

Has anyone here read Life of Pi?  And if so, what did you think of how it ended?

[Choop]

Hiroki Watanaki, The Elephant Vanishes (stories)

Erm, Elephant Vanishes is Haruki Murakami. Unless some other guy has written a short stories book called that as well.

Hey, at least I got some consonants and the scanning right. I didn't have it right on hand to check if I was 100% sure, which is really just a shame. Oh, well. Sorry.

I do love how the name Noboru Watanabe shows up all over his stories in that book (sometimes it's a cat).

[slink]

I do love how the name Noboru Watanabe shows up all over his stories in that book (sometimes it's a cat).

Woah, bizarre! I haven't got round to Elephant Vanishes yet. But Noboru Watanabe is essentially the bad guy in Wind Up Bird Chronicles, which is Murukami's hugest book. Mind you most of his protaganists are called Toru.

[jay-ell]

Has anyone here read Life of Pi?  And if so, what did you think of how it ended?

Brilliant.

[wombat]

Has anyone here read Life of Pi?  And if so, what did you think of how it ended?

Brilliant.

This is what my friend, who is a real writer, thought too.  That is was brilliantly about, like, what is reality and what isn't, and all that deep stuff.

But I thought it was like a story you write when you are nine years old and it gets so fantastical you can't figure out how to end it, so you say "And it was all a dream."  I felt so ripped off.

I thought the difference was that I am a geek and she is not.  I would read science fiction and write those kinds of stories when I was nine, but she did not, and now she writes about real people, and is the least geeky person you can imagine.  So what I thought was, she just didn't recognize the trick because of that.  But if you, who say you are better at the internet than real life, agree with her, this analysis must be wrong.