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[PinkStainlessTail]

Just finished Kyril Bonfiglioli's Don't Point that Thing at Me: a terrific crime novel from the 70s, with a wonderfully amoral main character, and lots of lovely Wodehousian overtones that should really be out of place in a book with all this sex and violence and malfeasance and whatnot. Well worth it (short too, if you're looking for a quick read).

[Ben-San]

I feel like a schlub when I say that at the moment my reading is what appears to be the overwhelming majority of all Green Lantern comic books ever published, and I expect this state of affairs to last at least into the early 1990s when I hear the series starts to suck badly.

[Pedro Picasso]

I just finished Steve Martin's Shopgirl which was a lovely overview of a deep emotional story.  As a narrator, Martin assures you there's depth there but that you need not get bogged down in it.  The book is short.

I also recently read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon.  It's a wonderful emotional book posing as a mystery story told by a severely autistic British 15-year-old.  I highly recommend it.  Even if you don't think the autistic first person device is engaging, the story's over before it has a chance to annoy you.  This book is also short.

I'm currently reading Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences by John Allen Paulos.  It's about how people get really upset when the news anchor uses the word 'infer' when he means 'imply' but don't notice when the weatherman says there's a 50/50 chance of rain on Saturday and a 50/50 chance of rain on Sunday only to conclude that it means there's a hundred percent chance of rain this weekend.  He's trying to say that being mathmatically illiterate can be as bad for society as being actually illiterate.  People are more afraid of terrorists than bike-rides when ten-speeds are a gajillion times more menacing.  So far so good.  Also very short.

Finally, I'm trying to read all the posts in this thread.  It's over a year long now, and the size of a novel!

[miles]

Just finished Kyril Bonfiglioli's Don't Point that Thing at Me: a terrific crime novel from the 70s, with a wonderfully amoral main character, and lots of lovely Wodehousian overtones that should really be out of place in a book with all this sex and violence and malfeasance and whatnot. Well worth it (short too, if you're looking for a quick read).

Thanks for the suggestion.  Well, I guess I should thank you after I read it, but it sounds like it's right up my alley.  I love quick reads and crime fiction better than sex.  And I really like crime fiction with lots of violence and sex.  It took me a while to find a copy, though.  All the Barnes & Noble and Borders stores in the area didn't stock them, but I finally found a copy at an independent bookstore.  I should be shopping there more often, but it's so out of the way.  There is a B&N right next to where I work, and there are two Borders and about four B&Ns not too far off the route to school (it's 40 minutes by car, so there is a lot of ground to cover, but still).  Plus, the lady I talked to was so nice.

For my Ethics class, I'm reading Natural Goodness by Philippa Foot, which is pretty good.  It's short enough that we're reading the whole thing, and she's a good enough writer that it's not a pain in the ass to read.

[Choop]

My boss (one of the best I've ever had) loaned me a collection of Wodehouse, so I'll get started on that right after I finish Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive. After this one and The Difference Engine, I think I've read them all. Least fave? Pattern Recognition (four out of five*) - and I loved that one, too.

I read The DaVinci Code in an evening (2/5), and Fouc*ult's Pendulum is waiting for me. I look inordinately forward to it.

Also, I received Found today and am loving it.

Also read recently: Bernard Cornwell, Heretic (4/5); Stephen King, The Dark Tower VII: The Redundant Title (2/5); David Sedaris, Holidays On Ice (4/5) and naked (5/5); Terry Pratchett, Jingo (4/5) and Monstrous Regiment (4/5); William Gibson, Idoru (5/5); Jon Stewart, Naked Pictures of Famous People (4.5/5). Also currently reading AntiPatterns, a software engineering college-course-text-that-didn't-quite-make-it.


* Why haven't most of the books listed above and in pages past been rated? The unit doesn't matter, so long as there's a scale.

[Max]

Numbered rating systems are crass!  Haven't you learned anything from The Onion AV Club?

I finally finished Greene's Fabric of the Cosmos, which was overall very, very good.  He's got Hawking's gift for making some pretty unusual concepts make sense without losing too much of the science.  Unfortunately, if you're a dillettante like me, and not a real scientist, it's going to take you a long time to read, and that means that by the end you're going to have forgotten some shit you read about before that's vital to the understanding of the later stuff, and then you'll be constantly flipping back and forth, which is aggravating (especially when he gets into shit like M-Theory, which is so crazy he doesn't even seem to fully understand it).

Anyway, in between Aristotle's Physics for school reading I am working on my first Philip Dick Novel, The Man in the High Castle.  I've heard a lot of stuff about Dick over the years (having spent much of my earlier childhood in the scifi section), but it took a recommendation from my favorite radio host to spur me.  In between both of those, for my modern nonfiction fix (it is insatiable), I am reading David Foster Wallace's Everything and More: A Brief History of [Infinity Symbol], which is mathematically rather more dense than I expected; however, Mr. Wallace is my literary profit, and ye I will go where he taketh me.

[AugustWest]

The best book you mentioned is Fouc*ult's Pendulum.  It's something of an effort, but it's definitely worth it.  I finished Baudolino a couple of weeks ago and it was terrific.  Probably Eco's most accesible.  Umberto RAWKS!!!

Based on my experience I wouldn't bother with Da Vinci Code.  I mean sure, it's badly written, but hey, at least it has no basis in fact!

Mona Lisa Overdrive is OK but not Gibson's best work.  

You pretty much can't go wrong with Wodehouse, but personally I have to be in the right mood.  It's kind of like Perelman that way.

Sedaris is a great monolougist and a good writer.  He's like Spalding Gray that way.

I'm reading (OK listening to) my first Sharpe novel after about 17 Aubrey & Maturins.  I started yesterday so it's too soon for me to comment.  I'm pleased with it so far.  If I didn't know better I'd say they were written by the same guy.

I don't understand all the hoo-hah over Phillip K. Dick.  He's good but not great.  I can name 4 or 5 better contemporaneous SF writers of the top of my head.  I'm not knocking him really, I just don't understand why he gets all the adulation.  "What if the Nazi's won WWII?"  My, that's an original premise!

[jough]

My next Audible freebie is coming up, so if anyone can recommend anything that is not only a good book but is also well-read/recited I'd sure like a recommendation.

I've finished:

Stephen King's "On Writing"
Kafka's "The Trial"
Ayn Rand "The Fountainhead"
John Stewart "America: The Audiobook"
Bill Bryson "A Short History of Nearly Everything"
Elmore Leonard "Be Cool" (read very well by Campbell Scott, one of my favourite actors who seems to have fallen off the face of the earth)

I think there was another one, too... hmm... I can't recall now, Senator.

[Bozack]

I really liked "Through a Scanner Darkly," but that was hardly sci-fi, and the only Philip K. Dick book I've read.
Last week, I went out drinming with my ex-boss. The next day, I was basically okay, but she was fucccckkkkeeddd. So I spent the morning sitting next to her as she puked up everything she had eaten, all of the water she had drunk, her liver, an old boot, a tire with a patch in it, etc. She had a copy of "Tripmaster Monkey: His Fakebook," by Maxine Hong Kingston, on her floor. I read maybe 20 pages waiting for her to fully expell all of the lost matter in the universe from herself, and when she could speak, she told me to take the book. It is pretty good, and makes me want to move to San Francisco.

[Max]

I don't understand all the hoo-hah over Phillip K. Dick.  He's good but not great.  I can name 4 or 5 better contemporaneous SF writers of the top of my head.  I'm not knocking him really, I just don't understand why he gets all the adulation.  "What if the Nazi's won WWII?"  My, that's an original premise!

I am only through five chapters so far, so I can't make a defense or even determine whether I want to.  So far I get a Bradbury vibe from the guy; sort of messy, sometimes downright irksome writing style, but some pretty unusual takes on common notions.  As I sort of had the same attitude toward the "what if firefighters burned shit" premise I thought the comparison might help.

[CortJstr]

I just took a break from System of the World to check out the    
Book of Bunny Suicides and Return of Bunny Suicides. Classic mirthmaking.

[miles]

Just started with some Wodehouse, and so far, it's great.  Halfway through Meet Mr Mulliner.  After that, Joy in the Morning, I think.

Also, Don't Point that Thing at Me was terrific.  Have you read any of his other novels, Pink?

[Choop]

So... was I supposed to whole-heartedly enjoy Fouc*ult's Pendulum? I mean, yeah, it was a creative storytelling, but good Pete it took forever to get through. I don't recall the last time I struggled so much with a book to get the payoff (which was not quite worth it, but I'm glad I finished it).

Up next: Mr. Mulliner, Wodehouse.

[PinkStainlessTail]

Also, Don't Point that Thing at Me was terrific.  Have you read any of his other novels, Pink?

I read After You With the Pistol a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. It's a bit more madcap than Don't point that Thing at Me.

Finished John Crowley's Little, Big last night. Fantastic book: a big sprawling romantic fairy tale, with lots of odd little details, flourishes, and references to Lewis Carrol.

[miles]

I read After You With the Pistol a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. It's a bit more madcap than Don't point that Thing at Me.

A bit?  I'm about half-way throught it, and it's way more madcap, but I'm enjoying it too.  Just taking a while longer because I just started finals.  I wish more of his stuff was readily available.  He's a lot of fun.