if your King collection includes Night Shift, those are some GREAT short stories. Not as good as Clive Barkers Books of Blood, imho.
Yeah, actually that is one we have two copies of, I actually got Night Shift as a teen and dug it a lot. I really liked the one where the hit man kills the toy company CEO and then gets a package full of little army men that go after him. I’ll have to look for that Clive Barker book.
You know what’s a crappy Stephen King book? From a Buick 8. Really, another self-healing evil car? And this one doesn’t drive around and kill people, it just sits there and occasionally zaps someone into another dimension? Lame. Although now that I wiki it again (it’s been several years since I read it, and then I gave up on King until I decided to try out the Stand) it’s supposedly sort of related to the Dark Tower series, which everyone is on my ass to read- I guess I’ll get around to it sometime.
So what are some of y’alls favorite SERIES?
I really dig:
Julian May’s Pliocene Exile/Galactic Milieu series
Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar/Colonization series*
Harry Turtledove’s Southern Victory series*
John Updike’s Rabbit series
Fred Saberhagen’s Swords/Lost Swords series**
Peter F. Hamilton’s Commonwealth Saga**
S. M. Stirling’s Emberverse series* **
Orson Scott Card’s Ender series
Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle (and Cryptonomicon)
*highly recommend, but I haven’t read the final books yet
**themselves part of larger series I haven’t read the rest of
Best book about the pitfalls of American culture…Lolita. Really great.
My favorite author is Henry Miller. But you need to be willing to let yourself become absorbed when reading him. It’s not always comfortable…but if you want to read something that will affect you at your very core read, “Tropic of Cancer”.
But the author whose style I feel the most comfortable reading is Cormac McCarthy. The Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing and Cities on the Plain) are beautifully written books. And if you really want an undiluted dose of McCarthy, read “Blood Meridian”. It’s a masterpiece.
Just finished Animal Farm by Orwell.[/reply]
great book! 1984 is even better. first 50 pages are a dry as hell but the rest of the book after that is juicy and reads quickly!
Late,
grmpysmrf
lolita is a grand piece of music, written by a russian. if any of you have some inklings to read modern american poetry–frank o’hara… who is dead now, but he did a lot of work for the american poetry movement, hung out with Dekooning and Pollack and the entire gangsta set of painters in the fifties and sixties. wrote one of my favorite american poems. “Why I Am Not A Painter”
You guys have some good taste in here, especially with the Stephen King selections. Feeling kinda remorseful that unwittingly I’ve read most of his fan-favorite books. “Geralds Game” is next - I hear that’s a very divisive one.
Reading “Game of Thrones” a second time after the HBO series rekindled my interest in it. What struck me as too character dense and boorish the first time around (what was I thinking?) now strikes me as a laboriously detailed piece of work that deconstructs all the cliches of what people consider the fantasy genre and presents a plausible cutthroat world of long ago that holds my interest on every page. Gotta dig the incest angle too, who’s really explored that in this genre? Anyone?
While I can’t confirm my guess is some of Game of Thrones is based on the Borgias during the Renaissance. The incest and some characters, even the names - Jofre and Sancia (Jofre Borgia was an upstart and his teenage bride Sancia disliked him. Jofre had a penchant for displays of violence) - have to be an influence of Game of Thrones.
Someone told me that Stephen King retro conned most/all of his books so that they have something to do with the dark tower series, which alot of people have been on me to read as well.
the books of blood series is great (3 of them, methinks). good stuff.
Catgoat, did you see the finale of Game of Thrones? It felt like a let down to me, especially after the intensity of the penultimate episode. Though it still had tits and dragons so it wasn’t all bad I guess.
shit i hadn’t seen this until now
you know, it ended very close to the book, so that was cool, but i agree that is seemed to be just all setup. when i was reading the book i had the same feeling where the “important beheading” blew my mind and then you’re left with just the setup for the next book/season. it was strange that the “climax” happened like an episode or two before the book/season ended.
lolita has excercised my brain forever, since i also speak multiple languages and english works best for me.nabokov was a master and he picked up on the nuances and lazyness of the english language as well as the american camping culture and mock outdoorsmanship. and of course, the rather coarse habit of naming EVERYTHING. (name a fucking sidewalk, for godsakes).
let’s not talk about the tawdry basis of that book…hmm? but why not. it could not have been written without that storyline.
Recently read “Primary Colors” by Anonymous (Joe Klein). I never read it back in the day when it was actually topical, but I found it on my gf’s bookshelf and gave it a spin. I liked it.
Currently reading:
“Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work” by David D. Burns, MD
Because shit’s been rough lately. It’s hard dealing with someone off their meds, the crazy starts to rub off on you. But things are looking up
Also just started:
“Next of Kin: What Chimpanzees Have Taught Me About Who We Are” by Roger Fouts
It’s about the first chimp to learn to communicate using American Sign Language. She was part of a crazy experiment where a bunch of chimps were raised in human families as human children, with mixed results. Heard a story on NPR a couple weeks ago about another chimp in the program that loved to smoke weed. Interesting shit.
Finished Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible + Fried last week. Very surprised CC didn’t die on the amount of coke he was on. Great book. Very short but some of the best 231 pages I’ve ever read.
I’ve been listening to the Dresden books on audio for a while now. I think they get better and better as they go along and are a lot of fun in a Marvel Comics sort of way.