What are you reading/last book you read

[Captain Aktion]

Finished Hard Freeze. On to Hard as Nails.

[schvanzbass]

I just began reading some H.P. Lovecraft novels. My God... this man is nothing short of a genius. No other author (or director of any medium) can fuse time traveling psychic aliens, half breed fishmen, cosmic demon gods, and ghouls so seamlessly without being ridiculous.

Lovecraft is (horrifyingly) lovely. I love his work.

I'm starting over with my Ultimate Marvel graphics. Decided to start things off right and read through the first 4 Ultimate Spider-Man graphics.

[Dust_pan]

Lovecraft is the best horror author of all time. Freakin' terrifying. I have never found it so difficult to read a book by my self.

Lovecraft is definitely a great horror writer, at times, but he's also kinda overrated. I'd say his best stories are more thought-provoking rather than scary or terrifying (Though perhaps I just don't read them with the right mindset). I believe Ambrose Bierce, M.R. James, and even William Hope Hodgson have written far scarier stories than Lovecraft. Their stories might not be quite as creative as body-hopping time traveling aliens, but they do have a better use of suspense, terror, and imagery, and not to mention a writing style that's easier to read. Seriously, Bierce wrote a story about a man staring at a harmless toy snake, and that freaked me out way more than anything Lovecraft wrote! (I'm not knocking on him or your opinion, though. I'm just expressing my own. I'm still a fan of Lovecraft!)

Speaking of weird fiction, I just finished reading Hodgson's novel The Night Land. Some people might get bored/confused by the awkward writing style, but when you get past that, Hodgson creates a very beautiful and eerie world of darkness and monsters, and even a compelling adventure and romance story involving two determined lovers.

Right now I'm going to read his next novel, a precursor to cosmic horror, The House on the Borderland.

[20th Century Boy]

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.

[EdGojira]

Last read: The House of Hades.
Backtracking to The Lost Hero.

[G-Matt]

For the past month or so I've been on a manga frenzy. I've read the entire K-On! series and Summer Wars, based on the movie.

Now I'm returning to the Haruhi Suzumiya series with the fifth light novel, The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya.

[H-Man]

I started reading A Escrava Isaura (Isaura the Slave) by Bernardo Guimarães. It's the quintessential example of Brazilian rural romanticism and was made into a successful mini-series (or soap opera). I'm about a third of the way through the story, and it's pure soap opera stuff. I like how all of the you women are written to be beautiful male fantasies (especially Isaura, who's a slave despite being 3/4 European) and how all the young men, no matter how evil, are described as being impossibly handsome.

I kind of lament that the genre mash-up fad that began with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is dead, since this book is ripe material for Sartana e a Escrava Isaura (Django has been used enough).

[EdGojira]

I finished The Lost Hero today after much delay.
Will probably be starting All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.

[EdGojira]

Finished All You Need is Kill. It might end up being my final reading conquest of the summer.

[godzilla98rules]

I'm currently trying again to read The Fellowship of the Ring.

[MysticalDL]

Currently reading War & Peace.

[G2000]

Just finished Phantoms by Dean Koontz after starting it this morning. Like how it combined horror with sci-fi and techno-thriller elements. First time in a while that a novel has genuinely unnerved me at all.

[EdGojira]

Congo by Michael Crichton.
This is one of those books I thought I would never read but then, one day, I wake up and want to read. Having never watched the movie I know nothing of what is going to happen besides from what the back cover says and some of the introduction.

[godzilla98rules]

I finally finished The Fellowship Of The Ring.

I'll now be starting in The Two Towers......

[HeiseiGodzilla117]

Currently doing some independent research on Viking Age and pre-Viking Age Northern European cultures. I want to piece together what I can purely from contemporary evidence first. So, skaldic poetry credited to period skalds/bards and runic inscriptions, the most valuable true primary sources from within Scandinavia during these periods (as in, not under scrutiny for being written down 100-200 years after the Viking Age), are what I'm currently looking at.

The two books I'm currently reading are:

'Anglo Saxon and Norse Poems' by Nora K. Chadwick and 'Texts and Contexts of the Oldest Runic Inscriptions' by Tineke Looijenga.

They're both fantastic resources. Especially if you're the type who likes to examine evidence yourself to come to educated conclusions on something like this (having a degree in History will do that to you). The authors interpret each source themselves in addition to listing each one in full. So you get two secondary sources to accompany the hundreds of primary ones.

[G2000]

I finished A Time to Kill by John Grisham a few weeks ago, but haven't posted about it until now. I really enjoyed it. I especially like how it criticizes both the KKK and the NAACP for how they handle race issues, how Northerners like to paint Southerners as a bunch of racist, hyper-fundamentalist rednecks, and vigilantism for (often) being more trouble than it's worth. A very, very good book.

While I have not seen the movie, from what I heard after reading this, it took a much more liberal stance than the book did and basically did the opposite thing: propagated the idea all Southerners are racist, not criticizing the NAACP at all, etc. It also completely screwed up the relationship between the main characters, Jake Brigance and Carl Lee Hailey-while in the book, they were friends, in the movie, they didn't know each other prior to the trial and Carl Lee hates Jake until the ending. It even screws up the ending: in the book, a jury member comes up with the "picture a 10 year old girl getting raped..now picture her being white" defense that gets Carl Lee acquitted for killing his daughters rapists, while in the film, Jake does it (which would be struck down for being "irrelevant" IRL). Also, the book makes it clear the "not guilty" verdict was given out of necessity, as if they didn't aquit Carl Lee, the black protesters surrounding the courthouse would have rioted and likely killed the jurors, while the movie treats the NAACP as being completely righteous. So, yeah, I definitely prefer the book to the film.

[Ligerzilla2014]

I made the mistake of buying a three-in-one copy of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The sheer size of the damned thing has daunted me. I put it down and started In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

[MysticalDL]

Reading Silmarillion currently, I love this book.

[Carcosa]

Epic of Gilgamesh, earliest mythical story ever told that predates both the bible and the illiad.

Starting Dracula now, so far, it manage to make vampire awesome and unprissy for me.

[godzilla98rules]

I just finished The Two Towers.

Now onto The Return of the King....