Anybody read a good book lately?

[phattymatty]

Finished Under the Banner of Heaven last night.  Holy shtein was it good.  Joe Smith was the man.

[SunMo]

i thought he'd have a better pro career though

[rjs246]

I just finished Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. Definitely the worst of the three books I've read by him. He basically took a bunch of short stories that he wrote and tried to force a plot line together that would link them all. Several of the short stories are exceptional but as a coherent plot the book doesn't work. 4/10

Taken separately though it's worth reading as a collection of short stories. 8/10

[ice grillin you]

reading is so 1950's

[phattymatty]

yeah i haven't heard anything too great about haunted.  that and diary i think are his only two i haven't read yet.  i feel like he's starting to run out of ideas.

[rjs246]

yeah i haven't heard anything too great about haunted.  that and diary i think are his only two i haven't read yet.  i feel like he's starting to run out of ideas.

Lullaby, Diary, Survivor, Rant and Fight Club are left on my list (so most of his books). The problem is that each book I've read by him has been worse than the previous one. I need to read something great by him soon or I'll probably never bother again.

[phattymatty]

survivor is probably the best out of that bunch.  none of them are as good as choke or invisible monsters.  i know i read lullaby but don't remember what it was even about. 

[rjs246]

Word. I'll narrow the list down to Survivor and Fight Club and be done with it.

[Dillen]

I read The Kite Runner. It was good. The ending sucked ass.

[phattymatty]

I just read a book called I Just Want My Pants Back, and it was really funny.  Laughed out loud several times.

[rjs246]

I'm in the middle of East of Eden and holy god is it good. I've almost completely stopped reading classic literature (and this barely even counts since it was only written 50-some years ago) but there's a definite trend of contemporary english-speaking authors striving to be as off-the-wall and unique as possible (whether through surrealism, or drug abuse or extremely graphic sex/violence and sometimes at the expense of the story), and it's refreshing to read a straightforward, linear story that is told so well.

I enjoy the Vonneguts and Palahniuks and Rushdies and Thompsons of the world as much as the next guy but Steinbeck's story is as old as any we have and his ability to tell it is remarkable. I'm only 1/4 of the way through but I can tell this will be a favorite of mine.

[Phanatic]

So I read the new Potter book. Meh... The middle dragged along and was hard to read.

I'm moving on to 'the old man and the sea' next because I have it laying around.

[SD_Eagle5]

Read 'Gilgamesh' for my Humanities course - easy read and not bad for a story that's so old.

Just started reading 'The Making of Star Wars' - only on chapter 3 but so far its outstanding. Lots of stuff about Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, American Graffiti, and how close he came to making Apocalypse Now. I have a new found respect for Lucas after seeing how much effort he had to put in to getting Star Wars off the ground. His early writings of Star Wars are night and day different than the finished story.

[General_Failure]

Finished up Spook Country by William Gibson last night. Another fine Gibson book. Picks up one of the characters from Pattern Recognition and has another woman off scouring the world looking for stuff. And as the name implies, lots of people spying on each other.

[rjs246]

I'm in the middle of East of Eden and holy god is it good. I've almost completely stopped reading classic literature (and this barely even counts since it was only written 50-some years ago) but there's a definite trend of contemporary english-speaking authors striving to be as off-the-wall and unique as possible (whether through surrealism, or drug abuse or extremely graphic sex/violence and sometimes at the expense of the story), and it's refreshing to read a straightforward, linear story that is told so well.

I enjoy the Vonneguts and Palahniuks and Rushdies and Thompsons of the world as much as the next guy but Steinbeck's story is as old as any we have and his ability to tell it is remarkable. I'm only 1/4 of the way through but I can tell this will be a favorite of mine.

Finished. Fantastic. Probably didn't reach the 'all time favorite' level that I was anticipating but a classic none the less.