What Books are you reading?

[Barry the Nomad]

Just finished reading Star Wars: The Rise of Darth Vader.

It's... OK-ish. Much better than The Force Unleashed novel, which was basically nothing but a tedious description of the video game cutscenes.
It's a story that takes place immediately after the end of Revenge of the Sith, for some odd reason, one group of stormtroopers actually thought that Order 66 was a joke. And the twist ending, well, you can see it coming a mile away.

Gotta pick another read for the next couple of weeks...

You looking forward to the Darth Plagueis novel? Hits in December and details Palpatine's master and how he trained Palps and eventually was killed by him (I assume). I'm a big Emperor fan, so I'm definitely picking it up.

I heard Matt Stover, author of the Revenge of the Sith novel, speak at a bookstore back in 2005 and he said he wanted to write a Plagueis novel. Though looks like the job went to James Luceno.

[max_cady]

I wasn't aware of said novel, but good to know. Though frankly I'm kinda burned out on the Star Wars novels right now. I wanted something decent from the Clone Wars TV show but right now the existing audio books are a little too much, I'm afraid.

Now, if only I could get a good mp3 version of Michael Crichton's Congo. Now that would be something.

[jonboy101]

Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore" and Pascal's "Thoughts".

[max_cady]

I finished reading Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes.

It was OK, but there wasn't anything outstanding about it. The characters were OK for what brief descriptions we had. Charles Hunter is a badass, but you won't get that much insight into him, the same with curious characters like Lazue.

Overall, not a bad time waster. But it's nowhere near as engaging as The Great Train Robbery, not even close.

[Emmett The Crab]

I'm reading Memory, Prophecy And Fantasy, the Works of Clive Barker Volume 1: Liverpool Lives.  Almost finished with it.  If you're a super-diehard fan of Clive Barker, these books are really interesting, and detailed.

[max_cady]

Just started readin' Phillip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?".

I wanted to get into classic sci-fi. Hope it'll be good.

[Nameless 24]

The last book I read I think was "Train Man".

I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped....but I guess it's that real life story happiness that everyone loves to read/watch come true.

It pretty much reads like a forum, but half the book is made up of Japanese ASCII art...which isn't bad, but it bored me reading 5 pages of "OH MY GOD! YOU GO TRAIN MAN!".

I might read the other six Thursday Next books, since I liked the first one, but I think the next book that's coming to me is The Last Quarkbeast (same author, different series).

[max_cady]

I'm done with Phillip K Dick's "Do Android dream of Electric Sheep?".


I've moved on to Michael Crichton's Micro.



This is his first post-humous novel. About a third of the original manuscript was completed, Mr. Preston was brought in to finish it. I'll tell you guys this much, it isn't as atrocious as Next. at first it felt somewhere along that level, but as it went it out it started to get better. It's got an interesting Jurassic Park-esque vibe to it splashed with an R-rated version of "Honey, I shrank the Kids". Two minor complaints so far, the villain is so unrealistically evil it hurts, two, this is a thriller novel, the chapters could and should end in a semi-cliffhanger.

[CosmicCastaway]

From what I heard Mr. Preston did a poor job of writing Micro which Michael Crichton only made an outline for. I think I would rather just read Crichton's original outline and leave it at that. He's one of my favorite authors and I don't want to read a novel that has his name on the cover, but he didn't truly write it.

[max_cady]

I finished reading Micro last night and also took the time to read a few extra reviews. To my surprise it's not bad at all. It's nowhere near the level of a Jurassic Park, but it's decent, waay better than Next.
There's some stuff there that's kinda weird, the characters are for the most part are very one-dimensional, most of them have one character trait they stick with it till the end, however[spoiler]I was surprised at how the story went down, you see Peter Jansen was presented in the novel as the main protagonist and indeed for much of the novel he is, so consider me shocked when he gets killed off later on and the other two more discrete protagonists actually become vital to the plot.

There's clearly a Jurassic Park vibe with Micro. The way the heroes have to fight off insects, bats and birds is very reminiscent of the 1991 novel. It's as exciting and gruesome, perhaps slightly more, the way one of the antagonists gets killed by a ground spider is just horrible and creepy.
[/spoiler]

[Nameless 24]

Finished reading The Last Dragonslayer: Song of the Quarkbeast.



As a fan of Jasper Fforde's books, it's one of the weakest for me. It was still good as it had that style of his in the book, but it wasn't as good as the first book (and I only just started to like that book at the end), the beginning was promising, and although the pace kept on going, I felt like the sudden twist at the end was pretty dull despite being the right way to end the book in order to give way to the final book.

[spoiler]
I guess introducing a new character and only making them relevant at the end of the book annoyed me, it would have been better if the new character was revealed in the sequel, but I can see why they introduced her in the second book to stop the Antagonist of this book.[/spoiler]

I may read the second Thursday Next book, since it's his main series but I am more into his (on a haitus) Shades of Grey series.

Then again, I could read The Nursary Crime sub-series instead, since I liked the first book.

[SOUP]

I've been making my way through this:

It covers the original issues from #31 all the way to the cancellation at #66.

[CosmicCastaway]

That's pretty sweet SOUP. The original X-Men books are often overlooked, but there are quite a few cool stories in them.



I've been reading Vol 6. of John Byrne's run on the Fantastic Four. It's been great to finally read the stories where She-Hulk temporarily replaced The Thing as part of the FF. I always knew she joined the team at the end of Secret Wars, but I never got to read any of the Fantastic Four issues with She-Hulk until now.   

[SOUP]

@CosmicCastaway:
Thanks . The writing's pretty dated, but charming in it's own way.  Oddly enough The Juggernaut comes off as a more compelling villain than Magneto in these early stories.
There's a lot more dialogue per issue than you'd find in a modern comic. I'd say it takes about as long to read a single issue as it would take to read 4 or 5 newer comics.

After this Omnibus, I'll probably go straight into the relaunch from the 70's, beginning with Giant-Size X-Men #1.  They have a couple of Masterworks editions that collect the miscellaneous appearances they made during the time X-Men was cancelled, but I haven't picked them up.  Aside from a few team-up issues, the only big things they cover are Beast's transformation, and Wolverine's first appearance in The Hulk.

[Barry the Nomad]

Since comics are allowed:



Since the movie, I've been rereading, and buying, all the Tintin books. I've been slow at it, mainly because my Amazon Prime membership wasn't renewed for a few months. When I first read them, I got them from the library. So I've never owned the books, aside from one. Now I'm up to the fifth book, The Broken Ear (sixth, counting the Congo book, which was not released in the US).

This one surprised me! It's a lot of fun, the cover art is beautiful. Any Tintin fans here?