benedictw wrote:I've just read Ron Jonsons The Psychopath Test. Very good.
Yeah, I got that a little while ago and really enjoyed it.
This, The Amazing Adventures of Phoenix Jones, was pretty good as well. Odd thing longer than an article, shorter than a book and £1.55
Just finished Experience, Martin Amis' excellent memoir. Not lost a parent but it gives a pretty vivid journey through what that must be like. And previous to that read Amis senior's Lucky Jim. Not quite sure how I'd never read it before
I thought the kid should have had to eat his own father to stay alive; as it was, him being found by a friendly family was a little too saccharine for me.
I loved the book, bleak and arse and all. The movie is pretty good, too. Made me cry.
"We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is ourlives. We have a spiritual depression." - Tyler Durden
Now I've been a fan of this author since his first novel (which I bought because it had a sideboob on the cover not because I have literary taste). His books are usually a viceral mix of sex, philosophy, depraved characters and knotty plots inhabiting a space just the other side of the wall that marks out reality. This one is no exception but in addition has horny, ravenous werewolfs, vampires and unhinged monster hunters. It's fabulous. It pulls off a kind of reverse transformation: takes all the hackneyed and hairy old monster novel tropes and, at full moon, transforms them into an intelligent human novel. Highly recommended.
Also by Duncan, both Weathercock and Death Of An Ordinary Man are high points.
Also finished Room. Thought it was quite good, but not great. Took a few interesting obervations, added likeable characters, stretched them into a novel, but never explored with any depth. The author's narcissistic A to Z of Me at the back made me feel guilty for liking the book itself too.
Currently in the middle of Post Office by Bukowski.
Hilarious in some parts, sad and poetic in others.
I also recommend the movie Factotum with Matt Dillon, which got me reading about
the drunken wanderings of Mr Chinaski.
Having just finished Max by a certain Gordon Houghton, which by the way is an excellent read, I've just started on Scott Sigler's latest, Nocturnal.
I love Sigler's particular brand of body horror, and he's been on good form in this one so far
I've just finished Peter Hamilton's Void trilogy, which was rather excellent. It features some of the characters and references some of the events from Pandora's Star / Judus Unchained, so if you haven't read any of them I'd recommend starting with Pandora's Star.
I was off work with the lurgy at the start of this week, so I re-read Frederick Pohl's Gateway. It's still as awesome as ever, though as with every time I've read it since I was a teenager I often find myself almost skimming the chapters set in Sigfrid von Shrink's office to get to the next Gateway-based chapter.
"I am a very considerate person. If I want to go out all night on my miniature golf course and shoot lizards, well, no reason to keep the neighbours awake..."
benedictw wrote:Blood Music - Greg Bear, been meaning to read this since forever.
Read this years ago, remember being underwhelmed by it at the time. Curious how it holds up?
Not bad - not as good as Eon or Hull 03 (utterly hated City at the End of Time though), not as good as New Scientists foaming-at-the-mouth review in the 80's would lead me to believe though. Works quite well as a purely biological singularity type novel though.
Prequel to Gears of War (The Slab is the prison Dom frees Marcus from at the very beginning). Lots of history covered. Fifth and final book in the series.
"PC Load Letter? What the fuck does that mean?" *XBL-J0n3seY
*PSN-MrJ0n3s3Y
*SWITCH-SW112256510736
Governmentyard wrote:Childhood's End, by 'ol Clarkey. Couple of chapters in, not sure I trust these overlord fellows.
Just finished this one. Can't believe I haven't read it before (there can't be many of his I haven't read), but I think it may have been out of print when I was a lad. Good stuff, anyway.
I love the predictions he slips in here and there. One he makes in this book is that society is stagnating because there are fifty hours of radio and TV broadcast for every hour on the clock, and people are too busy following the lives of fictional characters to do anything creative.
"I am a very considerate person. If I want to go out all night on my miniature golf course and shoot lizards, well, no reason to keep the neighbours awake..."
venusian wrote:Just finished The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan.
I just finished this last night - utterly superb: full of monstrosity and humanity. It's only the second book by Glen Duncan I've read (after "I, Lucifer") but I've already got the sequel, "Talulla Rising", queued up to read very soon.
