What Are You Reading? Version 2.0

[GhostBat]

Give the title, author, a brief description, and how you would rate it (good, bad, god awful).

Titles mentioned here will eventually be displayed on Werewolf.com's front page.

If you would like to discuss a particular book mentioned by another member, please create another thread in this forum.

[Vendetta]

Man, I didn't even know the old thread was closed? What did you naughty kids do?

Anyway, I recently decided to expand my urban fantasy horizons beyond Jim Butcher and terrible female authors (note: they are not terrible because they are female.) So, on some recommendations I've begun on a few new series and stand-alone books:

Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia
Larry Correia is a former accountant turned gun enthusiast, and his main character, Owen Zastava Pitt, is a former accountant turned gun nut and monster hunter. So when they say "write what you know" Correia really took that to heart. But definitely an interesting read, with vampires, werewolves, secret government agents and elder things from beyond time and space.

Hounded - The Iron Druid Chronicles Book 1 by Kevin Hearne
Written in a snappy, pop-culture-laden tone very reminiscent of Butcher, Hearne writes a great urban fantasy yarn about Atticus O’Sullivan, last of the druids and who is over 2000 years old. I'll be honest, I've never got too in depth on Irish mythology, but after reading this I was hooked. I've already also finished his second book, Hexed, and enjoyed it just as much.

Child of Fire: A Twenty Palaces novel by Harry Connolly
Connolly's Twenty Palaces series is a sort of gritty urban fantasy with mostly amoral characters. Take main character Ray Lilly, who's a convicted felon. Along with his "boss" Annalise Prowliss they work for the Twenty Palaces society, hunting down those who use magic and the otherwordly "predators". The characters can sometimes be unlikable, but Connolly paints a distinctly unique world in the urban fantasy genre.

[FMtRIS]

With all the new exoplanets being discovered, I wanted a sort of history of how they are found and so have been reading The Crowded Universeby Alan Boss. So far it is pretty good and puts forth some of the early troubles with seeing a planet transit its sun. Its fairly up to date and speaks of the James Webb Space Telecope to launch in 2018. Its a fairly technical book so requires some fortitude to get through some sections.
My other book I am reading on is an older book on bats entitled Bats, Biology, Behavior and Folklore by Glover Morris Allen. Its more of an historical reference because I am sure that migratory patterns and ranges have changed as have cultural behaviours towards bats since 1939, which was when this book was first published. Its an interesting read because its on the discovery of how bats actually behaved and how people were trying to keep them in captivity in some instances. It wasn't very well known or the methods weren't all that great evidently as most did not live very long in captivity apart from the flying foxes (Pteropus). The folklore portion is rather funny because it speaks of bats liking bacon and has some engravings from 1491 of bats eating bacon. This of course was later tested to find that the bats didn't like bacon or at least didn't eat it in captivity. Its a large book of over three hundred pages but its pretty easy reading as compared to The Crowded Universe.

[Sinanju]

The Road by Cormac Mcarthy:
This is about the post-apocalyptic united states. Some unnamed disaster ravaged the world, and this is about a man and his son wandering the ruins of civilization trying to find meaning in existence.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
This is a pretentious hipster book for hipsters who want to gain pretentious hipster cred. I'm pretty sure no one actually enjoys reading this book, but they pretend to. It's a pretty good iceburn satire of academia and I'm being hard on it because I did actually enjoy it but it has the worst fanbase ever.

The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton
A story about anarchy and order. It's a pretty layered and abstract story but primarily focuses on a police officer that infiltrates an anarchist group and gets deeper and deeper into a web of deception and manipulation.

Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury:
Evil carnies.

[Lipski]

The Road by Cormac Mcarthy:
This is about the post-apocalyptic united states. Some unnamed disaster ravaged the world, and this is about a man and his son wandering the ruins of civilization trying to find meaning in existence.


Funny, I just ordered this book off Amazon like 3 days ago. I'm not quite prepared for the mental breakdown I'll likely have while reading it. (The book is utterly devastating according to one veagan high school teacher I've talked to about it.)

[Sinanju]

Funny, I just ordered this book off Amazon like 3 days ago. I'm not quite prepared for the mental breakdown I'll likely have while reading it. (The book is utterly devastating according to one veagan high school teacher I've talked to about it.)

You know what? Everyone says that but I didn't feel that way. I think its because all of Mccarthy's other books are amazingly MORE depressing. If you've ever read like...blood meridian, you'll be ok :)

[Lipski]

You know what? Everyone says that but I didn't feel that way. I think its because all of Mccarthy's other books are amazingly MORE depressing. If you've ever read like...blood meridian, you'll be ok :)

A friend of mine was telling me about one of his books, maybe it was Blood meridian, which sounded pretty dark. I think the teacher who told me about The Road was so disturbed because he read it as a new father.

Side Note: Have you seen the movie adaptation of The Road? A friend of mine said it was so tragic a film he didn't even finish it. Viggo Mortenson stars, so naturally I am intrigued.

[GraemeR]

I'm currently juggling Stephen Kings new monster, which is great so far, and Lord of Souls, an Elder Scrolls videogame tie in that is better than I was expecting so far. Even if it was awful I'd have to finish it though, because I'm doing the review for a magazine. Next on my list is probably going to be Swan Song by Robert Mccammon.

[JL_Benet]

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
This is a pretentious hipster book for hipsters who want to gain pretentious hipster cred. I'm pretty sure no one actually enjoys reading this book, but they pretend to. It's a pretty good iceburn satire of academia and I'm being hard on it because I did actually enjoy it but it has the worst fanbase ever.


I have had this book on my shelf, and have even started reading it a few times. I never really got into it, for pretty much the reasons you stated. I'm a horror writer and a college professor, so I should be the perfect market for it, but it does seem a little too pretentious for me.

[Vendetta]

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. The title pretty much says it all. There so much more to salt than just iodized table salt or kosher sea salt. Kurlansky covers the roots of salt and how nations were built (and probably destroyed) by it. Also I learned that the Chinese were historically the first to use natural gas as a fuel for "cooking".... in the THIRD century AD! I have a thing for books that couch history in subjects I enjoy (Rum also comes to mind.)

[Vendetta]

Been reading Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers by Henry Jenkins. Jenkins is a professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and former co-director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies program.

With credentials like that, you'd expect a stuffy, academicically dry tome, but surprisingly Jenkins is actually a good writer that doesn't often (although it happens) let academia get in the way of talking about media culture and fandom. Mostly because Jenkins was one of the first academics to aknowledge his own fan activity.

The book is a series of essays and similar short works that span the mid-90s all the way up to publication of the book (2006).

[Fenris_brood]

I'm currently reading a book of short stories by Haruki Murakami, it has several of his short works and I'm utterly enjoying the read. He writes in gloomy, lonely guidelines often touching into the surreal of the everyday life, but that doesn't stop him being a good story teller of menial stories.

I'm currently reading The Seventh Man short story that is the confession of a repressed childhood memory of an unnamed man, only numbered as the seventh man.

[Tim]

I'm reading Demonatta book series from book 5 to book 8. The novel series is probably the goriest series of books I have ever read. They really go the extra mile when describing every gory detail or how grotesque each monster's appearance is. Hey if you are a fan on people fighting off demons and junk or able to sit through so many gross scenarios and details, try the series.

[Vendetta]

Walt Disney's Imagineering Legends and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Park by Jeff Kurti. I don't think I need to talk too much about the contents, but this is an excellent book if you want to learn about the folks who worked with Walt to create Disneyland, Disney World, and other Disney parks. One thing that susprised me about this book was its candor regarding Walt's personality and often mercurial mood (especially since this book is published in-house by Disney Edition.) It's quite refreshing. And even more fascinating is that while the book isn't really about Walt himself, based on the imagineers stories I think you can say that Steve Jobs was definitely cut from the same cloth as Walt. They were both incredible visionaries that knew not only how to drive the people around them to bring incredible ideas to life, but they understood their audience as well.

As an adjunct to that book, Walt Disney Imagineering: A Behind the Dreams Look at Making More Magic Real is an excellent coffee-table book that looks at all the recent innovations at the parks with some fantastic photography and art. If you have, or have seen, the older book similar to this (now out of print) understand that this is all new content, not an update to the old version.
(NOTE: the Amazon price on this is a steal at nearly 50% off.)

[Sinanju]

People's history of the united states by Howard Zinn: Do you like white guilt? Boy do I have a book for you! US history from the perspective of everyone not a white landowner.

http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-ebook/dp/B00338QF46/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1337018456&sr=8-6

The unlikely disciple: A brown student attends Jerry Falwell's fundamentalist evangelical university, then reports back on batshit insanity.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Unlikely-Disciple-University-ebook/dp/B001UMC9ZG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1337018553&sr=1-1

[Fenris_brood]

I'm reading Stephen Kings Cell, and I'm pretty satisfied with what I've read so far, it's about an as of yet unexplained happening that turns every human that use a cellphone into either a raging zombie or insane babbling messes bent on committing suicide.

[Sinanju]

Cell was the kind of book that I was interested in while reading, but it became painfully obvious that King's ADD kicked in halfway through and he got bored of writing it.