What are you reading now?

[abigsmurf]

To be fair, Needful Things is pretty much about how easy it is for things in a 'normal' town to completely fall apart if you know what makes it tick.

That said, King has a habit of awful 'big reveals' where he reveals the true form of the big bad. The Crimson King, the (supposedly) most powerful being in King's universe kinda tops the list though.

->Open Spoiler<-

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[Darwock]

I picked up a book the other week, chosen only because of it's low price and because it is part of a series, so plenty to get my teeth into if it turns out to be good.

"The Game of Thrones" by George Martin. It's actually turning out to be really good, at first I thought it was going to be super cheesy fantasy but I'm really getting into it. Then I found out that it's being made into an HBO series to be shown this year, starring the Beanster! Excellent!

Now I'm kind of in a quandary though as I would love to be able to watch the TV show without knowing what's going to happen. I wonder how they will do it though, the books feature giant wolves quite prominently.

[PeteJ]

I picked up a book the other week, chosen only because of it's low price and because it is part of a series, so plenty to get my teeth into if it turns out to be good.

"The Game of Thrones" by George Martin. It's actually turning out to be really good, at first I thought it was going to be super cheesy fantasy but I'm really getting into it. Then I found out that it's being made into an HBO series to be shown this year, starring the Beanster! Excellent!

Now I'm kind of in a quandary though as I would love to be able to watch the TV show without knowing what's going to happen. I wonder how they will do it though, the books feature giant wolves quite prominently.

Now that's just spooky, I came into this thread to post the same thing! I'm about half way through and it has been excellent so far.

[Super Grover]

Just finished reading Greg Bear's ' The Forge of God'. Very entertaining, and ripe for a big screen adaptation.

Gone for something slightly different for my next two books, 'The Money Machine - How the city works' by Philip Coggan, and James Lovelock's 'Gaia -Medicine for an ailing planet'.

The latter book has some excellent chapter titles, such as ' Metabolism and planetray biochemistry', 'Epigensis', 'The people plague'. Nice, light, bed time reading then!

[Finsbury Girl]

I picked up a book the other week, chosen only because of it's low price and because it is part of a series, so plenty to get my teeth into if it turns out to be good.

"The Game of Thrones" by George Martin. It's actually turning out to be really good, at first I thought it was going to be super cheesy fantasy but I'm really getting into it. Then I found out that it's being made into an HBO series to be shown this year, starring the Beanster! Excellent!

Now I'm kind of in a quandary though as I would love to be able to watch the TV show without knowing what's going to happen. I wonder how they will do it though, the books feature giant wolves quite prominently.

I reckon I started this series well over 10 years ago.....as far as I know it still isn't done yet - I've stopped reading them until they all come out.

The ones I have read were excellent.

[djjimbob]

If anyone wants to read Stephen King's newer stuff, both 'Under The Dome' and 'Duma Key' are both excellent.

'Under the Dome' especially, it's pretty big (600+) - story of a small town getting trapped under a large dome a la The Simpsons movie. Very character driven, couldn't put it down.

[PeteJ]

I just found out that Greg Bear is writing a new series based on...Halo.

wtf.

In fact it has already been released!


I'm still reading Game of Thrones. Loving it but haven't been getting through quickly.

[prinnysquad]

I'm still reading Game of Thrones. Loving it but haven't been getting through quickly.

You don't. It a good book and well written, but not something you can race through!

[Darwock]

Unfortunately, that wasn't my experience - I couldn't put it down and finished it far quicker than I hoped to. It was a bit misleading because there is a lot of appendix stuff at the end so I thought I had further to go than I really did.

Tremendous ending anyway, spine shivering stuff, been a long time since I've read a book that could do that. Luckily there are still three other volumes to keep me busy, but when I went back to the shop they no longer had the second book in stock

I'll have to wait.

[Guts]

Since my mother had bought Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange (in English) for my younger brother, I decided to give it a go. It's going to be interesting to see how much I can understand from the language as I'm not a native English speaker, but the first few chapters were not that hard to grasp, I guess that's a mark of good writing, even the nadsat words aren't that hard to understand since they're usually in some context that helps you understand/guess the meaning even if you don't speak a word of Russian besides "da" and "njet".

[NemesiS]

Finished Apartment 16 a few weeks back. A horror (supposedly) about an apartment in a plush block in Lowndes Square London which is inhabited by 1930's demonic painter in the mirrors. The premise sounds great but it's very very boring. It has nods towards graham Mastertons "Mirror", but isn't as good. Infact, its about 500 or 600 pages and its about 400 pages too long. The middle drags that slowly because of the totally unneccessary padding that i found it incredibly hard work to get through without my mind wandering with boredom.

Then read Clive Barkers: Books of Blood 1 & 2. I read these about ten or fifteen years ago and decided to read them again after the banality of Apartment 16. Both books have to rank as possibly the best collection of horror stories i have ever read. They are absolutely brilliant and easily stand alongside the collections of Stephen King, Ray Bradbury and Lovecraft.

The stories are so varied and fantastical, its hard to believe the films made of them are so crap. I also like his books but tend to prefer his early stuff like Weaveworld and Cabal.

Also read about 4 Brian Keene books. City of the Dead, The Rising, Take the long way home and Castaways. All very good page turners which are generally along the lines of post apocalyptic'ish settings with zombies etc. Castaways is about contestants who have to survive on a desert island with some murderous creatures.


Next up is The Passage and then the Day by Day Armegeddon books as i have heard they are excellent.

[NemesiS]

'Under the Dome' especially, it's pretty big (600+) - story of a small town getting trapped under a large dome a la The Simpsons movie. Very character driven, couldn't put it down.

Robert McCammon wrote a book similar to this years ago called Stinger. Absolutely brilliant story about a town that wakes up to realise they are domed in and cut off from the rest of the world.

Also Brian Keene has written one along a similar vein called Darkness on the edge of Town which i have ordered from Amazon.

[abigsmurf]

Finished Apartment 16 a few weeks back. A horror (supposedly) about an apartment in a plush block in Lowndes Square London which is inhabited by 1930's demonic painter in the mirrors. The premise sounds great but it's very very boring. It has nods towards graham Mastertons "Mirror", but isn't as good. Infact, its about 500 or 600 pages and its about 400 pages too long. The middle drags that slowly because of the totally unneccessary padding that i found it incredibly hard work to get through without my mind wandering with boredom.

Then read Clive Barkers: Books of Blood 1 & 2. I read these about ten or fifteen years ago and decided to read them again after the banality of Apartment 16. Both books have to rank as possibly the best collection of horror stories i have ever read. They are absolutely brilliant and easily stand alongside the collections of Stephen King, Ray Bradbury and Lovecraft.

The stories are so varied and fantastical, its hard to believe the films made of them are so crap. I also like his books but tend to prefer his early stuff like Weaveworld and Cabal.

Also read about 4 Brian Keene books. City of the Dead, The Rising, Take the long way home and Castaways. All very good page turners which are generally along the lines of post apocalyptic'ish settings with zombies etc. Castaways is about contestants who have to survive on a desert island with some murderous creatures.


Next up is The Passage and then the Day by Day Armegeddon books as i have heard they are excellent.

I really enjoyed the Books of blood, such an immense amount of imagination behind them, Only got book 3 left to read now (managed to skip it somehow). I never knew that Candyman was a Clive Barker adaptation. Got Cabal to read after that which I believe is supposed to be one of his best pure horrors, Mister B. Gone was dissapointing, aimless and the 'talking to the reader' bits were just irritating after a while. Other than Cabal, what are the full sized novels (rather than novellas) he's done that are pure horror rather than fantasy?

I suspect I'm going to whizz through his stuff now (as I always do when I find an author I like), going to need to find another supernatural horror writer to read.

[NemesiS]

Other than Cabal, what are the full sized novels (rather than novellas) he's done that are pure horror rather than fantasy?

I suspect I'm going to whizz through his stuff now (as I always do when I find an author I like), going to need to find another supernatural horror writer to read.

By Barker i would recommend: Weaveworld, Thief of always, Great and secret Show & Hellraiser (hellbound heart). Tbh most of his stuff is almost fantasy and not really pure horror. They are still good reads though with weaveworld in particular excellent. Also there are 6 Books of Blood in the series. I've just read are omnibus editions which contains them all.

If you like pure horror try Graham Masterton. A bit like Koontz he writes almost pulpish horror but all his books are real page turners where Koontz can be very boring and predicatable. He's wrote loads and there would no point me recommending this or that as they are all good reads. But there is no fantasy element to his, they are straight down the middle horror.

The best horror writer for me though was Robert R McCammon (i say was, he does still write, but doesn't write proper horror anymore)
They Thirst is about vampires taking over Los Angeles and is just an incredible book
The Wolfs Hour is about a werewolf who works for the british government during the 2nd world war. Sounds ridiculous but its possibly the best book/story i have ever read
Swan Song, post apocalyptic story similar to the Stephen Kings The Stand but better
Stinger, as mentioned in my post above is also brilliant


I have banged on about these before but another fantastic series of Vampire books is The Necroscope series by Brian Lumley. I simply can't stress how good this series is. The first 5 and then the 3 vampire wars books that follow are astonishing. This series along with my McCammon books i would never ever sell

Hope that helps

[Number45]

I have some Robert McMammon books on my wishlist, I think that might have been from your recommendation. Going to pick one up soon (as long as they're Kindleable).

I've just finished The Picture of Dorian Gray. There is some huge unnecessary fluff in the middle of the book (which, on further research, was added after the initial publication as a short story to help flesh out the character... but it fails as far as I'm concerned) but overall I liked it a lot. I can't for the life of me understand why Oscar Wilde was vilified for writing it, although again it has apparently been altered a little to neuter the 'homoerotic' messaging.

The Divine Comedy next. Prior to these two I've read all seven Harry Potter books back to back (I can't believe how much information I'd forgotten from the film) in preparation for the last film in a few months, and I fancied a change of pace.