What are you reading/last book you read

[Leviarex]

Having finished 'Godzilla: Awakening' and Marvel's 'The Tomb of Dracula', my list now includes the IDW graphic novel containing the first seven issues of the original 80s Ninja Turtle comics. It goes without saying but it's ironic that the Turtles' greatest enemy started off as just a one-off character.

[Leviarex]

Started this earlier (now that I'm done with Volume 1 of 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection'):

[Jomei]

Stalled on Angela's Ashes back in March and need to finish it. Cheated on McCourt a little recently by dipping my toes into Portnoy's Complaint.

[HedorahIsBestGirl]

Just finished Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, a novel I've wanted to read for seven years now. It was certainly an experience, and not one for the faint of heart or for anyone looking for light reading. The descriptions of the borderlands scenery are certainly beautiful and poetic, just as the graphic depictions of violence are raw and sometimes hard to read...

Spoiler:

special mention to a scene of babies having their heads smashed on rocks...

The Judge is one of the most interesting literary villains ever and I suspect the main reason a film adaptation has never been made is because the role is almost unplayable. Maybe Vincent D'Onofrio or Gary Oldman could do it?

If you're into westerns and stories about the amorality of humanity, this is a great book for you. Beware, McCarthy's distinct writing style isn't for everyone but if the idea of a long, bloody, sometimes confusing adventure through the mid-1800s American-Mexican borderlands with a gang of ruthless scalphunters sounds cool to you, I promise you'll be enraptured.

[Jomei]

Just finished Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Nice choice. "Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."

[HedorahIsBestGirl]

Just finished Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Nice choice. "Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."

That was my favorite line from the Judge.

I'm thinking of reading No Country for Old Men next, love the movie but never read the book.

[EarthNeronga]

Hey umm; I got a question for everyone here?

I wanna read more often but i wanna find a good book thats funny,action packed, reliatble but also have serious and sad moments in it

i hope its okay to ask this question; cause i wanna read more often

[Major sssspielberg!]

Hey umm; I got a question for everyone here?

I wanna read more often but i wanna find a good book thats funny,action packed, reliatble but also have serious and sad moments in it

i hope its okay to ask this question; cause i wanna read more often

Give Necromancer a go. It's got everything you listed imo.

If you're in the mood for something a little more grounded and less actiony, I always recommend The Great Gatsby to people looking to get into reading more, provided it wasn't ruined for you by the American public school system like it was for some I know.

[Jomei]

Hey umm; I got a question for everyone here?

I wanna read more often but i wanna find a good book thats funny,action packed, reliatble but also have serious and sad moments in it

i hope its okay to ask this question; cause i wanna read more often

Written stories don't execute action as well as visual art forms. That's not to say there can't be good action moments, but it's really not at the heart of what novels do.

So... that said, Neuromancer is indeed a good book, if you don't find its techno-babble confusing.

If you're easing into reading, though, let me make a couple other recommendations:

1) People from My Neighborhood by Hiromi Kawakami
2) Suddenly a Knock at the Door by Etgar Keret

Both of these books are made up of very short stories, often just 3-5 pages each, which makes them easy to pick up and enjoy for just a bit each day as you get used to reading more. Plus, they fit the bill as far as being funny but also emotionally and tonally complex.

The Kawakami collection is "linked," so a lot of the same characters appear from story to story, and things take place in the same town or neighborhood. Keret's collection isn't linked at all, but you'll find a through-line of his unique sense of humor.

[Leviarex]

Having finished volume #3 of the 'Animorphs' graphic novel series, I've moved on to something else alien related:

[JAGzilla]

Hey umm; I got a question for everyone here?

I wanna read more often but i wanna find a good book thats funny,action packed, reliatble but also have serious and sad moments in it

i hope its okay to ask this question; cause i wanna read more often

This is literally one of the best questions you can ask. It never isn't okay.

A little more info about your interests would help us make recommendations. Obviously you're a kaiju fan*, but what else are you interested in? What books have you already read that you enjoyed?

* If you have the money to afford the loony aftermarket prices, the four Marc Cerasini Godzilla novels belong in every kaiju fan's library. Well, I can't personally speak for Godzilla vs. The Robot Monsters, but the first three are good. The human stories are nothing special, but the kaiju action is amazing, especially in Godzilla 2000. Cerasini is one of those writers who specializes in crafting really cool imagery and beaming it into the reader's brain. It's the closest thing to reading a movie.

[Jomei]

Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and Lorrie Moore's Self-Help.

[Jetty_Jags]

In the middle of All the Pretty Horses. I want to like Cormac Mccarthy, I really do, but I perpetually stay in an area of appreciation. I read No Country for Old Men, and I think it highlights some story/thematic elements that I didn't catch in the movie (which I have mixed feelings towards itself), but there is much truth in comparing it to a screenplay, and it really dampens one of Mccarthy's best attributes. I'm somewhat enjoying ATPH, but the start is just so slow. The beautiful prose of the southern countryside is continually exhilarating, but it meanders through a serviceable coming of age story that I just find bland. There are moments with some really engaging pieces of dialogue, or beautiful scenes (the night at the lake for example), and yet as a whole I can only describe it as "fine".

[JAGzilla]

I finished volume 8 of New Teen Titans, which was very good. I feel like the writing has become very 'settled in' by this point, with a nice casual feeling of continuing the adventures and everyday lives of our heroes. The change in artists was welcome, too. George Perez has a lot of great selling points, but the replacement artist (forget his name) is even better in some ways. Not all, though.

I also finished Watch the Skies: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth. It's an excellent historical overview of the UFO phenomenon up to 1994, full of detail and context. I learned a lot. The author is an open skeptic, which is a mixed bag. He pulls out a lot of the believer community's dirty laundry and generally frames things in ways they won't, so there's a valuable outside perspective there. But he also aggressively downplays the phenomenon every step of the way, and treat every military or debunker explanation as proven fact. Good book overall, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in UFOs, but be aware that the author is as biased as any gung-ho believer.

I just bought the first volume of the '80s Post-Crisis relaunch of Superman. Apparently the writer stuck with the book for a long time and this is considered one of the best runs on a Superman comic. I have very little experience with Superman comics, and this seems like a perfect place to jump in. New Teen Titans has made me want to see what the rest of the '80s DC landscape looked like, anyway. I'm open to recommendations!

I also started Visitors From Lanulos, a 1968 UFO contactee book in which Woodrow Derenberger covers his encounters with a space brother named Indrid Cold. The case took place in West Virginia around the same time as the original Mothman sightings, and is an important piece of the paranormal puzzle for that era. The book was extremely rare for decades, with the few available copies trading for thousands of dollars, so I guess I'm lucky there was a recent reprinting. The case is kind of special to me because it was covered in The Mothman Prophecies, one of the first paranormal books I read as a kid. So the case has been on my radar for decades, and it's cool to finally read the witness's firsthand account.

[Jomei]

In the middle of All the Pretty Horses. I want to like Cormac Mccarthy, I really do, but I perpetually stay in an area of appreciation. I read No Country for Old Men, and I think it highlights some story/thematic elements that I didn't catch in the movie (which I have mixed feelings towards itself), but there is much truth in comparing it to a screenplay, and it really dampens one of Mccarthy's best attributes. I'm somewhat enjoying ATPH, but the start is just so slow. The beautiful prose of the southern countryside is continually exhilarating, but it meanders through a serviceable coming of age story that I just find bland. There are moments with some really engaging pieces of dialogue, or beautiful scenes (the night at the lake for example), and yet as a whole I can only describe it as "fine".

Have you tried Blood Meridian?

I've been going through Hemingway's In Our Time. Read some of this way back but am re-reading/finishing now.

[Jetty_Jags]

No I didn't, I wanted to save that for later, but it might be better just to jump into it.

[HeiseiGodzilla117]

I've done a lot of reading this year. I'll list a few of the ones I would most recommend.

First Blood by David Morrell - I've always loved the film for showing some of the less glorious aspects of a veteran's life. It portrays its hero in a way that's so different than what other "action" movies do. The novel does an even better job. Morrell digs into Rambo's PTSD in such a visceral way. He portrays Rambo as sympathetic and gives him heroic qualities as well. The man's a war hero after all! But he also shows the less-than-savory aspects of Rambo's life. And Teasle, the cop who hunts Rambo down, is explored in just as much detail. He's also a war hero. But the experience he had returning home is different than Rambo's experience. Seeing how these two men view each other makes for an extremely compelling read.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman - Gaiman is very hit or miss for me. But this one is a hit. It's simple fantasy. Not epic fantasy with dragons, elves, swords and sorcery. Not that there's anything wrong with epic fantasy. I consider Lord of the Rings the greatest work of fantasy ever created after all. But Neverwhere gives us an average, everyday, modern protagonist and takes him far outside his comfort zone. He's in a world totally unfamiliar to him. The characters and setting are strange and intriguing. I had a lot of fun with this one.

Age of the Vikings by Anders Winroth - Winroth is one of my all time favorite history writers. He has a very granular approach to his work and does a good job of making the reading as engaging as it is educational. He doesn't break new ground in this book. But he does an excellent job painting as complete a picture of early medieval Scandinavia, its people and their exploits as you could ask. Winroth does not make wild, speculative arguments by pulling from other cultures far removed from the Vikings by both geography and time like other writers (looking at you, Neil Price). If you're interested in the early Middle Ages, particularly in northern Europe, I definitely recommend this book.

The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West by Tom Holland - Where Anders Winroth writes History for students of History, Tom Holland writes pop history. That is to say, he occasionally forgoes accuracy for sensationalism or entertaining prose. The Forge of Christendom is not without its share of those issues. There were several times when I was reading this book that I thought, "Where the hell did he get that from?" and went down the rabbit hole of primary sources and JSTOR to try to find out, only to find absolutely nothing that supported what Holland wrote. HOWEVER, overall Holland gets the important details right and does make some interesting arguments in this book and many of the details he uses to support those arguments can, in fact, be corroborated. And, if you like an entertaining read, Holland never disappoints on that front. You'll be engaged from beginning to end. Holland is a great starting point for someone who is just trying to get into reading History books.

Dreamcatcher by Stephen King - Another hit or miss author for me. I find it difficult to explain why I enjoy Dreamcatcher. King is certainly not at the top of his game with this book in terms of prose. But there's something about the characters that I find to be more admirable and less mean-spirited than many of his works. It's not a scary book by any stretch of the imagination. But it has some elements of suspense and adventure that made for a pretty fun time.

[EarthNeronga]

Im reading the old man and the sea and im on Page 54 and it seems interesting and neat

[LSD Jellyfish]

Im reading the old man and the sea and im on Page 54 and it seems interesting and neat

That’s a bonafide Hemingway classic! I remember reading that way back in HS, but it’s been a long time.

[mikelcho]

Having finished 'Godzilla: Awakening' and Marvel's 'The Tomb of Dracula', my list now includes the IDW graphic novel containing the first seven issues of the original 80s Ninja Turtle comics. It goes without saying but it's ironic that the Turtles' greatest enemy started off as just a one-off character.

Which book version of The Tomb of Dracula / Dracula Lives! did you finish reading? Was it Marvel Omnibus (with three volumes), Essential Marvel (with four volumes), or The Complete Collection (with five volumes)? If it was Omnibus, please tell me that the brief nudity in The Tomb of Dracula magazine #1-6 hasn't been edited out and covered over, just like Essential and The Complete Collection stupidly did. I say this because I'd like to know if Omnibus is complete and unabridged. If it isn't, then it's all over for me.