I see you found the book you were looking for Pete. I saw that one recommended when I googled but that is a rather short list of books that fall into that category.

I'm reading I Am Legend again for the third or fourth time. Matheson is becoming one of my favorite writers. The man is ****ing talented. I just finished the passage about the dog. It's one of my favorite parts of any book. I get choked up every time. Poor Robert...

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I'm just starting it, mom says it's terrifying!

Been reading the second book in the whole Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. Generally I despise the thrillers that one can find in Wal-Mart, but these have at least one good character (Lisbeth Salander) that keeps you interested. I'm never exactly sure why it is that I can't put these books down, since they have a lot of what bugs me about thrillers in general, but whatevs.

Just finished Frankenstein for English 151 and am in the process of ruining it with a research paper. Immediately picked up The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for subsequent destruction through mechanical separation.

Frankenstein is definitely one of my favorite classics.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the characters, but meticulously comparing Victor Frankenstein to Percy Shelley is sucking the life out of me.

****ing talented with a capital F (or *, as you would have it). This is one of my top five favorite books ever.

I've had this book on my book shelf for a few years now, and not cracked it open yet. Please let us know how it is!

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Jam by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw

For the uninitiated, Yahtzee is a video critic of the ever popular "Zero Punctuation" video series on the Escapist. Very funny guy who says a lot more about a game with his brand of humor than a lot of others say in their more professional reviews. His first book, Mogworld, was a pretty spot-on riff of World of Warcraft and some fantasy tropes, and was very funny, especially if you're a fan of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett. Jam is still as funny, but removed from a fantastical world and planted in a more contemporary one, where humanity is under attack from carnivorous jam. Yes, jam, the stuff you put on toast.

Just read Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor, and I highly recommend it. It's not fulfilling in that the conclusion is just as you'd hoped, but it's entertaining and leaves you with an appropriate amount of emptiness.

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. For a class. Just finished Machiavelli's "The Prince", and now discovering that Hobbes is refuting basically everything that we've read so far (Plato's "Republic", Aristotle's "Politics" and the Machiavelli). Have to basically forget about everything those guys said in order to understand the Hobbes properly. Yikes.

That actually sounds kinda awesome to me.

Even the research wasn't that bad, but I didn't enjoy the writing on the topic. I get more satisfaction out of assignments when they ask me to think for myself rather than draw on what many other critics have suggested.

As an asides, nearly through the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The Count of Monte Cristo, for about the third time.

He totally should have teamed up with the Earl of Sandwich.

Eh, to make viciously charming yet retribution-seeking sarnie delicacies? Also, how is it any topic I've seen you discuss leads to sandwiches....

fuck hobbes, locke forever.

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Sudhir Venkatesh is a professor of sociology at Columbia University and a lead writer of urban life and underground economies. Once upon a time, he was a lowly grad student looking for something more meaningful than just writing numbers. He ended up making his way to one of the poorest areas of Chicago, and long story short, became best friends with a high level leader in the Black Kings, a large gang. This book basically documents his life with his new friend and talks in detail about gang life, relationships with non-gang members in gang territory, life in large urban housing apartment complexes, etc etc etc. Basically, it's awesome. Check it out if you're interested at all in any of those topics.

PS- I picked it up for $1! Gotta love used book stores.

When have I ever talked about sandwiches before? If I did, well...sandwiches are the perfect food. Quick and easy to make, but they are still legitimate food that can be as simple or as high class as you want them to be. Mmmm...sandwiches.

I always find those type of books interesting. The best i've read would have to be Monster about Kody Scott one of La's hardest gang members ever. Dude did a drive by on a bike once. You gotta have balls to do drive bys on a ten speed.

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Fucking brilliant book, especially if you like shows like The Wire for their socio-economic commentary. His other book Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor is another one that's well worth reading if you enjoyed Gang Leader for a Day. I really liked how it flowed like I expected a story might, yet still retained its biographical origins, which actually segues quite nicely into what I'm reading.

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Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa

Basically it's a biographical book with the structure of a fictional story. According to the opening forward, the book is a really good counter-point to the more popular Shogun novel by Australian author James Clavell, who was willing to distort history in order to give the story more appeal. Apparently all Yoshikawa really did was change a few names out of respect for the real people they were based on, and then added in the dialogue. In either case, I've heard Shogun is fantastic and look forward to reading it at some point, but for right now I can't wait to delve into the history of one of Japan's greatest Samurai's.

Shogun is definitely worth your time. I'm not a huge buff on feudal Japanese history, at least not more than the passing interest of a Japanophile, but it definitely isn't particularly accurate, and the portrayal of Japanese and samurai culture is more based on Japanese nationalist WW II propaganda than actual history from what I've heard. Still, it's fantastic stuff.

I'm giving Naked Lunch a go.

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don't care if a lot of the people interviewed have retracted their statements, this book goes hard

After having read Neuromancer, and having been so thoroughly confused with the plot that I had to sparknotes it, I've made it about halfway through the Eye of the World. It's pretty good so far. Hopefully the series (Wheel of Time) doesn't pull a Dune and ride the curve of a negative exponential function down the axis of quality into shitland.

I'm currently reading "Letters to a Young Poet" by Rainer Maria Rilke. Small book, although really enlightening and so so interesting, it gives an insight into what the poet was like and what many of his 'life philosophies' were. Has an interesting viewpoint on solitude and creativity.

A Wacko biog. it's by a guy who knew him in the 70's on but has rather admirably barely mentioned himself... Not even to explain how they met!!!

Haha I'm happy I'm not the only who one who was thoroughly confused by Neurcomancer. Did you enjoy it at least?



At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft

I really wish the Google ereader app thing could be connected to dropbox so I don't have to keep on rebuying books I've bought at least three or four times, which is the case with Lovecraft. Still, for $4.99 I did get a lot.

Neuromancer was an interesting beast. First of all, Gibson's writing is sheer poetry, so I ended up treating it more as a series of beautiful vignettes instead of a cohesive novel. Second, having obviously not grown up in the era that the book came out, I had to do a bit of reading to understand the impact and significance of Neuromancer as a cultural piece of literature.

I think it definitely warrants a revisit at some point, as it seems like one of those novels that just gets better every time you read it.

The God Delusion, ho ho ho, Merry Christmas

Ouch, my Santa infested heart just shrunk three sizes.

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i'm only about a quarter through it and man did this book start getting weird....

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A guy at work let me borrow this, and then he moved away, so it's mine now! Which is great because it's an amazing book. Really, besides the murder mystery part of it, the architecture and planning of the Chicago World's Fair would normally be of little interest. But the book is so well written it's managed to keep me engaged. A good book for history buffs.

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Just started this one, but so far it's been a very thought-provoking read. The author's prose it a bit trippy. Looking forward to reading it through.

i'm reading Vladimir Megre's Ringing Cedars series. has anyone else read this stuff?! it's like castaneda's don juan in a lot of ways to me... when i read that, i was young and was given it under the pretence that it was historical. obviously that's not the case. but, the readers of Megre's work have started movements that span the entire globe based on this Anastasia character. seriously. has anyone read this stuff?

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Just bought this at my local used book store for cheap. I am a happy camper. I'll probably be listening to hip hop and reading this all night.

One of the best books I've ever read.

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Chuck P. always concocts fantastic stories

If you mean cliched, repetitive and predictable, totally.

I'm reading this:

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Wasn't Fight Club your avatar for a year?

Marla Singer,my doppelganger