Read Galapagos and Bluebeard by Vonnegut, not the strongest pieces of his canon but enjoyable nonetheless. Moving on to hard core sci-fi - Dan Simmons - Hyperion.

Read some of his previous Pilgrims books. Haven't read Hyperion but its considered one of the best and did win the Hugo sci-fi award. Should be a good read.

Yeah, I'm a bit wary coz I tried to read Ilium and almost died from boredom, seriously traumatic experience. But a lot of people have recommended this one so I'm hoping it's gonna live up to the expectations...:\

I read Hyperion for a sci-fi-lit class. Twas no Ulysses, but it was quite good.

Ulysses was an illegible nightmare so I guess that's good news.

Is it really that bad?

My opinion of 1984 v Brave New World is the complete opposite; I think BNW is terrible and 1984 is great.

http://trashotron.com/agony/images/2...hniuk-rant.jpg

Rant by Chuck Palahniuk
I'm about 25% of the way in and undecided on how I feel about this one. The writing style, a series of snippets from fictional interviews, is interesting but I feel like it gets in the way of the story a bit. We'll see how it goes I guess.

Rant is middle-of-the-road Palahniuk, in my opinion. Still stronger than Snuff or Lullaby though.

Really. I thought it would be difficult but it's really impenetrable.