Book Swap! (Now you can be a bookworm too!)

[Bassios]

For anyone interested in sci-fi books, the Nights Dawn book series is really good. It's written by Peter F. Hamilton and comprises of these books:

• The Reality Dysfunction
  
• The Neutronium Alchemist
  
• The Naked God
  
• A Second Chance at Eden (just a collection of short stories in the Nights Dawn universe)
  

whee

 

[BlaqkWinter76]

@Pisces: Actually I never read the one by Carroll, but I have a feeling its just as twisted. sweatdrop  

[wakusei]

Alright, so I might as well get it out of the way now and recommend my favorite books series...The Hitchhiker's Guide "Trilogy" by Douglas Adams.

Consists of:
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe and Everything
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Mostly Harmless

...and possibly Salmon of Doubt, which is a collection of other such things by Adams that could have gone into a sixth book before he died.

If you don't know what the series is about, then you may have been living under a rock...but basically it's a sci-fi comedy about a simple ape-descendant named Arthur who finds himself traveling the galaxy after the Earth gets blown up to make way for a hyperspatial express route.


If you don't like the thought of reading 5 books (or at least checking out the radio series!) or going for the obvious Adams books, then I recommend Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and its sequel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, both of which are also highly enjoyable and about a strange detective who solves cases with the belief in the interconnectivity of all things.

 

[Taeryyn]

I could not agree more with your recommendation, Waku. The "trilogy" is one of my favourite series of books. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard reading any other books.

I think some people are put off by the fact that it's "sci-fi", especially if they don't tend to read anything in that genre. Despite the fact that it's science-fiction, a lot of the humour in it comes from stuff that everyone can relate to as humans. It pokes fun at humanity in general; our strengths, our weaknesses, stuff that we do without really knowing why, and things that we like that are just plain weird. Bureaucracy in particular gets special mention in the book. x3

Just to give a bit of an idea...(this happens after Arthur is told his house is going to be demolished because a by-pass is being built...)

Mr Prosser: "But the plans were on display..."
Arthur: "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
Mr Prosser: "That's the display department."
Arthur: "With a torch."
Mr Prosser: "Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
Arthur: "So had the stairs."
Mr Prosser: "But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
Arthur: "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."

Tons and tons of other quotes.

Also. I wouldn't be put off by the fact that there are 5 books. All 5 books stacked together are about the same size as the last Harry Potter book. x3  

[wakusei]

xd

Douglas Adams is so very quotable~

Indeed, the books are very short and are very easy to read. The only problem I have is that I keep rereading passages over and over because I love them so much.

 

[Thaliat Everwood]

x-Dark-Pisces-x

@Elcia: I will say that the visuals used in some of the more intense part of the story (i.e. Fiver's vision) were quite creepy and quite interesting.

@Yuki: Looking forward to it. 3nodding

@Blaqk: xd Isn't Through the Looking Glass twisted enough as it is? Does it really need more twisting? I'll have to look for that one.

@Thaliat: I've heard Christopher Clark's name somewhere before... I just can't recall where...

Holy flippin' A...you've actually heard of him?!? eek
We went to college together, and happened to be in a couple of the same writing courses. Not friends or anything like that, in fact I recall almost walking out of a class because of him once...but he's not a bad guy. His book was pretty good.  

[xDarkPisces]

I read the Hitchhiker's Guide and the Restaurant, but I'm sorry to say I don't remember much of either. I'll have to look into those. Perhaps the base library has them. I do remember them being quite off the wall. 3nodding

And yes, Thal, I think I heard about him sometime last year. My Honors Lit. teacher was the most well-read person I knew at the time, and she spoke briefly about him. Unfortunately, memory fails me miserably, and I can't remember what all she was talking about. It's pretty cool that you went to school with a [famous] writer.  

[wakusei]

There will also be a more official sixth book of the Hitchhiker's books called And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer.

Guess we'll have to see how that turns out....


Although it amuses me how the cover says "part 6 of 3" whee

 

[Roland Karloseth]

I'm currently hosting a contest in the ATG clan...

So Colfer is picking up the series? That makes me curious enough to want to read that series now.

...The prize is 5k. Why not swing by and check it out?

 

[Taeryyn]

The final Wheel of Time book is being written by Brandon Sanderson. I'm kind of scared to see how it turns out, but after slogging through 11 of those books, I really just want to see the story tied up, well-written or not. xp

As much as I enjoyed the Wheel of Time series, I wouldn't recommend them to many people. The story kind of got convoluted and dragged out.  

[Catalog Cats]

I highly recommend The Last Aprrentice by Joseph Delaney. It's a series of five books at the moment, and is my absolute favorite thing to read. It's about this guy named Tom who is apprenticed to the local Spook, who's job it is to rid the area of creepy-crawlies. The most interesting feature of the books is the continuing sub-plot about Tom's friend Alice. It's very well-written.  

[Chexley]

After the first couple of posts, I began to wonder if I should even bother posting here. I'm far from being a well-read individual.

I stick to one genre and that's romance. I have a couple of science fiction novels, but I'm sure they're from an author not a whole know or don't like (Anne McCaffery). I like the predictable, cheesy and idiot-males that run amok in romance novels. In other words, I read smut. whee

Also, I don't visit the book store often enough. When I do visit this one store called West Book Exchange, my grandmother's always asking me if I'm done yet. So. I'm always rushed to find what I want immediately. *Sighs.* Because I know I'm rushed, the only time I know my parents will tolerate me browsing is when my birthday's coming and Christmas.  

[Sentama Lin]

The Moonstone
By Wilkie Collins

Considered to be the first English mystery novel, the Moonstone is an epistolary novel concerning the disappearance of a precious Indian gem -- called the Moonstone -- from the hands of its current owner, a young Miss Rachel Verinder, who received the stone (possibly with the mere motive of aggravating the young miss's mother) from a family friend on Miss Verinder's date of birth. Mysteriously, the stone disappears from Miss Verinder's possession and the entire family and guests of the estate charge themselves to finding the whereabouts of the stone. The novel ends in a very strange twist involving the use of Opium, which was common during the time in which this book was written.

As Tsuji-kun has mentioned in the Phunkeh Thread many nights past, the book is quite dry and quite saturated in British lexicon and mannerisms. I pray, no, beg you to consider reading it regardless; I promise an amusing storyline with love, murder, and unexpected happiness intermingled in the words and the letters of each person writing in the book (yes, the book is a collection of letters, diary entries, and other accounts written by the other characters).

Each character, I believe, under all the stuffiness of Romantic-Era English, is wonderfully entrenched in qualities that make them all equally lovable, and equally capable of being the victim in the story. I imagine people sympathising with the feelings of Miss Rachel Verinder; Mr. Franklin Blake, her love; Rosanna Spearman, a lame servant with an infatuation for Mr. Blake; Gabriel Betteredge, the family's head servant; Miss Drusilla Clack, a "Jehova's Witness" kind of person; and all the others that appear in the story.

So. Yeah. Read. Enjoy. It's a public domain work, so I guarantee that it will be freely found somewhere on the Internet -- most likely Project Gutenberg. But there's nothing like having the physical book in your hands.

When We Were Orphans
石黒 一雄（カズオ・イシグロ） -- Kazuo Ishiguro

If you haven't noticed by that first review, I'm a bit of a Mystery Novel nut. I've read the complete adventures of Sherlock Holmes when I was but a wee child, and it's something that has always interested me. I will regret, however, that I read When We Were Orphans as a requirement for a class rather than for my own enjoyment. However, after returning to it, with the eyes of reading for reading's sake, I found it to be an excellent novel concerning one man's desire to be reunited once more to his parents.

Christopher Banks was separated, at a young age, from his parents in China. At a young age he could not comprehend exactly why his parents disappeared, but he made it a goal to eventually find them. Many many years pass, and Banks is now an adult and a detective working in England. One day he finds information that could lead him, finally, toward the whereabouts of his parents.

This is less of a mystery novel, I own, than the Moonstone, but an aire of mystery still surrounds it. Instead, I found much revelry in Christopher Bank's collection of the events of his childhood, and how his character develops as a child to an adult. It felt so incredibly human to read the events as Banks narrated it; one could almost feel pity for the man when he loses some control of his high-British-bred logic near the climax of the story.

Again, an excellent read -- especially for the people who would prefer a more contemporary novel rather than the stuffy classic that is The Moonstone.  

[Slightly Blue]

Mm, books. heart

I thought that Dead Witch Walking, by Kim Harrison, was really good. It's the first book in the Hollows series. It's about Rachel Morgan, a witch working for the IS. (Inderland Security) When she quits, they send out a death threat on her. With the help of her new friends and partners, Ivy and Jenks, she works to get the death threat removed.  

[124-C]

So I just finished Virtual Light by William Gibson. Chevette Washington (a bike messenger) and Berry Rydell (an ex-cop turned private security officer) end up at the wrong end of pursuit when Chevette steals a seemingly innocuous pair of dark-rimmed glasses... It was enjoyable, but I wouldn't recommend it to a first time Gibson reader. I think Pattern Recognition (Cayce Pollard, an advertising consultant, is contracted to find the source of a series of mysterious viral videos that have been popping up around the web), or what he's best known for, Neuromancer.

Anyway, I'm also reading American Lion by Jon Meacham (a biography about Andrew Jackson), Getting Things Done by David Allen, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. At this point I cannot recommend One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at all, as I have been struggling to finish it for about a year and a half now simply as a matter of principle.