Favorite Books and Current Reads

[noodles]

tib, thats a pretty tough novel to read as your first...I think it's too tough for a lot of native english speakers. but if you can get through it, that's good

right now I'm reading a ton of books about ancient greece for a presentation on greek theater

[Maxine MagicFox]

Victor Hugo or an Alexandre Dumas might be better, I think. Also I think determination and the interest in the story is probably the greater deciding factor, really.

[Kimiko]

Reading something like Moby Dick as your first book might be a little much, but in general, reading lots of books can improve your proficiency at a language quite a lot.

And then you have a language like Japanese, where you need to learn so many kanji to read even simple books.. >_<

[PLA]

^ Ahh, it's fine. Just do the thing. Ahab fights a big fish. Go. The wheel of fate is turning.

[Maxine MagicFox]

^ What PLA said. I started reading Shakespeare when I was young. I've never once felt that I should have been detered from reading one author or another. I always had the interest in the story. Sure there were some lines that was like "huh? ... whatever, moving on." Seriously, just do the best you can and more importantly > enjoy the story.

[Archaic Sage]

You've got to read who you like, not for status or to say you've read person X, reading should and is a pleasure but that's destroyed by snobbery and pride.

I'm reading with Wolves of London at the moment, not my normal sort of book - modern day horror, but brilliant nevertheless.

[zamisk]

I didn't like 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially the ending. Now I'm reading Catch-22. It's not as funny as Hitch Hikers Guide, but I'm still enjoying it.

[noodles]

[zamisk]

I still need to see the movie, but the book wasn't very good.

[Trifkin]

I ended up devouring Ancillary Justice and its sequel, Ancillary Sword. I loved them both and can't wait for the third book to come out. I think it's coming October or November of this year, so I have plenty of time to re-read the first two. This is swiftly shaping up to become one of my favorite sci-fi trilogies ever, if the third is as good as the others.

[Archaic Sage]

Wolves of London was awesome and I recommend it highly. Very interesting and an easy read at the same time. Looking forward to the second one in the series being released.

I'm now reading the second Game of Thrones book. It's good .

[zamisk]

Summer reading! I found a list of the funniest books ever written and bought some of them, as well Dune and 2001. I've already read the whole Hitchhiker's series, and just finished Catch-22. I also included 2001 because I already read it this summer.

I used to read a stack of books like this in a week or two, but since getting into comics I barely read books, so this will be nice.

[Zypose]

Well, i'm reading one of my favorite books again, this time as a book report for summer school. I'm reading Holes by Louis Sachar. still one of my favorite book, and it'll make this report easy

[zamisk]

This summer I've read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy again, Catch-22, Good Omens, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and I'm half-done Dune. It's so nice reading books again!

For comics, besides my monthly titles, I bought a bunch of Image stuff. Black Science, Low, Deadly Class, and Shutter.

Black Science is an instant favorite, it's about a team that has a alternate reality teleportation device that breaks and sends them to different realities at random. They have to make it back to the machine before it teleports away again. The story and characters are excellent, and the art is top-notch. 10/10.

Low and Deadly Class are by the same guy as Black Science. Low is kind of like Bioshock 1 and 2, just more depressing, and Deadly Class is an assassin high school in the 80's, complete with acid trips and crazy action scenes. Deadly Class is complex, and it still has me realizing stuff a few weeks after I read it. The same author has a series about alien fighting called Fear Agent I want to collect next.

Shutter is very cool, it follows the adventures of a 20-something retired adventurer. The world has a little of every genre living in it. She gets attacked by ghosts, aliens, and anthropomorphic assassins all at one time, for example. It's excellent so far, and I didn't get the second trade paper back yet.

Also while I'm recommending this stuff, Saga is excellent. It's a scifi epic, and the artist is a graduate of my art college. It is written by one of my favorite writers, Brian K. Vaughn. (The guy who did Runaways, Trifkin.) There's about to be a fifth trade paper back, so now's a good time to catch up before it comes out.

The best part about Image comics is that most of their first volume trade paper backs are $10 instead of the standard $20, so it's so easy to try all these out. If anyone who reads this is interested in non-superhero comics, any of these or basically anything else Image is gold right now. Give comics a go!

[Trifkin]

I've read the first trade of Saga and loved it. I'm waiting until it's all finished, though, so I can burn through the whole story at once.

As for comics, I am still reading Ms. Marvel and it is still excellent. I also just picked up the first two issues of A-Force, to which I look forward.

For books, I just picked up 5 at a comic convention here in Houston over the weekend, and all of them signed and inscribed. I got:

Daughter of Athena by my high school Latin teacher! Andrea Stehle
Haywire by Justin Macumber, who gave it to me for free because he's ridiculously sweet
Forge of Ashes by Josh Vogt, who was super nice and SO easy on the eyes, good lord
Dead of Night, by Jonathan Maberry who was extremely nice and told me he wrote that book as a sort of response to his buddy George Romero's lack of scientific explanation in his zombie movies, and they may be in talks about doing a tv pilot for it together
and finally, Second Paradigm, by Peter Wacks, who is a fellow time travel nut