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[Sheb]

That was apretty damn good book.

I just finished Poor Economics by Esther Duflo and an Indian guy whose name I can't remember. Abhijit something. Really great book about aid, because it's evidence-based: most of it come from randomized controlled trials she or other researcher did. Man, I love evidence.

[vagel7]

The Good Firm was a truly excellent book that illustrated the past, the present and the possible future. The book is written from the firms perspective, as if the firm was alive. Between the lines it is a philosophical book on society. I recommend it to everybody and it should be available in English on the author's website.

Spoiler: 4/52 (click to show/hide)

1.A Dance With Dragons - George R.R. Martin - 959 pages
2.Diamonds are Forever - Ian Fleming - 304 pages
3.A Rakvere novel(Rakvere romaan) - Jaan Kross - 372 pages
4.The Good Firm(Hea firma) - Armin Kõomägi - 150 pages

Next stop, The Cossacks by Lev Tolstoi.

[Dutchling]

Started reading short horror stories by Lovecraft.
So far they're... well short. Just when the horror bit is supposed to start it ends. The only fun thing so far is a cat called Nigger-Man xD.

[The Darkling Wolf]

Haven't had a huge amount of time to read, so I've only managed to finish 2 so far.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Nineteen Eighty Four & Animal Farm - George Orwell (Lumping them together because Animal Farm was really short)
Foundation - Isaac Asimov

Also finished:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For The Emperor - Sandy Mitchell
Caves of Ice - Sandy Mitchell

[Sappho]

Started reading short horror stories by Lovecraft.
So far they're... well short. Just when the horror bit is supposed to start it ends. The only fun thing so far is a cat called Nigger-Man xD.

Lovecraft is... Not so horrifying, and is fond of stinger scares and closures at the very end. Read him for his style, his literal depictions, not in search of scares or fears. He's definitely one of my favorite authors simply because of what he does with his words and how he flexes his vocabulary in a most pleasing manner.

Agreed. Also, his stories about dreams are far more impressive to me than any of his horror works. "The Quest of Iranon" made me cry the first time I read it, and "The Silver Key" fills me up with happy.

It is sometimes amusing to read through all this buildup and then get to the end and it's like "And then it turned out he was a FOREIGNER!!! OOOoooOOOooooOOOOOOooooooOOOOOOoooooo....."

[Scelly9]

Terry Pratchett is a friggin genius.

[Rose]

Terry Pratchett is a friggin genius.

Also water is wet.

And fire tends to get a little warm.

[Flying Dice]

Stahlkönigin and the preceding few short stories.
~76,500 words (plus whatever the shorts were)
27/1/13


Decided to take a break from paper for a few hours. Decent story, the author captured the characters fairly well. The writing was technically competent and moderately involving. Not terribly complex, but not bad either. B+

[Sappho]

I'm noticing an interesting pattern of taking 3-4 days to get through the first half of a book, then reading the entire second half in one day.

7 books so far:
Junky (William S. Burroughs) - 256 pages
Sourcery (Terry Pratchett) - 270 pages
The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm (Nancy Farmer) - 310 pages
American Gods - Author's Preferred Text (Neil Gaiman) - 650 pages
Hell - Robert Olen Butler - 232 pages
Seven Emus - Xavier Herbert - 175 pages
Jamestown - Matthew Sharpe - 327 pages

Jamestown was another re-read from years ago, found at a secondhand shop like so many of my books. It's very graphic (violently and sexually) and very interesting and occasionally funny. Not a bad read, all in all.

[i2amroy]

Book 6 finished. A rather interesting book that I haven't read for a while, Lear's Daughters, coming in at 739 pages.

Spoiler: Books Finished (click to show/hide)

Valentine's Exile - E.E. Knight
Valentine's Resolve - E.E. Knight
Fall With Honor - E.E. Knight
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein
When Darkness Falls - Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory
Lear's Daughters - Marjorie Kellogg with William Rossow

Total Pages: 2732

[Sheb]

Just finished yet another book, Paulo Coelho 11 minutes.

Spoiler: 5/104 (click to show/hide)

1- Writer at War, Vassili Grossman
2- Les Grands Mythes de l'Histoire de Belgique
3- Martin Luther King
4- Poor Economics, Esther Duflo
5- Eleven minutes, Paulo Coelho

[Dutchling]

Just finished Call of Cthulhu. Compared to what I expected, it is abosolutely rubbish >.<

It's not bad, I'm just wondering where the awesome Lovecraftian stories are I was promised D:  , I guess this will be one of the books I will read solely because it is such a classic. I do agree with some earlier poster that his writing style is excellent, although I hope at least on of these short stories will actually continue after the main character discovers some hideous evil.

[Absolute Niro]

Just finished Call of Cthulhu. Compared to what I expected, it is abosolutely rubbish >.<

It's not bad, I'm just wondering where the awesome Lovecraftian stories are I was promised D:  , I guess this will be one of the books I will read solely because it is such a classic. I do agree with some earlier poster that his writing style is excellent, although I hope at least on of these short stories will actually continue after the main character discovers some hideous evil.

In my opinion Lovecraft's stories aren't all that interesting, it's more the universe itself I like. Similar to how I think Twilight is a pretty bad series but I still love the take on vampires as more than night creatures with human jewellery.

I wonder if there's a genre of books that are basically just world building for other media to use. The Cthulhu mythos would kinda fit there, I think.

[fqllve]

Couple days late on this one, but shh, shh. Gonna read something short this week so I can catch up.

-- Week of Jan. 20th

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake [9/10]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

When I first heard of this I thought it was a modern book, but in truth it was published nearly a decade before Lord of the Rings. The book is absolutely amazing, one of the finest fantasy novels I have ever read. Peake's writing is masterful, his descriptions a thorough, unique, and informative while also capturing the decrepit and strange beauty of the castle in which the novel is set. His characters are both hilarious, and poignantly humanistic, and while each and every one of them is flat in the most Dickensian way, they have that same quality of Dickensian empathy that makes them so real in spite of the limitations of their characterization. I've read few books that made me laugh even half as much while being so simultaneously tragic, and none of them had the wondrous prose that Titus Groan has. The book, and its sequels, seem relatively obscure, which is a damn shame because I would rate it as one of the finest pieces of literature of the 20th century. Absolutely astounding and deserves a place not only in the canon of fantasy, but the canon of general literature as well. A masterwork of imagination.

[Cthulhu]

Lovecraft isn't the best.  It's his style that makes it good, a kind of clinical prose up until the Big Scary happens, where it becomes suddenly visceral which, for me at least, gives it this kind of dolly zoom effect that intensifies the moment.  But no, he's not the best and his imitators later on have been pretty lame, August Derleth in particular really diluted the horror with his elementals and war in heaven.

Almost finished with The House of Mirth.  Something's happened, I've finally regained what I thought was gone forever:  I read when I didn't have to, and had other things I could have done.  Because I wanted to.  This class reads some sad books, yo.  I'll be going to Half-Price Books soon and picking up a big pile of awful pulp novels from the 80s and 90s to inflate my book count, as well as my book shelf.

Finished with that.

Spoiler: 2/52 (click to show/hide)

The Octopus - Frank Norris
House of Mirth - Edith Wharton

Working on A Moveable Feast now, and starting on The Rise of David Levinsky soon.