Read any good books lately?

Good man. I pick up the Believer, but only have a few copies of the Quarterly roaming around.

I don't remember so much being scared as having a lot of WTF moments. I mostly appreciate it because it's so thought out and layered. Also, I have to love what he does visually with the text in the 2nd half of the book.

I think he's talking about GoT. 3rd book is great. I'm halfway through the fourth one and not really motivated to finish it, but that might be because I spend all my free time watching The Wire now.

I was. Didn't realize how confusing my post was until reading it now.

Tackling this finally, and it's very, very, good.

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I concur. The descriptions of hell and the various demons (every demon or devil from every mythology throughout time wanders through hell) are a blast.

OOOO Chuck Palahniuk! I HAVE to get that one. I remember reading one of his and then Maynard and I went on a binge reading everything we could get our hands on, written by him.

Side not "The Spiral Staircase" was amazing. The first 2/3 of the book are very personal and she goes around with the ideas on religion and adapting to not having a religion. She seamlessly transitions the last 1/3 of the book into sort of a thought provoking internal dialogue on god/religion. I felt like she left herself out of the ending of the book a little. I could identify with her losing her religion but still not definite on what is actually going on. I've picked up her book "History of God" which i'm just about 50 pages in.

I read Inherent Vice last year, after I heard PT Anderson was going to make a film version of it, and I didn't enjoy it all that much. Gravity's rainbow is supposed to be the one book of Pynchon's to read though.

Can you renew it even though it's a new release?

And theshining, I think out of all of his books, that's supposed to be the most atypical. It was his take on the detective novel, and while I've heard good things about it personally, I can understand not liking that one. I'd try Crying of Lot 49 next actually, it's a lot shorter and in my opinion very good.

Gravity's Rainbow is turning into one of my favorite novel I've ever read. I'm only about 300 hundred pages into it (this thing is dense) but it's definitely lived up to the impossible standards I had put upon it.

You might want to plug away then.

I don't have any plans this weekend so I hope to get a good chunk read by then.

I am still chipping away at this. No mortal can finish this in two weeks...I am enjoying it, but it is a mental obstacle course.

Started Naked Lunch today and got about a quarter of the way and all I can say is wtf. It's like if Super jail was a book. Its good, though. I think. It's definitely an addictive read. Blood Meridian is next, then 1q84.

I'm curious on updates on Gravity's Rainbow, nod. Something I tried to read when I was probably 18, but it was just too dense for me at the time.

James Rollins - Sigma Series



An inexplicable explosion rocks the antiquities collection of a London museum, setting off alarms in clandestine organizations around the world. And now the search for answers is leading Lady Kara Kensington; her friend Safia al-Maaz, the gallery’s brilliant and beautiful curator; and their guide, the international adventurer Omaha Dunn, into a world they never dreamed existed: a lost city buried beneath the Arabian desert.



The crime is inhumanly cruel with horrific consequences both unthinkable and inevitable. During a service at a cathedral in Cologne, Germany, a band of armed intruders dressed in monk's robes unleashes a nightmare of blood and terror, ruthlessly gunning down worshippers and clergy alike. The killers haven’t come for the church’s gold and valuable artwork, but for a priceless treasure secreted within: the preserved bones of the Three Magi who once came to pay homage to a newborn savior. As they flee the carnage they have wrought, they carry a prize that could reshape the world.



In the mountains of Nepal...in a remote monastery, Buddhist monks inexplicably turn to cannibalism and torture – while Painter Crowe, director of Sigma Force, begins to show signs of the same baffling, mind-destroying malady...and Lisa Cummings, a dedicated American doctor, becomes the target of a brutal, clandestine assassin.



Operatives of the shadowy covert organization Sigma Force, Dr. Lisa Cummings and Monk Kokkalis search for answers to the bizarre affliction aboard a cruise liner transformed into a makeshift hospital. But a sudden and savage attack by terrorist hijackers turns the mercy ship into a floating bio-weapons lab.



From ancient Greek temples to glittering mausoleums, from the slums of India to the toxic ruins of Russia, two men must race against time to solve a mystery that dates back to the first famous oracle of history - the Greek Oracle of Delphi.



Sigma Force confronts humankind's greatest threat in an adventure that races from the Roman Coliseum to the icy peaks of Norway, from the ruins of medieval abbeys to the lost tombs of Celtic kings. The ultimate nightmare is locked within a talisman buried by a dead saint—an ancient artifact known as the Doomsday Key.



Deep in the Rocky Mountains, a gruesome discovery—hundreds of mummified bodies—stir international attention and fervent controversy. Despite doubts to the bodies’ origins, the local Native American Heritage Commission lays claim to the prehistoric remains, along with the strange artifacts found in the same cavern: gold plates inscribed with an unfathomable script.