posted by justincredible

Just started The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe.

Recently finished this and The Sovereign Individual.

Just started Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson the other day.

posted by Zunardo

Just finished "Recursion" by Blake Crouch last night - wow.  

Recursion was Dark Matter squared.  Actually, it was "Dark Matter" meets "Groundhog Day" meets "Next" (Nicholas Cage movie).  This was a bit more difficult to grasp, there are a few websites that do a great job breaking down the plot intricacies.  One guy built a chart with all of the timelines so you could see how they lined up. 

Educational bonus:  I learned about DMT.

I am a huge sci-fi fan, about to start the last book in the Ender's Game series in a few weeks when it finally arrives called The Last Shadow.

Loved all of Michael Crichton books before he passed.

Never heard of these 2, Dark Matter and Recursion.  Is there anything I need to read before Dark Matter or is that the "first" in the series? I may go get that tonight to read while I am waiting for The Last Shadow to arrive.

A long time ago, I'd bought a pair of anthologies edited by Marvin Kaye (Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural AND Devils and Demons). Basically collections of horror, fantasy and the like from the 1800s to 1980s. Found he put together a lot more of these, so I bought five online and am going through Weird Tales -- a collection of stories published in the various forms of that classic magazine.

posted by justincredible

Read the first two Jack Reacher novels recently. Not bad.

I loved most of the Jack Reacher books. To be honest, after about 8 or so though the writing and the stories become redundant.

I mean you can only be told about how a punch is thrown for 3 paragraphs so many times. And basically its the "same" story each time, he arrives into some random town that has some form of corruption, and he kills a bunch of people on his way to fix the corruption. He has sex with some hot woman during all of this and then leaves town.

All 15 or whatever books are the same in that regard. 

posted by Zunardo

Finished all three books in the "Wayward Pines" trilogy by Blake Crouch over the weekend.  Very, very well done.  My only complaint was that last postscript "chapter" at the end of "The Last Town", just leaves you begging for a fourth book to follow.

Just read the plot, almost has a "Stranger Things" feel to it, I have never read anything from Blake, but between this trilogy and Dark Matter/Recursion that I have read the reviews on this thread, I will have to check his stuff out.

posted by jmog

Never heard of these 2, Dark Matter and Recursion.  Is there anything I need to read before Dark Matter or is that the "first" in the series? I may go get that tonight to read while I am waiting for The Last Shadow to arrive.

They are unrelated, just written by the same guy. Both stand-alone stories. Both excellent.

Project Hail Mary is one of the better sci-fi books I've read.

Bout to start Outlaw Platoon from Sean Parnell. Been killing Connelly’s Bosch books but the library sucks.

Just read Greenlights, it was good, not great. 

posted by justincredible

Project Hail Mary is one of the better sci-fi books I've read.

Hah!  I didn't see your post until just now.  Happened to see this book at the library the same day as your post.  Looked interesting, checked it out.  And it is very interesting.  

I didn't recognize the name of author Andy Weir until I read the jacket synopsis and it mentioned his earlier work.  I read "The Martian" after that movie came out.  Interesting to some similarity between that and "Project Hail Mary".

I started his other novel Artemis the other day. So far, so good. I’m about 25% finished. 

Just got my order for the final installment in the Ender’s Game series. Just released The Last Shadow which ties the two series’ (Ender and Shadow) together. 

I don’t see myself doing much more other than reading it this weekend. I have been waiting for this book for like 8+ years since I finished the Shadow series.

Have to pick back up on The Expanse.  Read season 6 in the books, and it threw me a bit with one composite character [in the tv adaptation] but otherwise it was great.

I'll watch the new season, but for me the show has been more good than great.  I've got 3 more books and a couple of shorts.  Cool that there's still a ton of story available after the series ends.

I'm a big fan of The Expanse show but haven't read any of the books. I'll get to them at some point.

posted by justincredible

I'm a big fan of The Expanse show but haven't read any of the books. I'll get to them at some point.

I watched the first 5 seasons, which apparently track closely with the books.  Had little trouble jumping straight to book #6, once I figured out Drummer on the series is a composite of Drummer and another captain in the book.

Five Families by Selwin Raab. 

A comprehensive history of the American Mafia.  It’s not an academic history; it’s a narrative.  If you find Mafia stuff interesting, you will love it.  I’ve found most Mafia “memoirs” are mainly bullshit written by guys who revise history and watched too many Mob films.  This book is great because you see who the real brains are (early bosses and capos) and who are the knuckle draggers (recent bosses and capos like Gotti and Gravano).  5/5

Currently reading Billy Summers by Stephen King. 

Reading a few collections of short stories in the general classification of horror.

A bunch compiled by a dude named Marvin Kaye. I'd had a couple of them for years and just recently found that he'd compiled a lot of them, so I Amazon'd five more of them. Most of the stories in each of them tend to be written between 1800-1960, so there's a lot of more classic tales (well, that might not be the best term, as he tends to prefer more obscure tales by those writers instead of their most popular ones) mixed in with stuff that's at least modern in comparison.

Also working through the short stories of Thomas Ligotti. Interesting guy. Basically a shut-in due to anxiety, agorophobia, depression and bipolar. His stories fit into weird fiction bordering on Lovecraftian where they feel like surreal nightmares at times. Most of his stuff had been super-rare for ages, but over the past decade or so, a fair amount of it has been mass produced so I can get my hands on it for less than $150-170 a book.

After that, I think I'll go back through the heyday of Clive Barker (Books of Blood, Hellbound Heart -- which Hellraiser was based on --, The Damnation Game, Weaveworld and so on) since I recently bought the handful of books from that time period that I didn't already own.

The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson

Yeah I rarely read but I got this for Christmas….it sat by my recliner until about mid February but I very much enjoyed it. A crazy amount of digging and research for the hundreds of stories. Some absolutely crazy things to believe he did and some others you just could see him doing.

The track and field stories might be the most impressive of all of them.