What have you been reading?

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I've been reading the collected Avengers vs Thanos from the 1970s. I've just finished the arc where Adam Warlock is the hero and Adam Warlock-with-a-white-man-afro is the villain. Gamorra is part of it, and keeps musing aloud about how hot she is. Thanos' spaceship has an automatic cigar dispenser. The bad-guy plots are long, and unnecessarily convoluted.

I'm enjoying it, but I have to take it in stages because it's so so so self-serious and so cheesy.
 
I've been reading the collected Avengers vs Thanos from the 1970s. I've just finished the arc where Adam Warlock is the hero and Adam Warlock-with-a-white-man-afro is the villain. Gamorra is part of it, and keeps musing aloud about how hot she is. Thanos' spaceship has an automatic cigar dispenser. The bad-guy plots are long, and unnecessarily convoluted.

I'm enjoying it, but I have to take it in stages because it's so so so self-serious and so cheesy.

I just read the original Warlock comics from the 70s that crossed-over with The Avengers. I find them charming in their stoned kiddie psychedelia.

Just started listening to the audiobook of Malcolm McDowell's 'Creature-from-the-Black-Lagoon crossed with a multi-generational Souther Gothic' epic novel Blackwater. It is excellent so far, McDowell, best known for writing the original script for Beetlejuice, is an elegant prose writer with a great sense of character and place. Oh and a few kids get eaten alive here and there.

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Also found these two Fighting Fantasy paperbacks at reasonable prices.

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PS. For some reason this thread never shows up in my feed along with the other threads I post in. Anyone finding that?
 
I find them charming in their stoned kiddie psychedelia.
That's a really good way of putting it.
PS. For some reason this thread never shows up in my feed along with the other threads I post in. Anyone finding that?
You might have accidentally clicked to take it off your watched thread list. In the upper right corner of the thread page is a button that says either "Watch" (if you're not watching) or "Unwatch" (if you are). Toggle that sucker if you need to.
 
...Malcolm McDowell's 'Creature-from-the-Black-Lagoon crossed with a multi-generational Souther Gothic' epic novel Blackwater. It is excellent so far, McDowell, best known for writing the original script for Beetlejuice, is an elegant prose writer with a great sense of character and place.
And all this time I thought he was just an actor!
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Kilkenny is an inteloper in a brewing Texas range war, but there's something else going on beneath the surface. About 1/3 of the way through. Good story.
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Dug out my old Flaming Carrot collection...including the extra-special "I Cloned Hitler's Feet" and "Fearless Umpire Killers" stories featuring the Mysterymen. Now I kinda want to run a Mysterymen-style game of third-stringer milltown super heroes.
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Trying very hard to get into some Lankhmar but I'm finding The Snow Women bloody hard going :crossed:
I eventually gave up and skipped it. Terribly boring story. Could not get through it. Worst part is, in the anthology I have the tales are presented in chronological order in the characters' lives (which I detest) rather than the order of publication (which I prefer), so I wonder how many readers were turned off because the first tale in the book is not a good one.
 
I finished Frankenstein, after forgetting about it all these years. It's good. :thumbsup: And very much a product of the Romantic movement, a delightful revelation of horror within the aesthetics' own philosophy of 'self overburdened by awareness of self'.

It should not be in the Young Adult section of the library, though. :blah: It's aged a bit where it has an uphill climb to reach the youth in love of reading. Several of the elements require a maturity and patience I don't think this age can support. I would rather kids like reading first for fun than grind through grandiloquent exegesis of human nature metaphors. ( :goof: Yes, I have lowered expectation for the young adult children.)
 
I would rather kids like reading first for fun than grind through grandiloquent exegesis of human nature metaphors.
I wonder if it would encourage kids to read classics if we actively limited their access. "Oh, you're too young for Dracula, it's not for kids - here's a comic book. No, no...wait until you're 18."
 
I blame Voros Voros' new thread for making me dig out and re-read my Sinbad novels.
On a related note, anybody who wants to read the Arabian Nights I'd really recommend Malcolm C. Lyons and Ursula Lyons translation. The notes alone are wonderful and the intro really sets up the Arabic world in which it was written.

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I wonder if it would encourage kids to read classics if we actively limited their access. "Oh, you're too young for Dracula, it's not for kids - here's a comic book. No, no...wait until you're 18."

"It is forbidden, young padawan. This knowledge is too much for you at this time. You must be more well read to withstand its message." :devil: Reading as forbidden fruit and privilege, mwa ha ha ha!
 
I wonder if it would encourage kids to read classics if we actively limited their access. "Oh, you're too young for Dracula, it's not for kids - here's a comic book. No, no...wait until you're 18."
I did all my classic reading as a kid. Now I'm older I don't have the patience for puzzling out archaic language. (Plus I live with a woman and three cats so five minutes uninterrupted is a luxury.)
 
I wonder if it would encourage kids to read classics if we actively limited their access. "Oh, you're too young for Dracula, it's not for kids - here's a comic book. No, no...wait until you're 18."

It will vary. If the kids come from an an environment/culture that doesn’t value reading, then....success is going to be limited.

I have had success using the No Fear version of The Scarlet Letter. One class is completely into the soap opera aspects and the drama/tension. Another could care less and the third, about 2/3rds are digging the story. They like being able to see a “modern” translation of the original and several have started to decode the original text as we progress through the novel.

Rob
 
Work has been keeping me from fun reading, but I have managed to get into book two of THE MAGICIANS trilogy, and so far so good. There's a lot more D&D influence than I would have guessed from the little snippets in the TV show, fun stuff.
 
This one promises to be a bit different based on the back-cover copy about a theater troupe trying to get to Alder Gulch and a couple of dangerous men get drawn into it for reasons of their own. Looks to take place in Wyoming and Dakota Territory. Sometimes I choose which L'Amour novel to read next just based on the map on the inside front pages: some days you feel like New Mexico, other days you feel like Wyoming!
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I just finished Gulliver's Travels, The Battle of the Books, and A Modest Proposal. It's funny how little things have changed. I laughed out loud a number of times. Still, Swift was a bit off base about Newton and Boyle and their theories.
 
Work has been keeping me from fun reading, but I have managed to get into book two of THE MAGICIANS trilogy, and so far so good. There's a lot more D&D influence than I would have guessed from the little snippets in the TV show, fun stuff.
I was never able to love this series so much because the protagonist(s) is(are) fairly unlikable. I haven't seen the show, just read the books. It always felt too much like a snarky parody of Harry Potter and Narnia.
 
I was never able to love this series so much because the protagonist(s) is(are) fairly unlikable. I haven't seen the show, just read the books. It always felt too much like a snarky parody of Harry Potter and Narnia.
The characters are complex, for sure. I find most of them likable at least some of the time, but I can see why you wouldn't.

I don't actually see much HP in these books, other than the basic idea of a school for magicians (which takes up far less of the books than it does in the show) and a couple of self-deprecating jokes.

The Narnia stuff, absolutely; it's the premise of the whole trilogy. However, I don't see it as parody so much as deconstruction, and even then as one possible example of a certain kind of fantasy literature that the author is critiquing, and I think in an interesting and legitimate way.
 
For a leadership class I've been reading a surreal book called "Zapp!"
It's a guide to being a better manager, written as a fable. It's both hilarious and somewhat enlightening.
In what little free time I have these days I've been reading "Mordenkainen's Tome of Foe's", which I recently purchased.
I'm loving it so far, the extended bestiary was the original reason I got it in the first place and the writings on the 9 hell's and the Gith were an added bonus. And it's got stats for the Giff, my all time favorite loudmouthed explosive hippo-men!
I'm thinking of reading "The Postman" for the first time, which is somewhat strange because I grew up in the town where Kevin Cosner filmed his ill-fated movie of the same name.
 
Was reading The Dragon's Legacy by Deborah A Wolf. It looked to be a really cool non western fantasy.

But....it's too much hard work. The amount of proprietary dialogue exposition and terminology is too much for me. The story, 150 pages in, doesn't appear to be coalescing.

I think I'ma DNF
 
Still working my way through THE MAGICIANS trilogy, slowly - not because of the book, just busy / tired. It's making me reflect a bit on my reading habits. I used to read a blank-ton of fiction and literature when I was younger, but I've really fallen out of the habit. I think I just don't like a lot of the stuff that I used to, or a lot of the stuff I think I ought to. I'm not sure if I need to keep looking for new stuff that I might like, or just admit that I'm not really a fiction / literature guy anymore, and stick to reading things that I know I'm interested in (philosophy, music history, etc.). First World problems, I know ...
 
I picked up the Hellboy omnibuses recently since they were on sale thanks to the new movie. Just finished volume 1 with Seed of Destruction and Wake the Devil.
 
Since The Law at Randado was really good, I'm reading another Elmore Leonard Western:
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Watched the tail end of the great movie The Last Days of Disco since a TV channel was playing it while I was folding clothes. Now I'm going to have to re-read The Last Days of Disco with Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards, one of the few books I have in first edition, although in this case it's probably the only edition. The novel is from the perspective of the Jimmy Steinway character and has a final chapter wherein he attends the movie of his book, and then an epilogue. Good stuff.
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Re-reading Blood Music.
Babel-17 is waiting for its turn:smile:.
 
I've been stuck reading YA books for school... The Book Thief and Upside Down In The Middle Of Nowhere.
I'm hoping to catch up on some more adult fare over Spring Break... finish this one in particular:
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The Bounty Hunters having been a ripping yarn, I'm reading another Elmore Leonard Western:
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It's been a while since I read it, but if memory serves me then, like it's protagonist, this book comes apart a bit at the end.
Kinda:smile:.
Or you could say they became whole:wink:. Depends on your positive thinking, I guess?
 
Those Time Life western books were fantastic but the Gunfighters was my favorite.
 
Got to Babel-17 yesterday morning. Now nearing the middle:grin:.

It would make a GREAT setting for Traveller:tongue:!
 
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