I recently finished Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. It's not my typical genre, but it was quite the odd tale, and I thought it was told very well in first person POV. It was a quick and enjoyable read. Before that it was The Rainmaker. I'm quickly becoming a Grisham fan here. Last month I read Gray Mountain, which was my first Grisham novel. I'm currently working on Ice Hunt, by James Rollins (not a part of the Sigma Force series). I have yet to read anything by Rollins that I haven't enjoyed. I'm current on the Sigma Force series, waiting for the newest book to come out next month.
Red Country by Joe Abercrombie. Also just ordered the Disaster Artist about the making on one of the worst films of all time; The Room.
Masks by E.C. Blake. He's written two more books of this series, so if I enjoy this one I'll have two more books to look forward to! Lowball by Melinda M. Snodgrass, edited by George R.R. Martin. The cover, at least, is very compelling. It's of a dude slinking his way down from a stairwell because the lower half of him is of a ringed snake. (Don't know the type, though, but the body is red with yellow rings touching it.) Darth Plageius by James Luceno
The Steele Remains by Richard Morgan. I needed a fantasy with a gay MC without it being a weird werewolf thing or just sex scenes and this delivers :3
Re-reading (from the beginning) Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series. and On the Move - Oliver Sack's autobiography
Just started Murakami's 1Q84. I liked South of the Border, West of the Sun well enough to commit to all 1156 pages of this beast, apparently. It's nice so far, he does that "slipping bits of fantasy/alt history into a realistic setting but only so you barely notice" thing that I really enjoy.
Still reading The Road. Haven't spent as much time reading lately as I would like, but I also take the blame for not setting more time aside. I'll get through it eventually--I have a some doctor appointments coming up over the next few weeks, and waiting room time is ideal for book readin'. After that I may look to Gaiman's Fragile Things, or I may finally finish the Millennium trilogy. Or something else.
Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. I disliked For Whom the Bell Tolls and my expectations were low so it's not so bad, even if his characters spend most of their time gossiping at cafes and drinking. He has nice clean prose, but from what I've read of him so far, I find his story-telling sort of dull.
Reminds me of my current reading. I'm 80 pages or so, so far, with Lolita. I think things might be about to change. His wife just got hit by the car. But it hasn't earned half the praise yet, imo.
Wish I could help you there, but I hated Lolita. I gave Nabokov another try with Pale Fire, but that was just odd.
Apart from the content, themes, or even the plot, which I thought were fine but could be done a hundred different ways, I just think his writing style and use of language made it enjoyable to read.
Just started -The girl who loved Tom Gordon- by Stephen King. I tried to read this once before but never got into it so I wanted to give it another try.
I decided to try Octavia Butler based off the comments of edamame, Ginger, and Steerpike. I stopped reading Parable of the Sower after about 10 pages, but I'm liking Kindred so far. After I'm finished, I'll probably give Parable another shot at winning me over.
I blew through it too fast to post here while I was still in the process of reading it, but: Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem was pretty great. It's written (well, the translation I read is written) in a straightforward, accessible style that sneaks up on you--you'll be breezing through a chapter and then suddenly one line will make you put it down and go think about it on a mountaintop for a few days. It's a deep examination of the difference between knowledge and belief (and how people act on knowledge and/or belief) but it accomplishes this in a sparsely-worded, aphoristic sort of way. There's a lot of extremely creative speculative science, too.
Just got a book I might be able to read during my WIP because the style and the genre is so completely different. "The third world war - The untold story" by General Sir John Hackett. A might-have-been-story, told more like a cross between memos, scientific information and articles than anything else. Should be interesting. Let's see.
