What are you reading right now?

[Ape]

Hurray for library! I found The Elves of Cintra (the 2nd book after Armageddon's Children) by Terry Brooks today. I'll be starting that a little later. Woot.

[piñata]

I finished Eragon. The pace picked up considerably toward the end... makes me look forward to starting book 2 (I got it for Christmas, but not having finished Eragon yet I didn't start it then).

I'm probably reading too many books right now... might wait on that one for a while. Because of the name of the thread, I'll go ahead and post what I am reading:

It by Stephen King (I'm far enough into it that I'd be finished with an ordinary-sized book, but this one's 1100+ pages so I've still got a ways to go... still, it's about a flesh-eating demon clown, so I really shouldn't complain)
Digital Fortress by Dan Brown (interesting so far, but I just started it... it's about NSA codebreakers)
Mutation by Robin Cook (he writes medical thrillers... this one's supposed to be a modern-day takeoff on Frankenstein)
Wizard and Glass by Stephen King (book 4 of The Dark Tower, highly recommended if you like a little spaghetti western in your dark fantasy novels)
The Diamond Throne by David Eddings (great fantasy author with an awesome sense of humor... this one's book 1 of The Elenium)
King of the Murgos by David Eddings (book 2 of The Malloreon, a different series dealing with different characters but written in a similar style to the other one I'm reading by him)
The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks (his most famous series, your library will probably have it -- if you like his writing style and want to try a more traditional fantasy novel by him, then I'd recommend to you, Ape)
The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time book 3, it's a series Stalin recommended to me and so far he was right, though I've heard from others that it goes downhill around book 5 or 6)
Pillars of Creation by Terry Goodkind (Sword of Truth book 7... I've heard this book is the point where this series goes downhill, but so far -- about three chapters in -- it's pretty good)
The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King (pretty good fantasy book, more kid-friendly than his other work but still has adult overtones)
Skeleton Crew by Stephen King (book of short stories... the one I'm reading right now is The Mist, which they made a movie of last year)
Star Wars: Betrayal by Aaron Allston (my favorite SW writer, another guy with a great sense of humor; this is book one of the Legacy of the Force cycle)
Star Wars: The Unseen Queen by Troy Denning (book 3 of the Swarm War trilogy, which is about carnivorous bugs starting a galactic civil war)
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover (movie novelization, and it's by another of my favorite SW authors)
The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman (His Dark Materials book 1... almost finished, very good so far, it's interesting to see a fantasy story unfold in an almost entirely snow-covered setting)
Hellboy: Unnatural Selection by Tim Lebbon (Ape, you'd probably love this book... lots of action, lots of humor, good solid scary setup)
Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien (great so far, though it retreads some familiar territory from The Silmarillion... still, there's new stuff in here as well)

So yeah... that's 17 books I'm reading right now.

[Ape]

Haha, jesus man, I can't see how someone could do that. Usually when I finish a chapter and have to put the book down, I look forward to continuing the story the next time I have a chance. I couldn't imagine doing that with that many books. Not only that, but I'd probably forget all the minor character names or minor events that happen in the beginning of a book and are mentioned later. I'd get extremely confused trying to do that.

*bows*

The Elves of Cintra is amazing so far. Though, if I was reading 531 books, i'd only be a couple chapter into it right now. =P
Its actually starting to turn into a more traditional fantasy book. I don't want to give away anything, but I can say there are wizard-like people, elves, and there is a fruckin' DRAGON on the back of the book cover. I don't know where the dragon comes from...but its on the back of the book. Armageddon's Children was VERY untraditional, what with it being all post-apocalyptic setting in a modern world with cars and electricity and whatnot. But now it is focusing on the elves. You would never know the real world existed.

My library does carry alot of the Shannara (this series is actually called The Genesis of Shannara by the way) but the books are scattered amongst the various series. I'll have to take some time and see if I can piece a series together in there. I imagine all the books are connected in some way (by setting, atleast) but do you have to read them in any order to comprehend the storyline?
That is a major problem with my library. If its a big series, I probably can't read it.
I looked into Terry Goodkind once. Like everything else, there are a number of those Sword of Truth books, but it is just scattered(I think I may have even posted about this already.)

[piñata]

You did post about the lack of coherency regarding Sword of Truth books at your library. As for Shannara... I don't know how interconnected they are, the one I'm reading right now is my first one. I started in order of publishing date (this one's 1977 I think), which is usually a safe bet unless the series is written out of chronological order (The Chronicles of Narnia comes to mind).

Muffin's the expert on Shannara though, too bad he's not around so we can ask him. I'll drop him an email and see if I can't get a response.

[piñata]

Just to let you know, Ape...

Ok, to begin with, reading the Shannara series by publishing order works fine, as any earlier books were written as prequels, and work fine being read either before or after having read "Sword" and its trilogy.

As for LOTR, I have both the older copies, and one or two of the newer versions, as I couldn't find my old ones when I wanted to re-read them, and they're the same.

This is from an email Morbaruk sent me.

[Ape]

Awesome. I'll just have to hope that the Fellowship shows up so I can finally read those.

I doubt I'll be able to find enough of the Shannara series, but I'll have to look into it.

I finished the Elves of Cintra. Dammit, it sucks so bad that the 3rd book won't be out for awhile (I think I read that it was scheduled for later this year, but I don't remember.) These books are awesome.

I started reading Cell by Stephen King yesterday. I like it, my only complaint is that so far it's taken some 30-40 pages to go through a few minutes of actual time in the book. He puts so much detail in everything (which isn't necessarily a bad thing.) It's definitely very strange, but I guess that's to be expected from him. =P

[piñata]

Yeah, and it gets stranger. But also awesomer.

As far as Shannara goes... I don't know what to tell you. If it's from a series, I usually buy it instead of hoping the library'll have it. I know that's probably not an option for you from a financial standpoint, so I have no idea how to help you get your hands on the books you'd need to read that series.

[Ape]

Spoiler Warning! Italics red text = Cell Spoilers

I finished Cell. Holy shit that was awesome! Blows the Stone War out of the water.


I liked it at first, but what got me hooked was when they started showing signs of intelligence in Tom's back yard, in the garden. Then when they started flocking I was pretty much addicted and couldn't stop reading. Seriously an amazing book. My only complaint is that he forgot to finish it! =P It just ended abruptly and left WAY to many questions unanswered. Like who started it in the first place? (To be honest, at the Academy I sort of started to think it was aliens...) Did they all die or was that just the ones in Maine? And what the fuck happened to Clay's son, it just ended. Are there any more 'normies' left? It was amazing, I just hated how all this stuff was left open...though, my extreme interest in the plot has probably spawned all this curiosity, whereas normally I wouldn't care as much

Anyways, I'll be looking into Stephen King the next chance I get. That book was an addiction, and I want some more.

Today, I just started Dark Lord of Derkholm by Diana Wynne Jones

[piñata]

Dark Lord of Derkholm sounds interesting... I'll have to look for that.

As for other Stephen King books... I can recommend Christine if you like him as a horror writer (that's about a car possessed by a demon), or The Green Mile if you don't mind a bit of a Lifetime-movie feel (compared to his other stuff, it's very much a chick book). Haven't finished any of his other non-Dark Tower books, and the Dark Tower's a 7-part series so it'll likely be hard to find in order at your library.

[Ape]

Dark Lord of Derkholm has a cool title, a cool cover, and a cool idea for a story. But so far, 3 chapters in, I'm already extremely bored and the whole damn thing is completely confusing the hell out of me. Its sort of like picking up the 3rd book of some big series and trying to figure out what's going on. She keeps making references to things that she hasn't explained anything about yet. But I looked it up and it's supposed to be book 1 of 2. Maybe she re-uses the same world over and over so she expects readers to know what she's talking about by the time they read this book. Or maybe she just sucks. Either way, if it doesn't get better by Saturday, i'm dumping it off and getting some new books.

The problem with Christine and Green Mile is I've already seen the movies. I'm sure its a little different, but it still sort of spoils the story for me. I'll see what I can find, I would imagine my library would carry atleast 1 copy of these Dark Tower books, considering how popular an author he is. I'll have to wait and see.

[Ape]

You're going to love this Pinata. I went to my library, and I was so happy because I found The Fellowship of the Ring. I yanked it off the shelf with The Two Tower and then... .... ...NO Return of the King! ...Yea...my library is out to get me.

I did get the Silmarillion though, but first I'm reading Comes A Horseman by Robert Liparulo, and it seems pretty exciting so far.

Edit- Interestingly enough, I opened the Silmarillion and out fell a receipt. The peson who checked out it out(a week ago) also checked out The Return of the King. They must still have it though...that bastard.

[piñata]

LOL. It'll show up eventually, Ape... don't worry about it.

The Silmarillion's good, though it took a chapter or two to really get into it because the first part is written almost like the Bible (when the language is that old-fashioned, I have trouble following the story).

[Ape]

Yea, I finished Comes A Horseman and started The Silmarillion. I think I know what part you are talking about (about Iluvator and the Ainur and the creation of the World?) I actually found that bit really interesting...it was the 2nd part that I hated. It was like a history lesson, it listed all the Valor/Ainur and whatnot and what they do and where they live and who they like and dislike. I didn't really get the point of throwing all this information at me all at once, and it didn't read well (like I said, it read like a history book-Boring unless it was something you wanted to learn about.) I found the story about Melkor and how he became corrupt or whatever fascinating though.

I think that is 1 problem with Tolkien's books. I've only read a couple, but it always feels like a ton of names are thrown you during the first few pages and it's just plain confusing most of the time. Like...

<name>, son of <name> and king of <city name>, also known as <2nd name> in <city name>, was the father of <name> and whose wife was <name>, daughter of <name> and <name> of <city name>. They travelled frequently to <name> to meet with <name> son of <name> who ruled <city name>, known as <2nd name> to the elves. He was enemy of <name> who conquered <city name> when <name> was the ruler of <city name>.

It's makes my brain hurt.

[Ape]

I finished the Silmarillion. It was pretty good. Not something I would recommend to everyone, but I liked it.

I'm not reading anything right now because I need to take a trip to the library, and with $4 gas it'll wind up costing me like $30-$40, so I'm putting it off as much as possible.

[Ape]

Is it bad for a mod to triple post? I'll fix that soon, I'm too excited because I'm finally reading...

The Lord of the Rings[/color]

Huzzah!