modDB Book Club group

I recently just finished a book called "Blue War" by Jeffery Thomas. It was awsome. It centres around the main character, a man called Jeremy Stake who is hired by a friend of his in the Colonial Forces to investigate the apparence of three clones in a city which is growing out of control.

There is this whole multi-storyline angle, much like "Deadstock" the first novel in the series. But this time around it fitted in so much closer with the main storyline which was great. Jeffery also brings back Thi, the main characters love interest. In the first novel we don't really get much on her, but in "Blue War" her mystery is revealled some more.

One thing that I really did like was that we got far more into the character of Jeremy this time around, and what it was like for him in the Blue War (a previous event in his life). It does help that we have many of the characters being Blue War vets themselves. Also I found the characters be better this time around, I really just did like them a whole lot more. Especially Yengun.

I really do recommed it to anyone. Solaris as a publisher, really are pulling out all the stops in their range.

Hey guys just thought i would join up, here are some of my personal favorites...

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
When the Lion Feeds - Wilbur Smith

again i would say these are the perfect books, in face i have read the entire series of books by Wilbur Smith in regard to the Courtney tree line.

All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy
Western-ish

Just got started on this one, but so far, so good. I'm really getting into McCarthy's Faulkner-esque style. Pretty Horses tells the story of John Grady, a boy of 15 who is the last in a long line of ranchers. John Grady packs his bags and begins a journey south to Mexico with a buddy. The pair manage to pick up some other companions on the way. Seems to be shaping up to be a surprisingly powerful adventure tinged with romance and action.

I'll keep you updated.

Currently Reading: Jpod by Douglas Coupland

sourced from Amazon.ca

Already dubbed Microserfs 2.0 by some pundits--a winking allusion to Douglas Coupland's previous novel Microserfs, which similarly chronicled pop-culture-damaged twentysomething misfits flailing, foundering, and occasionally succeeding in the high-tech sector--JPod is, like all of Coupland's novels, a byproduct of its era and yet strangely detached from it. Only this time with a bold and very crafty narrative device: Douglas Coupland, novelist, is a character in Douglas Coupland's novel. Which, when you think about it, makes sense since the type of people Coupland depicts are precisely the type of people who consume Coupland novels. As the once-great comedian Dennis Miller might holler, "Stop him before he sub-references again!" Readers familiar with Coupland's oeuvre know what to expect with the characterizations here. They also know that Coupland on a roll is both savagely observant and laugh-out-loud funny: "Bree was showing someone photos of her recent holiday visiting Korean animation sweathshops. She was bummed because she couldn't get into North Korea: too much legal juju. [She said] 'I just wanted to know what it's like to be in a society with no technology except for three dial telephones and a TV camera they won from Fidel Castro in a game of rock paper scissors.'" Much of the book is like that, built on granular and meandering exchanges between characters about . . . stuff. While JPod's flow is hobbled by some preposterous twists and character traits and by random words, phrases, and numbers splattered gratuitously across successive pages in oversized typeface, it's hard to imagine Coupland fans walking away disappointed. --Kim Hughes

The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead
Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Richard Alpert
Non-Fiction / Instructional

Title: Rant
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Genre: Fiction, Science Fiction, and pure insanity.

For those of you who haven´t read anything from Chuck Palahniuk I highly orecommend you hop on the train of this guys literature. If anyone has seen the film Fight Club this is the guy who wrote the novel off of which the movie is based. What is fascinating about reading this man´s work is that not only does he construct unconventional and complex stories filled with twist and powerfull plot turns, but he also incorporates this creativity into every aspect of the writing process. Essentially, he toys with the English language like no other and you find yourself reading sentences and phrases that utlize altered meanings of words and convey highly discriptive images using irregular sentence structure. (I´m sure this guy is every english teachers Freddy Krueger) I really can´t explain his style only to say that there is no other author out there like this guy. But for the newbie to his work I wouldn´t recommend starting with Rant since it pretty much is a rant and totally chaotic. Try his novel Fight Club or Choke these are slightly more traditional and also conventionally thought of as his better novels.

Check this guy out!

Ahh this looks like a wonderful place to share my love of reading. Although I do share alot of that love over on the BL forums. I shall have to get reading and commenting.

Got bored of Terry Pratchet's "Going Postal," so now I've moved on to...

"Red Seas Under Red Skies"
by Scott Lynch

Locke Lamora, head thief of the Gentlemen Bastards, is trying to steal an incredible fortune from the vaults of the Sinspire, one of the most highly guarded gambling dens in the world. Standing in his way are a small army of guards, the most ingenious thief-proof vault ever designed and the murderous crimelord that runs the casino.

Much like the first book in the series, “The Lies of Locke Lamora,” the entire novel is basically a high-stakes caper \ heist \ con being played out in a fantasy world that is a strange mixture of Renaissance Italy and Lord of the Rings. Much like the movie, “The Sting,” there are multiple plots going on at the same time, so you are never really sure who is turning on who, what the Gentlemen Bastards’ themselves have planned and who will make it out alive.

As the cover gives away, a bigger threat emerges when midway through executing their plan, the Duke in charge of this island country captures Locke and his cohorts and demands that they masquerade as pirates on the high seas in order to instigate a naval war. From what I’ve read of the novel so far, this sudden switch is both clever--in that putting our land lubber heroes into the tough shoes of gritty pirates is pretty fun to read about--while at the same time pretty distracting, as the heist itself was damn exciting and is virtually forgotten between intense naval battles and the personal struggles of each thief.

While I haven’t finished the novel yet, I can safely say that a lot of the pacing issues present in the first book are missing here, replaced instead with a much deeper look at the central characters and a more engrossing plot overall. I just wish they would get back to stealing, which was far more often that seeing these awesome characters play Pirates of the Carribean.