What are you reading???

[campbell]

Yeah, it's like World of Warcraft -- Massive Multiplayer Online RPG. Lots and lots of people playing.

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Finished Cryptonomicon. Verdict: lots of fun.

Reading Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (re-read)
The Big Four by Agatha Christie (re-read)
Venus on the Half Shell by Kilgore Trout (aka Philip Jose Farmer)

[oedipus rex]

Cryptonomicon is still Stephenson's best, although Anathem is a close call for me...

[Entropy]

Picked up Snow Crash yesterday... never read Stephenson before, I'm looking forward to it.

[cohomology]

"Alaska" by mitchner. Will get back into reading the Hugo winners soon.

[Maine-iac]

Reached the halfway point in "Martin Chuzzlewit". Boy, did Dickens have a grudge against America. The American scenes just seem to be an endless rant against greed, hypocisy, slavery and poor table manners. Yes, he did have a point but talk about . He pretty much pounds it right into the ground.

Luckily, he switches back and forth between America and England, so you do get breaks. And presumably, Martin the younger will come back home at some point, which should lighten things up a bit.

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Also tossed off Jayne Castle's "Dark Light", which is a totally frivolous sci-fi/fantasy romantic suspense tale from the "Harmony" series. It was more enjoyable than I expected. Silly stuff, but the best entry in the series so far.

[Frenchie]

Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy

[campbell]

There are two things operating in the American section (yes, this is the bit I skip every time I re-read):

- Dickens had just been to America, and was highly ticked off about the amount he was getting ripped off there. I think it shows up in Chuzzlewit, and I know it has shown up in Nickleby, copyright laws were not well-enforced in the UK and there was no internationally-recognized copyright. So publishers in the U.S. printed up Dickens books and he got not one cent from them.

When he was in the U.S. he made several speeches to this effect, and of course the newspapers covering him, who had been reprinting his stories without paying him, gave him horrible coverage.

So he was pretty miffed at the U.S. in general and was willing to let them have it.... to be sure, he hit his own society often and ruthlessly, too, with regards to hypocrisy.

- Chuzzlewit just didn't have the sales numbers he liked, and anti-American books were really popular in the UK. Dickens thought throwing in America would goose the sales (remember that the book was originally published 3 chapters at a time, and Dickens monitored his sales and reader response, and would change his plans as he went along to get better sales). As a marketing ploy, it was a dud - Chuzzlewit just wasn't as interesting/exciting as what had come before.

[Maine-iac]

Oddly, in the introduction they assert that Chuzzlewit was one of Dickens personal favorites. It's a decent book, but hardly his best, unless it improves dramatically in the second half.

[QMO]

The Weapon Shops of Isher by A. E. van Vogt
An old favorite.

[Hydraskull]

The Brothers Karamasov.

I like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky most of the time, but it gets so tedious when they go off on a tangent about some civil or church matter that was a huge issue in 1865 but has no bearing on the story and is impossible to follow without a thorough understanding of the current events of that period.