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Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill.

Noir-esque. Although more on the 'repressed desires, and women who will do you wrong' side of noir than the crime/murder side. Short book and kinda slow moving.

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Finished World of Warcraft: Wolfheart by Richard A. Knaak. Not his best WoW novel, but certainly not his worst.

Starting The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Marukami.

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I just finished Robopocalpse; quick read and a blast if you are into Sci-Fi. Spielberg bought the film rights so if you read it now you can complain about how much better the book is when the movie comes out..
 
Just finished Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim. Absolutely loved it...it's like The Prophecy meets The Dresden Files.

Started reading The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly this week. So far so good...has a Gaimen vibe a little.

[quote name='SilentBob50023']I know his writing is a mixed bag here on CAG, but I'm reading Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris.[/QUOTE]

I really enjoy Sedaris when he's on This American Life reading his stories but for some reason, I just can't get into the flow of his books.
 
Halfway through Stephen King's Under The Dome now, in preparation for the TV adaptation. Reading 11/22/63 next since JJ Abrams just optioned it for development.
 
Just finished Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.

http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Penumbras-...=8-1&keywords=mr+penumbra's+24-hour+bookstore

The curious goings-on at the bookstore draw you in to the mystery, but the ending is just a little bit of a letdown. That said, I enjoyed the characters (and seem to know a few of them in real life - ha!). The mix of the old (books) with the new (computers, Google, data visualization, etc), with a 500-year-old cult make it a unique page turner.
 
Finished up The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo yesterday on the bus and wanted to start The Hunger Games but it turns out the copy I have is corrupted and has a lot of broken formatting and repeated lines. Disappointing. I ended up starting A Storm Of Swords instead since the missus and I just started watching the show.
 
About 300 pages into A Storm of Swords, I feel I'm just a few chapters from being caught up to the show. I hear they stuck pretty close to the source material with the first two seasons, but it seems the differences are starting to stack up with the book and TV show. Great read thou.
 
I just finished Prophet of Bones. It popped up on my "recommended" titles from Amazon's algorithm, and the first testimonial was from Daniel H Wilson (author of Robopocalypse and Amped) so I'm sure that's why it was recommended for me. The author, Ted Kosmatka, is a full-time writer for Valve software, so this should be enough for CAGers to want to check out this title.

The premise was curious enough (in a bizarro alternate universe, science has proven through carbon dating that the Earth is only about 6000 years old, but a new fossil discovery threatens to shake the foundations of science) and reading some of the reviews hooked me.

I'll admit I enjoyed the thriller aspect. The author kept it tense and riveting and pretty bloody. It didn't end where I thought it was going, but where it did end seemed a little derivative. I wanted to see more of the conflict between religion (and the politicians religion conspired with to maintain the status quo) and science (even more shady than the politicians).

It's an easy read (finished it in a day) but one that I'll probably go back to. Here's a link to the hardcover on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Prophet-Bones...d=1368683555&sr=8-1&keywords=prophet+of+bones .

Here's a testimonial that pretty much sums this up: "Prophet of Bones is what happens when you start with a foundation of Harry-Turtledove-style alternate-history science fiction, throw in some Dan-Brown-ian theology-tinged conspiracy theory, add a dash of Jurassic-Park-era Michael-Crichton-esque bio-thriller and top it all off with some Elmore-Leonard-y dark humor. The result is some truly unique – and uniquely awesome—classification-defying, boundary-pushing fiction, and I, for one, couldn’t be more thrilled."—criminalelement.com
 
Currently going through a bunch of old issues of Dragon Magazine, writing down any fantasy, scifi, or horror titles that they cite in any interesting articles and then going through those books. I've been discovering some really old, cool stuff.
 
Really hadnt' been reading much the past few months.

Finally finished Washington: A Life that I started back in January and had been slogging through. I'd recommend sticking with His Excellency by Joseph Ellis for anyone interested in a Washington bio. It's a much shorter and easier read, and I don't feel like I really know more about Washington after reading Chernow's book--just really bogged down with details and description.

After that I read Phoenix, a recent short story from Chuck Palahniuk that was decent, quick read.

Now reading:

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Wanted to read it before seeing the movie next month.
 
Finished Joyland and back to American Tabloid / Under the Black Flag / The Maltese Falcon

TctclMvPhase said:
Maklershed said:
On the hard copy side of things I've finished The Chase and started Under the Black Flag.


Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly
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I don't know if you're into econ, but one of my favorite professors Peter Leeson, wrote an awesome book called "The Invisible Hook", that has some awesome insight into the way pirates governed themselves, set up incentives and other econ topics.
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Despite being a business major I'm not too into econ but that does actually sound quite fascinating. I've added it to my Kindle wishlist.

 
I'm more in to non-fiction, so I'm currently reading "The Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace", by Avi Shlaim. He references a guy's book who acknowledged me in his book, which is pretty cool. Plus, I'm a big Avi Shlaim fan.

 
I'm reading Cooked- A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan.  It's a very interesting book about how we view and treat food.  It takes about half an hour to make a meal (or meals), and yet we choose to spend that time consuming processed foods and entertainment. If only I read this book earlier, I would've gone to last weekend's Barbeque event in Madison Square Park.

 
Finished Foundation And Empire on the bus yesterday.  Decided to start on a "classic" I've had lying around and will begin Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince on the bus Monday.

 
[quote name="Maklershed" post="10585943" timestamp="1370000832"]
Finished The Martian yesterday and started American Tabloid


American Tabloid by James Ellroy[/quote]
I'm on a James Ellroy kick right now. Last summer I bought his LA Quartet after playing through LA Noire. I finished The Black Dahlia a couple weeks ago and am 1/3 through The Big Nowhere. On the back it says American Tabloid was TIME's novel of the year in 1995. I was thinking of buying it. How is it?
 
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Finished Calculating God by Robert Sawyer.  It's an interesting view of looking at "The Creator" that I never even thought of.  At times it does get a little too scientific even for me but overall good book.

Started The Magicians by Lev Grossman.  I'm about 30% into the book on my Kindle and I just can't get into it.  I don't care about any of the characters in the book.  I've been told it's like Harry Potter but for adults but I feel that the author has just drained out all of the fun and wonder of a magic school.  The characters are just really depressing and down.  Someone tell me it gets a better!!!!

 
On the hard copy side I just started Empire Falls


Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Cleaner7 said:
I'm on a James Ellroy kick right now. Last summer I bought his LA Quartet after playing through LA Noire. I finished The Black Dahlia a couple weeks ago and am 1/3 through The Big Nowhere. On the back it says American Tabloid was TIME's novel of the year in 1995. I was thinking of buying it. How is it?
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It was decent but nothing to write home about imo. I absolutely loved the LA Quartet - the stories, the setting, the characters. But I didn't *love* much about this book. I thought it was schizophrenic, with a very cynical tone and unnecessary body count. Having said that though, its competently written and I can see why some people would really like it. I might be judging the book unfairly though because what I wanted was more LA Quartet and this is not that.

 
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