I have read A Brief History of Nearly Everything and I consider it a must-read for everyone. It is quite a project though, but I learned things that I never would have had I not read his book. So amazing. I love all of Bill Bryson's stuff, especially A Walk in the Woods, and In a Sunburned Country, but Short History is his best.

I just watched a show on Science Channel called The Search for Particle X and I almost cried at the end! The best chance of finding it at the LHC/Cern and they didn't :(

I just finished reading a book I started in September of 2016.
I feel so accomplished.

congrats, Moonshadow! =)

I'm going to start reading The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud.
It won the Giller Prize and I have a personal goal of reading every Giller Prize winner, because every time I read one I just love it.

well that's cool too. i just keep reading the series i've started reading. but i have The Handmaid's Tale to re-read .... soon.

I never really think too much about literary awards, but I just looked and Fifteen Dogs was the winner for 2015, so looks like I'll need to pick a different book for my "published in 2016" category. I must have a reprinted copy.

Now I want to read that, but two books only! I plan to start The Scarlet Gospels when I get home.

I need to reread The Handmaid's Tale too. I love Margaret Atwood. I have read many of her novels and they are so good! My favorite book of her is: Alias Grace (and it also happens to be a Giller Prize Winner). A friend described it like this: "that book has a lot of words" yeah, but its good words!

LOL!

i've also read her MaddAddam series: Oryx & Crake; The Year of the Flood; and MaddAddam. oddly disturbing, actually.....

SO I never post here but I am indeed reading books, one a month xDDD
I read Contact, by Carl Sagan! It made me want to read more of his books.
Also read a Japanese book about me. I mean, a 30 year old that does nothing and still wants money from his father |D

From Atwood I've read Oryx and Crake and Surfacing. I have another on my shelf, forget which one it is. No plans to read The Handmaid's Tale though. It's just not the sort of story I'm interested in.

My sister has started a course on European history and will be reading "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" so I've decided to make that my next book and read along with her. :).

that's ok, Quiet Man - it'd get boring after a while if we all had the same taste in books. =D

and hi there, mdom!! *waves*

I don't want to read Handmaid's Tale but here I am reading The Scarlet Gospels. I've seen three or four Hellraiser films but the reading it still a little shocking. That is, perhaps, the point. I do like how Barker wrote his own annoyance with the fan-created nickname "Pinhead" into series canon now. The cenobite is aware of said nickname and he likewise detests it.

Yeah, I know. Still reading Memories of Ice and my copy of Ivan Denisovich arrived today. I got impatient.

i enjoyed Hellraiser and Hellbound. i've seen Hell on Earth, and maybe #4? i don't remember. i did read the Hellbound Heart once upon a college, but don't remember much about it now. *sigh*

was the Cenobite now named Pinhead given a different name originally?

In the original Hellraiser film he was just called "lead Cenobite" but fans dubbed him "Pinhead" and Clive Barker hated the name because it was so undignified sounding for the character. However, it stuck, and you see it in the credits of later films.

The book reads thus:

"Whatever torments he had planned for these last victims [...] it would be worsened by orders of magnitude if any of them dared utter that irreverent nickname Pinhead."

I've seen Hellraiser, Hellraiser 2 (the one with the insane asylum I think?), one that involved a nightclub, and Hellraiser 4: Bloodlines.

ah, lead Cenobite makes sense. and i agree, Pinhead does sound undignified for him.

yes, Hellraiser 2: Hellbound is the one in the asylum. there's that other puzzle 'box' at the end, if i remember right. and i believe Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth has the night club. i may have seen that one too. pretty sure i didn't see 4 though.

4 goes through the history from the creation of the puzzle box to the future on a space station, following the Lemarchand line.

that sounds... interesting? XD

Well I did watch the movie several times. It was on netflix. The only Hellraiser on netflix at the time, and the rest of the b-horror films I had watched were uninspiring. Has some of pinhead's best lines!

ah, gotcha! i wonder if/which ones are on Netflix now. i could turn mine on and look, but... *holds hand out in direction of remote* too far. XD

I have read Oryx and Crake, it was okay. Never did read the other two.
I just finished an amazing book called Trespasser by Tana French, one of the best police procedurals I have ever read. The story was well-crafted and the characters were really well developed and defined. I love the "heroine". It is 6th in a series called The Dublin Murder Squad.

You ever look up artist renditions and such when reading a book? I looked up some Lovecraft things once, because his descriptions just get weird and I'm curious to see what other people imagine. I looked up one of the characters in The Scarlet Gospels but I admit I was disappointed with the rendition.

Lovecraft art is weird... just like the actual stories! XD

I've never done that, but I read a trilogy called Xenogeneses (later Lilith's Brood) by Octavia Butler and I went on Wikipedia and read the descriptions and characteristics of the different beings in the books. It was pretty good too.

welp, I finished the Revenge of Analog, and I think I'm ready to re-read The Handmaid's Tale. I put it that way because I've read a ton of dystopian fiction over the past many years; and I'm still watching the show (i don't actually have Hulu, so shhhh..... XD )

so while I want to re-read it, I don't want to re-read it. and I'm pretty sure that's clear as mud. XD

Hmmm...year's almost half over and I've only finished 1/3 of my goal. Time to pick up the pace.

Found another Clive Barker book on the book sale rack at the doc's today, The Thief of Always. The original purchase receipt was still in it. It cost $7.48 in 1996. GST was a paltry 7%. It's still about the same, actually. I don't think my province charges PST on books.

Dystopian fiction has been overdone. I read Handmaid's Tale a while ago, I probably won't reread it.

I'm halfway through my goal of 50 books, so I am happy about that. I have been reading at a decent clip, I bought a really comfortable chair to read in so I have been reading a lot in my little baby recliner! :)

so i'm re-reading Handmaid's Tale after all. it's book #15 for me. =)

Ideal societies not being ideal is sort of now an accepted idea, but I wouldn't knock off reading it for that. I think more that it's not something people can base a book on anymore. It needs other stuff to go with it, just like you can't stick a wizard and a unicorn in a book so that you can sell a thing called "fantasy."

I walked into Indigo again today. I bought Carrie Fisher's The Princess Diarist. (this will be by book written by a celebrity) It had nothing at all to do with the fact that there was a gift guard giveaway for purchases totaling over $40. That's totally also not why I bought that special issue of Rue Morgue about Shark horror films.

Not at all.

General update: Half-way through Ivan Denisovich and The Scarlet Gospels. I did not buy The Hellbound Heart at the bookstore today but I did have it in my hand. I might venture to the library for that one. The copy was expensive. I continue to pluck away at Memories of Ice. my friend does not believe I will finish it.

My reading speed is certainly picking up again, though I don't think it will ever again reach pre-college levels.

i'm about a little over a third of the way through the Handmaid's Tale.

my reluctance to read it is that (a) i've read it, and (b) i've read quite a lot of dystopian novels (and if numerically it's not a lot, it sure feels that way) and i wasn't sure if i wanted to read it again.

the main reason i'm reading it again is because i'm watching the series, and i want to see how it compares. the book is first person from the main character, so it's always interesting to see how omniscient tv shows translate the world around the narrator. (and i'm not annoyed by the 'dystopianness' in the novel either.) =)

and: it compares quite nicely. there doesn't seem to be a sense of 'time' in the book - it feels like it's only over a week or something - but in the show, you know it's longer than that. and the outside world in the series is truly scary

as for my reading and speed - if i stop crocheting, i'll probably read more. but i don't want to stop crocheting, so it's a trade-off for me. =)

I just am not comfortable with the subject matter, myself, so just not going there.

I'm looking at the old Witcher short stories now that I've started playing the game.

Haven't been reading as much the past couple of days. Need to get at least one done before I head to visit my dad at the end of the month. I can do more reading on the ferry!

Ivan Denisovich complete! Which book next?

I am reading a very interesting book called The Book of Strange New Things.
I thought it was going to be more...idk. But anyway it is still a decent read.
I thought I would love it more, it is hard to describe but I am glad I am reading it. I'm trying to give myself a goal of 50 pages per day of my fiction book. I am doing very well this year.

I finished The Book of Strange New Things and it really did redeem itself. It was pretty good. I have already read 27 books this year, my goal was 40, so I am sure I will meet my goal. I need to update my reading list!

ooh, i finished my reread of the Handmaid's Tale! it wasn't as 'bad' as i feared. XD

new book in my sig =)

My local used book store had a copy of The Last Wish that they obligingly brought in from their larger store that it further away. My book list is getting large again.

Looking around in the store today, I discovered that C.S.Lewis actually wrote a sci-fi trilogy that I've never heard of. Looked interesting but all the books were new and I wasn't about the spend the extra money. I'm going to add The Screwtape Letters of his to my reading list.

The Scarlet Gospels finished! So many books complete! Such progress!

Taking a break from genre books now and starting The Princess Diarist. At this rate, it would seem I shall spend my summer reading instead of looking for that job I was going to try and get. I wouldn't mind.

Quiet: I tried reading that trilogy by C.S.Lewis I did not get very far. Just 50 pages into the first book, I did not like it too much so I stopped.

I really do need to update my list. I just started a really good book called The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz. I'm up to page 81 and it is really good already.

Ugh. I want to read today but I have a headache and am probably affected by the heat here and just can't focus enough to read tiny print. I tried three times in either book and it's just not happening.

The Hellbound Heart is eluding me. I'm trying to find a copy but refuse to pay the $18 the bookstore wants, but no luck at either my regional library or the used bookstore. I may finally take a crack at Dune. Which has been sitting on my shelf for God knows how long. There is a category for that. ;)