Close to done with World War Z, An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. Quite an entertaining little book, even if you're not a fan of zombies (let's face it, of course you are.) It's a collection of stories from people from all over the world who survived the zombie holocaust that engulfed earth for ~15-20 years. Lots of different stories, and they cover the early outbreaks to the main swarms of zombies covering earth to victory.

A really intelligent (I thought so anyway) read, lots of variety in the stories and very good pacing. Recommended. 

That sounds rather good actually. I do like "contemporary" twists on horror stories, because let's face it, most horror is generic, purposeless, cliched, badly written shite - despite the potential the genre has.

I read I Am Legend a while back, that was rather cool. 

I was wondering if anyone had read Cloud Atlas as I was skimming through this page. I read it last summer and thought it was quite good. I found it hard to get through sometimes; in most of the sections there's an overwhelming feeling of civilization driving itself in to the ground.

I was also introduced to Lovecraft from reading this forum, and I finally read some: The Rats in the Walls, The Dunwich Horror, and a few other short stories. My favorite so far has been the first half of At the Mountains of Madness; it was really awesome. I loved the description of the airplane approaching the mountains, and the main character beginning to see the ancient fortresses. 

Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser comic book adaptation by Mike Mignola (Hellboy, BPRD.) Story about two thieves (one big Norsey kinda guy, and a grayer, mousier one) who lose their girl friends and go on crazy adventures together afterwards. Pretty good if you like those 70s-ish fantasy novel type stories, where people have crazy names and wizards/sorcerers/interdminsional merchants selling trash to take over the world/thieves are commonplace. Y'know, the type of stuff Mignola is good at. It doesn't have the type of universal conspiracy feel Hellboy's got, but if you like Mignola you should probably read this. 

just rereading the scudder series - so fucking brilliant (for a crime novel, anyways) - i just love the style. 

Christopher Priest.

You guys need to read his stuff, both his sci-fi and contemporary fiction. Intriguing concepts, gripping ideas, nicely peaceful writing style. Can't do any wrong so far. 

1. Fuck Harry Potter.

2. Fuck Terry Pratchett.

3. There's a lot of fucking better fantasy out there.

Okay, a couple of replies needed:

HeadThump - DeathGate Cycle - did you stick with it??

I remember picking up the first book of that series and enjoying the story about an assassin who is caught and nearly killed by townfolk only to be saved for the purpose of carrying out a quest.
I was really into it and then suddenly it jerks you out of that story into a realy stupid one about a tinker dwarf couple and their Goddamned cutesy story of domestic tranquility.

Basically none of those are the actual story. The scope of the series is far bigger than that. There is a larger overriding meta-plot and then lots of events (like the two you described) relating to that, across various different worlds. Some of them are quite light and jolly, some of them are pretty dark and bleak. It may be worth sticking with it.

Zwiffle - World War Z - I finished reading that recently...

A really intelligent (I thought so anyway) read, lots of variety in the stories and very good pacing. Recommended.

I agree entirely with that. It is a modern classic and could do a great job of dragging the zombie genre out of cliched cheese and into contemporary culture. I personally liked that the vibe was as much "apocalypse" as it was "horror".

And finally.

Currently reading: China Meiville - Iron Council. Good so far, not sure why, it's just a good intriguing, well written book. 

HeadThump - DeathGate Cycle - did you stick with it??

I have read it up to Serpent Mage, and I believe that leaves me with two more to complete, and I'm glad I have stuck with it so far. There are far more things I like about the cycle so far than the annoying aspects that bring it down a little bit. 

Have you read the Zombie Survival Guide or whatever its called, also by the World War Z author? I haven't read it, just wondered if you could give input on it. 

HT: Cool.

Zwiff: Not yet but might well do. 

Yeah Deathgate Cycle is pretty nice, I read it quite a while ago (I was a silly kid) so I can't really be objective about it, but I loved it back then (was my favorite series with Zelazny's Amber books).

About Meiville, even though I liked Iron Council, it didn't quite grab me as much as Perdido Street Station and The Scar (The Scar still being my favourite of his). I read some of his short stories in Looking for Jake, some nice ideas in that.

Still catching up on my K. Dick these days, last one being Valis, which was just pretty fucked up, but interesting.

Quite enjoyed Light and Nova Swing from M. John Harrison recently, some very strange stuff, but very intriguing.

Waiting for Amazon to send me latest Iain Banks, Richard Morgan, and Alastair Reynold books, gimme! 

Perdido St Station and The Scar are going to take some beating!! 

and loved it as a kid, about ten years of age, I would guess, too. My brother is several years older than I am, and I relied on him to supply my Science Fiction/Fantasy fix. Hundreds of those old paper backs still lie around our houses.

First HorseLover Fat book I read was Martian Time Slip about at the same time. 

Yeah, first PKD book I read was Martian Time Slip too, didn't really like it at the time, and let a couple years pass before I gave him another try with A Scanner Darkly (wanted to read it before seeing the movie), and Man in the High Castle, both of which I quite enjoyed. 

so I havent really read much over the last 7-8 years (no real reason, just stopped) but during my holiday I did read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Apocalypse Now has always been one of my favorite movies and I was looking forward to this for a long time, but it simply blew me away. The level of writing involved here is so much better than your average good book, it's amazing that its only 120 or so pages long because it feels a lot more dense and packed.

Its also no wonder that it took Coppola so much trouble to adapt it because it is definitely something that is very difficult t adapt well.

Bottom line - I was very very impressed. 

and wandered up and down the fiction/literature aisles trying to remember who wrote One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and wound up picking up two other books before I spotted it, Closing Time (the sequel to catch 22 which I'm currently reading for the 3rd time) and a new William Gibson novel called Spook Country.

I found Pattern Recognition, Gibson's last effort, to be full of his usual cool ideas and wary take on technology, but with an ending that didn't really do more than cushion the reader from smacking suddenly into the back cover once he'd run out of writing, like stopping short at a traffic light. I read Nest in high school and it stuck with me more than the other books in the curriculum, so I'm going to retrace it now that I'm smart enough to think as analytically as I was expected too back then.

I want to read Nostromo, also, but I was already carrying three books at that point. 

The only thing I read since then was Mr Nice, the autobiography of Howard Marks, cause I was on holiday. 

Baltimore, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire

by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden

Was a quick, easy read featuring several short horror/myth stories wound together with a Victorian children's tale and a man seeking serious revenge on a Vampire. Even without Mignola's art accompaniment, it generates a lot of vivid mental imagery and would make an excellent movie. It has an odd little ending too.

One wooden leg up :) 

I picked up that "watch the windward side" or whatever it was, of the Culture series from 2000.
It was mostly talking heads in very elaborate set pieces, but there were some nice things like the different personalities of the various species and individuals, robots and minds.
But what bothered me was that the environments were not relevant to the story in much any way and didn't affect the plot mechanics much. It was almost as if I had read a product placement advertisement brochure (for Masaqi for example, you'll know if you read the book).

I actually think it borders pulp fantasy like Eddings, of which I've read two thirds of a series (two books) ten years ago.

*spoiler* The lack of plot mechanics and existence of fantasy-like omnipotent benevolent creatures etc etc leave little space for the story as you know not that much interesting happens to the good guys... *spoiler* 

Use of weapons, the second in the series, or the Algebraist, the most recent. Excession is also pretty good, but hard to follow.

Look to Windward is one of the weaker ones and don't touch Against a Dark Background. 

Excession might be hard to follow but you should read it through a couple more times anyway, so don't worry about that!

HYPERDIMENSIONAL FLOWER OF ANNIHILATION 

Well, Look to Windward is one of my fav from him actually, but it's pretty pointless reading it if you haven't read Consider Phlebas, and at least a few other culture books, as it was kind of meant as a conclusion to the culture series (even though it seems he'll be writing at least another one).
Comparing Banks to Eddings? ugh... 

I haven't read the rest of the Culture series, so I might miss something, but the comparisons to Eddings are well founded when you look at this book alone. It's not as bad but has many elements to that direction.

I read some Eddings book (well, two of three) with a guy called Sparhawk fighting some evil empire. Don't remember the name of it anymore.

1) The good guys are in practice invulnerable. They most of the time have numerous fallbacks and god-like sidekicks that take care of everything. There is never any real danger to the main characters. If it was fantasy, it would be some elves, spirits and sages.
If someone dies, he/she can just be revived.
The only exception was the immediate start, and even that was not a real character but more of just a motivation.

2) The bad guys are hopelessly outdated and stupid in their backwards culture and ways.

3) There are lots of elaborate set pieces where some characters constantly move. For example every time we had Ziller or Kabe, they were at some sightseeing place doing something pointless and the real plot mechanic was just something they talked about. Maybe these sets are used in other books but here they just serve no purpose whatsoever. I almost skipped over the long descriptions of floating trees or flying women or cable tracks in a desert or hunting in a forest or the glass walkways of Aquime or the intricate shapes on a floating megacreature's back or... . Completely useless, and they must have filled one third of the book's considerable length. Why did Quilan even have to go to that gas world for that meeting? I mean, it's almost south park like, maybe there is a secret headquarters of some evil organization in the head of the statue of liberty, just because it's a fun set piece?
I realize part of this was done to show the beauty of Masaqi so you'd care for its destruction, and that partly worked, but it could have been done in some other way like following the life of some more everyday people.

4) The "comical" situations where mishaps happen and people joke about in good spirit. They are in it just for fun. There is no real danger because of magic, often this involves mixing very old and ultramodern technology in a contrived way. The most obvious was the desert cable car trip thing. But there were lots of others too.

I'll read more of him to get a fairer view. 

That's why it's not my favourite - it kind of wanders off into describing things that he'd wanted to include in other books. Really its more like a collection of short stories with one narrative holding it all together.

It was the same in the worst he's written, as I mentioned before, Against a Dark Background. Not really bad but its just a bunch of cool ideas with a fairly weak plot holding it all together. I'dve preferred a collection of short stories, tbh.

The ones that are well written are excellent though. A strong narrative that really drives the story forward, at times there are still the descriptions of complicated stuff, but they never overshadow the story (they're almost overshadowed by it) and feel right, not coercive or just dropped in there for the sake of it.

I agree - what the hell did that oskendari (?) Airsphere have to do with anything? It nearly came off as a nice epilogue attachment, but didn't. 

Heart of Darkness is one of the best books I've ever read. It's such a good expression of the idea that everything is ultimately descended from, and indeed an expression of, primitive savagery.

To me it seemed really Darwinian, Conrad somehow had a better grasp of the subject than plenty of educated people today do, but he was writing in a time that was still early enough in the history of the idea for him to be shocked by it and find it dark and disturbing.

When Coppola was having difficulty adapting the book, with Apocalpyse Now going way over budget and him having too much material filmed, he referred to it (or maybe the filming process of it) as "The Idiodicy" (as opposed to The Odyssey, which the screenwriter said was another influence - the playboy bunnies were the sirens, that little dog was Cerberus, etc). I always found that amusing.