What Book Are You Currently Reading?

Lord of the Flies- William Golding

That's awesome, are all of his books as daunting (yet in a totally enjoyable way) as Gravity's Rainbow?  I know Inherent Vice isn't, I've read excerpts from that.  Not that I don't love the challenge, I just always seem to hear people gripe about Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon as being really tough and I don't hear as much from his other books.

Interesting, so I guess with Gravity's Rainbow I'm just diving into a real challenge by him.

Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein the Original Psycho by Harold Schechter

Wow! You know the book has to be extremely graphic and detailed if it even grosses me out.
Gein definitely takes the cake as one of the most dastardly fucked up individuals of the last century.  His parents had a lot to do with it.

Messed up individuals like this often come from an ultra strict religious upbringing, especially when the religious head of the household keeps the children  insolated and constantly preaches about the evils of everyone else. His mother was intolerant of everyone who wasn't a Lutheran, and his father was a henpecked drunkard who was never successful at anything (except drinking)

After his family died off, he went off the deep end. Im not going to get into it here, but he was into making things. I guess he enjoyed arts and crafts and If you have a strong stomach, you can Google pictures of some of his gruesome handiwork. Creepy creepy stuff.

His crimes make the Manson murders look like a Sunday picnic. This guy was an out and out ghoul!

Studying for my final exam has taken up most of my time, so I'm not yet finished with "The Three-Body Problem" (approximately 80% done though). Next up is "Miniature Size, Magical Quality: Nasca Art" by Frances Marzio. 

Speaking of...

What's all this shite about?

The finalists for the 2016 Hugo Awards for science-fiction and fantasy were announced today, and it looks like the Puppies are at it again. As The Guardian reports, the majority of nominees promoted by The Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies – groups that “campaign against a perceived bias towards liberal and leftwing science-fiction and fantasy authors” – made the final ballot.

The Sad Puppies, founded in 2013 by writer Larry Correia, criticize the Hugos for favoring “academic” works that allegedly promote left-leaning messages. In 2015, Theodore Beale – a “self-described ‘fundamentalist’” whose racism, as Ryan Britt explained in Electric Literature, is well-known – founded the more radical and political Rabid Puppies.

Since Hugo nominations are determined by voters, the Puppies have stirred controversy by actively campaigning for the inclusion of works that conform to their ideologies. After buying a membership to the annual World Science Fiction Convention, voters can nominate up to five works per category, and the five works with the highest numbers of votes make the ballot.

To the chagrin of many authors – including George RR Martin and Connie Willis, who declared the Hugos “broken” and rife with “bullying” – the Puppies have been successful. Some writers, like Alastair Reynolds, have requested that the Puppies remove them from their lists of recommendations. Faced with a ballot full of Puppies-backed nominees last year, voters declined to select winners in an unprecedented 5 categories. This year, 4,032 nominating ballots were cast — a new record. Of the 80 works recommended by Beale, 62 snagged spots on the shortlist, including an essay that Beale wrote under his pen name, Vox Day.


electricliterature.com/reactionaries-attack-the-hugo-awards-again/

Ugh. Long story short, starting recently, a group of people have been stuffing the Hugo ballots because they felt they weren't being diverse enough. This led to conservative ballot stuffing to COUNTERACT that.  The result has been lots of winners that are distinctly diverse (like a recent Best Novel winner, Ancillary Justice, that is very gender-bending - decent read), but also a lot of categories having "no winner" because of rules concerning majorities. A little like delegates.

Or as George RR Martin put it: the Hugos are dead.

Look at how many "no awards" there are for 2015. (The ones that have "no award" at the top of the list)

www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2015-hugo-awards/

Vote early, vote often

Just finished it the other day. Took me awhile due to schoolwork and my job.

It was good, a nice breezy read. It was a little weak stylistically which disappointed me. I'd like to see a little more of the world through the author's eyes/mind. But to be fair, I think much of it was lost in translation and maybe there's much more to it in the original language (this is sometimes the case, especially with French authors I've heard). Really enjoyed the story though and many of the concepts and various philosophical questions (the meaninglessness of everything, humanity as insects, etc). I'll continue reading the series, I'm just pretty backed up right now with other books. 

That's what I'm wondering. I'm thinking it's because it was lost in translation. But who knows--it's still an engaging novel (that I somehow managed to motor through despite my workload) with some really fun, inventive ideas. It doesn't matter much in the end.

Oh, cool. I'm going to keep reading. Ultimately it's the story that matters most of all. So yeah, Liu definitely did well--in my opinion--with the storytelling. He knows how to pace it, too. Love his hard science, as well, even though most of it goes way over my head.

Speaking of Tolkien, I bought this beauty a few weeks ago....

www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Deluxe-RINGS-Vinyl-bound/dp/B00QPHDSQU/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1462588595&sr=8-4&keywords=lord+of+the+rings+deluxe

Nice Justin.

What's the USP for that version? Not many details on Amazon.