I just finished reading Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. I had this book on my radar for a while, simply because of the author's bio: I finally picked up after a few friends raved about it, but it sat on my bookshelf until I saw Slumdog Millionaire. This book paints a very vivid picture of the streets of Bombay as well as chronicling the main character's perspective of living it the slums for a while before he joins the Bombay mafia. It apparently is semi-autobiographical. The events were taken from real events in Roberts life, but he clearly presented them in a fictionalized manner. At times the writing is over the top. If I had to read more time about "staring into someone's eyes and seeing the truth", I would vomit. Still the story is engrossing, the dialogue is extremely well-written, there are a number of memorable quotes, and it paints such vibrant pictures of multiple locations that I will probably never visit. I'd definitely recommend it. A sequel is coming out in 2010 and apparently Johnny Depp will star as Roberts in an upcoming film version of this novel. Up next: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.
I'm almost through reading everything by Jack McDevitt. Don't know how I missed the guy, but all of his stuff is terrific. If you are a fan of SF and of mysteries, his novels are a must read.
going through a manga phase it happens like every 5 years or so about 5 years ago i used to spend hours at the book store reading the manga books for free during the summer (summer school+living at home 40 miles away+hours of free time waiting for the van pool to leave=reading in the library and bookstores around campus) Now i just read them online reading Detective Conan right now (mystery novel) about 200 issues in out of about 700 issues so a lot of reading left to do on those. will start on FMA as someone posted about that yesterday Book wise? Been sitting on a new clive cussler novel that i wanted to read on my flight to houston (which should have been last week!) but will read that in a few weeks (hopefully)
That's a great book. You should definitely read the sequel, World without End, next. It picks up several hundred years after Pillars of the Earth and features descendants of many of the characters.
Dave Barry's Greatest Hits. I've been trying to get the stamina up to read State Of Denial by ol' B. Woodward but haven't gotten around to it. Probably won't get around to reading much of anything until this semester is completely done.
Yeah, I was disappointed, too. They started very good, but each one has been progressivly worse than the previous book. I might not even read the next one, even though they're quick and easy. Currently, I'm re-reading: http://www.repairmanjack.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repairman_Jack
