The trip this weekend, like most trips out of Ithaca I take, is always a good excuse to catch up on my reading. When I’m home, I tend to get easily distracted – “Oooh, IIDX…Oooh, IRC…Oooh, blog”. Ironic since a common gripe I heard while in college was that we had to do so much other reading, we didn’t have time for leisure reading.
First up, I have managed to crank through the 300 pages of Pattern Recognition and finished it up early this afternoon. As I detailed on AllConsuming – or will, once the server starts resolving again – it took a little while to get going, but it’s a throughly enjoyable diversion from Gibson’s usual body of work. All the characters are believable, the technology doesn’t overwhelm the plot, and the action pulls you in enough to keep you turning pages. On the down side, the book is perhaps a little less deep and more accessible than one might expect from him, and there are a few subplots that don’t get enough closure given the level of involvement the book takes with them. Still, definitely worth reading.
Now that I’ve finished that, I can start chipping away on the rest of my reading list. I’m currently tearing through Chuck Palahniuk’s new one, Lullaby. “Tearing through” isn’t an understatement – I expect to be done with it tomorrow. Chuck Palahniuk, for those scratching their heads, wrote Fight Club, and I’ve read all four of his previous books (Fight Club, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, and Choke). This book surrounds the premise that there’s a set of words – in this case, a lullaby – that will kill anyone who hears it. Of course, Palahniuk wouldn’t just make this a Steven King-style horror story. The book gets deep into the bizarre ethical questions surrounding the ability to kill, and definitely has the same social commentary feel of his previous books. I’m currently in a bit of a slow part, but I’m hoping it will pick for a good finale, as his books usually contain a magnificent twist or two at the end.
Coming up after Lullaby, I have to decide between trying to pick up Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting sequel Porno, or reading the highly regarded Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom. I think Cory’s book is going to win, though.
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