The first essay was quite good, but the second sort of... I dunno, the author seems to be taking a very long time to explain a very simple idea, and not getting a lot of extra oomph out of the verbiage.

Reading Catch-22 right now. It's my friends favorite book. Now I understand why she is bat poop crazy. I also happen to be arse over tits in love with her.

Im over 100 pages in and I can already tell its like Dracula and you really need to read it at least twice to catch enough to truly appreciate it. Probably due to its format along with having to get used to its crazy circular logic. I also feel I'm missing punch lines to jokes I missed. It is definitely not an "easy read" but I am enjoying it.

I fount Count of Monte Cristo to be severely overrated. I read the whole thing through, got maybe 10 minutes of real enjoyment toward the end, and though "why did I waste so much time on this?" when I was done. Laborious.

Catch-22, on the other hand, was awesome -- witty, clever, cynical, occasionally uneven, but well worth the time.

The Fractured Sky (The Empyrean Odyssey, Book II)
I've only just recently got into D&D literature, starting with War of the Spider Queen and some Dark Sun novels, it's trashy but made of awesome.

Was reading Dan Simmons' Flashback. Questionable politics and racial views taped over a re-telling of Strange Days. I get into any more detail, I break CoS. I'm not going to link to it because it's a total piece of shit.

Simmons, once the great writer of The Hyperion Cantos, is now a foolish man equal to Orson Scott Card.

Author! Author! by P. G. Wodehouse, a collection of letters to one author from one of the greatest authors of our time (lyrics and stories for musicals, short stories, novels, other stuff)

Chock full of useful hints about keeping a story moving and better writing technique, and amusing to read.

I think I'm the last nerd on Earth not to have read Perdido Street Station by China Mieville.

Just finished Chapter 1 and a university professor is boning a red-skinned bug woman. I'm having a hard time seeing how I wouldn't enjoy this.

You're not - we own it and I haven't actually read it yet.

I actually got past the politics to enjoy Flashback. Dan Simmons posted something about not subscribing to those beliefs but finding their idea of the dystopian future brought about by their opposites to be interesting post Apoc material

That book kept putting me to sleep. I simply gave up on it.