I am really not a huge fiction reader, the most of my fiction reading falling into either sci-fi stories (like Asimov) or Fantasy/Medieval stories (such as Deathgate Cycle)

As for my other reading, I enjoy history, especially about the Cold War. Soviet Russia was quite an interesting establishment I must say. 

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.

Bbrrrr . . . 

So it might be nice to be able to download comic books in digital form and slap 'em on a USB drive so I can take them with me and read them while I'm on campus and bored. Now, assuming I don't want to rip off talented artists by downloading scanned comics, does anyone know/recommend a legitimate service? 

Here�s my picks;

The HP Lovecraft Omnibus, (trilogy) can be difficult to get hold of, try old bookshops.

Iain M Banks Culture Sci-fi series, Just avoid Against a Dark Background (pointless shite) the best ones being (in this order) Use of Weapons, Excession and Look to Windward.

The Games Workshop short story collections are pretty good, though they vary greatly in quality, my favourite specifically and overall was The laughter of Dark Gods.

The later gamebooks from the Virtual Reality Adventure series; Heart of Ice and Necklace of Skulls (post-apocalyptic Sci-fi and Aztec mythological, respectivly) were good reads. The earliers were hit and miss, mostly miss.

Iain Rankin for crime writing (Rebus) - haven�t read them all yet but I�ve yet to be dissapointed, though the style seems to be maturing into more solid and stronger writing.

Terry Practchet - fantasy / humour. I�ve read all the Discworld series, at least and they�re literary genius. The last I read was Going Postal, the sheer moral impetous of the work moving it away from fantasy with jokes. Either start at the start of the series and read forward, or at the present and read back.

As to older books try hunting for Everyman�s Library short story additions - these were what people did on the train before MP3 or the pulp novel (which is what I�d call 75% of modern fiction). Condensed, entertaining and creative. 

by Iain M Banks Alchemist do you mean Algebraist? Or Paulo Coelho?

also, the TeamShambler Archives are quite a good read as well :) 

So I haven't been reading much lately.

I finished Cloud Atlas a while ago. That was fun -- multiple stories, written in different genres, but all loosely related. The structure is interesting, and the writing is fun to read (one reviewer compared him to Nabokov, and maybe that's overstatement, but I did enjoy the prose in the same way I enjoyed Lolita's.)

Now working on Shadow of the Wind, which I've had trouble staying interested in, but is moderately interesting. I'll hold off on a final judgement until I finish it. 

I think I got recommended Cloud Atlas recently. 

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 :)