i have a little time on my hands waiting for computer processes to end, so i figured i might as well post something on my neglected site. the first thing that comes to mind is the year zero alternate reality game (arg) that's emerged in anticipation to nine inch nail's upcoming album. i could write about that...in fact, i have a bit of summary in the works, but it's quite large in scope and will take more time to wrap my head around it.
instead, i'm going to do a rundown of books i've read or that i'm currently reading. it's a fairly large list, dating back to sometime last year, and it includes some new authors.
cory doctorow - new author i decided to read - focus is scifi/post-cyberpunk
down and out in the magic kingdom - this book quickly became one of my favorites. it took me just a day to read. the story, roughly, is a futuristic tale set in a time where the only currency is respect (whuffie) and the protagonist lives in what used to be disney world. it was overrun by ad-hoc committees that upkeep the park, thus earning whuffie. one of the best things is that doctorow details some of the backstage areas of disney world and i've always had interests in that subject. good book all around, but i wanted it to keep going. he wrote a short story titled "truncat" set in this same world and that was good, too, but i still want more.
eastern standard tribe - good book as well, but down and out still surpasses it in my mind. this is a nearer future book where business people form tribes loyal to their original time zone. even if the people within the tribe are scattered around the globe, they are still synchronized to the tribe's time zone. the protagonist starts out in an asylum, placed there by his "friends." you discover more details as the story flashes back to the events that led to his commission. i mainly picked this one up because i liked down and out so much and i wasn't disappointed. i didn't read it in a day, but it is still good reading.
mark danielewski - another new author. i came by this one through an unusual set of events.
house of leaves - this book is huge...no other way to put it. as i mentioned above, i came across this book almost by accident. in a day's boredom i was reading what wikipedia had to say about the silent hill series and in a page detailing silent hill influences and trivia, i come across the following quote: "The novel House of Leaves and its use of impossible physical spaces have been an influence on the series (especially in Silent Hill 4), with its almost interminable corridors. During one part of the game, Henry walks down an infinite staircase relating to the one within the novel. Henry also puts together a scrapbook of letters of a journalist he learns about, just like Johnny Truant in House of Leaves." needless to say, my curiosity was piqued and i picked up the book. i can't really detail the plot because it's insanely complex. in short, the book is about a character that discovers a book about a video tape/report. you end up reading parts of everything. the layout is the biggest draw. parts of the text shift around the page and mimic the feeling of what's going on in the story itself, sometimes amounting to a word or two a page. footnotes are everywhere and some footnotes have footnotes. for a better understanding, i'll point to the wikipedia page about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves.
only revolutions - i grabbed this one because of house of leaves, but i'm still in progress. as difficult as the previous was to read, i think this one beats it. it's two stories in one book - you start from one side and read the story from one perspective, flip the book over and start from the other and you get the other perspective. the tough part is the style of narration: stream of consciousness mixed with poetry. the recommended way to read this is eight pages from one side, flip, and eight pages from the other. as with house of leaves, more information can be found via wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_Revolutions.
william gibson - nothing new about him. i picked up a new one of his and then moved to one i've had for a while.
pattern recognition - this one's a little different from gibson's standard fare. instead of dystopic cyberpunk fiction, this is more present day...and it's good. this one follows cayce pollard, a "cool-hunter," as she is tasked to find out where videos are coming from. these videos are showing up on the web as part of a series. cayce is personally interested in this as well, with her being part of the community tracking and trying to understand them. my interest in this book came about from the fairly recent "lonelygirl15" phenomena and the references back to this book.
all tomorrows parties - this is classic william gibson. it's the third (and final, i believe) book in the bridge trilogy and it's a continuation of my favorite book of his: idoru. the characters are familiar faces if you've read any of the bridge books. this one is the buildup to the nodal point (this series is where i got the website name). laney, a man with a rare ability (brought on by experiments) to see informational patterns tasks rydell with going to san francisco to confront a person who leaves no trace, but is integral to the convergence. i'm still in progress on this one and i've owned it for quite a while before i decided to actually pick it up and read through it.
bruce sterling - not new to me and i've had this book for a while without getting into it. not a novel, but speculative.
shaping things - bruce sterling is one of those names that lives on the list of cyberpunk authors, but i haven't read anything by him. this one is a little different and warren ellis said to read it if you have any interest in design. actually, warren ellis just said to read it, but it is concerned with design and a sustainable future of objects. he introduces the idea of "spimes," objects that can be tracked through space and time, and how they are what is inevitably coming. somewhat interesting, but not focused on visual design (which is my interest) but industrial design. still a pretty decent read.
warren ellis - a comic-related, but not comic book
come in alone - this is a year's collection of columns warren ellis wrote for comic book resources (cbr). he covers different sides of the industry, from stores to publishers. i'm in progress on this as well. interesting so far.
books i'm looking forward to: crooked little vein by warren ellis, spook country by william gibson, the "world of watches" tetralogy (night watch, day watch, twilight watch, and final watch)