Metal Reviews

the Master and Margarita - Bulgakov.

Scott Lynch- Red Seas Under Red Skies

finished harry potter in two days...some parts extremely boring or odd, and some parts decent and exiting...all in all a OK book

Rose Madder - Stephen King

Ahh, Rose Madder. One of King's really shitty books.

Robert Graves- Claudius the God

Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time


Hey I'm actually understanding it!

Is it actually understandable or are you just really into physics?

It is written in an understandable manner for the physics n00bs. That's why the book sold so much in it's time, I guess.

Finally finished Blood Meridian... Apparently Ridley Scott is making it into a movie... I can't imagine Hollywood having the balls to do the book justice though =\

now reading - Joseph Conrad - The Secret Agent

They rarely do.

Working my way through Ken Kesey's 'Sailor Song'.

Meh, it was ok (better than Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon), but what's with the spider fixation? Dark Tower, IT...

I finished Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows last Friday. I thought the ending was fantastic. I can't wait to see that film adaptation!! Rowling wrapped up the series very nicely.

I completed Dracula on Saturday. Another incredible book and I'm glad that I finally read it instead of relying on movies to convey the story.

I'm currently reading,

1) Halo: First Strike

2) Star Wars: Darth Bane (Path Of Destruction)

3) The War of the Worlds (HG Wells)

They make Halo books?

Uuum, yes they do. I believe as of now there are four. I bought the one that takes place between Halo 1 and Halo 2 (game storyline). The titles are:

The Fall Of Reach

First Strike

The Flood

Ghosts Of Onyx

Check them out on Amazon.

They really fill you in on all the of Halo-verse. If you're a fan of the game then you will absolutely love these novels. I know it sounds nerd/geek to the 100th power...but it's still damn cool.

Going to start Deathly Hallows tomorrow.
Just finished re-reading half blood prince, cried again.

Ok...I have committed the ultimate sin of watching the Lord of the Rings film triology without reading the actual books. However, I'm gonna start rectifying that tomorrow by purchasing The Hobbit and starting from there. There is one little thing bugging me that I was hoping someone here could answer. I just discovered that I have the three installments of the main trilogy in paperback (I think someone gave them to me for christmas a while back), but with movie screenshots on the cover. It says "J.R.R. Tolkien" on the cover, so I would think that it is the original text and everything, but the movie screenshots on the cover make me feel kind of uneasy; like this is a watered down version for some reason. So my question is this:

Is there any version of the Lord of the Rings that has been "watered down" after the movies were released, or are the covers purely cosmetic in their differences? If I could afford it, I woudl like to get this big ass hardback collection containing the entire trilogy, which I saw at the library a while back.

There's no difference aside from the covers- however, I hate movie covered books, so I probably wouldn't buy them. The single volume is pretty easy to find- just go to any large bookstore and you'll see it, methinks- or at least regular covered editions of all three books.

Now reading: Theodor Mommsen- History of Rome: The Revolution Part II

OK, I went ahead and bought the hardcoer versions this morning. I got a box set of the trilogy, but it still had movie screenshots on the cover when I opened it!(albeit, they were different shots and not close-ups of the actors like my old paperback version). I also got this really cool green hardback version of The Hobbit. Normally, this would have come to a total of about $120, but since I got 20% off when I used my borders members card, so I ended up paying about $87. I've got a lot of reading to do now.

To those that have already read them: these books are as great as their cracked up to be, right?

I would say they are- some people don't like them because of the prose and the level of detail, but I think Tolkien was a genius and The Lord of the Rings, as a whole, is one of my favourite books, and I've read it many times.

You're all correct about the LOTR series. They're fantastic books and just meticulously written. My wife has a great way of describing Tolkien's writing. she describes it as being very "dense" reading. If you're not into the story for magnificent description and painstaking detail then reading Tolkien can be very frustrating. However, his works do deserve to be referred as epic. I know that term is thrown around entirely too much but it is accurate in this case.