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The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
pg. 58/571

At the Mountains of Madness (1936) by H. P. Lovecraft

I'm on a Lovecraft kick right now. Happens every couple of years.

Jory, did you know Guillermo del Toro and James Cameron are making an At The Mountains of Madness movie this summer, supposedly?

...

Right now I'm reading "The Bonehunters," book 6 of The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. A rare foray away from speculative fiction, it's one of only two "fantasy" series I can stomach.

^ Del Toro has been trying to make an At the Mountains of Madness movie for a long time. I can't say I'm too excited about it. Every time he talks about it, he goes on and on about how it needs to be rated R, which gives me the impression that he'll be going for gore over atmosphere. And James Cameron hasn't impressed me in the least since 1994.

Edit: See, this is the problem with spell check. It doesn't tell you that "impressed be" is wrong because it's technically spelled right.

^ I've got a lot of nice things to say about del Toro (Cameron not so much), but I get nervous whenever I hear a horror director ranting about the importance of an R rating. Not that I would prefer a light PG-13 version, but anyone who thinks that gore is important to Lovecraft must have picked up the wrong book at some point.

Currently I'm reading The Solitaire Mystery, by Jostein Gaarder, and re-reading The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka.

i know it's demanding/cheeky.... but it would be really appreciated if people could post like a mini blurb or briefly review how they are finding the book...
i'm pretty easily persuaded if someone says something's good

i'm open
so long as it's nothing too heavy right now, my brain is fuzzled

Right now: I'm rereading Camus's "The Fall". I read it when I was a youngling and frankly, didn't get a whole lot out of it. Getting a lot more reading it this time around, probably because I'm not 16, sick, and realize how dumb I am nowadays, whilst knowing more trivial garbage!

To satiate Miss OSB:

As far as style, more verbose for Camus in my opinion, but still possessing a simplicity that I associate with him. Interesting book, has some really great passages. Short. An interesting take on "The fall of man". Hm--for how much I enjoyed, and am enjoying it, I'm half-assedly reading it and am having trouble thinking of positives, only negatives are coming to mind!

Quotes I like:

"Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day."
"Martyrs, cher ami, must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood--never!"
"I've lost that lucidity to which my friends used to enjoy paying respects. I say 'my friends', moreover, as a convention. I have no more friends; I have nothing but accomplices. To make up for this; their number has increased; they are the whole human race." [This one goes on a bit and I like it, but it's out of place a smidgeon. Also a few depressing quotes I left out--although I adore them]
"It was not a matter, mind you, of the certainty I had of being more intelligent than everyone else. Besides, such certainty is of no consequence because so many imbeciles share it."

Summary of the book:

Basically a guy talking to someone about his life and his fall--he was rich and powerful--now he's drinking in dives around Amsterdam.

Not sure if I'd recommend it to you. It's short and pretty easy and a bit thought-provoking. But eh. In my opinion there's better stuff out there unless you really like absurdism/Camus, and then I'd start with "The Stranger."

Almost finished with "Love and Mr Lewisham" by H.G. Wells. It's certainly not the Wells that most of us are used to, but I find it quite interesting nonetheless.