So... read any good books lately (FICTION)?

[D'Art]

Do the election manifestos from the political parties count?

[PretAllez]

Well we can all agree that they are certainly fiction, but are they worth reading?
OTOH, I feel you should get double "extra" points for any swordplay references

[cornflower]

i'm currently reading between three books: Catch-22, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the Ultimate edition), and The Sot-Weed Factor (by John Barth). With a few quickies thrown in between (like The Stranger, Scat, etc). I find that this method of reading helps keep me from becoming bored. If I force myself to keep reading through a thickie (i know, stfu), I lose motivation and end up being HAPPY I'm done, and that just sucks.

Also, The Sot-Weed Factor is HILARIOUS (sex, prostitutes, "friends-in-folly" and both Isaac Newton and Sir Thomas More are portrayed as homosexuals... AWESOME). Here are some passages that I particularly enjoyed:

"In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point."

***

"My dear fellow," Burlingame said, "we sit here on a blind rock careening through space; we are all of us rushing headlong to the grave. Think you the worms will care, when anon they make a meal of you, whether you spent your moment sighing wigless in your chamber, or sacked the golden towns of Montezuma? Lookee, the day's nigh spent; 'tis gone careering into time forever. Not a tale's length past we lined our bowels with dinner, and already they growl for more. We are dying men, Ebenezer: i'faith, there's time for naught but bold resolves!"