It's a lot of books, but it won't take long. They're pretty short (not in a bad way). I've gone through the first 8 audiobooks plus the short story collection side jobs in less than a month. Since the audiobook doesn't arrive until August 4, I'll likely finish well before it's out.

They're easy to get into, he does a really good job of building a collection of characters that you (well, I) care about.

Highly recommend the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins.

I am getting a Nook this Friday (thank you, Guru), and the first book I download will be The Help. Looking forward to it!

'dearly devoted dexter' by jeff lindsey. good so far.

After all the hype, I was disappointed with Hunger Games (the first book). I'll read the others because they're easy reading and it wasn't bad, but I didn't like it as much as all the women who commented on it when they saw me with it did. Maybe it's a chick book. :shrug:

I had a guy recommend it to me. The second book is far better than the first. Probably the best book of the series. The third book takes some wicked twists, too. There is the whole love triangle thing. I guess that might be part of what draws women.

I just bought that one. Tired of my friends talking about it and having no idea WTF is going on.

But I'm reading the other book I bought at the same time first -- SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper.

Hrmm...cookie cutter characters? That much I can't say I agree with. There are eleventy billion characters, and I thought he did a decent job with most.

For those that care, Brandon Sanderson is finally wrapping the series that Robert Jordan couldn't complete because he was still creating new plot threads when he, you know, died. Sanderson is two books into wrapping things up, and doing a VERY good job at it IMHO. The last book in the series will be released between next April and next November (2012).

There are definitely some slow points -- books 5-8 or whatever (I can't remember which, but there's a bunch in a row in the middle) where not enough ahppens and too much time is spent on people who really are ancillary to the main action, but overall it's very good stuff.

IMHO Jordan is too fascinated with physical descriptions of settings. I admit, I skim/skip alot of it. 1,000 pages describing EVERY place in exquisite detail bores me. If you can adopt a good strategy for dealing with slow stuff, then you may find you enjoy the larger plot/characters quite a bit.

I could practically teach a class on young adult dystopian literature, and I didn't like it, either. I didn't even bother with the 2nd one. That being said, it's a certifiable craze that, while not reaching Twilight proportions, swept through the YA literature world by storm. I just didn't enjoy the book, but it might be that I'm also burnt out in YA.

So I read China Mieville's Kraken, which was stinking awesome. Contemporary Urban Fantasy in the vein of Neil Gaiman. Weird stuff.

I've also been reading Lucky Peach, the new culinary magazine put out by David Chang and the McSweeney's crew.

Dean R. Koontz, Twilight series, USA Today.

Just finished The Authentic Animal by Dave Madden, which came out last week. It's likely the best book about the world of taxidermy that there is.

Have you read Lucky Peach, yet? I really enjoyed it. The essay on authenticity was pretty thought provoking and gave voice to a lot of thoughts that have been kicking around in my brain for a while now.

Yeah, Lucky Peach is really fantastic. I'm going to be a subscriber in perpetuity.

Speaking of that essay on authenticyty, I just picked up a book, The Wild Vine, by that author (Todd Kilman) about the pre-Napa American wine scene, specifically the Norton grape.

Cool. I may check it out if I ever get through my pile of reading I need to do.

Are people in this thread reading more with an e-reader or paper/ink?

Paper/ink for me, though I probably spend more time reading discussion boards, blogs and online articles on a laptop than I do reading paper/ink at this point. I just don't have an e-reader.