What are you reading? Options

[Alexander]

Right now I'm about to start a new book actually, but I'm a bit torn. I've got the Appeal from John Grisham, American gods by Neil Gaimann and the first Shannara books by Terry Brooks. All were acquired on my recent trip to Orlando, and I'm not sure which to begin with tbh as all are quite appealing

[jack cloudy]

I used to be a fantasy junkie in my early days, though nowadays that has been pretty much fully replaced by sci-fi junkiness.

For example, I've recently come into the situation where I can buy books as I please. With moderation, although I've thrown over a hundred euros at it by now. Err...am I becoming addicted? Then again, those hundred euros are spread out over more than thirty books and some of it went into education books.
And I guess my personall motto is also to blame.
"If it's a good book, better buy the whole series in one go before some sneaky honoured user runs off with parts 3 and 5."

I swear though, it's amazing what kind of stuff you can find in the used section. Books from all the great ones and the more obscure ones. Often even in pristine quality! By comparison, the brand-new section is just filled with Star Wars novels based on the last film, the last (and only the last) book in the Wheel of Time series and the latest reprint of Lord of the Rings. All that, fills half a rack. The used section barely makes it to two racks. One of those racks is filled with nothing but the older reprints of Tolkien. The guy even gets his own section. Man, I know that he's been pretty influential but I think that it's now getting a bit too crazy.

Anyway, the closest to fantasy in my personal library would be the John Carter of Mars series. I got the first three books in the series for the price of one. Awesome. I think it's sword and sorcery to be more specific.

Now getting back on topic. I have not yet started reading, but am planning to read: Hyperion, by Dan Simmons. I've read the sequel to it years ago in the library and while confusing as heck, it did have its share of moments that made me go "HOLY CRAP, THAT'S AWESOME!" I've also read Endymion which is supposed to be the sequel to the Hyperion series, but that one only managed to confuse me. Still, it was nice to see the Shrike, aka 'the bad guy' from Hyperion turn into the totally awesome silent saviour and stuff.

Speaking of which, I remember a conversation I had a few years ago with some friends. Basically, we were trying to decide on the greatest badass in sci-fi. For a while, Darth Vader led because of his calm and ruthless behaviour, and his awesome mask. But when we moved onto less well known badasses, we eventually settled on the following. The Shrike is the ultimate badass ever, period.

I mean, we're talking here about a three metres tall...thing made out of nothing but indestructible beyond razorsharp spikes, blades, barbed wire etc. Add in four arms (I think, the covers only ever show two), two creepy red glowing eyes, bullet-time that makes Neo go "That's impossible!" and a habit of standing still just long enough to catch a grenade to the face, just so it can watch people crap their pants when they realize said grenade didn't do a damn thing.

Oh, and then there is the gigantic tree-version of itself which it uses to impale its victims on. The victims never die and are doomed to suffer for eternity. So yeah, he's either badass, or some sort of god of hell. Your choice. It kind of makes me wonder how Simmons ever came up with it.