I’m reading Anthony Kiedis’s biography (Scar Tissue) at the moment, which is realyl good an engaging. Which is surprising, because for the most part it just about him taking drugs, playing music and sleeping with women over and over again. When you get past that though, there’s some really interesting stories and anecdotes about the popular music scene at that time in the US and the cycle of drug addiction.

I originally picked it up at Melbourne airport for something to read on the plane, and it was a choice between that and Slash’s biography. On the page I read Slash was going on about how his clothes got stolen at the start of a tour and he spent the rest of the tour wearing nothing but a pair of leather pants. I had the feeling I’d just end up disliking him if I read too much stuff like that, so I went with Scar Tissue instead…

I know have a list of books that is about ten long, will slowly get through then. I’ve been reading Shantaram for three weeks which is a bit of an epic (~900 pages in small-ish print). It’s been a great read so far though, part fiction, part non-fiction about a guy who escapes from a Melbourne prison and runs to India, and how his life leads on from there.

If you haven’t read it, it probably sounds like a run of the mill fugitive story, but its really not, I’ve found myself laughing, crying (somethign like that anyway), anxious and generally obsessed as to what is about to happen next. Seriously, he finds himself, living and working in a slum as a doctor and treating Cholera, then moves on to drug dealing, money laundering, passport forgery etc. Lots of ups and downs, powerful story and all that.

I got the Maddox book online from Amazon, as far as reads go, its very funny, but Tucker Max probably tells a better story, once you get over his pigheadedness

I read Neuromancer recently by William Gibson (the person the gibson from hackers is named after, who came up with the term cyberspace) which is a surprisingly good read! He’s got a big catalogue of that whole “cyberpunk” style which I want to give a go as well.

Another author I’m looking to have a crack at is Phillip K. Dick – he wrote Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly. I have a suspicion that reading his stuff might feel a bit like mental athletics though – I get the feeling from the movies that they won’t be a straight forward read.

I’m reading Darkly Dreaming Dexter (can’t remember the author) at the moment, which is really good. I don’t know if you’ve seen the TV show, but that was good as well. I’m only a little way through the first book, but they’re pretty easy to read. It’s about a serial killer who was taught by his father at an early age to intergrate into society and only kill bad people.

I also read The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by Tome Wolfe a little while back, which you might be interested in – it explores the use of acid in the 70′s by following Ken Kesey (the guy who wrote one flew over the cookoo’s nest) and his gang, The Merry Pranksters, across the US. The subject matter and the events are interesting, but I found it a really difficult read – disjointed and lacking a solid plot.

Also, when you refer to “middle earth” sci-fi, sci-fi purists would probably not class that as fantasy rather than sci-fi. wankers.

I know what you mean about being able to see the ending coming if you read too much of an author. There was an author (i think Ian or Robert Rankin maybe) I used to read, and he used to use the same phrases in all of his books across different characters etc…urgh!

I’ll be interested to hear you opinion of Grisham, I’ve never been able to get into any of his books.

I finished my latest book the other day (Andy Mcnab’s – Crisis Four), which ended dissappointingly I’m sad to say, but we’ll get back to that later, and my housemate handed me a book by the famous author, John Grisham. Not that I’ve read any of…