Nuketown

Chicken Soup for the Raging Barbarian's Soul

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Sun, 08/05/2007 - 12:38pm

Go to the bathroom of a non-geek, and you'll probably find some fairly benign reading material -- maybe a copy of Field and Stream, may be Real Simple, maybe the nearly-ubiquitous Chicken Soup for the [insert demographic here] Soul.

Not me. I've got The Bloody Crown of Conan, a collection of three Robert E. Howard novellas that I'm slowly dogearing my way through. I'm about 50 pages into the first story, "People of the Black Circle" and find that Howard's fast-paced style and quickly moving scenes make the book very easy to quickly pick up and put back down again. In addition to Conan, I've got a stack of Make magazines on the bathroom bookshelf, which makes for some good geeky reading. Prior to their arrival, I'd kept a few comic collections, namely Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes and Foxtrot.

What will replace Conan? I'm not sure. The voluminous Hard SF Renissance, which I've never managed to finish, may be next -- a collection of short stories seems like it would work well.


Sun, 08/05/2007 - 6:15pm

I keep a variety of reading material in my bathroom at all times. One of my constant favorites is The Complete Sherlock Holmes Vol. 1, which is a complete collection of the short stories vol. 2 is the novels. This book is great because the stories vary so much. It has short stories from 6 pages for those average bathroom stops, to some nice long pieces for those "extra spicy mexican chili" nights. I'm about three quarters through all of the stories, not sure what will follow.

To go along with this, I love Science Fiction & Fantasy. I got back into reading short fiction due to Steve Eley's Escape Pod. and this magazine as well as whatever I encounter at the book store usually finds its' way into the bathroom.

Following that, Wired magazine. Got some spare time to think? why not think towards the future.

Also, While none are in there right now, another one I like to read are the Marvel Essentials and DC Showcase collections. These are (roughly) 500 page collections of come printed on cheap paper in black and white, reprinting material from the early silver age. If you're new to comics or just young enough to miss most of these stories, it's a great chance to catch up. Plus most of these stories are split up into small chunks, perfect reading while you yourself are chunking. The only reason, I don't keep these in the bathroom is because of the cheap paper, they are slightly more hazardous towards steam damage.

http://comicsradar.com

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