Book Recommendations

[Laethaka]

that sounds awesome. I read one of Charles Lindburgh's books a while ago and have been meaning to hit more exploration memoirs.

[Regolyth]

I started collecting comics when I was about eight (1988). My first comic I picked up was Spider-Man and I've been hooked on it ever since. I stopped collecting comics somewhere around 1997, when I was in high school. I had been collecting for about a year, maybe two, at that point without reading any of the issues; I figured that was a waste of money, even though I still liked the collecting aspect. I started playing Diablo just before that and got into UO later that year, so my time for reading went away and I was immersed in MMOs for the next decade.

Fast forward to 2010... my wife saw that there was a comic book convention, Comic Con, coming to Baltimore and asked if I wanted to go. I thought it was weird for her to ask such a thing, but she thought it would be fun for me (since I had always wanted to go to one, but never did); she even said she'd dress up. That coupled with watching The Big Bang theory made me want to collect comics again. I remembered enjoying the collecting and reading. The Walking Dead show was coming up and I thought I would pick up the series and read it. Since then, I've been collecting again. I've gotten into a whole slew of new things and started re-reading all of my old stuff (completing my collection as I go, where holes existed before).

With that said, if you are interested in picking something up, The Walking Dead is a good, mature series. The art is bad, but the writing is definitely reason to overlook it. Getting the individual issue would be a huge pain (#1 is selling for $350+ right now). You can buy the big trade volumes for ten bucks and read twelve or fifteen issues at a time.

Batman is another well written book with great art as well. It won some awards last year (TWD has won several too). The current run of The Amazing Spider-Man and Avengers is also good. All New X-Men is one of the biggest sellers right now and definitely worth the read. Some newer books worth reading are Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers: Undercover (picking up from where Avengers: Arena left off).

There's also this really good title called Lazerus (from Image). It is set in a future world where economic collapse from the world's governments have left control of territories in the hands of ten to fifteen super rich families. The series follows a character named Forever who is genetically engineered to protect a particular family (most families have a "lazerus"). The series starts out with a conspiracy, and then moves on to see more of the world from there. There's also a good series, with incredible art, called Aphrodite IX.

Valiant, if you remember them from the 90's, stopped producing comics for a long time. They have relaunched some of their titles and have been extremely successful and popular in doing so. Some worth picking up are X-O Manowar and Harbinger.

[Laethaka]

[Regolyth]

I remember the first time I saw the Heavy Metal anime. I was blown away (and something like ten). I didn't know "cartoons" could be like that, or that cool.

[Laethaka]

I'm trying to watch Akira with village kids here. They like the motorcycles... but then too much talking. I can't have been this easily bored when I was a kid. Was I?

[Regolyth]

LOL - I've had the same thought before. From as far back as I can remember, I don't know that I was ever really bored with any type of show.

My dad used to see me watching anime and say how horrible it was; that people were standing around talking and whatnot. His idea of animated shows was Looney Toons. He didn't get the concept of anime.

[Laethaka]

why hasn't Neuromancer been brought up here yet?? I'm re-reading it now for the first time since 2007. Lovin' it all over.

[Morreion]

A classic! It's waiting for me on my Kindle, but I've got over a thousand Kindle books now, plenty to read!

[Regolyth]

The interesting thing I find about reading books is it's harder, at least for me, to tell that a book is 50 years old or newly released. You can tell easily from film quality, haircuts and styles how old a movie is, even if it's set in another time period (the hair cuts give away Conan: The Barbarian and Flash Gordon - LOL).

[Morreion]

As an aside to your comment, I like watching a movie and seeing how close I can come in guessing the year it was made (hairstyles, clothing styles, what the telephones look and sound like, car models etc.) That's harder but not impossible with sci-fi!