"The Long Way Around" by Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor. Good read even if you watched the series on Bravo. The book includes a fair bit more in depth personal feelings/reactions about their bike trip around the world.

I just read Shutter Island and 3 other books by Dennis Lehane. He is the guy who wrote the book "Mystic River", which the acting of Tim Robbins and Sean Penn made one of the greatest movies of all time. His books are just as dark and suspenseful as the movie.

Pretty much anything by Andrew Vachss.

His Short Stories are really edgy, and his novel series (focusing on a character named "Burke" and his family of choice) are amazing. They are best read in order of publication, because there is stuff that goes on in later books that makes more sense if you already know the background.

There's a new one due out in a couple months.

Stephen King?

The Talisman
Black House

The Gunslinger
the rest of that series

Anne Rice - The Mayfair Witch trilogy (these may be out of order)
The Witching Hour
Lasher
Taltos

Under the Banner of Heaven - nonfiction, talks about violent past of the LDS church.

I can't get into Anne Rice, despite trying a number of times. It took me several tries to make it through Interview With a Vampire, and read through the series up to Tale of the Body Thief. I never really felt engaged by the characters or the stories. I'm still not sure why I kept reading her stuff ... but I have read The Witching Hour and also Exit to Eden (I liked it better than the movie, which is not saying much) and the Sleeping Beauty books.

It's not like I didn't try.

Anne Rice, Stephen King. I tried to get into both of them at some time, and neither could hold my attention for some reason. I'm reading "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" right now. It's... interesting.

I like the movie and the parlour game looks interesting, though I've never played it...

Neal Stepherson's System of the World trilogy is now in paperback and is a fantastic read, kept me busy for a while, thicker than lord of the rings. Last really good one would be I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe. Anything by Terry Pratchett is good, same goes for John LeCarre.

That's interesting, I'm reading Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle" trilogy right now. The first book (Quicksilver) has been good overall, but that's because the first half was really iffy and the second half has been GREAT.

My whoopsie on the name. The first is really setting the scene, like the first act of a play. I own all 3 in hardback, the wait between volumes was painful, I did a 3 hour round trip and bribed a shop assistant to get the third one. Overall they're probably my favorite books, Stepherson's ability to not only have great, engaging stories but also to use them as a vehicle for ideas is awesome. If you haven't you owe it to yourself to read Diamond Age.

I really enjoy Stephenson. I'm also reading the trilogy. But I'm stuck about halfway through the last of the three books. I hit a dull spot, and am having trouble getting started again. In my opinion, Stephenson spends far too much time on tracing the lineage of royal families, and he introduces far too many characters. After the first book, I started keeping notes with index cards on the different characters. I wrote small, and filled the front and back of two index cards for the second novel. There must have been 50 characters in the second book.

I think his novels could be just as good even if he limited the number of characters to oh, lets say, 15 per book.

I wasn't aware of the trilogy. I'll have to find time to fit it in ...

intersting though, amazon has a new way to clutter up their sales page ...

SIPS. WTF? This is useful somehow??

Correction on my entry: Devil in the White City is by Eric Larson. I just lent my copy to a friend and realized I had mutated the author's name.

Here is the putative "why".

This combines two of my favorite recreational internet pursuits (both safe for work). Googlewhack and StumbleUpon.

I absolutely love Neal Stephenson. I've read everything he's ever written.

I don't think The Baroque Cycle would be quite as rich and fulfilling if it where shorter or if there were fewer characters. The only thing that kind of gets tedious to me are the letters, in the 2nd book I think, from Eliza to Rossignol and Leibniz. They consist of a large amount of plain-text and a generally lesser amount of cipher-text which is what you want to read about...