I finished Blackout by Hepola. Well written, honest, and really moving. I know she struggled with a real disorder, but so much of the book reeked of first world problems. It's hard to empathize with people like that for me sometimes. Or maybe that's what alcoholism always is, self created problems regardless of real world status. One other takeaway was the value of friends in her life and how well she kept in touch with people. Im terrible at long distance, going to work on that over the holiday.
Next up is some good horror fiction. I'm watching the returned so its got me in a creepy mood.
I finally finished Cryptonomicon after several weeks of delays. It sparked my interest in reading a bit about Japanese history (a topic I know painfully little about), so I picked up a relatively decent sized comprehensive middle ages to 20th c. book called The Making of Modern Japan just this afternoon at the library. I'm mostly hoping to get a decent reading list put together out of it. I've never found comprehensive histories to be all that interesting, because the best they an ever do is give you a snap shot of something interesting.
Have you read House of Leaves? It's in the horror fiction genre. I've not read it yet, but my buddy has been recommending it to me for a couple years now.