I used Awesome WM for 2 years but switched to i3wm 6 months ago: http://i3wm.org/ The major difference is, Instead of cycling through a list of master column+row layouts per window, one recursively splits the screen using a small set of generic commands. Additionally, the keybinding configuration is a bit more straightforward and declarative.
I'm currently half way through the Malazan Empire series by Steven Erikson. http://malazan.wikia.com/wiki/Suggested_reading_order Things I'm enjoying so far: - impressive imagination, things are so out there - very expansive world and history and range of characters - very good at setting up and writing interactions for interesting pairings of characters - engaging prologues, I always flip back to try and guess what's going on - started a 10 book fantasy series and actually managed to finish it - so far has managed to write great endings for every book, even the ones which I felt drag slightly in the middle