"Conan the Conqueror" by Robert E. Howard

This is another of the Conan editions edited by Sprague LeCamp. In this novelette Conan is around 46 and has been a king of Aquilionia for a while.  He got there by deposing the original kings and their dynasty and in this volume Valerius, one of the heirs of the old dynasty, with the help of a wizard awakes a 3,000 year dead wizard Xulthotun and with his help win over Conan's army and overthrow Conan as the king of Aquilonia.  However Xulthotun secretly saves Conan and brings him to the siege camp to offer him to be the puppet king of Aquilonia instead of Valerius, but Conan refuses and is saved from a death by being eaten by a giant, gray ape by a slave girl.
  Conan then goes through much of the new kingdoms gathering support for himself but also trying to follow the path of the Hearth of Ahriman, a magical jewel that can be used to bring mummies back to life and fight against the magic of Xulthotun.  Conan ends in Stygia, way south, where the cultist of Seth, the snake god, have stolen the jewel to put it in a pyramid-shaped temple of Seth and bring back to life a number of ancient Stygian sorcerers from their mummies.  Conan is kidnapped by a 10,000 year old near-naked female vampire, but he resist her call and eventually kills the cultists and the Kithai followers and gets the jewel.
  On the way back to Aquilonia Conan gathers a huge army and attacks Xulthotun and Valerius near a river which fails to rise as cast by Xulthotun's magic because the Heart of Ahriman was used against him.  Finally Xulthotun is killed by Conan and turns into a shriveled mummy, which is what he was all along.  Conan becomes a king of Aquillonia once again and frees the slave girl that helped him.
  Overall an interesting read, though too much emphasis on battles and less on monsters, which is what usually makes good Conan stories.  Anyway, written by the legendary Robert E. Howard and published last before his suicide at age 30, this is an entertaining and exciting story in the Conan storyline.

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is a seminal book in literature, one of the pillars of modern and post-modern prose.  Although the narrative is not very clear and autobiographical parts are mixed with hallucinations and speculative thought, the overall pace of the novel is interesting and thought-provoking.  The story loosely follows Rolling Stone journalist Raoul Duke and his Samoan lawyer Dr. Gonzo as they drive from LA to Las Vegas with a suitcase of every imaginable and obtainable drug to cover first a race and then a convention about drugs for police officers.  The characters in the novel are on drugs and alcohol combinations pretty much through the entirety of the book and much of the narrative describes them panicking from taking too much of some particular drug or mixing too many different drugs together.

After arriving at the first hotel to cover the race in Las Vegas, the pair destroys the hotel room where they were staying, already high on the many drugs they consumed on the way there from LA.  When being thrown out they separate and Raul Duke drives back to LA while the Samoan flies.  However Raoul turns around half-way through, after being stopped by a smartass cop and meets with Dr. Gonzo, the lawyer, who now has in tow an imbecilic girl, who's apparently a wannabe painter from the Midwest.  As she is high on LSD the pair decides to get rid of her, but she follows them until they get separated and lose her in the stupor of their continuous drug and alcohol binge.

The book is a great example of Gonzo journalism, invented by H.S. Thompson while working hiself for the Rolling Stone and other newspapers.  It is interesting that Thompson wrote several variations on the same style (and pretty much the same book) throughout his entire life until he shot himself at age 60.  This book and his proverbial hatred for Nixon are probably the best-known legacies of his literary career.

"After Dark" by Haruki Murakami

"After Dark" was the last novel by Haruki Murakami before 1Q84 and it is a little bit different than most Murakami's novels.  First, it is very short, which is very unlike Murakami, only 206 pages.  It was published in 2004 but the first English translation was done in 2007, while the audio book one even later.  The novel happens in only 6 hours between midnight and 6am, mostly in a Denny's restaurant and a nearby love hotel "Alphaville".  Mari, a 19 years old student and Takahashi, trombone player and student who met Mari and her beautiful sister Eri some time back for a pool party.

There is a former female wrestler involved, who is now the manager of the love hotel.  A few maids in the hotel also appear on stage, as well as a 19 years old, beaten up and robbed of all belongings, start naked Chinese prostitute.  A representative of a Chinese prostitution gang and a sadistic computer programmer who works night shifts and uses prostitutes regularly to get away from his ordinary wife and kids round up the main characters in the book.  A main character who spends most of the book sleeping is Eri, Mari's beautiful sister who one night declares she will go to sleep for a longer time and continues to sleep for the next two months.

The book is written more like a movie script or a teleplay than a true novel.  Often the author tells us directly about what point of view we have, at what angle we are seeing things and uses declarative descriptions like in a play script.  This detracted from the book for me and made me unable to enjoy it as much as his other works like The Wind Up Bird, Norwegian Wood, Dance dance dance, Kafka on the shore, etc.  There are not too many magical elements, except for Eri sleeping in a non-deterministic room in a non-deterministic space and world.  An interesting read overall, but below Murakami's usual standards.