The Return Of... So what are you reading?

I havent really posted in a long time but it appears there isnt a current reading thread anymore. Heres my list of current books and my opinion on them:

-Eating Chinese Food Naked by Mei Ng
This is the story of a chinese immigrant family living in America. I am only about 15 pages into it but it seems like a depressing tale of a disfunctional family trying to survive.

-Memoirs Of A Revolutionist by Peter Kropotkin
Kroptkin was one of the most important anarchist revolutionists in russian in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Memoirs is an autobiographical account of his life and describes in detail his beliefs on everything.

What books is everyone else reading? discuss.

-Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson
A book in the Stephen King tradition (i.e. probably twice as long as it needs to be) about code-breakers during WWII and the adventures of their granchildren in the present day. The books has a tendency to go off on a lot of rambling tangents, but since they’re generally entertaining rambling tangents it’s forgivable.

Not by me. I read 100 pages. A friend borrowed it. Never bothered to ask for it back. And I’m not “sciencephobic”.

Just TOO big a novel for a pseudo-scientific thriller.

I’m reading Year Zero by Jeff Long. It’s a speculative novel about a plague with 100% mortality. The disease started when someone opened a vial in a relic that contained blood from the time of Christ. One of the main characters is a child prodigy geneticist that does such things as mixing human and frog DNA to create a sort of amphibian ape and cloning people from bones found in the newly discovered charnel pit at Golgotha and from the jawbone of a Neandethal. She can accelerate the clones’ growth to adulthood, and they somehow retain some memories of their first lives. The other is a disgraced mountaineer/archaeologist who has to escape from a Nepalese prison and trek across a plague-stricken Asia alone to get back to America.

I’m about a third into it, and am really hoping he makes it make sense, somehow. It is clearly an attempt at science fiction by someone who knows little about science and not much about SF. He puts in way too many far-out elements for the world to seem real in any way. But I’m one of those people who generally will finish a book once I start it, even if it doesn’t seem very good, so I’ll keep going.

Just finished Divine Secrets of Ya Ya Sisterhood, which was suprisingly good. I put off reading it for a long time because I thought it would be smarmy. It wasn’t.

Currently reading Pillars of the World by Ken Follett, Elvenblood by Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton, Crossroads to Twilight by Robert Jordan, and The Queen’s Gambit by Deborah Chester. (Do you see a pattern developing?)

I have been floundering for something good to read, suggestion are welcome. Preferably a big thick book that I can sit up all night reading. I will soon have much more free time since Buffy isn’t going to be on anymore. :frowning:

I’m reading the Kate Seredy novels The Good Master and The Singing Tree. I was recently reunited with these books via one of the “Identify from a vague description” thread here on the Dope.

I’m also reading Infinite Jest, but that’s sort of a multi-year hobby.

The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill

More than 600 men work together on a daring escape from a WWII German POW camp.
Later made into a movie in 1963 starring Steve McQueen.

I just finished Friday, by Robert Heinlein, and enjoyed it until the action stopped and… well, I won’t spoil the ending. I just didn’t care for it.

Next, I’m probably going to start one of the Tom Clancy books that I haven’t read yet.

Sorry, that was me, not Jerseydiamond.

This is the first time one of these threads have come up when I’m actually reading something!

I’m in the middle of The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean, which I started reading almost immediately after I saw Adaptation. I’m really enjoying it so far, and I’m surprised that it’s not nearly as dry as the movie makes it seem. Turns out the movie’s not that bad an adaptation after all.

I am currently reading The Father Thing by Philip K Dick. It is a collection of some of his short stories. The quality varies from ok to really great. The stories are short enough that I can usually read one on my daily commute.

Currently in the middle of The Subtle Knife, book two in the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman - an amazing series of books for children. Next book up is The Amber Spyglass, which is the third in the series.

I’ve also got a pile of books by my bed that I’m dipping into occasionally, including The Orchid House by Phyllis Shand-Allfrey, A Caribbean Life, Phyllis Shand-Allfrey’s biography by Lizbeth Paravascini-Gebert (sp?), The Road to McCarthy by Pete McCarthy, All the Blood is Red by Leone Ross, Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, and The Trial of Henry Kissenger by Christopher Hitchens.

Rereading Wyrd Sisters and Moving Pictures by Pratchett.

Dune by Frank Herbert. I tried reading it twice before over the years, but never got into it. Now it’s working for me.

A couple of days ago I finished Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. Last week I read The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, and the week before that I read Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books.

I started War and Peace. I’ll probably pick that one up again in a couple of weeks. A Clockwork Orange is on its way.

I just love Easton Press books. :slight_smile:

Heinlein’s Double Star.

I’m reading two.

The man who stayed behind by Sidney Rittenberg and Amanda Bennett. A remarkable book about how Rittenberg lived in China during and after the civil war. Became a member of the Party and hung around with people like Mao Zedong. The most enjoyable and informative book I’ve read in a long time. Thanks jjimm :wink:

American Tabloid by James Ellroy. I read a lot of Ellroy a few years ago and got tired of his style and content but enjoyed the books. Really enjoying this though.

The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama.

Currently reading The Burning City by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

Just finished The Barbed Coil by JV Jones.

Both are very good.

If Chins Could Kill, by Bruce Campbell. He’s the star of various B-movies (including the Evil Dead series) and of TV’s Brisco County, Jr. I’m enjoying it immensely – he’s an entertaining guy. He comes off as a pretty earthy, decent fellow, and not at all arrogant.

Currently reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Good enough so that I enjoy it when I pick it up, but not gripping enough to make me want to read it every spare second.