What are you reading now?

(I apologize if this thread has been recently done. I haven’t kept up
with the boards as much as I’d like to lately.)

So anyway…I’m actually just dying to plug a great book I just
finished. It’s called The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My
Family, by Dan Savage. As many of you probably know, Dan Savage is a
gay man who writes a sexual advice column. He’s also written several
other books, such as Skipping towards Gomorrah : the seven deadly sins
and the pursuit of happiness in America; The Kid : what happened after
my boyfriend and I decided to go get pregnant; and Savage Love : straight answers from America’s most popular sex columnist. I heartily recommend all of them.

The Commitment (as you may have guessed) is about love, sex, and
family, but mostly about gay marriage. It was very funny and moving.
At one point I even had tears rolling down my cheeks. I don’t know
anyone IRL who is…open-minded enough to enjoy this book as much as I
did, although if I could get some of them to read it, it would definitely give them some food for thought. Fortunately, I have you guys to talk to, and I wish to say “Please please please please please go read this book!” Whew!

Next up: Not in Kansas anymore : a curious tale of how magic is transforming America, by Christine Wicker. I’ve just started on this one. I think it will be interesting, but I haven’t read far enough to determine whether or not the author is as flaky as the people she investigates.

The to-be-read pile:

Robbing the bees : a biography of honey, the sweet liquid gold that seduced the world, by Holley Bishop. Recommended by a fellow Doper! Sorry, but I don’t remember who.

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, by Mary Roach. I’m really looking forward to this one! I loved Stiff.

Growing up too fast : the Rimm report on the secret world of America’s middle schoolers, by Sylvia B. Rimm. I sure read a lot of books with colons in the title!

Lost in Place, by Mark Salzman. A memoir.

Narnia beckons : C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and beyond, by Theodore Baehr. I glanced at this already and it looks like a long sermon with lots of Narnia references and a bunch of crappy illustrations. It’s my current “car book” for when I’m stuck waiting for the kids to get out of school or whatever.

So, what have you got?

Nothing on deck per se, but I’m currently reading “Hot Toddy” an investigation (yes another one) into the suspicious death of Thelma Todd.
Yours sounds interesting, so unless I go all ADD (which happens) I’ll probably pick it up.

Thanks for sharing.

I’ll read Savage.

Right now I’m finally getting around to Catch-22, because **Noone Special ** finally talked me into it. I normally don’t read war/anti-war books.

I just finished a couple of fiction novels, nothing too exciting.

I also have an audiobook going - Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Seen the movie (OK) read the book (Great!) and so I thought I’d listen to the audiobook too.

Have to hit the library, tomorrow probably.

I’m just about finished with Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky. I like the way he writes.

Just starting the Roma sub Rosa mystery series featuring Gordianus the Finder by Steven Saylor. Excellent books.
on Audiobook in the car: In the middle of The Two Towers, having already listened to The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring.
On deck: a bunch of books by Patricia Rushford.

The Know-It-All : One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A. J. Jacobs

About a writer for Entertainment Weekly and his quest to read the entire Encyclopaeia Britannica. Pretty funny stuff.

On deck:
Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour : Armistice Day, 1918 World War I and Its Violent Climax by Joseph Persico

The story of how, despite the fact that the war was to end on Nov. 11, 1918 at 11 AM aggresive generals still sent out men to die right up until the last minute.

Currently?

Re-reading book 7 of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.

And Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown (he of The DaVinci Code fame). I know, I know. But the books, I enjoy. Consider them “guilty pleasure” books.

Just finished reading Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys. Another great book from Neil.

Currently reading nonfiction:

The Chaco War by Bruce Farcau. Mostly because I’m just discovering Paraguayan history, and this was a messy little war (that killed a quarter of Paraguay’s population) that gets little notice.

The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky. A history of the oyster in New York city, with fascinating facts; evidently, it was an important foodstuff up until New York Bay grew too polluted.

Just out of curiousity, how did you find this book? I ask because I lent my boss a book called The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization by Brian Fagan, and he in return lent the Cod book to me, but I still haven’t gotten to it. It looks interesting though.

I’m reading Paris 1919 by Margret McMillan right now. It’s about the Paris peace conference at the end of the Great War, and how the powers divided up Europe and much of the world. It’s excellent in every way, not the least of which being that she’s the grand-daughter of David Lloyd-George, and thus had access to a lot of his personal files. Very well researched and very interesting.

I just finished American Psycho and boy, I won’t be forgetting anything about THAT book any time soon. Very well written IMO, but some scenes made me go lie down for a bit.

I have a copy of 1776 checked out from the library, but I must not be in the right mindset. I can’t get into it.

I just finished two great books by Alan Garner–The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath–and am currently reading some disposable mystery plus Jasper Fforde’s Jack Spratt novel, the title of which escapes me.

It is my understanding that Kurlansky wrote his book about the Basque, which in turn lead to Cod, which then led him to write Salt. I had been reading Salt and when I was about 3/4 done I went out to buy Cod. Cod is written in much the same style as Salt with historic information as well as updates with modern times. I knew that many world fisheries were in trouble but this book really seems to make that notion hit home. To a degree it is a little depressing, but it is informative and interesting.

I’m reading the Robert B. Parker Sunny Randall books. Okay, but somehow seems a little too much like Spenser in a dress.

Susan

Hah! That was me. I enjoyed it.

I’m reading Keegan’s The First World War. Just getting to the actual declaration of war.

Also, a book of collected columns by Philip Yancey, a Christian writer, called I was just wondering. It’s OK, some interesting things and some not so much.

My car/working out book is Dorothy Sayers, The five red herrings. Again. Mysteries are my perennial brain candy.

To be read: I raided my mom’s religion shelf. So the pile has C.S. Lewis’ The seeing eye (book of random essays), Phyllis McGinley’s Saint-watching (about saints and their stories, I love that stuff), and Louis Untermeyer’s The second Christmas. And I need to find a good classic to be reading, too.

The Man-Kzin Wars X: The Wunderland War by Hal Colebatch

Colonization: Second Contact by Harry Turtledove

I’m set to read Harry Potter and the Half-Baked Prince (or something like that)

and at night I’ve been flipping through

Roadside America

The Experts Speak by Navasky and Cerf (But take it with a grain of salt – there are errors)
I’m moving bookcases this week, so I expect to look through a lot of old books.

A couple of days ago I re-read Jules Verne’s From The Earth To The Moon.

After completing that, I picked up Stephen King’s Dark Tower VII. Finished that one yesterday.

Right now I’m just about finished with H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine.

I just finished Steaming To Bamboola by some freaking hilarious guy. I absolutely loved that book and would recommend it to anyone.

Now I have dove into The Return of the Shadow, part of the history of Middle Earth series.

after that I will either read The Treason of Isengard which is next in HOMES, or Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz.

**PrairyErth** by William Leat Heat-Moon (which I picked up from RTFirefly at the book exchange at Gettysdope this summer). He tends to Write, which can be distracting – or at least which creates a pace I’m needing to adjust myself to – but so far it’s good. I’ve been on a natural history kick recently, and I don’t like him as much as I like David Quammen, but I don’t want to blast through all of DQ’s books at once.

(And Augest West – I read Blue Latitudes a couple of months ago and loved it.)