Pre Christmas 'Whatcha Reading Thread"

I have been long tempted by The Shadow of the Wind and finally decided to bite the bullet and :::::shudder:::pay full price for it at Borders. ( It was an emergency. I had to have a flat tire repaired.)
I’m only on page 25 and am just sucked into this story line.
Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife the continuation of Pride & Prejudice…only a bit easier to read and sex. So far, so good.

Microserfs by Douglas Coupland.

It’s been a good and interesting read so far probably since I’m the target audience for the book. I’ve got about thirty pages left and will probably finish it on Wednesday, on my 4 hour train ride home.

I know people greatly dislike Coupland’s writing, to put it mildy, but I love everything I’ve ever read by him.

“Ulysses” by James Joyce. While some passages do have a genuinely poetic lyricism, most of it really is as much a slough as you might imagine it to be. Yeesh, this makes most of Faulkner’s works seem positively breezy.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (the guy who wrote Remains of the Day).

Very weird, very good so far (I’m maybe a quarter of the way into it). The narrator reminisces about her time in school, and the people she knew then, with two of whom she has relationships of some sort now – it’s one of those books where you figure out the premise as you go along. Very weird, very good. (Oh wait, I already said that :wink: )

Recently finished The March by E. L. Doctor and recommend it highly.

Right now I’m on a western binge. After The Shootist by Glendon Swarthout, I’m reading Meridian by Norman Zollinger and paging through The Best of the West, edited by Tony Hillerman. Not fiction so much as original writings from the time.

I love western fiction. So sue me. :slight_smile:

Dammit! I saw the typo right after I hit Submit. Wouldn’t you know this’d be one of those days when the board’s running lickety-split?

That’s Doctorow, of course.

Try this book. I found it very helpful. I’d read each episode twice, once with Gifford, and once on it’s own.

Stuart Gilbert has many flaws, but is a good guide to understanding Joyce’s symbolism, the least important part of Ulysses, IMO.

Just finished reading (as self-assigned classic literature reading) The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Dunno what to say about it – the story is definitely weak, the message rather powerful until Sinclair loses it and forces the reader to make such leaps of faith and to subject himself to socialist propaganda. Even as a Social Democrat, that was somewhat hard to stomach. Sigh. Next on the self-assigned list is The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot. Looking forward to it, kinda.

Apart from the self-assigned classics, I’m reading Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, which is all the fun you ever thought it was (which is plenty), Larry Niven’s A World Out of Time (interesting), Elizabeth Longford’s biography of Wellington, The Years of the Sword (somewhat enthusiastic…my only biography of Lord Wellington, I’m taking many of her evaluations with a grain of salt just now); and finally I’m occasionally taking a look into The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway. Okay, not great.

Relatedly, I’ve done some Christmas shopping and got my brother Fluke – Or, I Know Why the Winged Whales Sing by Christopher Moore, which I have high hopes for after the god-damned hilarious Lamb – The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. My mum’s gonna get a German novel, Der Schwarm, by Frank Schaetzing, and my Dad’s gonna get a copy of the brillant Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.

Wait’ll you figure out just what’s going on. It’s VERY weird. And very good. Oh wait, you said that.

I loved this book. One of the best two books I’ve read this year.

Tepper Isn’t Going Out,” by Calvin Trillin. It’s a very funny book about a guy who, even though he keeps his car in a parking garage, seeks out a parking space on the street after work every day. He sits there, reading the NY Post until his meter time runs out. After a little item about him appears in an underground newspaper, strangers start lining up at his car door to ask his advice.

Right now I’m in the middle of Richard North Patterson’s Conviction (a testament to my weakness for mass-market thrillers). I was in Borders on Saturday and was pleasantly surprised to find that my favorite author has a new novel out, so next up I’ll be reading The Lighthouse by P.D. James. :slight_smile:

I’m working on The Brightonomicon by Robert Rankin. It’s very entertaining and funny in a Doug Adams sort of way. (I know I’m supposed to like Christopher Moore too, but for some reason he just doesn’t do it for me.)

My car book is Don’t know much about mythology : everything you need to know about the greatest stories in human history but never learned, by Kenneth Davis. I haven’t had a chance to do more than nibble at it yet.

Other than that: several books about throwing a cheap wedding.

**At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig : Travels Through Paraguay ** by John Gimlette. Absolutely fascinating. Not only is Gimlette a hell of a writer, but Paraguay’s history is amazing.

just finished “the lady and the panda,” nearly done “the last panda”. next up “titan” and “the fords”.

Finished **To Rule The Waves: A History of the Royal Navy ** over the weekend. Next up is Spices: The Scents of Paradise. The surrent truck book is If At All Possible, Involve A Cow, a history of college pranking through the ages.

I just started that.

I’m also reading The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain De Botton. I’ve been having a phase the last few months of reading Alain De Botton in the bathtub.

Just got to the part where they spell it out – or start to spell it out, I suspect. Yikes!

I’m reading…“Lusitania - An Epic tragedy” by Diana Preston. She did a lot of research, and it’s pretty good. I’m learning a lot. A Vanderbilt, very powerful and rich family at the time, was on the ship, torpedoed by the Germans in 1915. I like history stuff.

Also a travel guide on Montreal, becaue I may very well be going there in spring!

Some mystery entitled Fearful Symmetry. Can’t remember the author. Just bought it today. Hope it’s good.

Just finished The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne. It’s brilliant, quite heartbreaking. Reminded me a lot of Millions, another book ostensibly for children, but able to be enjoyed by adults, too. I have a copy of Robert Fisk’s The Great War For Civilisation waiting for me to read at work in January, when things have calmed down a little.

At home I’ve been rereading my least favourite Harry Potters - the fourth and the sixth, and really enjoying them this time round, and I’m settling into Featherstone, by Kirsty Gunn, who wrote Rain.