I just finished reading Bill Bryson’sA Walk in the Woods which I so thoroughly enjoyed and delighted in every aspect of it that a) I didn’t want it to end and b) I got back into doing a little hiking.
Working Through via reading with the kids: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban Loving it still even if it is 4-6 nights a week since January.
Not really sure if I will launch myself into Goblet of Fire with them as of yet. Too long, complicated plot and Death stuff. Input welcome. Kids are 7 and 6. Next Up
Strata by Terry Pratchett. The only one of his in stock at my local library.
Is this a sequel to Into Thin Air? I’m just kidding. There’s a joke in “think air” somewhere, but I’m leaving work right now and I don’t have time to come up with it.
I’m just finishing **The Thinkin’ **…uh, I mean The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly. It’s really good. And then I’ll take on The Colony, a non-fiction book about the leper colony at Molokai (sp?).
I’ve just completed **Tariffs, Blockades and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War ** by Mark Thornton and Robert B. Ekelund Jr. and am now starting Robin Neilland’s The Old Contemptibles: The British Expeditionary Force, 1914.
I’m currently reading London Fields by Martin Amis. I have a little more than 200 pages to go, but I’m not at all certain that I’ll be able to make it through them. I hate, hate, HATE this book more than anything else I’ve read in a loooooong while.
Take a slew of irritating, unlikeable, superficial characters and have them do basically nothing for long stretches of time, pontificate upon ridiculous psuedo-philosophical non-topics, throw in some fairly misogynist attitudes, and drape it all in a tone of smug, supercilious yuppie condescension and you get “London Fields.” Arrrggh, I hate this book!
Just read Gladwell’s Blink (which I loved until about the last 70 pages, where it sort of died off) and am about to start that new James Morrow that my boss claims is wonderful.
And Art: don’t finish. That book is sheer misery, start to end. I got stuck with it in an English lit class and considered getting a lobotomy instead of finishing.
In the middle of Steinbeck’s East of Eden. It’s very good, but it’s required reading for a class, and so is tainted with the inhumanities that are one’s final two months of high school. A friend has recommended me a book called The Practice Effect, so if I can find it, it’s next.
Curse you, yanceylebeef! Intriguing title. I looked this up at Amazon. So far, She Who Shall Not Be Named is the only, ahem, “reader” who’s reviewed this book. Undaunted, and after depositing a Not Helpful vote on said, ahem, reader’s “review”, I found Janet Maslin’s NYT review. It appears that Maslin has actually read the book, rather than a synopsis of it, and it sounds damn good, so I ordered it.
The Private Life of a Masterpiece, which looks at a series of iconic works of art (David, Mona Lisa, Olympia, Sunflowers), how they were created, early reactions to, ongoing reactions to, and references to in other works of art. Really entertaining. I skipped about half of the chapter on Goya’s Second of May, which isn’t a work I’m particularly familiar with – nor am I interested in 19th-century European political/military history. So.
Picked it up on a whim from the remainder section of Barnes and Noble, but I’m really enjoying it.
I’m halfway through a Tom Holt book my cousin lent me - My Hero it’s fun, but I keep comparing it to Jasper Fforde’s books, and it’s not stacking up so well. The bookshop where I work has just got a whole lot of his stuff, it’s been rejacketed and resized (like the new Discworld books). At work I’ve been reading Bagombo Snuff Box, a collection of Vonnegut’s previously unpublished stories. It’s interesting, but not groundbreaking. Robert Fisk is still looming at me, accusingly. It was the only book I took house-sitting with me and I still haven’t opened it. Next on my list is Edward W. Said’s autobiography. I found Oslo to Iraq very interesting, so I have high hopes for this.
Some of his early stuff, like Bloodsucking fiends and Coyote Blue are rather Robbinsesque. He realy came into his own as a writer with Lamb The lost Jesus years, also known as the Gospel of Biff.
This one is really good, as well. His humor and character depth is much better than some of his earlier work.
Although, I loved Practical Demonkeeping. That was the first one I read, and the others were just ‘meh’ until Lamb.
Sorry Auntie, I am an enabler.
I actually bought this as soon as it came out, before any “readers” could review it. I’ve been hooked on Morrow since Towing Jehovah!