Whatcha Readin' Dec 2010 Edition

First and foremost: Tomorrow is my birthday, send cards! I will be 49 - how bad will 50 be?

Well the holiday season is here - I will get tons of books. Anyone who doesn’t know what to get me, gets me a book gift certificate. I love it!

I am reading The Spirit Eater (The Legend of Eli Monpress) the last in the legend of Eli Monpress (I think.)

It just came in yesterday and so I have no idea yet how good it is.
November’s thread.

Happy Birthday! Don’t be surprised when parts start falling off in your 50s. :smiley:

Closing in on the end of Aztec, by Gary Jennings. About 85% through. Expect to finish it within a week.

And still enjoying it, I hope!

Yes, I like it lots. I can see where it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, though. It may help that I’ve studied the Aztecs formally and visited a pyramid or two in Mexico City and so am already a bit familiar with their brutality. “Peaceful natives” my eye!

I plan to check out Jennings’ The Journeyer later this month.

Just finished the fourth book in the new Nicholas Flamel books. I strongly recommend them if you like books about magic and fantasy.

I’m just finishing up Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann on audiobook. Very beautiful, accented voice and the sheep are hilarious and so sheep-like. I just got done with NanoWriMo so I need to get a Kindle read picked out but have been downloading some samples with nothing really grabbing me yet. Next audiobook in line when I finish TBF is The Prestige by Christopher Priest.

I’m reading Better: A surgeon’s notes on performance by Atul Gawande. It’s a fantastic book that mixes case histories, personal anecdotes, and history of the medicine, to discuss the state of his profession.

You know, I started them like gangbusters, but my interest has waned. I’m not sure why exactly. No doubt I’ll get back to it eventually.

I’m reading John Dies at the End. Pretty good, with gross and absurd imagery and some wonderful turns of phrase, but halfway through I don’t really know where it’s going. It’s less plot-driven, more clever-driven. I like it, though- just hope it becomes more… something.

Just started the fourth Charlie Chan novel, The Black Camel. They’re like noir-detective crack, those books are. After I finished the second, I told myself I’d read something else before starting another, just to space them out (there are 6 in total), but I ended up jumping straight into #3 and then straight from #3 to #4.

Just finished ‘Against all things ending’ (book 3 of The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant) and sadly I have nothing downloaded onto my kindle yet :frowning:

Slight hijack - I read the first few ‘Wheel of Time’ books but stopped due to the hiatus that occurred for them to be published. While I enjoyed the first 6 ones, do you guys think I should re-start the series? I’m aware of all the usual criticism but am juts wondering if this series jumped the shark somewhere or not

I just finished the audiobook of Christopher Moore’s A Dirty Job. A reread for me, but first time on audiobook. The narrator is nothing special, but the book is so good. Moore’s one of my favorite contemporary authors.

I’m in the middle of City of Glory, by Beverly Swerling. It takes place in New York during the war of 1812. It seems like Swerling took a casual approach to her historical research, but makes up for it with plenty of high melodrama and intrigue. There’s so much going on, it’s hard to put this book down to go to bed at night. I would recommend this for anyone who likes Philipa Gregory and wants to branch out into a new time period.

I am just finishing up The Journeyer, and did enjoy it. I will say that it is a bit more graphic than Aztec.

Jennings books are very entertaining. For me, they are a very good mix of “real” history, very colorful characters, and smut.

I noticed that some of the reviews of Jennings books, Journeyer, in particular, were critical of him including hetro and/or homosexual scenes in these books. I tend not to agree. I think that these scenes help create a level of realism and help the reader develop a better sense of what it was like to live back then.

I’ve been trying to read “Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series”. Trying to keep straight all the crooked lawyers, gamblers, and politicians. When I came across this , I almost just gave it up:

Katcher didn’t footnote, didn’t cite sources, so his allegation is difficult- if not impossible- to verify. But it may indeed be true.

WTF?

Just finished Declaration: The Nine Tumultuous Weeks When America Became Independent, May 1-July 4, 1776 by William Hogeland, which was good if more narrow than I had hoped, and started Into the Storm by Taylor Anderson, a SF novel which I started before but didn’t finish.

Just read Knights by Julek Heller and Deirdre Headon, which is a well-illustrated but not too historically accurate book on knights in armor, the Crusades, heraldry, siege warfare, etc.

Finished The Spirit Eater the third in the series of the Legend of Eli Monpress. I enjoyed it - although the first is still the best of the series. I had stated that I thought this was the last, but I was wrong, more are coming.

Happy belated birthday, Khadaji!

Well, so far in the month of December I have read almost nothing and I’m starting to get mean! I’m going to have to give my current Bill Bryson back to the library because people with time to read are waiting for it.

So I picked up a less overdue book from the pile: Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half with America’s Cheapest Family, by Steve and Annette Economides. It’s been all fluffy pep talk so far.

I also cast an eye over The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey, which my fourteen year old son asked me to get him from the library. I read it when I was a teen and promptly forgot what it said. Suffice it to say that now I remember why I forgot.

I just started The Prestige on audiobook. I love the movie and so far am really enjoying the book as well but it is a different experience than it would have been before I knew the twist. Still, I’m about an hour into it and it’s pretty great regardless.
I didn’t know there would be a modern component so that part is like reading a new to me novel at least.

A Curtain Falls, a detective novel set in 1906 New York. Stefanie Pintoff’s debut In the Shadow of Gotham was Edgar-nominated, and I’m enjoying this one too.