Easter Break Edition: Whatcha Reading?

Cafe Society
21

I just finished The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad, which was mostly about the women in the bookseller’s family and what their lives were like just after the Taliban fell. Recommended.

Just started One Bullet Away The Making of a Marine Officer by Nathaniel Fick. It’s okay so far, despite the military acronym fatigue, but then I’m only about 40 pages in. So, what’s an ITR again?

Next up, The Minotaur by [I-swore-I’d-never-read-another-one-of-her-books-after-the-last-one] Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine. I’m rationalizing it this way: she wrote this book as Barbara Vine, not as Ruth Rendell and her Barbara Vine books are generally better. We’ll see. If this one sucks I can swear her off forever and ever. Again.* And then whine about it in the next book thread.

*Except that she has a new Wexford novel coming out shortly. I’ll probably read that one too.

22

Having just returned from the US, I have a nice pile of summer reading to tide me over. Right now I am working on Team of Rivals; The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, then I have Stalin’s Folly covering the first ten days of the War in the East. (In truth I expect little insight from this one, but want to give it a chance.

Then I have two works on China, one on Mao and the other the Great Leap Forward. Then there is some other stuff including some cheapo novels.

23

Cripes, I’ve got so little time to read these days that I’m probably still working on much the same list as last time this topic came up!

The last book I finished was My Fundamentalist Education: a memoir of a divine girlhood, by Christine Rosen. I don’t think that this book would be for everyone, but I enjoyed it, mostly because it so closely mirrored my own childhood. It’s about a little girl going to a private Christian school in St. Petersburg, Florida, whereas I was a little girl going to a private Christian school in Ft. Lauderdale. It was so close to my experience that at one point I wondered, “Didn’t they have that seminar about the evils of rock music?” and then a few pages later, bip! there it was. However, I think I was more successful than Ms. Rosen in the long run at shedding the effects of the brainwashing.

Currently working on We’re all in this together : a novella and stories by Owen (son of Stephen) King. So far, not bad at all. It must be hard for this kid to write in the shadow of his father, but he seems to be doing fine.

Car book: Fired! : tales of the canned, canceled, downsized, and dismissed, by Annabelle Gurwitch. Short funny essays by many people whose names you will recognize.

On deck:

The politically incorrect guide to science. Bethell, Tom.

Body brokers : inside America’s underground trade in human remains. Cheney, Annie.

The dead beat : lost souls, lucky stiffs, and the perverse pleasures of obituaries. Johnson, Marilyn.

Hippo eats dwarf : a field guide to hoaxes and other B.S. Boese, Alex.

Gastronaut : adventures in food for the romantic, the foolhardy, and the brave. Gates, Stefan.

Mixed : my life in black and white. Nissel, Angela.

Tripping the prom queen : the truth about women and rivalry. Barash, Susan Shapiro.

Death’s acre : inside the legendary forensic lab the Body Farm, where the dead do tell tales. Bass, William M.

The year of yes : a memoir. Headley, Maria Dahvana.

Life’s little annoyances : true tales of people who just can’t take it anymore. Urbina, Ian.

Bryson’s dictionary of troublesome words. Bryson, Bill.

A canticle for Leibowitz. Miller, Walter M.

Crap cars. Porter, Richard.

Walking the big wild : from Yellowstone to the Yukon on the Grizzly Bears’ Trail. Heuer, Karsten.

PostSecret : Extraordinary confessions from ordinary lives. Warren, Frank.

I always feel it’s up to me to inject some light reading recommendations into these threads. :slight_smile:

24

Last night I finished reading The Thin Place, by Kathryn Davis. Really good, beautiful writing, imaginative, and more.

25

I’m re-reading Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere

26

I found this totally unreadable. I couldn’t keep track of who any of the characters were, and 100 pages into it decided I didn’t care.

27

In an attempt to fill in my perceived educational gaps, I’m starting “The Divine Comedy” for the first time.

28

I’m on a german literature kick lately…Just finished “Maerchen” by Clemens Brentano. Am currently reading “Homo Faber” by Max Frish will I will follow with “Zauberberg” by Thomas Mann.

Since I only like to read the german versions, it’s a pain in the ass to find them without paying big bucks. Somehow 2nd hand bok stores don’t seem to carry a lot of them.

29

Vegetarian cookbooks lately but I bought a copy of Steve Martin’s The Pleasure of My Company at the Op Shop for $1 without realising that it was the Steve Martin. The bits I read on flick through looked promising so I may start it tomorrow, although it is Derby Day.

30

Slight Hijack, but has anyone read The Town that Forgot How to Breathe by Kenneth J. Harvey?

My wife got it for me from the library, and I started it thinking “this is silly, I’m never going to finish it. I don’t like the characterfs and the premise is just dumb.”
The next thing I knew I was finished, and had that dissapointed feeling you get when a good book is done, and you won’t be seeing those characters again for a while.

Highly recommended. Don’t let the description get in the way.

31

I’ve recently finished The New Work of Dogs by Jon Katz (highly recommended for those interested in reading about the human/companion animal bond). I’m almost done with 999, a horror anthology edited by Al Sarrontonio that I nearly recommended in another thread in this forum, but some of the stories get kinda icky in places and therefore didn’t meet **AuntiePam’s ** OP request.

Next up is Captain John Smith, a biography by Thomas Hoobler and Dorothy Hoobler, and after that is The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, a book that I read about in yet another thread in this forum. I don’t read much science fiction, and I’m really looking forward to that.

32

I just finished reading The Closer by Michael Connelly. It was ok in a something to read kind of way. I recently started Blackwater Sound by James W. Hall, which is one of the sale-a-thon books I bought a metric ton of a while back. My dad says that its horrible, but I have to see it with my own eyes. Yesterday, I was given Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire as a gift, and I can hardly wait to start reading it.

So many books to look into from this thread!

33

Just finished Charlaine Harris’s last Southern Vampire mystery, Dead as a Doornail. I’ve enjoyed this series, and I’ll have to get the newest one (Definitely Dead) when it comes out next month.

34

I’m reading two books right now. My at-home book (a hardcover) is Citizens by Simon Schama, a very interesting history of the French Revolution; my bring-to-work book (a paperback) is Aramintha Station, some minor yet enjoyable science fiction from Jack Vance.

35

The complete works of Edgar Allen Poe, Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, and the Paradiso by Dante. I need some good recs.

36

I am way behind on my Carol O’Connell reading. I just started Stone Angel, the fourth of the “Mallory” books.

37

Pathfinder, John Charles Fremont and the Course of American Empire (Chaffin).

Just finished Benjamin Franklin: an American Life (Isaacson).

Apparently I’m working on a string of bios of 18th-19th century Americans…

38

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien for my american lit class. It’s a book I would read if it wasn’t required. Just finished Pale Fire by Vladmir Nabokov for same class…not sure how I felt about that one.

39

Just finished Sims by F. Paul Wilson; when I get a chance I’ll take a look at the Royal Ontario Museum exhibit books we picked up on our trip to Toronto.

40

Halfway through Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash right now. Very, very good book, and every time I read it, I get this pang of jealousy of the guy’s writing style. I don’t think he’s as good as Gibson (I read Neuromancer a while ago) but every description is near frickin’ perfect. Guess I have to keep practicing.

And I just finished The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordan by Stephen King. Which was actually (gasp) very short! Good book too, even though I finished it in like a day.