I’m in the middle of the fourth Otherland book, by Tad Williams, and I also borrowed (I work in a bookstore) Wifework, about the perception of the place of men and women in mariages. Next up…a list about as long as this book, but that top of it are Lovely Bones, Wicked, and the Days of Rice and Salt (about if the Europeans had been wiped out in a plague and it was the chinese who populated the Americas.
I’m veeeeeerrrrrry slllllooooowwwwlllly working my way through Sidney’s Arcadia, which is one of those things I’m going to have to read sooner or later. Not a bad read, but a difficult one.
Clancy’s Red Rooster.
…but shouldn’t this be in Cafe?
Every Spy A Prince–a critical history of Israel’s Intelligence agencies.
I’ve also been reading other books on espionage, including Spy Book: The Encyclopedia Of Espionage. I can highly recommend both volumes, as neither blanket condemnations nor propaganda.
I was inspired to this my the increasing tensions in the Middle East, & by the 9/11 events.
Last Breath: Cautionary Tales from the Limits of Human Endurance, by Peter Stark. This was a library book that I had to buy because my bird found the last couple of pages so tasty.
The book describes what hypothermia, scurvy, drownings, falls, dehydration (unbelievable) and other gruesome things that happen to us, detailing the tenacious hold on life the body strives to maintain.
Just finished Vinegar Hill.
Depressing.
Yeah, it should. I’ll scootch it over there.
Me, I’m still reading Little Dorrit, as I have been for a couple of months now. It’s big and fat and heavy, so I don’t carry it around with me everywhere, and I only dip into it when I know I’ll have the opportunity to read at least twenty or thirty pages.
I’m into Book II now: Old Dorrit is out of the Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison because he unexpectedly came into a massive fortune (How con-veeeeeeen-i-ent) and his whole family has trooped up to the Great St. Bernard Convent on a Continental Tour, where they’ve unexpectedly run into Henry Gowan and his new bride Pet (and I give THAT marriage about six more months), and each party includes at least one Mysterious Stranger.
Just finished Arthur Koestler’s The Lotus and the Robot, his memoirs about travelling in India and Japan in the late 1950s.
I’ve given up on Jack London’s John Barleycorn, about 2/3 through, as it is lousy.
Also dipping into Robert Cole’s A Traveller’s History of Paris, which is fun and informative. I’ve been to Paris several times, and lived there for close to four months, and I never knew just what the heck a “Capuchin” was, or what Etienne Marcel did. Did you guys know that the enormous equestrian statue in the Place du Parvis doesn’t resemble Charlemagne at ALL?
Volume I of the Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock. The Elric stories are about the only fantasy I can get into, and I re-read them every few years.
Before that I read Be Real by Elmore Leonard. It’s the sequel to Get Shorty, which I have read but not seen. I’m developing an uncanny ability to predict what happens next in an Elmore Leonard novel.
No Parachute by Arthur Gould Lee. Out of print for a couple of decades, I was lucky to find a cheap paperback copy at a favorite used book store.
It’s the letters he wrote home from World War I, where he flew into battle every day in Sopwith Pups and Camels. His letters and diary entries comprise the most startling account of ordinary heroism I’ve ever read. It’s impossible for me to imagine a life where going into mortal danger two or three times a day becomes so commonplace that news about the company dog becomes more interesting. Great book.
I just finished Patty Jane’s House of Curl, by Lorna Landvick. My book club is doing a “book crossing” thingy, and this is the book I got. It was very sweet, fairly light family saga, and made for good vacation reading. I shall be sending it on its way soon.
I am also still reading Manuscript Found At Saragossa, by Jan Potocki, which is excellent, and was recommended (and lent!) to me by another Doper. The fact that I am STILL reading it doesn’t reflect at all on its quality, which is amazing, but rather that the volume itself is a little too big to be a good subway book.
In honor of my summer vacation, and this milestone year, I am also reading Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, by Peter Guralnick. I am enjoying this tremendously, although I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who wasn’t already a big Elvis fan.
Sivalensis, what do you think of the fourth Otherland book? I’m not a huge fan of Tad Williams, but I read the first Otherland for book club, and despite the fact that it wasn’t something I really liked, I got completely hooked on the characters, and slogged my way through the next two books as well. It’s a love-hate thing for me. Is the fourth one the last one? For the love of all that is good and holy, does he start to explain some of the stuff that’s been going on?
I just finished “Good in Bed,” a novel about a plus-sized woman and her search for love, “The Doggfather,” which is the autobiography of the rapper, Snoop Dogg, and “My Brother,” Jamaica Kincaid’s account of her brother’s death from HIV/AIDS.
I’m scouring you all’s responses for new books to try. 
Just barely started Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue. Supposed to be about the life of a 18th c. London girl as she gets herself into prostitution, out, then in again. Good so far.
Also just finished 100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I don’t think I’ll try any more of his books. It’s not that they’re bad, but I get no joy from reading them.
Good books from this summer: The Lovely Bones, Hard Eight, Sometimes a Wheel Falls Off, Prodigal Summer, Catherwood, The Outermost House, Dandelion Wine (again). Egads! Those are just the good ones… I’ve got to move somewhere I can go outdoors and get some balance.
Awwwright! Now ALL the Cool Kids are reading it!
(I’m still bogged down on the Forty-fourth Day, “The Marques de Torres Rovella’s Story Continued.” Does Alphonse van Worden ever get any nooky with Rebecca, the Cabbalist’s cute sister?)
I just started The Shelters of Stone by Jean Auel (the fifth book in her Earth’s Children series).
*Maria von Blucher’s Corpus Christi: Letters from the South Texas Frontier, 1849-1879*
And happy birthday, gobear! (You mentioned it the other day, and it’s the same as my sister’s. )
Just finished Gold Mountain. Pretty decent civil war story (not the standard battle scenes, all takes place after the war).
Also read Tehanu and The Other Wind, didn’t know there even were any new Earthsea books, somehow completely missed the two new ones. Still prefer The Tombs of Atuan of the series (and Always Coming Home will remain my LeGuin fave)
Recently:
Passages by Connie Willis. Cannot recommend this book enough. Fantastic.
The Whitechapel Conspiracy, one of Anne Perry’s “Thomas Pitt” victorian mystery series. I’ve been enjoying them when I’m in the mood, working my way through them gradually as they’re available at the library. If she wasn’t credited, they ripped off 90% of the plot of “From Hell” (that recent Jack the Ripper movie w/ Johnny Depp) from this book. Don’t remember seeing any book credits, but I saw the movie first so I wasn’t looking for them…
I usually read books in one or 2 sittings, so all I’ve got atm is “what I just read”. Won’t know what I’m reading next until I hit the library again…
I’m reading Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy, The Indian In The Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks, and redoing the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis.
I’m currently wading through The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe. I’m finally getting to enjoy it - the style annoyed me at first.
Another multiple reader checking in… at current count there are six in my reading stack.
Dark Star by Marcia Muller
Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural edited by Marvin Kaye. He picks the best stories to make you shiver!
Ancient Evenings by Norman Mailer. Sex and politics and MORE sex in Ancient Egypt.
Sex: A Natural History by Joann Ellison Rodgers. Lots of biology and sociology and anthropology… so why did sex evolve?
Shakespeare’s Kings John Julius Norwich. Interesting but iffy history.
Thomas Becket: His Last Days by William Urry. A condensation of a MUCH larger work and you can tell. It leaves out a lot of details that should be discussed. The editor is, of course, a journalist not a historian else there would not have been this phrase " Roger of Pont l’Eveque, a murderer and sexual pervert…"
Historians would have just ignored the perv part:D
Seriously though does anyone know WHY he was a pervert? The idiot editor never explains… the sadist!
In addition to a whole lot of re-reads, I’ve been plowing through The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African.
I haven’t figured out which is which yet.