Mind Wide Open, by Steven Johnson – a popularized intro to neurobiology. I’m enjoying it.
I’ve been thinking about starting one of these myself, but didn’t have any thing good to report.
GreyWalker
A totaly mediocre read. Mind candy. If you like the genre, go ahead and look at it, but don’t expect to be wowed.
The third in The Sisters Grimm I like the series. So far this one is only OK.
The Stolen Child is in the queue. I have heard good things about it. We will see.
I’m about to start Napoleon’s Pyramids by William Dietrich.
I really liked his other historical novels about Hadrian’s Wall and Atilla the Hun.
The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by G. W. Dahlquist was very good - fairly slow going, though. It’s a strange, quasi-Victorian conspiracy novel with lots of confusion and double-crossing.
See if you can fit in a trip to Jamestown, too – it’s the quadricentennial this year. Yorktown (my stomping grounds) is also worth a visit. Neither is as madly developed and huge as Williamsburg (although Jamestown is likely to be pretty busy this year, what with the birthday and all).
I’m working my way through the Dresden Files books by Jim Butcher. Enjoying them very much indeed. I’m about halfway through Dead Beat, which is the second to the last book so far.
In Xanadu by William Dalrymple, in which the author retreads Marco Polo’s travels from Jerusalem to Xanadu. Dalrymple’s witty and funny, and I’m getting a fair bit of history in the reading, but something about it’s not really snaring me. Oh well. I found the book stashed in our magazine recirculation bin in the lobby of my building.
Next up: The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer.
Not, “Whatcha reading for?” 
I’m reading Queen Isabella by Alison Weir. It’s a biography of a English queen from the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages is not my favorite period for British royal history, but Weir is my favorite historical biographer and the book is pretty good if you like that sort of thing.
After Flanders, which as AuntiePam points out, was an absolutely riveting and terrifying book, I needed a moment to catch my breath. So, I’m trashing out with Deep Storm, by Lincoln Child. It hasn’t hit the wall yet, but it isn’t nearly as good as his books with Douglas Preston. Kind of an undersea mishmash of The Abyss, Sphere and Outland, with interchangeable characters…wait, why am I reading this again? Oh yes, rats, mud, purification, pain, brutality, insanity, waste and death. Think I’m going to need something more distracting more than Deep Storm.
I just picked up Grayson, by Lynne Cox, from the library. Young girl swims with baby whale. Maybe this’ll work.
“The Vicomte de Bragelonne,” by Alexandre Dumas (pere). It’s the second sequel to “The Three Musketeers.”
I’d be interested to hear what you thought of it. I enjoyed it.
I think you’ve made some recommendations in my Gene Wolfe thread.
-Cem
Sorry…forgot the intent of the thread!
I’m reading Galatea 2.0 (Richard Powers) right now, and have a few on queue:
[ol]
[li]Team of Rivals (about Abe Lincoln)[/li][li]Re-read some Haruki Murakami[/li][li]Maybe re-read Gene Wolfe’s Short Sun series[/li][/ol]
I want to get more Richard Powers, and maybe a few reccomendations I’ve received in another thread.
-Cem
Just started reading two new books:
The Letters of John Keats: I have a wierd inclination to reading the letters and journals of authors and philosophers rather than their actual published works.
Shalamir the Clown by Salman Rushdie: After reading The Satanic Verses earlier this year I began to buy all of his novels and I am finally starting to get a chance to read through them.
Four things more or less at once.
The Roman Reader, edited by Basil Davenport, and originally published the month I was born (by Gutenberg, obviously.) An anthology of Roman literature. I’m in the middle of the Aeneid, each book of which they took from a different translation. All the translations were chosen to be public domain.
Thurber Carnival, which I had picked up at a library sale for 50 cents.
For the Flag by Jules Verne, from my collection
and A Tom Swift Jr. book, #7, which I started when my wife went to bed early and all 3 of my books were in the bedroom. Also from my collection.
I just finished getting through several crime thrillers by Val McDermid. I nearly had to call in sick one day last month because I couldn’t stop reading A Place of Execution the night before.
Now that I’ve unpacked the box where they’d remained hidden for over a year, I’ve started re-reading the Aubrey-Maturin series. Almost finished with Post Captain.
Currently finishing:
In paperback, Blind Man’s Bluff, a historical account of U.S. Navy submarine activities during the Cold War.
On my PDA (I just created my first e-book library!):
Atlantic: The Last Great Race of Princes, a great book detailing the 1905 Trans-Atlantic Kaiser’s Cup race and the social and political backdrop of the time.
Up next on my PDA:
Air Force One: A History of Presidents and Their Planes
COD: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World
The Ice Master: The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the Karluk
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Ohio Narratives
If you couldn’t tell by now, I’m a bit of a history buff!
I loved Galatea 2.0. It started me reading several of Powers’ books, of which The Time of Our Singing was my favorite. I hope it’s on your list!
Just finished Helen of Troy by Margaret George, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, Concubine by Norah Lofts, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams, and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Now I’m rereading Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett and going through Lucifer: Mansions of the Silence by Mike Carey.
I’ve got two books on hold that I need to pick up: *Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles * and The Autobiography of Henry VIII, both by Margaret George. After that… who knows?
My last girlfriend almost dumped me the first day we met when I admitted that I never finished this. Of course she dumped me a few weeks later anyway. Now I’m sad again. Damn.
Currently reading The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon by Anthony Summers. Awaiting delivery of The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States by Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. The last fiction I read that wasn’t a children’s book or graphic novel was Malpractice in Maggody by Joan Hess.
I’m in the middle of Widdershins, a collection of ghost stories by Oliver Onions (of which the first, The Beckoning Fair One, is my favorite ghost story – I’ve read it lotsa times).
I’m also in the middle of McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, edited by Michael Chabon – it’s got stories from some heavy hitters in it, including Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Michael Moorcock and Chabon himself. I’ve enjoyed all of the stories thus far, and have discovered some writers new to me from which I’ll be looking for more.
I’m also reading a biography, Ulysses S. Grant: The Soldier and the Man by Edward G. Longacre, but I’m about to put it down and get a different Grant biography. It’s pretty well accepted that Grant liked the bottle to a certain extent; I don’t need to be reminded of it every three pages.
She has a new one coming out in a couple of weeks, I think, about Lady Jane Grey. This one is fiction, though, and aren’t hers usually straight bios?