I’m finishing up The Crimson Petal and the White and am eagerly anticipating reading the thread about it.
I’ll be starting Martin Amis’s Yellow Dog after this.
Elaella, I’d like to hear what you think of Freezer Burn. Have you read Lansdale’s Hap Collins and Leonard Pine novels? Fantastic stuff.
Right now, working on both:
harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
and
The Light Fantastic - Terry Pratchett (my second foray into Discworld, and doing them in chronological order, just to be rebellious)
I am attempting to read the first Harry Potter book in Korean. I’ve been working on it for maybe a year now, and I’m on chapter 9–I can’t handle more than a page or two at a time. I have been interspersing it with other books (lots of Discworld and Vorkosigan stuff) but right now that’s the only thing I’m reading. I think I got through about two paragraphs last night before I conked out.
I’m only on chapter sixteen of Freezer Burn but so far I’m really enjoying it. The protaganist is IMO pretty pathetic. He’s so clueless it’s funny. I love Lansdale writing style. The characters seem very real to me.
I have relatives in East Texas. When I first started reading the book all I could think was ‘this guy could be one of my dim-witted cousins’.
I haven’t read any of Lansdale’s other books but I definitely intend on finding them. He’s very talented.
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester.
I just finished The Stars My Destination. I expected better.
Just finished As Nature Made Him, the true story of a boy raised as a girl. Absolutely harrowing story that actually succeeded at making me distrust the psychiatric profession even more than I already did.
Justin Diamond ROCKS! That’s such an interesting and well-written book. I’m planning on re-reading it as soon as I get done with my current list.
Right now, I’m reading ‘Plagues and Peoples’ by William McNeill. Good but he’s too fond of making sweeping, vague statements that really don’t mean anything.
I’m also reading Chris Claremont’s “Shadow Star”. It’s the third book in a trilogy that follows the events of the movie “Willow”. I wasn’t expecting much but I’ve found I love this series! Very engaging and fun.
elaella, here at the sdmb reading more that one book at a time is normal. you are going to have to try harder to be a freak.
i’m starting david von drehle’s triangle.
I just finished that too. A funny, terrifying book.
I have little time to read because I’m fixing up a new apartment, but I read while I eat (my husband and I bonded because we both do) and while riding the bus and L, and any other spare second I can get. Right now I have 2 others going:
Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth by Joe Conason - I’m about half-way through, and he covers much the same ground as Frankin. Sometimes it’s in more detail and other times he gives less detail. They complement each other. I’m on a mission to read all the recent “liberal” books. (Conason will be in Chicago at Border’s Books on Michigan this coming Monday the 29th. I think it’s at 7:00pm. I’m not sure if he’s reading or just signing.)
and a re-re-re-re-re-reading of
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (it fits well in my purse, I always have a paperback of some book or another in my purse).
Sorry, Franken.
Reading Catch-22 for the third time.
I strongly recommend that book, or anything else by O’Rourke, as a counter-balance to Al Franken et al. If anyone is interested.
I am reading the Iron Tower Trilogy by Dennis McKiernan. David Spade might say about it, “I really liked it the first time I read it…when it was called Lord of the Rings.” It is basically a LotR knockoff, but a well written and enjoyable one. The Burger King to Tolkien’s McDonalds.
Nice to see more Lansdale readers showing up. Newsweek reviewed Bubba Ho-tep this week (and liked it) but they got his name wrong. Sigh.
Recently finished Things Unborn by Edward Byrne. It’s a mystery set in London in 2008, about 40 years after a nuclear war and after people started being reborn. They’re called Retreads and when the book starts, society has learned to assimilate them.
Byrne doesn’t hit the reader over the head with anything, so it’s fun watching people who have lived at all different times in history get used to cultural changes.
Richard III is king (in name only) and is refusing to say what happened to the princes because he needs to save something for his memoirs.
T. E. Lawrence defeated the Duke of Monmouth in something called the Feudal Wars.
Am about halfway through Luck in the Shadows, a fantasy by Lynn Flewelling. I love her stuff. Been reading a lot of fantasy lately.
The people in my life simply don’t understand how I don’t get all of the details of several different books confused. There are only a couple of people who understand my addiction to books and the fact that just because I buy a book doesn’t mean I have to read it right away. I may not read it for months or years after purchasing it.
I was going to read the Discworld series, but I gave up after the first one. Thought it was just a wretched book, quite frankly.
So after a trip to the library, I now have Most Wanted, a collection of crime stories from such luminaries as Lawrence Block, Sara Paretsky, and Sue Grafton and Journey to the Center of the Earth by old school scifi boy Jules Verne.
I do that, too. I scour used bookstores and thrift shops and always have a huge stack of “To-Be-Reads.”
I also can read two or three at a time.
I’m currently reading The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood and The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton. I’m not liking Ruth that much. Just not getting into it for some reason.
I just finished Hornet Flight by Ken Follett and have his earlier one, Jackdaws to read. I may dump The Book of Ruth and read that one instead.
The Iliad, actually, for my Mythology course. I like it, but the amount the prof assigns us to read each night in unbearable. The Odyssey is next.
I want to get back to my Best of H. P. Lovecraft and then the latest Discworld novels I picked up (The Fifth Elephant and The Truth).
Just finished Doctors Wear Scarlet, by Simon Raven.
Now:
The Golden Pot and Other Tales by ETA Hoffmann during my commute - light, fun, writing/plots which are amazingly accessible to contemporary readers.
At home - Hell House, by Richard Matheson - I feel it’s a bit dated, but I recognize the style are very Richard Matheson - hard to put my finger on it - he writes in a very cinematic way (does that make sense?)…
I’ve just finished a book-buying orgy, and have about 15 or 20 new books to crack through. Can’t decide whether to start action or horror next. Will probably just flip a coin.
Grim - have you read Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee? It won the Booker - best book I have read in a decade. Brilliantly written, uses a man’s life and the troubles he runs into to comment on race relations in South Africa.
I just finished In Conquest Born by C.S. Friedman (if you like fantasy, you owe it to yourself to check out the Coldfire Trilogy by same). ICB was an amazing book, especially since I’m not a huge Sci Fi fan. Very cool characters.
I may read Lady Slings the Booze by Spider Robinson next. Or my Annotated Dragonlance Legends, if I feel like carrying around a huge hardback.