I’m reading the revised Clanbook: Malkavian. It’s a sourcebook for White Wolf’s Vampire: the Masquerade RPG. It’s far superior to the first edition.
A hijack perhaps, but here’s my rant on White Wolf.
I got into the VtM series by way of the GURPS adaptation. I liked the depth of the background and was generally able to ignore the cliches. Being a completist nut, over the course of the next year or so, I ended up buying most of the WoD series.
I was not pleased with everything White Wolf did. I felt their decision to stiff Steve Jackson games over the GURPS licensing agreement was ungrateful. I also felt they were spreading themselves too thin, trying to get the most possible sales while their product was “hot” rather than develop it for the long term. The Changeling series seemed to essentially be a contractual obligation as far as Mark Rein-Hagen was concerned. And I didn’t find their new SF series (Trinity?) worth following.
So I began to slow down my WW purchases and consider long and hard before buying their new products. But their recent decision to essentially restart the whole line finally pushed me completley over the edge. Considering I’ve had misgivings about a lot of their recent products, I’ve decided I don’t want to start all over again with their “revised editions”. At this point, the main decision I’m making about the WoD line is whether I should dump my whole collection onto EBay.
Geek here as well. I read Chaos when I was fourteen. That book sent me into long, dizzy, wide eyed, opened mouthed, awed, full of breath, raptured dazes. Incredible stuff.
Right now I’m reading Guns, Germs and Steel which is an excellent and timely book. Very readable. Some books have me counting how many pages I’ve gotten through so far, but that’s not the case here. You don’t have to reread paragraphs three times to make them take.
Books that changed my life:
A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
This affected me in the same way Chaos did, but on some different levels. This book cries out to be read aloud. Dillard is, in my opinion, foremost American essayist.
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
The skeptic’s manifesto. Beautifully written, carefully, fairly and rationally put together.
Guns, Germs and Steel is going on my TBR list for sure.
Hey, who was I asking about Gravity’s Rainbow? I never got an answer! (You’d think I wouldn’t be so anxious for someone to tell me I’m an airhead.)
More all-time favorite books – The Bonfire of the Vanities. This really is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, though it left me with a residual fear of ever going to New York. If I ever do get there, I’ll be immediately labeled a bumpkin anyway, so what am I worried about? 
I love farce, if it’s done well.
Another in a vaguely similar vein that springs to mind is A Confederacy of Dunces. I’ve only read it twice, but the second time was just as hysterical. I’d anticipate what was going to happen and get hilarious just waiting for it to spring. Isn’t there an Ignatius J. Reilly on these boards somewhere? (as a username not as a personality type; LOL)
I know I said I didn’t read any “girlhood” books, but I musta lied because I was thinking about how Anne of Green Gables probably had an important effect on me at the age of 10 or 11. Anne is an imaginative and creative girl with a firey temper. I really aspired to be as imaginative as she, which may have fostered my own creative self. At any rate, I began making up my own stories in earnest after reading the book. For a while I was re-reading every 3 or 4 years, just to immerse myself in sweetness and wholesomeness for a few hours.
Has anyone here read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver? I finished it in late winter, early spring I think. Hmm…maybe it was last fall. At any rate, not too long ago. The book had some problems, but overall it was really a masterpiece, I thought. I feel I understand the problems of Africa better for having read it, which I’m sure was Kingsolver’s intention. It’s her best work, IMHO.
I can’t believe this thread has this many posts and NO ONE has mentioned the FFF Reading Circle! Please do check it out, it’s lovely, and I have recently appointed myself as the Ursa Major’s successor in making sure it moves along, so I’m doing a bit of adverstising. We presently have a circle reading Ulysses, and one reading Fahrenheit 451 is due to start soon. You’re absolutely welcome to join in the reading and make new nominations over at FFF. The URL is http://fff.fathom.org/ubb/Forum13/HTML/000073.html
For the record, I am presently reading both of the aforementioned books, as well as The Social Art by Ronald Macaulay, a book on linguistics and language acquisition. I work in a bookstore and always have at least a couple books going. I recently read all three Harry Potter books, which surprised me in being so good! I’m as psyched about Book 4 as all the kids who come in asking me about it now!