well, while checking out the boards, “rapture in death.”
“the vanderbilt women”
“fatalis”
“fire and ice”
I’m about halfway through Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris. This is very enjoyable and fluffy so far, about a waitress who starts dating a vampire. It’s also a complete Anita Blake rip-off, and I feel somewhat guilty for enjoying it more than actual Anita Blake books. Harris and Hamilton aren’t the same person, are they? I will feel really dumb if they are.
I also just reread This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden. This is a chronicle of a cloistered Benedictine community of nuns in the 1950s, and it’s so fascinating. It’s also a good touchstone in troubled times. I always think this book is amazing because it makes it seem ok for you, the reader, to be oogling at the weird nun stuff while at the same time, becoming very impressed with the spirituality of the women. Fiction, but it’s my understanding that Godden did quite a bit of research and interviewing while she was writing.
Am reading: Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub
Just before that: Under the Skin by Michel Faber
(much more horrifying than my current reading)
I am currently two-thirds of the way through three different books.
Shadow and Claw by Gene Wolfe. Science fiction/fantasy. The main character is a torturer who got kicked out of his guild for showing mercy. Different, to say the least.
The Club Dumas, by Arturo Perez-Reverte. It only took me until chapter three before I realized that this was the source for the movie The Ninth Gate. Hopefully, the book has a decent ending.
The Island of the Day Before, by Umberto Eco. A young Italian on a mission for Cardinal Richelieu is ship wrecked and washes up…on a deserted ship. Kind bogged down on this one. Need to start reading it again before I totally lose the thread of the story and have to <shudder> start over.
Normally, my tastes aren’t nearly this high-brow. If you’d asked a month ago, it was mostly exploding space ships and Buffy novelizations.
I’m on kind of a skeptic kick lately:
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. Been meaning to read this for years.
Just finished:
Galileo’s Daughter and Longitude, both by Dava Sobel. Galileo’s Daughter was superb, but Longitude was weak. Too short and not enough detail.
Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud by Robert Park
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. Guaranteed to put you off hamburgers for life.
On deck:
Beyond Backpacking: Ray Jardines Guide to Lightweight Hiking by Ray Jardine. The guy’s kind of a kook (to save weight, cut lightening holes in your toothbrush!), but he has some very good ideas.
Just finished with Volpone, by Ben Jonson, for my Renaissance Drama class. Terrific play, that. Also reading selections from Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth for my Foundations of Interpretive Theory course, and rereading The Lord of the Rings again, though I don’t have a lot of time to read for fun (having this tendency to waste my free time on the Net… ;)) Oh, and I’m also veeeeeeeeerrrrrryyyyyy slllllooooowwwwwllllyyy reading Children of Dune, though it’s been a long time since I’ve picked it up.
T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. My favorite part is The Ill-made Knight.
I am reading a highly annoying Anita Shreve book at the moment. “The Last Time They Met.” I’d give up on it, but I just gave up on the awful piece of crap novel I bought at the airport, too, and I hate to ditch on two books in the same week.
Next up: “Bobos in Paradise.” My book club is reading it.
999 - A horror anthology. Pretty good. Some authors I never see anymore are in it (hello, T.E.D. Klein!)
Next up: The Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
I’m just finishing up The Annotated Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, with notations by Leonard Wolf. It’s taken me a lot longer than I thought it would, but it was worth it.
Nex up: The Compleat Werewolf by Anthony Boucher, and a whole set of Lindsay Davis mysteries abut Falco in Ancient Rome.
I have lost track of how many times I’ve re-read this, and the other Hornblower novels.
Frosted Mini-Wheats: Back of the Box by Kellogg
It’s all about the struggle of the more fulfilling charachter (Wheats) vs. his more appealing alter-ego (Sweets). Enthralling.
Terry Pratchett: The Gods Trilogy (Pyramids, Small Gods, and Hogfather)
Terry P. kicks ass.
Oh, and countless textbooks, boring essays, and a handful of journal articles. Yay me.
E.
Currently reading From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman, which is a really excellent book if you’re interested in the Israeli-Palestine conflict at all. He manages to cover the history of the region while still making it interesting with a lot of personal anecdotes and reflection.
Next up, something probably of interest to few but myself: Three in a Bed. It’s a book about co-sleeping with your infant.
University of Phoenix press’s “Comtemporary Business Issues (with readings).”
Actually quite facinating. I may wind up more liberal than Stoidela before too long.
Right now I’m reading Journey to the West, a very old and well-known classic Chinese fantasy novel about a monk traveling with his three disciples (Monkey, Pig, and Friar Sand) to the Western Heaven to retrieve the Buddhist scriptures. The journey is long and dangerous, and they fight many demons along the way. The book is fascinating, though the episodes are a bit repetitive at times (the monk gets captured by a demon, Monkey pulls some favors to bail him out, repeat). This book is huge, 100 chapters and about 1,800 pages. I’m just finishing up the second volume, so I’m about 2/3 done.
Up next: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, another old Chinese classic novel, part historical and part legend, about the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history after the fall of the Han dynasty and the struggle to reunite the empire. It’s also about as long as Journey to the West, so I’ve got lots of reading to do!
I just finished Snow Falling on Cedars. It was a great book. I just started Sense and Sensibility but it is going slowly. I read best when I can sit down and read a whole book in one day, which I haven’t been able to do lately.
I just finished Jack Welch’s autobiography. Now I am on Cimmaron Rose by James Lee Burke.
And to the poster who is reading The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, I am sorry.
SPOILER
Rule 11 is the father.
Slaughterhouse Five just finished this book.
The Nine Nations of North America is what I plan to read next.
I read that part. It didn’t surprise me as much as when they found 28 § 1391 in the garden shed with the Rules Enabling Act at the end of the sixth chapter. Now that was shocking.
Oh, sorry…SPOILER.
BAH! It is a red herring. Any fool can see that the Constitution CLEARLY killed th Articles of Confederation!