I’m kinda on a ‘well-worn classics’ trip lately. I recently finished Don Quixote, and I’m reading Crime and Punishment now. I finished off A Burnt-out Case by Graham Greene last week and was pleasantly suprised by it.
I am going to tackle the classics after Christmas. I am getting a palm pilot from Mama watsonwil, so I figure I’ll grab a few public domain books of the web and toss in my Palm Reader. Free reading material for the ol’ Palm Pilot. Any recommendations? I was thinking of starting with The Count of Monte Cristo.
Right now, I’m almost done The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius. Nero’s just killed himself and old Galba has become emperor.
I didn’t quite understand where Cecil B. deMille got his ideas about Roman orgies until I started dipping into Suetonius. If anything, Cecil tamed them down.
Hope you’re over the pneumonia, Jodi. Take care of yourself.
Recently finished:
Darkness Demands by Simon Clark
Six-Inch Spikes by Edo van Belkom
In the Dark by Richard Laymon
No Rest for the Wicked by Brian Keene
Working on:
The Nature of Balance by Tim Lebbon
Death Drives a Semi by Edo van Belkom
October Dreams edited by Richard Chizmar
999 edited by Al Sarrantonio
My to-be-read shelf just keeps growing and growing. But I can’t stop buying books. It’s an obsession.
Sheri
I’m reading Robert Paxton’s history of Vichy France. Really slow read, though. Also Richard Lamparski’s Whatever Became of…Vol. 3 (bedtime reading).
Next, perhaps Harry Turtledove’s Colonization: Down To Earth. (I really enjoy his books.) Or Dan Jenkins’ Saturday’s America (book on US college football, mid-70s). But Lawrence James’ The Rise and Fall of the British Empire looks really interesting.
Two friends of mine really like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and they were seriously considering giving it to me for my b-day (but didn’t). So, I picked the books up used (3 for $5), and I’m going to give it a go, for the first time, in the next few weeks.
I can finally contribute to this thread. I haven’t been doing a lot of reading lately. I was on a Michael Connelly, John Lescroart kick for a while (pop fiction), but that was months ago.
I just picked up Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein a few days ago. I wasn’t a huge fan of the film, but I liked it well enough. I’ve heard a lot of people sining the praises of Heinlein here, though, so I thought I’d give the book a go.
I’m not that impressed so far. It seems dated, and the exposition is very contrived. I’m finding myself doing the “rolleyes” quite a bit.
I just finished Kokoro, by Soseki. He’s one of Japan’s best known authors- he was writing in the 1900s and is brilliant. It’s a breathtaking work and I’m going to hunt up the rest of his books in my idle time. It’s very much about virtue and reminds me a bit of Heart of Darkness but in a good way.
Up next: The Great Gatsby, which I am not looking forward to. (It’s for a class and I’m sick of the book.)
Constantine’s Sword - The Church and the Jews: A History by James Carroll. A little self-involved, but an interesting piece of new POV history. The Catholic Church is taking kinda of a shit-kicking in print form these days…
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence - now * there* was one out there dude!
The Trial, Franz Kafka. 'Nuff said.
z
The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams (for about the fifth time)
Othello by Shakespeare
Asimov’s Guide to the Bible by Isaac Asimov
Combinatorics by N. Ya. Vilenken (English translation)
A User’s Guide to the Brain by John J. Ratey, M.D.
Tarzan Alive by Philip Jose Farmer
Just finished The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio. It was OK.
Recently finished The Blind Assassin. It barked.
Picked up Bujold’s latest one The Curse of Chalion today. Hmmmmmmm. Hope it picks up. Also bought Sagan’s The Demon haunted World today and am looking forward to reading it. In addition I bought Stones from the River even though I know I should boycott it as it was an Oprah recommendation and thus is bound to be beneath my austere tastes ;).
I forgot to mention: I’m re-reading Un the Spoor of Spooks by Bergan Evans as bedside reading. I highly recommend this 1954 book, and his other book The Natural History of Nonsense if you like debunking books. Evans preceded L. Sprague de Camp, James Randi, and other CSICOP and Skeptic types with his witty and literate exposees of foolish beliefs. The books are a bit dated, in that I’ve never even heard of some of these misconceptions (showing that some ignorance has a half-life), but some of it is still with us. One thing Evans debunks is the belief that Mussolini “made the trains run on time”. Evans was there when Mussolini was in office, and he swears that the trains were never on time.
Just finished:
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon. It’s about a couple of comic book creators in the “golden age,” modeled after Siegel & Schuster, the creators of Superman. Good book, I think, although I find, sometimes when reading it, like late at night, under the cover of moon, that the author, who I’m sure is a good writer, what with his awards and all, tends to rely too often, as many writers do, with long-run on sentences with sub-clauses.
The Keep by F. Paul Wilson. Nazis in an ancient abandoned castle in Romania, slowly getting killed off one by one by some unknown entity. Awesome setup, really fizzles out towards the end.
Currently working on:
The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan. I just picked it up because I’d finished re-reading The Lord of the Rings and wanted more of the same, but I’m having trouble getting through it. It’s just tedious.
And watsonwil: back when my pilot worked, I downloaded Peter Pan to read on a plane flight, since I’d never read it. Great book and perfect cross-country-flight length.
Dhiammara by Maggie Furey. It’s the last book in the series. Not sure what I’ll read next. I have three or four books unread around here including the latest from Terry Goodkind, but if I don’t feel like starting them, or rereading the books that came before them, I usually just grab something that sounds interesting like a romance or mystery that I have laying around and have read a dozen times.
The Map That Changed The World, by Simon Winchester. It’s an account of the life of William Smith, an 18th century mining engineer who founded the science of stratigraphy and drew the first map of the geological composition of the British Isles. Fascinating book.
I’m also reading Weight Training For Dummies to get some new workout ideas. Next on deck is Harry Turtledove’s American Empire: Blood and Iron, which continues the independent Confederacy storyline in his Great War series.
Probably the ONLY advantage of my crummy job in the NY Publishing Biz is that I get to read galleys of books that aren’t out yet. Right now I am poring through:
• “Shopaholic Takes Manhattan,” by Sophie Kinsella, a very funny novel due out in February. It takes place in NYC in Sept./Oct. 2001, so I think some rewriting will have to be done . . .
• “Celluloid Skyline,” by James Sanders, a photo-packed coffee-table book about movies taking place in NY (most of them shot on CA soundstages)—due out in late Nov.
• “Marlene Dietrich—Photographs and Memories,” by Jean-Jacques Naudet, due out in late Nov. A must for any Marlene fan, chock full of stills, snapshots and estate-auction photos.
Just finished rereading most of my Pratchetts - favorite changes, currently it’s The Last Continent. Also just reread all the Harry Potters.
I’ve had a bookmark in the third chapter of the Age of Innocence for about three weeks, just can’t get myself to pick it up. I know I should - I loved the House of Mirth, but I just don’t feel like reading this.
Also tried to read Telempath by Spider Robinson - but couldn’t get into it. Oh - and I read the first book of the A Series of Unfortunate Events - The Bad Beginning. I liked it well enough - I’ll see if my local library has the rest. I need to use my library more - when I moved recently, I donated 5 boxes of books - and I still have full bookshelves!
I almost just posted this without mentioning the book that I started to post to this thread for - Narcissus in Chains, by Laurell K. Hamilton. I don’t know - Hamilton seems to be more and more focused on sex since she started her Merry Gentry series (the first book for that series, Kiss of Shadows, was just about all sex), and I think it is to the detriment of the book. I swear, she didn’t get around to the actual crime in NiC until 3/4 of the way through! C’mon.
Susan
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. NPR listeners know him well. It’s just not Christmas without hearing his account of his stint as an elf. He’s hilarious! Here we find him in speech therapy as a North Carolina youth and attempting to explain Easter to a Muslim fellow student in French class in Paris. Reading this last night, I believe I actually snorted seven or eight times.
I just finished Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard. Man can this guy write dialogue! I’ve never read one of his crime novels before and I can see myself consuming his entire output over the next year or so. I’ve got another one on deck, but I can’t remember which.
Next up: a re-read of Jitterbug Perfume, which I haven’t read in more than 10 years. We were talking about Tom Robbins somewhere here a few weeks ago. I tried reading Skinny Legs and All but somehow the Jew/Arab thing didn’t seem as funny in a post-Sept. 11 frame of mind. (I kept telling myself that was ridiculous, but I wasn’t enjoying it for whatever reason, so I put it aside.)
Recently, I’ve read Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin (just the first volume) and The Fourth Hand by John Irving. Unfortunately I don’t recommend the Irving; if I could just find the thread I started on it, I’d tell ya why! 
Jodi, can I recommend “Bread Alone?” I enjoyed it, and everyone I’ve handed it off to loved it too. It even takes place in your neck of the woods! 'Tis a great novel, only wish I had the author’s name handy.
I am currently redressing an egregious gap in my education by reading Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke.
Right now I’m reading The Life of Elizabeth I by Alison Weir.
Recently finished an execrable bio of Jackie Gleason.
Before that was The Speaker for the Dead, the second of Orson Scott Card’s Ender books. My 12 year old son is currently reading the next in the series, Xenocide, and I keep bugging him to read it faster so I can get to it.
Hey gobear, I read TMTCTW about a month ago. I agree with the recommendation, and will be looking for other work by Winchester. Great portrait of an exceptional man and his times.