Return of the Curse of the Black Pearl: Whatcha Reading Right Now?

Cafe Society
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In a monumental effort to Improve Myself ( for reasons that remain unknown to me) I am currently working on three books [size=1](big people books, not the romantic trash that is turning my brain into an utter and complete wasteland. [size=1] in order to become better read and more urbane.
**Jane and the Uncomfortableness[size=1]or some such big word[size=1] at Scargrove Manor ** by Stephanie Barron.

**The Gospel According To Biff, Christs Childhood Friend. ** by Christopher Moore.

Chocolat by…I forget.

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oh yes, and a big dose of self improvement:

**How to Keep People From Pushing Your Buttons ** by Albert Ellis and Arthur Lange.

**Spiritual Guidance for Dealing with Difficult People: Thank You For Being Such A Pain. ** by Mark Rosen *

  • I am thoroughly enjoying this book, very helpful.
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I also have the (sometimes annoying) habit of keeping more than one book on the go…

At the moment
The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins (a must for anyone interested in evolution)
The Second World War - Winston Churchill (a bit of a mammoth, I was left the original 6 volumes by my grandfather and only at the end of vol I…worth the slog though)

Oh, yeah… and Harry Potter’s latest!

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Since I’m currently residing in an area where nobody speaks my language, I read…entirely too much…

Shogun, by James Clavell. The miniseries is coming out on DVD in September.
Geisha of Gion, by Iwasaki Mineko. She was a primary source for “Memoirs of a Geisha.” Iwasaki clears up a number of misconceptions that Golden left intact in his book.
Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser. Eeeew…
The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman. Escape from reality is a GOOD thing…

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I just finished Greg Keyes’ The Briar King this morning.

I’m also reading:

Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather
P.G. Wodehouse’s Leave It to Psmith
and
Michael Durant’s In the Company of Heroes (non-fiction, to ground me after those two air-light works)

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Stolen - Kelly Armstrong. Sequel to Bitten. Whereas the quality of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake novels decreases exponentially each book, I enjoyed this second book a lot. If you like the Anita Blake books but you think they’ve become a taundry, S&M knock off of their original greatness, check it out!

The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic - Gay and Laney Salisbury. A race to get diptheria serum to the town of Nome, dog sleds and Balto!

The Probable Future - Alice Hoffman

For Matrimonial Purposes - Kavita Daswani. After a trip to New Delhi, I’ve been fascinated by India and stories about Indian women.

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I always love these threads; I get so many great ideas for things to read.

I started Keep The River on Your Right by Tobias Schneebaum this morning. I haven’t seen the documentary film, and according to critics the anthropological bits are somewhat fictionalized, but I’m eager to get to the cannibalism.

I must start re-reading Will Self’s Cock and Bull for the book group. I haven’t read it in years.

My current guilty pleasure summer fun reading is T. Jefferson Parker’s Silent Joe. Good to fall asleep with.

I just finished Toby Horwitz’s Confederates in the Attic and wanted to recommend it to anyone interested in the South and/or the Civil War. I’d be curious if anyone else has read it and can tell me if they think it’s an approximate portrayal of the South. I recently read Horwitz’s Blue Latitudes, in which he tracks the voyages of Captain James Cook in the South Pacific, and thought it was excellent; this was the main reason I picked up Confederates.

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I am reading ** Ghost Riders** by Sharon McCrumb and
Beauty Before Comfort by Alison Glock.

All the while impatiently awaiting the arrival of Jon Krakauer’s new book, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, which I ordered from a book club but won’t receive for another couple of weeks.

I’ve read Confederates in the Attic and thought it was excellent, although I have heard of quite a bit of controversy surrounding the author’s supposed “disrespect” for his book’s subjects, in particular the Confederate widow he interviewed in the nursing home. Never got the full story on that situation so I don’t know exactly what was going on. I still thought it was a great book though. I CAN tell you that I have met some people here in SC that could have walked straight out of the pages of that book.

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Thanks to a recommendation of Mr Tambo a while back, I’m currently reading The Belly of the Bow, the second book in the Fencer trilogy by K. J. Parker. Something about his description set me off to find it, and I was lucky that my local Borders store had all 3 volumes of the trilogy available.

I particularly like this volume, because he went into some detail describing how the main character makes a bow. I haven’t done that yet, but would like to!

Thanks, Mr Tambo!

I bought a few self-help books last weekend, but I haven’t delved very deeply into them yet.

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Ruled Britannia by Harry Turtledove. An alternate history set in 1598 where the Spanish Armada was successful and Britain has been under the Spanish thumb for ten years.

Just finished it last night so I haven’t perused what’s next in the stack-to-be-read.

DD

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Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer.

Gracefully Insane by Alex Beam

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Going the Other Way by Billy Bean; the autobiography of a gay pro baseball player

Brunelleschi’s Dome, by Ross king; the story of the creation of the Duomo in Florence

Masters of Midnight, a collection of homoerotic vampire stories

Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand

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Finished Seabiscuit recently and am now reading We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, by Philip Gourevitch. It’s a recounting of the genocidal horrors in Rwanda in the 90s.

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Currently reading Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta and am most impressed. Also reading Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind and Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. Am on a comic kick and looking for more.

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I have this but haven’t read it yet. Do you like it?

I’m almost finished with an excellent fantasy The Bone Doll’s Twin by Lynn Flewelling.

Also reading in McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales and A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O’Nan.

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Salman Rushdie’s Fear

Just finished Pearls, Girls, and Monty Bodkin by P.G. Wodehouse for the umpteenth time.

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Just finished:
Lost Light, Michael Connelly’s latest Harry Bosch novel, which is Connelly’s best in ages. I’d been getting pretty tired of Bosch, and Chasing the Dime was both predictable and (worse) silly, but this seems to put the character back on track.

Now in progress:
Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People, by Amarillo Slim Preston. Slight, but very entertaining.

Terror and Liberalism, by Paul Berman. Not at all slight, but again with the entertaining. A different kind of entertaining, granted . . .

Making Documentary Films and Reality Videos, by Barry Hampe. A friend and I are starting to plan a documentary; this is a very good introduction to what the process entails.

Essential Fantastic Four volume 1, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. It’s interesting to see the groundwork being laid for things to come. I’m on issue 18, and they still haven’t completely hit their stride, but it’s pretty compelling stuff regardless.

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I’m another one who’s always in the middle of a half dozen books to suit my mood.

Non-fiction:
Empire, a history of the British Empire by Niall Ferguson.

D-Day, by the always excellent Stephen Ambrose.

Robert E. Lee, Roy Blount’s entry in the extremely fine series of Penguin Lives mini-biographies.

1919, by William Klingaman, which I’m reading for a larger perspective on the world to accompany Margaret Macmillan’s Paris 1919, about how the Peace Conference after World War I shaped the world and influenced World War II.

Fiction:
Midnight’s Children, the Booker Prize winning novel by Salman Rushdie.

The new T. Coraghessan Boyle novel, Drop City.

Finished yesterday:
My Anecdotal Life, just like it sounds, by Carl Reiner. Tried reading his collection of short stories, but they were too jokey and inconsequential.

Hollywood Mystery (I Hate Actors), by Ben Hecht. A real find. Hecht was the famed newspaperman, film writer and novelist who was huge in the 30s, though not well-known today. As the title indicates, this is a true mystery, but really a vicious satire on Hollywood - the mystery is secondary. It’s as cynical as anything put out by Fitzgerald or West on Hollywood (one actor is put on a seven-day bender to keep him away from the set and another is sedated with heavy doses of drugs to make him tractable), but much lighter. I didn’t even know it existed, and I found it as a Bart House paperback, with the altered title.

AuntiePam, what do you think of the McSweeney’s anthology? I was very disappointed with it.

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I’ve just finished the four Dark Tower books by King. Man, what a mind-warpingly good read. My current read is You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers, who has one of the coolest writing styles I’ve ever seen.

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I recently read both books - tho in the opposite order :slight_smile: I quite liked them both, but can’t speak to the accuracy of CitA, as I’m not from the South.

Currently reading Things that Make Us Smart by Donald A. Norman - very informative, but more textbookish than his previous work I’d read: The Design of Everyday Things (aka The Psychology of Everyday Things).