I just finished Brian Sanderson’s Mistborn. I enjoyed it a lot.
Oh, I liked that one.
One of the things I liked was how self-contained it was. He could write a sequel (obviously, and he has) but it didn’t end on some horrible cliffhanger. I’m glad for that.
May I recommend:
Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy (starting with The Amulet of Samarkand)
Nix’s Abhorsen trilogy (starting with Sabriel)
or for a Harry Potter fix, The Psychology of Harry Potter: An Unauthorized Examination of the Boy Who Lived.
I do too.
I’m in the middle of his The Blue Nowhere right now.
Oh, and I love the Stephanie Plum books.
Oh, and…I’m a guy.
I’d also recommend Angie Sage’s “Septimus Heap” and that one guy’s “Percy Jackson” books for those jonesing for some HP-type storytelling.
ETA: Rick Riordan. I hit submit before I went and looked it up. Oops.
I was curled up in front of the heater most of the weekend reading Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset.
I am *so *jealous that you need a heater! Although the weather here in PA *has *been rather nice, I *still *prefer the cooler weather!
Good example of a winter book. Proven by your need for extra heat. 
Maybe we could use a Technicolor time machine. 
Nightingale you probably won’t like the last 1/3 of Ghost. You will probably like the other books much, much better.
Seconded. I’m partway into Flyte.
I just finished reading:
Shalimar the Clown - Salman Rushdie
Cat’s Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
And next on my list to begin reading this week:
Slaughter-House Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman
Plus I have just had the book Journey to the End of the Night suggested to me, so I am going to have to look that one up.
Pagan Celtic Ireland: The Enigma of the Irish Iron Age by Barry Raftery
and the modestly titled
Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II’s Greatest Rescue Mission by Hampton Sides
Correction. This book is about trading, which probably makes it less interesting to me, but I will still finish it.
Just finished **The Wee Free Men ** and **A Hatful Of Sky ** by Terry Pratchett. I’m now reading **The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell ** by Mark Kurlanksy.
Oo! That will keep me reading; I love a payoff at the end…I am only on page 70 and frankly am intimidated by 700+ pages!
I have to say the narrative style is intriguing. Again, I haven’t gotten very far but the style is making me experience the book in a different way. The way the narrator “guides” you around “No, don’t follow her, let’s follow him instead, he’s much more interesting” takes me out of the story to some extent and makes me feel like I am looking from above at some sort of stage or tableau. It’s kind of disconcerting and makes me think a lot more about the author than I normally would, because I think of him as this guy manipulating me through his writing.
Unsettling, but an interesting experience.
I just finished The Art of Detection & enjoyed it. But it left me hungry for more Mary Russell. (And there’s no hint as to whether we’ll ever get any more, as far as I can tell.)
The King book was a “palate clearer” after finishing The Book of the Long Sun. Gene Wolfe’s 3 volume Book of the Short Sun is due today from Amazon. Then, I may begin again with The Book of the New Sun. (I came late to Wolfe.)
In Houston, summer is the time for curling up in front of the air conditioner with a big book!
I just finished these
The Omnivore’s Dilemma
The Diamond Age
Rumo
I especially liked Rumo - will have to read Walter Moers other stuff …
On the next up list are
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Stiff
To Say Nothing of the Dog
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Why does everything on hold at the library always come in on the same day? Waiting for me right now:
The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich
Quincunx by Charles Palliser
A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel
What to do? What to do?
I’m not a reader of fiction, but am always looking for good non-fiction. I just finished Lewis Black 's Nothing Sacred , which was funny in parts but pretty uneven. Also just read Len Berman 's Spanning the World , which contains some excellent sports stories as well as some good insight into what’s wrong with pro sports today and possible ways to fix it.
Next, I plan on re-reading Jim Caple 's The Devil Wears Pinstripes . Caple is a Red Sox fan who works for ESPN and has written a terrific book about the Yankees and their fans. It’s not complimentary by any means, but I found it very entertaining. And I’m a lifelong Yankees fan!
My major reading plan this summer is to re-connect with my atheism. Today I am buying Christopher Hitchens ’ God is Not Great and Richard Dawkins ’ The God Delusion .
To expand, in case anyone cares.
Raftery’s Pagan Celtic Ireland is pretty light thus far, exploring the transition from the bronze-age culture to the iron-age. Nice little summery of Hallstatt decline and La Tene expansion before launching into the meat of Irish metalworking and culture. Not really comparable to Herity and Eogan’s Ireland in Prehistory, but it’s summer after all.
Ghost Soldiers is the book on which the movie The Great Raid was based. The back story and trials which the prisoners endured is far more interesting than the raid itself. This book doesn’t emphasize the misery as much as River Kwai Railway did, so it sounds almost as if the Bataan Death March (and subsequent interment) wasn’t as bad as what the Kwai boys put up with. I’m not sure it’s possible to compare such suffering, especially as one who has never really suffered, so I assume that it’s a difference of writing style rather than a substantial difference in misery.