I just finished Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maquire - a great read - and I ran right out and got Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister : A Novel and Mirror Mirror: A Novel, just to live in this guy’s head again!
I just finished “Gunpowder,” a history of the title item. Just about to start “Ponzi’s Scheme,” a biography of the famous con man.
Currently:
[ul][li]Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times, edited by Kevin Smokler[/li][li]Flashman on the March, by George Macdonald Fraser[/li][li]The Map That Changed the World, by Simon Winchester[/li][/ul]
And I just finished All Fun & Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye by Christopher Brookmyre.
Right. I’ve been meaning to read the Flashman series. Thanks for the reminder.
“Napoleon the III and His Carnival Empire” in the car to read at lunch, and at home, “Billy Budd.” Strange how boring it was when I read it as a 15-year-old. They must have revised it heavily in the last 17 years, since it’s really good now.
I don’t need to think about all the dull as ditchwater required reads that I hated in High School being suddenly interesting…it would mean…I’ve…become…an adult.
That would suck.
Recently finished Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk and The Cobweb by Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George; now I’m starting on Out of the Flames.
The Thing of It Is. . . by William Goldman. Love that guy.
Currently I am reading Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, but thats the last of my fun books for the summer. Next I have to get to reading some of the books off my reading list for the school year:
Plato - Symposium
Homer - The Odyssey
Xenophon - The Education of Cyrus
Aristophanes - Lysistrata
Socrates and Acibiades - Four texts
Virgil - Aeneid
Augustine - Confessions
Cicero - On Obligations
Euripides - Medea
I dont have to read them all over the summer (thank god!) but I do need to get started on them.
Like so many others Ive just finished rereading the Harry Potter books. Ive also just read the first four books in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, cant wait for Wolves of Calla to come out in paperback. And over Christmas I read the first Dune book, I recently bought the next three books in the series and so will probably start the second book tonight.
Just finished You Can’t Win by Jack Black last night. I loved everything about it. I’m wondering what I should read next (after a short story each by John Mortimer and Damon Runyon to cleanse my palate).
By the way, his latest two - The Knight and The Wizard - were really good fantasy, and quite a bit different from his other series’.
I saw those at Borders. They looked intriguing, but it’ll be a while till I get to them. I think by the time I finish the Short Sun books that will have been enough Wolfe for the time.
Also, I just picked up The Prize, by Daniel Yergin for my non-fiction book. I highly recommend this to all dopers, and everyone else for that matter. It’s long, but it’s as readable as a best seller, and is of the utmost importance. I’m learning something new on every page.
Oh, and by the way the one-starred customer reviews of The Prize on the Amazon page I linked to are BS. The book is even handed but it certainly is not biased towards the oil industry, as some reviewers claim. I’m only on the beginning but Yergin’s treatment of Standard Oil is pretty fair, and he spends quite some time on their dubious business practices. I think some readers wanted a left wing screed, and were disapointed by Yergin’s responsible historiography.
Is this any good? I been trying to get my hands on Guns, Germs, and Steel but some fool at the library won’t return the damn book.
As for me, I just finished reading Eragon by Christopher Paolini. It was pretty good, his first book, and I’m really looking forward to reading the sequel, Eldest. I also just finished reading A Cold Clear Day, which is the athletic biography of Buddy Edelen, one of the best US marathoners of all time. Very inspiring. Right now, I’m re-reading Running with the Buffaloes , by Chris Lear. It’s a fabulous account of the Colorado boy’s cross country team.
All three books are highly recommended.
I was in my friendly massive downtown DC Barnes and Noble the other day, saw that this had just come out. I just finished Cryptonomicon, and have been itching to buy Quicksilver. Obviously, that comes before The Confusion, but still I’d love to start.
My current Metro book is a text from my freshman year of college that I never got to read in whole for the class: Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. I enjoyed it before, and it is definitely still intriguing, but not so revelatory as it seemed five years ago.
I picked up Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon: Joe Queenan’s America this past Sunday. So I’m reading that now. I guess I’ll start that book about Thomas Jefferson next.
Have you tried his modern-day books? “Stormchild” is one of the best I’ve read in years.
As to the OP’s topic:
“State of Fear” (Michael Crichton)
“Fear Nothing” (Dean Koontz)
purl=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375414126/qid=1119926032/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-4197876-7668029]John James Audubon: The Making of an American by Richard Rhodes. Very well written, but I think my brain’s on summer vacation and I may switch out to something a little fluffier for a while.
You don’t know how many times I’ve tried to get through that book. It is one of those books that is interesting on the whole, but a real chore to get through.