The Silmarillion, by Tolkien - I’ve read Lord of the Rings a number of times, but never read The Silmarillion, so I thought it was about time I did.
Islam: A Short History, by Karen Armstrong - I’m trying to learn more about Islam, and hopefully this book will be a good start. I picked it more or less randomly off the shelf at Barnes & Noble, though, so I’d welcome any comments/critiques.
I’ll play, buddy…
AS you, I’m reading ‘Ruled Britannia’ by Turtledove. So far it’s good.
‘Fuzzies and Other People’, by H Beam Piper. The third Fuzzy novel by one of the more tragic SF writers in all history.
‘Co Aytch: A Side Show to the Big Show’ by Sam Watkins. A bio of one confederate soldiers Civil War experiences.
‘Footfall’, by Niven and Pournelle.
It drives Lady Chance batty that I read more than one thing at a time. But it doesn’t bother me a bit.
I don’t think the Lizards were incompetent in the WorldWar books. Just far more decent and trusting than was called for. The real conflict in the book was that, even though it’s natural for the reader to indentify with the humans, the Lizards are by FAR the nicer group of characters. Really, who would you rather have as neighbors? Your current neighbors or Ristin and Ullhass? I know which one wouldn’t let his leaves blow over into my yard.
‘Ruled Britannia’ is pretty good so far. Point-of-View characters remain at 2 so far (and I’m about a quarter through) so that’s sort of a prodigy for Turtledove. It’s good, though I think he constantly goes out of his way to point out things that would seem strange in Elizabethan culture to modern minds.
And has anyone else ever noticed Turtledove’s fixation on food in his novels? He’s constantly going on about unusual meals his characters eat. I found it most distracting in ‘The Two Georges’ and it’s happening again in ‘Ruled Britannia’.
“The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith. Amazingly enough, he’s one of the few writers not of the past century that I can read without going nuts.
“The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco, one of the few books written during the past century that’s slowly driving me nuts. Publish an annotated version so I can understand the Latin and keep all the obscure church history straight, damn you!
“French for Dummies” because sarcasm is twice as condescending when it’s in French.
“Band of Brothers” by Stephen Ambrose. When I can’t find anything else to read.
The Little Friend by Donna Tartt. I’m about 200 pages in, and it’s been hard to put down.
I’m also reading The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell for the bazillionth time and been picking through My Mexico by Diana Kennedy.
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
and
1984 by George Orwell
I’m reading both because I loved them so much while in high school that I just needed to own them and read them again. 
I’m also working my way through The Idiot’s Guide to Tarot and Fortunetelling, it’s been a good book so far and has really helped me with my tarot cards.
District court case Bonneville v Peters. The briefs from the plaintiffs. Law review articles discussing the case. Histories on copyright law in the US. Decisions by the Copyright Office. RIAA websites. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Interpretations on US Codes. And writing writing writing.
Oh goodness, you mean free reading? Gah. I need more hours in the day. In December I shall make up sorely for lost reading opportunity.
Recently finished re-reading The Hobbit, and also recently finished American Gods - Neil Gaiman.
Just started re-reading Lord of the Rings – I read it many years ago, but want to at least get through Two Towers before seeing the next movie.
After LOTR, I’ll read The Silmarillion – as I never did read that one originally.
“The Trials of Lenny Bruce” for a newspaper book review. Great book and it comes with a CD with selections of Lenny’s routines like “Religions Inc.” and “Las Vegas Tits and Ass.”
Just started “Dickens’ Fur Coat and Charlotte’s Unanswered Letters” that contains all kinds of gossip about the literary lights of Victorian writers, including Thackery, the Brontes, George Eliot and others. Easy reading, here.
Just finished Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. Next up are The Moviegoer by Walker Percy and The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.
I really liked Angle of Repose. It’s a slow read, but I really got into it.
The sisters, about the Mitford sisters. Yowza. I had only heard about Nancy, the oldest sister and a well-known novelist. Two of the others were prominent fascists, another was an equally well-known communist, and the youngest wound up being the Duchess of Devonshire–she’s still around. Then there were still more sisters doing various amazing things…it was quite a read.
An alphabet abecedarium, fun history/tidbits about letters, typefaces, etc. A bit too determinedly whimsical to read all at once, but full of lovely pictures of different typefaces.
And a huge pile on the nightstand, I won’t be able to get through it all before it’s due at the library. But the latest Elizabeth Peters is in there (her style annoys me, and I read them anyway). So is Constantine’s sword, about the persecution of the Jews through history.
drools over cjhowarth’s Cat Who and Cadfael collection
Currently re-reading The Lord of the Rings, as I, also, want to make it through the end of Two Towers before seeing the movie next month. So far I’m in Bree, so with the homework I’m supposed to be doing in the next couple of weeks I don’t know if I’ll make it…
Just finished Take a Theif by Mercedes Lackey and Goso’s Tale by Peter Myers, both borrowed from a friend next door. Hoping to get some more reading in The Silmarillion done, eventually, since I’m only partway through that. Have read the main stories, but not in any coherent order, and what I remember of Beren & Luthien and Turin Turambar is actually from The Unfinished Tales or something.
Working through The Politics by Aristotle, which I got on a whim - haven’t had a good classic in a while. Profound and very powerful reading - I’m taken by how much modern relevance it has.
Summary: Aristotle seeks to answer the question: “How should men live together; what is the best form of government and what are the weaknesses of each? What should the role and rights of citizens be? How can democracy be preserved?”
The insights are truly amazing. He summarizes the problems of communism and dismisses it out of hand some 22 centuries before Karl Marx was even born, in a dozen paragraphs no less.
Of course in his day, it was Plato who was advocating an ideal state founded on common property.
I’m currently working on City of Bones. While most of what Tor Fantasy produces is crap, this one appears to be pretty creative, although the writing isn’t exactly spectacular.
Next up: the sequel to Jurassic Park.
I don’t know whether I should be amazed at the number of fascinating sounding books out there or at the number of Dopers who are reading them!
CJ
Today: The fools in town are on our side by Ross Thomas.
Tomorrow: Glamorama
After that: Fear and loathing on the Campaign Trail
At the moment Night’s Watch. Prior to that I was reading the reality dysfunctiion by Peter F Hamilton. I haven’t finished it yet, but Pratchett takes priority for obvious reasons.
I’m finishing up rereading Mists of Avalon, and then I think I’m going to have to wrest the Harry Potter books out of my children’s hands and reread them.
I just finished the Three Sisters Trilogy by Nora Roberts. Nice bit of Wiccan story-telling about three women who are descendants of Salem witches (real witches, not the innocent victims they hung.)
Escape fiction…I love it.
Third Edition D&D’s Forgotten Realms manual.
Finished A Prayer for Owen Meany this weekend - after working on it on & off for the past few weeks. The back & forth timeline is sometimes difficult to keep track of and the foreshadowing (altho the point of the whole book) is a bit depressing.
I guess Irving’s not quite to my taste - I read The World According to Garp about 10 years ago, and it’ll probably be another 10 years before I read another of his novels.
Maybe I read too much SF, but I like my protagonists to be, well, maybe not heroes, but at least someone I can care about & not feel like he/she’s being a whiny jerk a lot of the time. The sudden personal violence (how John avoids the draft, what happened to Garp’s son) gets to me too, I guess.
Also read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. It was a pretty fun read even if you know next to nothing about the world of high-end food prep. I wonder if you could tie the macho/homoerotic (? not quite the word I want) atmosphere to the Hispanic culture of so many of the staff. That kind of surprised me (both the fact that so many of the staffers were Central/South American and the grabass horseplay.) The description of a lot of the dishes just kind of went over my head - he used a lot of terms that he expected his readers to be familiar with.
I’ve also gone thru John Varley’s short story collections again in the last month - read Picnic on Nearside/The Barbie Murders for the first time – “The Barbie Murders” was a very intriguing idea … how to track down a murderer in a society where everyone looks and claims to BE the same?
Also read Blue Champagne – “Options” is probably the most thought-provoking of the bunch in this collection re: sex changes & gender roles. “Tango Charle & Foxtrot Romeo” is just too sad at the end. “The Unprocessed Word” always cracks me up (tho I still don’t know who “DT” from Oakland California is supposed to be) and an interesting companion to “Press Enter”, which is pretty depressing.
Persistence of Vision is probably my favorite Varley collection - “The Phantom of Kansas” touches on the memory cube and the gender change concepts, as well as weather as an artform, which is a very cool idea! And I really like “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” - even if the PBS TV-movie version is pretty darn cheesy… what were you thinking, Raul Julia? The movie deserved its MST’ing…
Night Watch is on my Christmas wish list - trying VERY HARD not to get it ahead of time!