Just finished Tad William’s Otherland series. Right now I’ve got The Compleat Tightwad Gazette open on my lap. Very interesting, although I think that if everyone followed her suggestions the worldwide economy would shut down. I’m also reading Tickets For A Prayer Wheel by Annie Dillard, and The Disappearance Of Childhood by Neil Postman.
Working on The Snakebite Survivors’ Club: Travels among Serpents by Jeffrey Seal—very funny at times (think Bill Bryson doing snakes). Also Inside Ms–the history of Ms. magazine.
And for my five-hour flight next week, I found a remaindered copy of A Gentle Madness, which is about bibliophiles…I’ve been coveting it and was psyched to find a copy for $10.
ooh, CrankyAsAnOldMan, Girls totally creeped me out. Good book, but very gruesome.
I’m reading Hunting Mister Heartbreak by Jonathan Raban at the moment. It’s a pretty sympathetic outsider’s view of the US - he’s English and lives in Seattle but the book deals mostly with the period when he lived in New York and Northern Alabama. I’ve also read books he’s written about the settlement of Montana in the twenties and thirties, a trip in a small boat down the length of the Mississippi and sailing from Seattle to Juneau. I never tire of hearing about you merkins. He’s well worth a read - a welcome break from the Bill Bryson ‘look at these funny people’ school of travel writing.
The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey is next on the list. Despite the title, it’s fiction.
I see Booklover’s post on preview - no offence meant.
Nonfiction:
Teachings of the Buddha edited by Jack Kornfield
Fiction:
The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook
(Courtesy of El Elvis Rojo, who gave it to me. Thanks again.)
auntie em, my friend turned me on to this book, but she never mentioned any of her fiction…thanks!
Anyone read “On Writing”, by Stephen King? Another good one.
Can anyone guess what I’m struggling to do right now? 
No offense taken—he can be a little juvenile at times.
Right now, I’m reading Children of Hope by David Feintuch (fiction), Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, The Fictional Writer’s Primer by Darvin P. Harfield and Adam Poszar (non-fiction) and House of Leaves (fiction) (in my car).
McCollough’s “John Adams” I highly recommend it for history fans. Just finished Bill Bryson’s “Notes from a Small Island”. It’s probably time to reread “Catcher in the Rye”, too.
I’m reading Where Or When by Anita Shreve.
It’s pretty good so far. Shreve is sometimes a little hard to take.
A friend of mine from Norway just sent me Naive. Super by Erlend Loe. It’s the English translation of a recent number one bestseller in Norway. Here’s a bit from the back cover:
**"It’s as if Wallace Stevens had been Norwegian, writing in prose and born fifty years later. Erlend Loe’s deceptively simple novel is a highly original meditation on existence.
Troubled by an inability to find any meaning in his life, the 25-year-old first-person narrator quits his MA course at university in a bid to discover a raison d’etre.
He writes lists. He becomes obsessed by time and whether it actually matters. He faxes his meteorologist friend. He befriends a small boy who lives next door. He yearns to get to the bottom of life and how best to live it."**
My friend found the book to be funny, deep and poignant. Although she read it in the original Norwegian, and is afraid that something may be lost in the translation. I just started it, and its a nice, light read–but it really does make you reflect on life’s meaning…
I’m halfway through Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins. Besides his new one, its the only one I haven’t read yet. It’s surpassing my expectations, which is nice. The last one of his I read was Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, and I wasn’t exactly bowled over by it. Good stuff. 
Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny. Not that far into it, but so far it looks ok. Nothing spectacular, but not bad either. It was reccomended to me by quite a few people, but to be honest I don’t see why.
Also a mixture of textbooks depending on if I feel like learning something at the time.
Before this gets moved to the cafe society…
I’m currently reading three books, all fiction.
** The Runner** by Cynthia Voigt, which is a companion book (prequel, sort of) to her book series about the Tillermans that started with ** The Homecoming** I never got around to reading this one, or the one about Dicey’s friend (Come a Stranger) as a teenager, so when I saw them I had to buy them.
** Songs in Ordinary Time** by Mary Morris. I’m only 40 pages into it, but it’s good so far.
X-Files: The Ruins. It’s ok, but the book-length fanfiction here is as good if not better. http://www.geocities.com/phantmoftheopera/
This week I’ve read/re-read :
All 5 Star FIST books (mmm trash military sci-fi)
Matt Reilly’s (spelling) Contest, Ice Station and Temple [Aussie author, really interesting, lot of twists and turns but writes like a block buster hollywood movie. He’s what 25? Give him 5-10 years and he’ll be fantastic, I hope.] Adventure
Books 3-5 of WEB Griffin’s Corps series. [WWII novels that follow various marines through the WWII, fairly good and quite interesting. He also does a series of police novels that are good also.]
Recently I’ve been slogging my way through the Interview with a Vampire and the Vampire Lesat… Does anyone else find her writing enjoyable but also like wading through chest deep mud? Too interesting to stop reading for her writing… plots boring enough to put me to sleep.
Things to try if you haven’t:
Lovecraft, lots and lots of Lovecraft
Armor and Vampire$ by… John Steakly? (Can’t remember the guys name) VERY very odd books. Well written but the characters in his books stike me as ‘off’ for the lack of a more exact term… The stories aren’t particularly interesting, but the characters are odd.
William Gibson (Go with Neuromancer and some of his short stories)
Philip K Dicks (Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep and his short stories [The short happy life of Brown Oxford]) Just about everything he’s written is pretty good.
John Steinbeck - America and Americans and selected nonfiction
Latest one - James Randi’s The Mask of Nostradamus (nonfiction). An in-depth analysis of the life of Michel de Notredame and his writings.
I’m reading Achilles in Vietnam by Jonathan Shay (non-fiction – a terrific book, about PTSD) and A Piece of My Heart by Keith Walker (24 interviews with women who were nurses in Vietnam).
LolaBby, Anne Lamott is great. I just finished A.S. Byatt’s latest book, The Biographer’s Tale and would really recommend it. She has some terrific collections of short stories, too. My favorites are The Matisse Stories and The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye. I’ve started on Umberto Eco’s Foucoult’s Pendulum, but it’s proving to be a little weighty for me at the moment, so I’ll probably go to the library soon and pick up something lighter.
gobear, The Years of Rice and Salt sounds fascinating. Maybe I’ll look for a copy of that.
I just finished High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s a collection of essays. In my opinion, the first half of the book is fine and is in fact very interesting, but later on come the political essays where she attempts to be poetic and make a political statement at the same time*; she also contradicts herself in some essays. While I understand not all the essays were written at the same time, and over the period lapsing between the essays she probably changed her mind on some beliefs, this isn’t explained very well in the text.
I’m also reading Stephen King’s new anthology (I’m big on anthologies), Everything’s Eventual. I love it so far. I had to skip over the Dark Towers story, “The Little Sisters of Euria”, because I haven’t read anything of the DT series, but I’ve read the other works and they’re fascinating. I’m halfway through right now.
Also, a bunch of short stories in my English Lit book. Also, just finished Chaim Potok’s The Chosen (I want to read its sequel, The Promise), and Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Dreams.
*I’m not saying it can’t be done, just that IMHO, it wasn’t done very well here and she came off as preachy. Also, her “facts” are sometimes a little implausible. I skipped over a couple of the poli-essays because of that.
Newjack by Ted Conover
The author signed up for Correctional Officer training, became one, and was assigned to Sing Sing prison for a year. This is an account of that. Not bad.