John Grisham’s The Rainmaker - I don’t think I need to explain the central theme 
I’m also in the middle of The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams, but it drags on a hell of a lot more than any other DA books I’ve read.
I am reading Nanocosm, a look at near-term applications of nanotechnology, by William Atkinson.
I’m ninety pages into Virginia Woolf’s classic, Mrs. Dalloway. I found it for a dollar at a book sale, and while I might not finish it anytime soon it’s spurred me on to see The Hours again.
Oh, and I read The Little Prince over my lunch break today. How did I miss reading that my first twenty-two years on the planet? I simply loved it.
Alnilam by James Dickey, somewhat entertaining but I can’t figure out what its all about.
If you just want to be entertained any of John Sandford’s Prey books are outstanding.
Just finished Kim Wilkins’ Grimoire. It was OK.
Last night I read Joanna Trollope’s Girl from the South. Eh. It read to me like she was trying to be Anne Tyler. I didn’t care about the characters and I found the book to be remarkably unengaging.
I read India Knight’s latest book and if you’re looking for mind candy, it’s the most hysterically funny chicklit I’ve read in ages. I can’t remember what it was called 
as I passed it onto my mother.
The Book of Fred is the next book I am actually going to finish. Began last week, my mother stole it from me and says it’s great.
My Uncle Oswald by Rold Dahl.
It’s about this guy who gets hold of this incrediably powerful sexual stimulant, and is using it with a female classmate and a professor to get the semen from famous people (royalty, Renoir, Einstein, Stravinsky, etc) so he can sell it to women at exorbinant prices so they can have kids with geniuses as fathers.
It ain’t your James and the Giant Peach that’s for sure. 
I’ve been MEANING to read the Nero Wolfe books for ages, and last month I decided to start with the first. I am now reading two (The Black Mountain and To Be A Villian). So far, I’ve read about half a dozen or so. Fortunately, there’s plenty more Stout novels to go.
Roald Dahl wrote some pretty wicked adult fiction; of course, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, featuring 4 children being tortured for their naughtiness, hints at Dahl’s dark side 
I’m currently reading The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain’s travel journal through Europe and the Middle East. It was one of his first major works, written in serial format for newspapers in New York and San Francisco. I’m only 1/3 the way through and still following Twain through Italy, but I have enjoyed it so much that I plan to read his other travel journals.
Nearly finished McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, a collection of new short stories in the old style where there’s a plot and everything! The editor, Michael Chabon, waas complaining that since 1950 or so, the critics would pan any fiction that depends on plot, so the publisher of McSweeney’s, a literary quarterly, told him to edit an issue, now out in a trade paperback. It has stories bt Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Elmore Leonard, and more.
Just started a mystery called OOPS! by John Lutz. The detective, Alo Nudger, is a bit of a coward who usually ends up manipulated into very hard-boiled situations.
And welcome aboard, BF!
I just picked up Moneyball the other day and haven’t had much time to crack it open. I’ve only managed the first chapter, which I’ve probably read about three or four times by now, since it’s been excerpted in Sports Illustrated and ESPN.com among other places. I also read an excerpt of one of the middle chapters that was featured in the NYT Magazine a few weeks back. Unfortunately, I just haven’t had a chance to sit down with the book for an extended period of time. My initial reaction is that this is going to be a book that, once I get around to actually reading it, I will breeze through far too quickly.
Carnage and Culture is a beast of an entirely different sort. Although billed as a book for a popular audience, it’s nevertheless a dense tome. Quoting from the backcover blurb:
“VDH explains why the armies of the West have been the most lethal and effective of any fighting forces in the world. Looking beyond popular explanations such as geography or advanced technology, Hanson argues that it is in fact Western culture and values - the tradition of dissent, the imoportance placed on inventiveness and adaptation, the concept of citizenship - which have consistently produced superior arms and soldiers.”
He does this by looking at a number of decisive battles and the ramifications they had on Western society and warfare. These battles include Salamis, Guagamela, Cannae, Poitiers, Technotitlan, Lepanto, Rorke’s Drift, Midway, and Tet.
In a way the book is advancing the thesis he first proposed in The Western Way of War, which dealt with Greek hoplite warfare. The principles of warfare first demonstrated by the Greeks, the preference for short decisive battles waged between forces of massed infantry composed of citizen soldiers, is a thread that runs throughout the history of the Western military, albeit however differently it may habe been mainfested at different times.
I am currently in the middle of the chapter on Technotitlan. So far I think it’s great, but I don’t necessarily agree with or buy everything Hanson is saying. His big thing is that no western army has ever been defeated on western soil by a non-wetsern army. In arguing this point, Hanson breaks out a littany of exceptions to explain away Western military defeats. Some hold water, others would be better off as spaghetti strainers. Your mileage may vary. His selection of battles is rather slim (where’s Manzikert and the Sicilian Expedition, Vic?), and he goes to great lengths to dissociate the present work from works of the past that claimed to track the course of Western history through a series of decisive battles. Hanson claims his book is different; I’m not sure that it is.
On an odd note, Hanson takes some scholarly shots at Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel. I don’t really get it. I can’t figure out why, in Hanson’s opinion, the two theses are irreconcilable.
One other item that struck me as being also somewhat bizarre was Hanson equating Alexander the Great with Hitler. While I agree with Hanson that the conception of Alexander as a proponent of “the brotehrhood of man” is false, I cannot make the intellectual leap required to equate him with Hitler. (If only this were a message board debate - Hanson would lose based on the principle of Godwin’s Law.) Big Al certainly had his fair share of less than glorious moments, the destruction of Thebes and the murder and enslavement of its population, the spirit-fueled burning of Persepolis, and the spirit-fueled murder of Cleitus, all spring immediately to mind (not to mention the disposal of Parmenio and his son), but even though these acts were indeed heinous, they were not conducted with the intention of purfying the breeding pool of unwanted and undesirable elements and creating a master race. Maybe it’s my view that’s a little skewed and apologetic.
Despite these points, which are really minor nitpicks, if you have an interest in military history, I suggest you pick this one up. It might even deserve a thread of its own.
halfway through just tell me when to cry , richard fleischers biography. great if you like reading about the movie industry in the 50s/60s/70s.
just finished re reading house of leaves by mark danielowski, which in my opinion is the best book ever, even if it does fall to bits slightly at the end
To ammend my post above:
Hanson is not claiming that no non-western army has ever defeated a western army on western soil. I misspoke (miswrote?). What he is claiming is that when it has happened, it hads been due to extraordinary circumstances such as the inept leadership of teh Roman generals at the battle of Cannae.
Sorry. It’s late… typing fast… got careless.
Currently on The Years with Ross, James Thurber’s look at New Yorker editor Harold Ross. Interesting, but vaguely confusing to me … I suppose it’s a peek at another world. Thurber is fluent, amusing, and perceptive as always, but half the names he’s dropping, no doubt instantly recognizable to New Yorker readers in the 1940s, are totally unknown to me. It gives me a slightly disconnected feeling while reading the book.
(Though, of course, I can pick up a copy of OK or Hello! and read about all sorts of people who are apparently celebrities, but whom I’ve never heard of … and the Thurber book is, at least, a lot better written.)
Have nearly finished reading “8 Simple Rules” by W. Bruce Cameron. Very good book, there’s a new TV series on the Disney Channel cough based on it.
I’m reading Ulysses by James Joyce. It’s a bit hard going (reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man just wasn’t enough to get used to the stream-of-consciousness style), but it’s interesting.
I’m not very far in, but the back cover informs me that it follows the lives of two men over a single day.
I’ll never make a book critic.
I just got into “Eye of the World” the first book in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. It’s been a while since I’ve read a SciFiction/Fantasy book. It was slow to start but has picked up nicely. I am really enjoying this one and can’t wait to get to the end to start another!
I just finished “A Prayer for Owen Meany” for the fifth or sixth time and Pat Conroy’s “A Losing Season”. Conroy and Irving are two of my favorite authors.
But I am anxiously awaiting June 21st for HP #5!!
Just finished E. Morris’ bio of TR as president, “Theodore Rex”- I recommend it, for those who like biographies.
I should really get the Alienist. I ducked it because of the best seller thing, but I can’t argue with the recommendations.
I also want to get “The devil in the White City” - I forget who wrote it, but it’s about the Chicago World’s Fair, and a serial killer who was preying on the populace at the same time…
I just recently finished The Blessing Stone by Barbara Woods. The only reason I picked it up was because I had read everything else and I was desperate to have something to read between seeing patients. I was really impressed…it catalogues the journey of a rare stone and its various possessors from the prehistoric era and ancient Rome all the way to the Old West. once I put it down I wished I could have read it again.
I recently finished The Bone Doll’s Twin by Lynn Flewelling. I hadn’t read anything by this author before, and I liked the book immensely. It’s a fantasy novel that involves disputed inheritance of a throne, and twins, one of whom is killed at the beginning of the book.
It’s a bit dark, but compelling. I find my thoughts coming back to the characters and the world pretty often.
I’ll definitely be seeking other books by this author.
I’m currently reading the omnibus volume The Complete Ivory : Includes Gate of Ivory; Two-Bit Heroes, & Guilt Edged Ivory by Doris Egan. It’s nominally science fiction, but takes place on a world where magic works. I’ve gotten through the first volume. It’s a pleasant read, but so far it’s not a read-more-than-once book.
Hey Grey, welcome to the board. Enjoy your stay.