# What are you reading this month, dopers? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 25, 2006, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011 "2006-09-25T02:47:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Lamar\_Mundane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lamar\_Mundane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamar_Mundane)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/41 "2006-09-25T19:17:55Z")
**The Emperor’s Children** , by Claire Messud. A novel about three young people in New York in 2001. It uses 9/11 as a plot device, but only in a minor way. Messud is a brilliant writer, maybe the best new novelist I have read in a decade, but her half-page long sentences, full of semi colons and dashes, leave me exhausted. **The Miracle of St. Anthony** , by Adrian Wojnarowski. The story of Bob Hurley, basketball coach at St. Anthony High School in Jersey City, NJ. A tiny school, abandoned by the church but held together by a group of dedicated nuns, educating the poorest of the poor, somehow manages to win 22 state basketball titles and send nearly every senior to college. I have on order **Letter to a Christian Nation** , by Sam Harris. ---
**Author:** ![Cemetery\_Savior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/439d5e/32.png) [@Cemetery\_Savior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cemetery_Savior)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/42 "2006-09-25T20:36:39Z")
[QUOTE=blondebear] Three Days to Never by Tim Powers. I always hoping that he’ll come up with something that I like as much as The Anubis Gates. I’m about 40 pages in–so far, so good. [/QUOTE] I just started the Anubis Gates. About 15 pages in, so no discussion points yet. I also just finished Drawing of The Dark by Powers. I just ordered Pynchon’s new one on Amazon (rotten pre-order!), and pre-ordered Gene Wolfe’s new one (the name escapes me now, but it’s in the _Latro_ series). Recently finished: [ul] [li]1776[/li][li]An omnibus work of Tom Holt’s[/li][li]Independent People (Halldor Laxness?)[/li][li]Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Murakami)[/li][li]And…tried Finnegan’s Wake again (feeling arrogant), got through page 43!!![/li][/ul] -Cem (who hopes one day to get into triple-digits on FW) ---
**Author:** ![Cemetery\_Savior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/439d5e/32.png) [@Cemetery\_Savior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cemetery_Savior)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/43 "2006-09-25T20:43:35Z")
[QUOTE=Baldwin] Just finished _World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War_ by Max Brooks (who also wrote _The Zombie Survival Guide_). Really impressive; the book is made up of “interviews” with survivors of a great worldwide plague of flesh-eating zombies, a couple of decades in the future. Brooks obviously did a tremendous amount of research to achieve verisimilitude in the first-hand accounts. [/QUOTE] I’m going to get it tonight…didn’t know it existed. -Cem ---
**Author:** ![Sunrazor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sunrazor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunrazor)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/44 "2006-09-25T20:46:40Z")
I’m in grad school, goin’ for the ol’ English MA – up to my butt in Victorian lit this semester. Carlyle, Coleridge, Dickens, Tennyson, Eliot, Mill, Bronte (both of 'em) and on and on and on. Enjoying it? Nope, but I knew it wasn’t going to be fun. ---
**Author:** ![Mrs.Cake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2acd7d/32.png) [@Mrs.Cake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mrs.Cake)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/45 "2006-09-25T20:53:48Z")
Currently reading: _Collapse_ by Jared Diamond, having recently re-read _Guns, Germs and Steel_ _The Hedgehog, the Fox and the Magister’s Pox_ by SJ Gould _Undead and Unwed_ by MaryJanice Davidson, a chick lit/vampire book for a little light bedtime reading Also re-reading my Agatha Heterodyne books, if graphic novels count. In the stack waiting to be read are: _Fluke_ having only belatedly discovered Christopher Moore and working my way through his novels The latest Amelia Peabody book, the name of which escapes me at the moment My semi-annual reading of _Little, Big_ by John Crowley, one of my 10 desert island books. ---
**Author:** ![mack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mack)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/46 "2006-09-25T21:04:16Z")
[QUOTE=Cisco] I’m currently reading: Burning Chrome by William Gibson [/QUOTE] That has one of my favorite science fiction short stories: Hinterlands I’m reading **1919** by John Dos Passos, a sort of epic many slices of many lives around the time of WWI. The second book in his USA trilogy. I took some time during my vacation to read **The DaVinci Code**. ---
**Author:** ![Sophie\_Z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@Sophie\_Z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophie_Z)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/47 "2006-09-25T21:05:25Z")
I’m rwading Harry Turtledove’s **WorldWar/Colonization** series. Tjis is what L. Ron Hubbard’s **Battlefield Earth** wants to be when it grows up. ---
**Author:** ![Sophie\_Z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@Sophie\_Z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophie_Z)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/48 "2006-09-25T21:08:27Z")
[QUOTE=Sophie\_Z] I’m rwading Harry Turtledove’s **WorldWar/Colonization** series. Tjis is what L. Ron Hubbard’s **Battlefield Earth** wants to be when it grows up. [/QUOTE] **This.** This is what it wants to be. ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/49 "2006-09-25T21:59:13Z")
[QUOTE=silenus] S. M. Stirling’s **A Meeting At Corvallis** arrived last week, so it’s currently being read. Next up will likely be Robert Rankin’s **The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse**. [/QUOTE] Being a cheapskate with limited shelf space (my books may be reaching critical mass; if a new black hole appears near St. Louis, MO, it’s just my book collection finally imploding under its own mass), I’m waiting for the paperback, but **The Protector’s War** came out recently, and I’m working my way through it. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/50 "2006-09-25T23:11:21Z")
[QUOTE=DrFidelius] **The Plague Dogs** [/QUOTE] Assuming you enjoy the book, should you ever stumble across the animated film, I reccommend it. It’s one of the few animated film adaptations I’ve ever seen that holds faithful to the novel. For that matter, should you get sick of the book, the film is a good way to find out how the rest of the book goes in 90min 😉 I’m currently reading **A Concise History of Poland** by Jerzy Lukowski & Hubert Zawadzki. They managed to boil 1,040 years of history down into three hundred seventy pages so I’m guessing that’s pretty concise. I still need to finish **Guns, Germs & Steel** and a biography I have on Abigail Adams but the Poland book was bought for a research paper I’m doing so it got top billing. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/51 "2006-09-25T23:51:49Z")
Regarding **Raj** : [QUOTE=Anaamika] Is this worth it? After my extraordinarily long post re: Riot, I do want to read more. [/QUOTE] I’m finding it fascinating but slow going. Huge areas of personal ignorance are being cleared away, but I’ll need to read it through again so that some of the names will stick… ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/52 "2006-09-25T23:52:59Z")
**France and the French: A Modern History** by Rod Kedward [a few chapters only] \*\*The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy \*\* – Douglas Adams \*\*Beyond Band of Brothers \*\* – Maj. Richard Winters [ret.] “No Exit” – Jean-Paul Sartre **The Great Starvation Experiment** – Todd Tucker I’m still on a WWII kick. ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2006, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/53 "2006-09-26T02:39:03Z")
_Very Good, Jeeves_, _War of the Worlds_, _The Memoirs of Cleopatra_, _Neverwhere_, _Soul Music_ (for our Discworld Reading Club threads), _Tender is the Night_, and _Akhenaten_ by Naguib Mahfouz (I remember checking the book out of the library and reading about his death two or three days later, on the BBCNewsworld feed, and having a moment of “He can’t be dead, I’m still reading one of his books!”) I’m due back at the libary tomorrow, so I’ll have a host of new books then. ---
**Author:** ![wonderlust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonderlust/32/7237_2.png) [@wonderlust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonderlust)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2006, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/54 "2006-09-26T04:01:24Z")
I finished **Fall of Hyperion** this month, which I didn’t like as much as **Hyperion** while reading it, but in retrospect I do. I finished **A Wild Sheep Chase** , my first by Haruki Murakami. I was underwhelmed, but will give him another try since I want to like him. In my new effort to include short stories in my reading, I’ll slip some **Burning Chrome** in between reading my next book, which may jump-start me into continuing that series. My next read will be **The Prestige** , by Christopher Priest, because I like reading the book before seeing the movie, which will be out next month. I’m also hoping to start River of Gods, by Ian McDonald soon. ---
**Author:** ![wonderlust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonderlust/32/7237_2.png) [@wonderlust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonderlust)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2006, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/55 "2006-09-26T04:11:15Z")
gah! pressed enter too soon, sorry. :smack: …My next read will be **The Prestige** , by Christopher Priest, because I like reading a book before seeing the movie, which will be out next month. I’m in the mood after just seeing the probably inferior film, _The Illusionist_. I’m also hoping to start **River of Gods** , by Ian McDonald soon. **twickster** , I’m sorry you’re not enjoying **The Orchid Thief** , which is obviously nothing like the film, but I really loved the book for the amazing history of orchid collecting, the bizarre people inhabiting the sub-culture, and the extremes people will go to for the plants. The swamps and odd folks reminded me of southern gothic fiction. ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2006, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/56 "2006-09-26T14:11:56Z")
[QUOTE=Kythereia] _The Memoirs of Cleopatra_/QUOTE] I’ve got a real soft-spot for Margaret George. I love her books though sometimes the historian in me gets irked at inaccuracies. I just finished her latest, _Helen of Troy_. Quite good. I suggest, though, that you skip, _Mary, Called Magdalene_. I thought it was tedious. Her books _Autobiography of Henry VIII_ and _Mary, Queen of Scots_ are great and stand among my all-time favorites. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2006, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/57 "2006-09-26T14:22:47Z")
**Yarn Harlot** by Stephanie Pearl McPhee. If you read her blog, it’s just like that, only more portable than your laptop. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2006, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/58 "2006-09-26T14:32:54Z")
Let’s see. This morning I finished Rick Riordan’s _Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters_, the second in the Percy Jackson series. Highly recommended for fans of Harry Potter. Earlier this week I finished Madeleine Brent’s _Golden Urchin_ (someone on the Dope recommended Brent), Patricia Wrede’s (and someone else) _Sorcery and Cecelia_, the second book in the York series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (can’t recommend it), and Elizabeth Young’s _A Girl’s Best Friend_. Currently reading Bujold’s _The Vor Game_. Getting ready to start Angie Sage’s _Flyte_, Charles Stross’s _The Family Trade_, and Edith Pattou’s _East_. And I want to plug a book I read a couple of weeks ago: Daniel Abraham’s _A Shadow in Summer_. This is great fantasy. Read it! (And the author swears he won’t fall prey to Robert Jordan syndrome when I questioned him on his blog.) ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2006, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/59 "2006-09-26T15:10:38Z")
Just finished **Warfare in the Classical World** and now halfway through the latest issue of Air & Space. Next up is **Rum: A Social and Sociable History.** ---
**Author:** ![susan\_foster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@susan\_foster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan_foster)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2006, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011/60 "2006-09-26T15:16:32Z")
Just finished [Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter’s](http://www.amazon.com/Basilica-Splendor-Scandal-Building-Peters/dp/0670037761/sr=8-1/qid=1159282804/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6874187-6139260?ie=UTF8&s=books) . I thought it was good in that it taught me a lot about Roman/Papal history, but it wasn’t great in a literary sense. It did make me go to the library yesterday, and pick up biographies of Michaelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci. In the middle of [Garlic and Sapphires](http://www.amazon.com/Garlic-Sapphires-Secret-Critic-Disguise/dp/0143036610/sr=1-1/qid=1159282906/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6874187-6139260?ie=UTF8&s=books) . I had read Ruth Reichl’s other 2 books, and considered them okay. I love this one. Sometimes you just read a book by an author that reaches you, when all of his/her other ones don’t. Tried to read [Grass](http://www.amazon.com/Grass-Sheri-S-Tepper/dp/055376246X/sr=1-2/qid=1159283011/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-6874187-6139260?ie=UTF8&s=books) by Sherri Tepper, but I just couldn’t get into it. I had loved [Beauty](http://www.amazon.com/Beauty-Spectra-Special-Editions-Tepper/dp/0553295276/sr=1-1/qid=1159283072/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6874187-6139260?ie=UTF8&s=books) , so I had high hopes. Read [Blue Screen](http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Screen-Sunny-Randall-Novels/dp/0399153519/sr=1-1/qid=1159283140/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6874187-6139260?ie=UTF8&s=books) in one night. I always felt that Parker’s Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone books were too similar, so I’m not sure that I liked That they became a couple at the end. Then again, his Spenser novels are not high literature either, and I don’t expect them to be. And in between, I reread [Feet of Clay](http://www.amazon.com/Feet-Clay-Terry-Pratchett/dp/0061057649/sr=1-1/qid=1159283399/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6874187-6139260?ie=UTF8&s=books),[Thud!](http://www.amazon.com/Discworld-Novels-Paperback-Terry-Pratchett/dp/0060815310/sr=1-1/qid=1159283302/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6874187-6139260?ie=UTF8&s=books) and [Going Postal](http://www.amazon.com/Going-Postal-Terry-Pratchett/dp/0060502932/sr=1-1/qid=1159283332/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6874187-6139260?ie=UTF8&s=books) . There’s something funny about Pratchett’s later novels; it takes me time to get to like them, but they do improve on reread. Up next? Well, I’ve got a stack of about 30 books out from the library, and a bunch of unread books on my shelves, so it’ll be what hits me right. Top contender is [Never Let Me Go](http://www.amazon.com/Never-Let-Go-Vintage-International/dp/1400078776/sr=1-1/qid=1159283449/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6874187-6139260?ie=UTF8&s=books), and I have several by Octavia Butler and Charles deLint. Susan [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-reading-this-month-dopers/374011.md?page=4)