House Atredies the prequel to Dune.
Voted Best Sport
And narrowly averted the despised moniker Smiley Master
“Avast and ahoy, landlubbers! Shore leave’s in August. Hide your women.” – A WallySig
RIGHT now? The Sound and Sense textbook for my English class. I got bored with it so I thought I’d check SMDB 
Voluntarily, I’m reading Ever Since Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould, The Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig and Point-Counterpoint by Aldous Huxley.
``You’re just an empty cage girl if you kill the bird.’’ – Tori Amos.
My kind of people!
Right now I’m reading “The ground beneath her feet” by Rushdie and keeping an eye out for “The fifth Elephant” by Pratchett in paperback. Just finished re-reading a danish book called (roughly translated) “Odin and the hard-drive” about Viking age values and ethics and how they might fit in modern society. Not bad.
But I just realized that I haven’t read “Zen & the art of” etc. for a looong time.
And this threead added another 5 titles to my “books to buy” list.
(And right now I SHOULD be reading “Release notes for Cisco MICA Portware version 2.6.2.0”, but what the heck).
Norman
Shayna, I loved ‘Anna Karenina’—but it IS very demanding, and you have to really be in the mood for it.
I just finished a new bio of film director Erich Von Stroheim, and I just started ‘The Smart Magazines,’ a 1991 book about how wonderful magazines were in the 1910s-30s (Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, etc.). Makes me very depressed at the state of magazines today . . .
Bedside table: Jonathan Weiner’s Time, Love, Memory, an account of behavioral geneticist Seymour Benzer’s work with fruit flies, which has opened the door to learning much more than we currently do about the influence of genetics on behavior.
In the car to read at lunch: Matt Ridley’s The Origins of Virtue : Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation, an exploration of how altruism and cooperation have arisen in animals, inlcuding humans, despite the single-minded self-interestedness of genes.
In the car (on tape for the commute): Patrick O’Brian’s The Ionian Mission, book 8 of O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series, read by the amazing Patrick Tull in the [url=http://www.recorededbooks.com]Recorded Books unabridged audio version. At the current rate, I should just about make it through the whole series by the end of baseball season (I started in early December).
On deck: Seamus Heaney’s new translation of Beowulf.
“Ain’t no man can avoid being born average, but there ain’t no man got to be common.” –Satchel Paige
It’ll be more fun when you take Recreational Chemistry. 
Live a Lush Life
Da Chef
“The Lost Tomb” by Kent R. Weeks. Very interesting story of the discovery and excavation of the tomb of the sons of Rameses II.
rackensack, I’m also working on Time, Love, Memory, but it often gets put aside in favor of the above.
Next on the list: “All the Pretty Horses” by Cormac McCarthy.
I’m currently working my way (actually I should say “playing my way”) through Peter Mayle’s delightful series of books about the expatriate life in the south of France:
A Year In Provence
Toujours Provence
Encore Provence
Live a Lush Life
Da Chef
In progress:
Coaching for Commitment (2nd pass)
the cluetrain manifesto
The Secrets of Question Based Selling
A Sight for Sore Eyes (Ruth Rendell)
Just finished:
All Hat and No Cattle - tales of a corporate outlaw
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
The Abilene Paradox
If you want an easily digestible and greatly condensed history, try The People’s Chronology
Yep, I’m a dweeb.
Grow your own dope! Plant a man.
(Wally made me say it)
I always try to balence intellectual books with detective/fun books. My current brain candy is a whodunit called * Honkey Tonk Kat* and, as whodunits go, it’s not half bad.
I recently finished Assata by Assata Shakur, a Black Liberation Army member unjustly jailed. Good book, even though her own rascism is a bit distracting.
I am currently reading, on advice from my sister, What Color is my Parachute? I need a new job.
School stuff includes Richard III, and a LOT on child psychology. I can’t wait till summer.
Recently finished Kobo Abe’s WOMAN IN THE DUNES.
Right now I’m on page 302 of THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, and also plowing through Matloff’s WORLD WAR I: A CONCISE MILITARY HISTORY.
These are both too large to haul around with me, though, so I’m also reading Rolland Hein’s CHRISTIAN MYTHMAKERS, a study of fantasy fiction by C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, George MacDonald, Charles Williams, and others.
Uke
Just finishing The Character of Physical Law - Feynman, about halfway through
A Brief History of Time - Hawking, just starting
The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner.
Just make yourself comfy while I shoot nuclear particles into your heart.
(Courtesy of Wally)
My job involves a lot of reading, so I don’t often read books for pleasure. I do listen to book on tape during my commute.
Currently: Dark Lady by Richard North Patterson.
Next up: Personal Inuries by Scott Turow
Nothing too heavy here. I get enough heavy reading at work. Pure escapism when I listen to books in the car.
Presently I’m reading “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco. Wish I had taken a Latin class in school…
“It’s only common sense,
There are no accidents 'round here.”
Just finished The Class of 1846 and Faith and Treason (about the Gunpowder Plot) – feeding my history jones.
Currently reading Tom Wolfe’s A Man In Full and not finding it as fabulous as I’ve heard it to be, but then I’m not very far into it. Next up: Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children for Book Club.
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
Right now I’m in the middle of Alexandre Dumas’ “Religion wars” trilogy. Just finished “La reine Margot” and starting on “La dame de Monsoreau.”
Waiting in the wings is Pynchon’s “Mason & Dixon”. So far I’ve been intimidated by the sheer weight of it.
At work, I just finished “The Last Temptation of Christ” (Nikos Kazantzakis), and now started a whodunit set in ancient Rome, “Silver Pigs” by Lindsey Davis. If you discount the setting, it’s a very average detective novel.
I always have several books going at once. Currently:
The IRA: A History - by Tim Pat Coogan
The Troubles - Tim Pat Coogan
Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire - Rousseau
The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy
Just finished The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski and Hawaii by James Michener.
I just finished (from most recent on down):
William Goldman’s Which Lie Did I Tell
Terry Pratchet’s Fifth Elephant
Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Muskateers
Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre
Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility
That’s been the last month or so, and I know some other books have snuck in, but I can’t remember them right now.
Almost forgot - also recently finished Hannibal. What a waste of a few hours. Bad bad bad - not to mention revoltingly disgusting. Do not waste your money.
Right now, The Spiral Dance, by Starhawk and The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper. Just finished the third Harry Potter book a couple of weeks ago, and intend to get going on Heretic’s Heart by Margot Adler this week.
Gamera is really neat, he is full of turtle meat, we’ve been eating Gam-er-aaaa…