Oh, jehoosephat. Waning. Waning at a dangerous rate. I is an astronomer, really I is.
In keeping with my usual preference for non-fiction, I am currently reading No Mercy by Redmond O’Hanlon. It is his account of a trip he took a few years back up the Congo river to a lake that supposedly houses a Loch Ness type monster. I have read two other of his travel books. In all three cases he travels up a river in a remote area (Borneo, South America, Africa)with at least one companion who seems spectacularly unsuited to the trip.
O’Hanlon can be somewhat self indulgent a writer at times, but this one is mostly quite interesting. It contains a lot of comparison about the Western vs. African perception of reality, the supernatural, religion, history, conservation, etc. And he does have a knack for characterization.
I just finished reading I Dare by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller and Sea of Sorrows by Michelle West. I’m almost finished with The Skies of Pern and have just started The Gambler’s Fortune and Snow Crash.
Huck Finn
War and Peace
Recently wrapped up More, Now, Again by Elizabeth Wurtzel and have since moved onto The Body Artist by Don Delillo.
I liked the Wurtzel book better.
Colin
Right now, I’m working on The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin and Many Waters by Madeleine L’Engle. Tomorrow, probably, I’ll start rereading A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L’Engle.
The LeGuin book is just…weird. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to finish it. I’m halfway through and it’s starting to bog down.
jessica
Bill James’ revised Baseball Abstract (I’m halfway through the third basemen) and Broadsides a history of 18th & 19th century fighting sail.
Titan (biography of John D. Rockefeller) - Ron Chernow
Goedel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
Lethal Marriage by Nick Pron.
I saw it mentioned in another thread and decided to give it a read. Interesting story so far, but I haven’t gotten to the hideous parts yet.
Sheri
awwww **kambuckta ** Good luck on the essays.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about. 
THE NANNY DIARIES. Very funny.
A Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart. Jaw-dropping adventure and great writing, with lots of humor.
An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears – one of those books that make me wish my brain were bigger so I could retain more.
Just finished Venus on the Halfshell by Kilgore Trout. Actually, Philip Jose Farmer wrote it. I don’t think it’s published anymore, though. My older bro got it for me (second hand) through Amazon.com as a birthday gift.
Debating whether to reread The Masked Rider by Neil Peart, The Story of English by McCrum, Cran, and MacNeil, or get copies of some books in this thread that I haven’t read yet. I’m particularly interested in God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian!, by Vonnegut, Inferno, by Pournelle and Niven, and Everything’s Eventual, by King, all authors I enjoy.
Just finished Bad Astronomy by an SDMBer, Torpedoed by Edmond Pope, and What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response by Bernard Lewis.
Currently I’m reading Don’t Get Duped and Warrior Women.
just finished:
area 7 (very, very, good)
love greg and lauren (very good)
the last precinct (okay)
nearly finished:
the pursuit (okay)
Currently, I just decided to skip over A Tribe Apart by Patricia Hersch because I don’t feel like reading about adolescent culture just right now, and am instead engrossed in Daniel McNeil’s The Face.
And I also just finished Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver, which I highly recommend. (Can’t say about the others, having not finished them yet.)
Well, I got myself onto this Lit binge I can’t quite seem to get off of.
I’ve been working on:
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway
“Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger
and soon I’m gonna start on
“On the Beach” by Neville Shute
Finally, seeing as how I’m starting college, and am going to have all those international politics and history classes, I’ve decided that it was a good idea to hit Barnes and Noble.com . I ordered:
“The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx.
No, I’m not communist…geez!:rolleyes:
I got Marx for Beginners because it’s a hell of alot easier to read. I’ve just thumbed through it so far.
Anyway, I’ve abandoned the Philip K. Dick book and am now reading the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I’ve been bad and looked ahead a little bit. Needless to say, I really want to get through it. There are some awesome characters/dialogue here. I just wish the prose wasn’t like swimming in mud! ehehe
Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon. Which is turning out a pleasant surprise, in that I find it quite enjoyable. However much I respect Gravity’s Rainbow, I found many swathes of it a terrible slog, & so I was expecting Mason & Dixon to be a similar tussle to get through.
Also, an interesting but very opaque book of prose poetry, Peter Larkin’s Terrain Seed Scarcity (try combining the respective difficulties of Heidegger & Zukofsky & you begin to approach those of Larkin, who is influenced by both of them, along with Wordsworth & Geoffrey Hartman), which I’m determined to work through to write a review of it; & Perry Anderson’s English Questions.
& a bunch of poems submitted to a journal I edit, most of which I’m going to reject. & reading out loud a large array of kid’s books to Anne, our 4-year-old (Rosemary Wells & Penelope Lively are current favourites).
I’ve started and haven’t stopped laughing at Christopher Moore’s “LAMB, the gospel according to Biff, Christ’s childhood pal” Too funny…