If you are like me ( and you know you do) you would have a stack of books lined up to settle in for a long winter.
I started last year doing a theme of sorts of ‘one author’ all their works ( that I can get my hands on - library or owning) so last year I did Barbara Metzger, which to the most of you, means nothing, but in the world of Regencies, shes a good solid name with a good solid bulk of work.
So, thanks to Fubrilsea and CalMeacham, thanks guys! I started readingLindsey Davis’ Falco series. I am presently waiting for book #3 to arrive in my mailbox and have picked up through used book stores a couple others. Since there are like 15 books in the series and it is taking me a month per book, I think I am set well through next fall.
After reading Francis Spufford’s The Child That Books Built, I have bought The Chronicles of Narnia ( I read three of them as a child, and I’m going to read the whole set now). Also, I have developed an interest in Roman Britain, so I have listed a lot of books I won’t bore you with.
I love that giddy anticipation on opening an unread book! But I’ve been lax in my real-in-the-hands books lately. I can’t remember the last time I fell asleep, book on chest and glasses askew. So…
Right now I’m a few pages into Richard Preston’s The Demon in the Freezer, an account on smallpox eradication. This will be followed by Miller, Engelberg and Broad’s Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War. I gotta send both of these to my sister.
Next will be either Clark’s Waging Modern War (the Kosovo campaign) or Scroggin’s Emma’s War (political and personal relationships in the midst of the Sudan’s civil war). Or maybe I’ll read Davidson’s North Atlantic Seafood: A Comprehensive Guide with Recipes. And before I forget, Garrels’ Naked in Baghdad (unembedded NPR reporter).
All of which will be interspersed with heavy doses of TV’s Survivor and Joe Millionaire.
God, it’s not a project. It’s more like a compulsion. I read, literally, all the time. I have a book with me in the car. When I’m waiting on the ferry…I’m reading. At lunch if I’m along…I’m reading.
So I can’t say I have a project. Just an endless need to keep doing this act until the end of time. Put it in front of me and I’ll read it.
I share Jonathan Chance’s reading habits (heck, I read at bars fairly regularly), but I still have a project for winter. The two greatest disappointments of my literary life are not finishing Gravity’s Rainbow and The Brothers Karamazov, so I plan on taking on one of those during my break.
Carcosa, I just finished Quicksilver for the second time and I have been reading historical documents and texts to refresh my memory of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution.
All those texts I saved from my History of Science courses in college have been read, with much more interest now that when they were assigned!
I’m looking for a copy of Newton’s Principia Mathematica and in fact am on my way out the door to Powell used bookstore
In general, I have been reading (or rereading in many cases) the classics. I have Plato, Locke, Hobbes, and Voltaire on my to do list. Why yes, I do get a bit obsessed with a topic:)
All of this can be blamed on Neal Stephenson. Why he has no forum or online community is beyond me, if you know of one, please let me know so I can go talk more!
Just a heads-up: I started the DaVinci Code thinking it would be somehow like “The Name of the Rose”. It isn’t at all. It’s a caper, with two-dimensional characters and a car chase. I enjoyed it once I stopped expecting any kind of depth from it – and please don’t take that Priory of Sion stuff too seriously.
Oy, I need to find ways to make more time for reading.
Step Number One: Close laptop and stop wasting so much time playing with the computer.
(Right after this post.)
Those who read the summer reading thread will remember that I intended to read Haruki Murakami’s Wild Sheep Chase, which I still intend to read. I got sidetracked by some other stuff which, in retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have bothered with. Fred Hoyle was a sexist and a looney, kids, and not much of a SF author. Steer clear!
I must lay hands on Quicksilver in the near future, which will probably lead to a rereading of Cryptonomicon. This will have to suffice, until my plans to kidnap Neal Stephenson, lock him up in my basement, and force him to write me 40 pages a day come to fruition.
I’ve also heard tepid praise for Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, along the lines “It didn’t suck as much as the Virtual Light series.” So I’ll probably pick that up, as well.
There’s some non-fiction I picked up with the best of intentions giving me the hairy eyeball from the shelf, but I just can’t bring myself to read anything that’s, like, hard work. If it isn’t sweeping me along in a heady roller-coaster ride, I’ll probably put it down and see what’s on the ReplayTV.
Aside from reading stuff on the 7th grade curriculum that I have been avoiding, I plan to read Stephen King’s Dark Tower books. Somehow I have managed to avoid them all this time and am caving in now. I’m halfway though The Gunslinger right now. I will also read Quicksilver as soon as the library lets me know that they’ve gotten a copy for me.
Also, I hope to be reading the next Song of Ice and Fire book before the end of the winter, but that could be just wishful thinking on my part.
I’m slogging my way through “Sarah Morton: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Lady”, which is an amazing read but pretty slow going.
I’m reading it both for research purposes and just for the heck of it.
I’ve also got in my stack of books to read this winter:
The Tea Rose, I Capture the Castle, Haunted Ground, and The Final Confession of Mabel Stark.
i never read DaVinci Code, but i got Angels and Demons for my birthday. I couldn’t take it, had to put it down after100 pages. I just wasn’t sure the author was joking, the second I realised he’s serious in the way he leads his narrative/characters, i nearly died laughing.
Mind you, I still take into consideration that the translation into my mother tongue (Polish) could have been a damage. But it’s definitely a book filled with interesting knowlede with no idea how to share it in a digestable way. I found it grossly simplistic and awkward.
My Winter Reading List is anything by Margaret Atwood. Somehow I’ve missed out on her until a few months ago. I’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake and I’m currently on The Blind Assassin.
Also on my list of things to read: 1984 (again) Stiff Fast Food Nation The Jungle Dude, where’s my country
I tasted a bit of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe. So far I’ve read about 10 books. I plan to read the others as they fall across my path. I’ve been holding off on Monstrous Regiment, because I want to save it for a hospital stay, and I know that if I get it, I’ll read it instead of saving it.
My winter reading list is as many of the Jeeves and Wooster books as I can get through.
A few Discworld novels yet to be decided and the ‘Oor Wullie’ or ‘Broons’ book that I’ll invariably get for christmas.
As if the Biblical studies weren’t enough to do I went and started A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis By David Friedman yesterday. Its quite good, so far nothing much I hadn’t read before but the author’s sense of humor is worth it alone.
Hope you enjoy the Nero Wolfes, **Lynn. ** Keep in mind that Rex Stout was a sexist pig and you’ll do fine. And Archie is of course a total studmuffin!
And Archie is of course a total studmuffin!