They get better and better. I wasn’t really hooked after the first book, but by the time I finished the third one I went ahead and bought the entire set.
I’m reading Ambush: The True Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Ted Hinton, one of the officers who was in the shootout.
The book is a gift from a friend, and it’s inscribed by Hinton’s son. The reason it’s inscribed is because my friend’s family are friends of the Hinton family. On this most recent trip to visit family, Hinton let him hold a shotgun that Bonnie had used. He said it was almost a religious experience. I can sorta get that. My friend is very much into the Civil War, the Wild West, and the outlaws and gangsters of the 30’s. He travels a lot, and takes side trips to visit sites where stuff happened. Interesting guy.
First time I’ve ever entered one of these threads (mainly cuz I was always offended by the way that a thread about literature always starts with a word that isn’t in any english dictionaries).
I’m reading The Devil in The White City by Eric Larson, and it is fabulous so far. It is a story about the Chicago World’s Fair in the late 1800s, and a serial killer who was a regular visitor to the event. It reminds me a lot of The Alienist by Caleb Carr, one of my favorite books of all time, except this time it’s non-fiction.
I have two weeks of vacation time, and I plan to go to the library for The Age of Faith by Will Durant (volume 4 of his Story of Civilization). Hopefully I will also finish The Vintage Bradbury and finish re-reading The Iliad and The Odyssey.
Finished Innocent Mage two nights ago. I will reserve judgement on it because it really is 1/2 of a whole. Often a trilogy will have 3 full stories linked together. But this one cannot stand on its own, so I will await the second one before deciding if I can recommend it.
I started Those Who Walk In Darkness by John Ridley. This is the second time I started it. I’m thinking it is an X-Men light. Meta-normals are being hunted down by “norms” in a futuristic society.
It is catching me better this time. It is likely a light read, so I suspect I’ll report more on it soon.
I’m still reading The Dollmaker. Last week I was so busy I never even laid eyes on it, but I needed a little emotional break right about then anyway. I’m at the part where things just have to get better for Gertie soon…right?
On a lighter note, I’m reading Roald Dahl’s The BFG to my son at night. I think it’s the only Dahl book I missed growing up.
I have a stack of books in my to-be-read pile and not enough time to get to them, which sucks, but it’s way better than having time on my hands and nothing to read!
I’ve been reading this one off and on for a few months. I bought the set a few years back from Amazon for $80. I’m so old, I shouldn’t buy green bananas, but I guess I’m an optimist. Nobody writes history like the Durants.
I just finished Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock and loved it. Last night I started Lush Life by Richard Price, and I’m still reading Quicksilver.
Dung Beetle, I was wondering how The Dollmaker was working for you. Do you think you’ll want to read more Arnow?
It depends if I can forgive her for how this turns out. 
I’m reading Knockemstiff, by my neighbor Donald Ray Pollock, for the second time. I started a thread recommending it a few days ago.
I spotted a copy of this at the cutout bookstore in the mall the other day. It was a mass market paperback, and so thick that I could barely pick it up with one hand. I’d be miserable trying to read it in that format, so I ordered a hardback. I’ve never read Stephenson because I was under the impression that his stuff was cyberpunk, which I don’t usually like. But *Crytponomicon *sounds interesting.
I’ve just finished another of David Weber’s Honor Harrington books (very enjoyable space opera) and I’m about to pick up Wodehouse’s Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves.
I just finished Bill Bryson’s Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Highly amusing reading even if you don’t give a crap about Des Moines.
Dox Qixote is kicking my butt so I turned to a box of forgettable books (John Grisham, James Patterson etc) that was given to me purely to earn some Paperbackswap credits. I needed some mindless fluff.
In that box, I came across and devoured Whistling In the Dark by Lesley Kagen. I’ll be keeping that one.
Also just started Blood, Sweat, and Tea: Real-Life Adventures in an Inner-City Ambulance. So far it’s enjoyable.
Saul Bellow’s short stories
Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. It’s a sociological study of why coal miners in central Appalachia didn’t organize for so long, and what happened when they tried. Dry, but meaty.
This month, I’ve finished reading:
Spilling Clarence by Anne Ursu (a decent first novel, well written with a playful sense of language)
The Reckoning by Charles Nicholl (drags in some places, but a very well-researched history of Christopher Marlowe’s life and the political climate of Elizabethan England, with an intriguing analysis and hypothesis regarding his murder)
The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker (a sort of broadly-drawn look at the linguistic aspect of cognitive science, ca. 1992, with a mixture of some very good information and some rather annoying instances of stating his assumptions as obvious facts)
In between Nicholl and Pinker, I spent some time re-reading A History Of Pi by Petr Beckmann (glossing most of the actual equations) and Mencken’s Treatise On The Gods, both of which are old friends.
I’m about to finish Peter Green’s Alexander Of Macedon (the 1992 expanded edition), which is an excellent historical biography, written so well that it moves along at a good pace. And I’m about a third of the way through Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn To Decadence, which strikes me as a bit uneven, a little disjointed, and not nearly as well-written or informative as Durant’s History Of Civilization. (But then again, Barzun is trying to summarize in one book what Durant covered in half a dozen or so, and it took me over a year to read all the volumes of Durant covering that same period, so comparing the two is probably unfair.)
I’ll have time to start at least one more before April ends, but I’m not sure which I’ll take from the waiting-to-be-read shelf. Perhaps In Albert’s Shadow, by Einstein’s first wife, Milan Popovic, or Churchill’s The River War. Then again I might decide to take time off with another old friend (Twain, Mencken, Burgess, Heinlein, Swift, Kipling, Vonnegut . . . I dunno) to round out the month. Depends on the mood I’m in when the time comes.
Recent finishes:
Neverwhere: Okay, now I get the rabid Gaiman fans. That book was flippin’ awesome. I don’t know why They felt the need to release a graphic version, especially since the characters looked all wrong. Let me keep my mental images, please.
The Quiet American: This is probably the most mature book I’ve ever read. I’ve been reading adult books for a long time, but this one was on a level I haven’t reached before. I can’t really pinpoint why I get that feeling, though. I think it was Thomas Fowler. He had a world-weariness to him that aged the whole thing.
Most recent library trips netted:
Chronicles of Pern: First Fall by Anne McCaffrey
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Daisy Miller and Other Stories by Henry James
Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
Finished John Le Carre’s A Small Town in Germany. It was so-so; I really can’t recommend it. I find he falls flat when he starts geting all preachy. He’s much better when he sticks to pure spycraft.
Today I start The Shape Shifter, by Tony Hillerman, in the Joe Leaphorn Navajo-detective series. I began reading Hillerman back when I lived in Albuquerque and am a big fan. The wife is, too. Looking over the list of some of his earlier works brings back fond memories of having read them back then. He’s in his 80s now and still cranking them out.
Just finished Christopher Moore’s The Stupidest Angel 2.0 and Lisa Jewel’s * "Roomates Wanted (Except when you’re in love)*
I enjoyed both of them.
The Stupidest angel was great fun, but very fast paced once the action actually started. But it was still fun to read along.
The Roomates one was also okay, it was very british, and I hadn’t read works that take place in London and such really other than like Sherlock Holmes. So everyone in my head had voices from “Sean of the Dead” basically. But it was nice, a good quick read again.
Finished Lush Life by Richard Price, who also wrote Clockers and Freedomland.
It’s set in NYC and it’s about the aftermath of a street killing. We know who did it, so the focus is on the characters – the detectives, witnesses, the victim’s family, the perps, and especially one of the guys who was with the victim. There’s not a lot of tension – at least not the kind that we usually find in crime fiction. I liked it a lot. Price’s dialogue is especially good.
Back to Quicksilver.
I’ve read a few of the books mentioned elsewhere in this thread:
I did not like **No Country for Old Men ** - the book or the movie.
I did not like Water for Elephants, either. The writing is pretty good but the overall story is really boring.
I loved **Middlesex ** - great story and great writing.
Now I’m reading **What is the What ** by Dave Eggers. It’s awesome - the writing is fantastic, the story is compelling and I’m learning a lot about what is/has been happening in the Sudan.
I’m about to start **People of the Book ** by Geraldine Brooks for my book club.