I’m currently about 50% through “Geek Mafia: Mile Zero” by Rick Dakan, which is the 2nd in the trilogy. Really enjoying it, and I thoroughly enjoyed the first, “Geek Mafia”. Pity the 3rd installment isn’t free 
I like business, financial and economic history and am just starting Frank Partnoy’s The Match King, about financier Ivar Kreuger and his epic cooking of the books.
I was up entirely too late last night plowing through Richard Russo’s Bridge of Sighs. It’s rather depressing but I can’t put it down.
I bought Denis Johnson’s Angels yesterday, but suspect my husband and I may end up fighting over who gets to read John Burdett’s The Godfather of Kathmandu first.
I just finished The Light Fantastic and enjoyed it very much. Equal Rites is waiting for me at the library and I’ll try to pick it up today. I read Color of Magic about two years ago and it didn’t suck me in… Light Fantastic seemed much better structured. And maybe my sense of humor has blossomed in the last couple years.
I also finished:
Sleepless, by Charlie Huston. For those who like his Hank Thompson or Joe Pitt series, I recommend this book. It’s a stand-alone novel and Huston has seemed to have improved as a writer in leaps and bounds in this book. Still gritty, still pulpy but he’s taking on new depths and challenges. And using quotation marks too!
Everything’s Eventual, by Stephen King. This was my plane book for a weekend trip. A collection of short stories. Good – I feel SK excels at short form – but no classics. For those who have read the Dark Tower series, there’s two interesting DT related stories.
I tried, and gave up on, the first in the Cirque du Freak series. I like YA, but this was too “kiddie” for me. Definitely seems intended for the 10-13 year old range.
And I’m still reading a few pages of Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver each night before bed.
Just finished Flyaway by Suzie Gilbert, about her experiences rehabilitating wild birds. One Amazon reviewer compares it to All Creatures Great and Small, and I’ll buy that. Sometimes you want to take her by the shoulders and shake her for accepting yet another bird she can’t possibly save, and sometimes you want to track down the people who brought her the birds and kick them in the ass.
I’m over halfway through Sabiha Al Kemir’s “The Blue Manuscript”, a tale of archeology, west meets east, and the effects intense heat can have on the passions.
Why? Use as many adjectives as necessary, please. I’m thinking of reading it myself.
Just finished reading an abridged version of Mark Twain’s 1881 classic The Prince and the Pauper with my ten-year-old. He was underwhelmed, but I liked it well enough, having never read it before but seen a zillion TV adaptations.
At first I was offended by the idea someone would mess with Abe’s historical legacy. You just know some poor fool will think this stuff is history. But then I warmed to it. It is a fair attempt at a Goth novel set in 1850-or so America. On that level it worked. The book never took itself too seriously and frankly I suspect I could write it better, but for all that, it was an amusing read.
Count how many one-armed men are mentioned. It seems everyone has an armed whacked off at some point or another.
Thanks. Sounds like something George Lucas (or the creators of The Fugitive) would like, too.
The Time-Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England, it’s good going so far. That and the first two* The Authority* collections, and Miéville’s* Looking For Jake*.
I’ve become a Bob Woodward fan over the past couple of weeks. I finished Veil the night before last, and I’ve just started Plan of Attack.
Woodward is not the best writer in the world as far as prose goes, but deathbed interview jokes aside, he’s an excellent story teller with fantastic journalistic instincts and sources. After reading Veil, I’ve found a far deeper respect for politics at the national level, including the president, his executive aides, and his cabinet. Even if I despise those people’s politics, they have fantastically hard, soul-consuming jobs, and I do not envy any of them. I have also found respect for all the presidents from Carter to Dubya to Obama, even though I didn’t vote for most of them. King Solomon had it easy.
Woodward’s book The Brethren, cowritten with Scott Armstrong, is a great peek behind the red curtain at the U.S. Supreme Court in the early-to-mid-Seventies, including the Watergate-related decisions. It’s a good character study of the members of the court back then, and a very interesting examination of how the court does its work and decides cases both big and small. Highly recommended.
Ooh, that one was good. Held up to re-reading a few years later, too. I just finished his Ghost, and enjoyed it as well. I will never look at the Blairs in the same way! 
I have Archangel, but didn’t get into the first go round; I think I will pick it up again.
Other than that, I’m going through all the Terry Pratchett witch books, and I see what all the fuss is about. I love being made to laugh aloud while reading.
Finished Angelology last night. I liked it, but it had some flaws.
I thought the premise was very interesting. Way back in ancient history, several disobedient angels had sex with human females. Their offspring were the evil Nephilim, who have since run the world behind the scenes. But by the mid 1900s, they’re starting to die off and are looking for an ancient religious artifact to restore their power and health. The good guys are the angelologists, a secret society of academics who are trying to prevent the Nephilim from locating the artifact. Most of the story takes place in the present, with lots of flashbacks to Europe from 1930-1950.
So, neat idea, but the execution wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. It definitely reads like a first novel (which it is), with some repetitive descriptions, clunky dialogue, and some plot twists that raised my eyebrows. I didn’t care for the ending, either.
It was very similar in tone and style to Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, which I liked a lot, but Angelology is not as well-written.
Despite all that, I enjoyed it. I just thought it could have been better. I believe there’s a sequel in the works, but I can’t say yet whether I’ll read that.
That is the saddest book ever! Well, that and Lolita.
Do you like it? I do. It made me go on an everything-Thomas-Hardy-has-ever-written rampage.
I hadn’t read any fantasy since I was a teenager, so recently I broke that trend with two in quick succession. They reminded me of what I liked in fantasy before I got all serious about literature at uni!
So, one was Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees. A really cool fantasy with a strange and bureaucratic society (faintly reminded me of Gormenghast with pointless crazy ritual and eccentric characters), but at the end, I felt like the author chose the more mysterious but least interesting way to depict the climax.
Before that, I read Thursbitch by Alan Garner. I am still walking around in an admiring fog after that one. I recommend it. It is a book with about a billion levels. It is also a Mobius strip. That’s all I can say!
More reality-grounded reading in Saturday by Ian McEwan, but I don’t love it. It’s too obsessive about its main character who is too perfect and has a too-perfect family. And he reflects and analyses endlessly with dry and unprofound pomp. But, you know. I’m not very far in, so should give it a fairer go.
Thanks for the review. I’ll cross this one off my list. I hated The Historian, the style, the writing, the plot – all of it (and especially the ending).
A friend in my book club just read Kostova’s second novel, The Swan Thieves, and was very disappointed. Said it was a kind of whodunnit where the answer was pretty obvious all along (and she had enjoyed The Historian).
I just finished Vanity Fair’s Presidential Profiles, ed. by Graydon Carter, a collection of concise bios of all the U.S. Presidents from Washington through Obama, with nice charcoal right-profile portraits of each. A quick read, and a fine short introduction to the Presidency despite a few minor errors.
Funny, I just started that - it was in my stack and I figured it would make a good road trip book.
I’ve started The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa