I just finished The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. It’s a solid 3 out of 5 stars. The story takes a while to meander through the middle parts. Most of the writing is pretty good, but the dialogue is horrible. College kids do not talk or act like Chad Harbach thinks they do. But, for a first novel, it’s pretty good.
See post #548 here for a book I’ll bet you’d like: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=638331&page=11
I’m reading Winter’s Bone which I love and The Hunger Games which I kinda sorta don’t. 
Finished Helen of Troy- such a good book. And I totally knew that she wasn’t a real person before I read that- I swear! 
Then I read The Book of Drugs, a memoir by Mike Doughty, the lead singer of the band Soul Coughing. It was okay, nothing to write home about.
Now starting A Safeway in Arizona, about the Jan 8 shootings here in Tucson and politics of this state.
I will look out for that one, thanks!
All the Flashman books are definitely available in Kindle format, and a quick Googling indicates they’re available in EPUB format as well. What format are you looking for?
Not reading yet but purchased today: Kinglake-350, about the (Australian) Victorian bushfires of 2009.
Those bushfires were in an area I’ve been to, I’m from Melbourne; the towns most affected are not all that far away. I well remember the unbelievably oppressive heat of that day and the slowly growing horror as the extent of the disaster became clear.
The book comes highly recommended. I find disasters oddly fascinating, and it’s nice to have something Australian to read. So even though it’s more expensive than I’d usually accept for an ebook, I think it’ll be worth it. I’ll finish what I’m currently reading, so it’ll be a little while before I report back about it.
I finished A Night to Remember. I missed seeing the movie last weekend so decided to start that instead. I really enjoyed it. I then started Night Stalks the Mansion: A True Story of One Family’s Ghostly Adventure. It was an Amazon freebie so I decided to give it a shot.
Kindle would work. So would whatever iBooks uses, though I’ve been having trouble getting that to work. I just checked for Flashman and the Mountain of Light (actually what I was looking for, but the bookstore didn’t have it) on Amazon and the only thing I’m coming up with is an Audible audiobook edition.
That’s odd - there is a Kindle edition but for some reason you can’t actually buy it at the moment from Amazon in the US. However, it does seem to be available for purchase from Amazon UK. I’m in Australia and I’m assuming you’re in the US, so there may or may not be a problem in buying ebooks from UK Amazon. Worth a try, anyway, the worst that can happen is that you get refused.
iBooks uses EPUB format, and the Flashy books seem to be available in that format.
I think I’m the first Doper to give up on Cloud Atlas in frustration. To be fair, I got as far as p. 150, and even liked the Luisa Rey portion, but I’m a slow enough reader and too old to invest more time in this book. The pomposity got to me.
I came across a fabulous book list today, from Wired.com’s GeekDad department: 67 Books Every Geek Should Read to Their Kids Before Age 10, which to me means “books I should read”, even though my kids are grown. Favorite books and authors from my own childhood are in there, like Edward Eager, The Phantom Tollbooth,* Pippi Longstocking*, and Wrinkle in Time, but also many books not generally regarded as kid lit, like Princess Bride, Ender’s Game, and J. R. R. Tolkien.
Next up for me, After Life, by Rhian Ellis, long unread on my shelves, and recommended by Nancy Pearl’s new reprinting partnership with Amazon, Book Lust Rediscoveries.
I didn’t give up on it but I did not think it was my cup of tea. The only story I really liked was the story of Somni whatever number - which is a theme in science fiction I’ve always liked (the “define human” theme - makes me a sucker for the admittedly terrible flicks such as ‘The Island’ or ‘Gattaca’). I did prefer The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet to Cloud Atlas but neither is a book I’d wish to read again nor do I think much of them afterwards.
Finished Blood Cross (Jane Yellowrock, Book 2) a serviceable second in the Skinwalker urban fantasy series. Just a tad more sex than the last, but not enough to make me drop the series yet.
Continuing my recent spate of books about Queen Elizabeth II (today’s her birthday, BTW), just finished Her Majesty: The Court of Queen Elizabeth II by Robert Hardman. Pretty good, but didn’t break much new ground other than focusing a bit more on the role of Prince Philip.
I’ve just started House of Rain, by Craig Childs. While it reads like a mystery, it’s non-fiction, and concerns the research done on the Anasazi of the American Southwest. So far, it’s really grabbed my interest.
I’m reading 1222 by Ann Holt. It’s a Norwegian crime novel about a train crash and subsequent murders. I found it a quick, easy read and will go to the library and order any other books she has written.
I was one of those people who said I’d never use an e-reader but damn, when you’re lying in bed and the book you’re reading doesn’t grab you, it’s damn cool to just lie there and flip through a library – maybe even buy something new – without getting out of bed!
I’m reading Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. I vaguely remember the movie – Leslie Howard has a club foot and falls for Bette Davis (?), who treats him badly. I’m enjoying the period detail, and feeling bad for Philip, who’s being bullied at school.
I read Mary Roach’s newest book, Packing for Mars, which is just as entertaining and informative as her other books. On her recommendation I just bought a copy of astronaut Mike Mullane’s memoir, Riding Rockets.
In a blog post back in January, George R.R. Martin made some recommendations for books (besides his own) to be nominated for the 2012 Hugo Award.* Leviathan Wakes* turned out to be a really good read, and was in fact nominated. But I just finished Heaven’s Shadow, a near-future First Contact novel, and it was not good. It read like a screenplay for a bad SyFy channel movie.
Right now I’m reading Adam Bede on my Kindle. So far I don’t like it as well as Middlemarch - all the dialect is a bit tiresome, for one thing.
Recently finished King Abdullah II of Jordan’s work Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit Of Peace In A Time of Peril which I thought to be a really good read from a moderate Muslim leader from a dual POV (Western educated Middle Eastern royalty) that essentially distills the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to its essence and exposes it as the primary de-stabilizer of the region. Its a good book.
I also read the last book in Guillermo Del Toro’s trilogy of vampire novels* The Night Eternal*. I really liked the first two books but this one goes off the deus ex machina rails in the latter half of the book. Still a worthy vampire series, recounting back in the days before sparkly romantic vampires.
Now I am reading The Hunger Games…so shoot me. Its moderately compelling, if a little unoriginal (Running Man, The Long Walk).
Next up is either The Towers by David Poyer about a special ops soldiers POV of the aftermath of 9/11 or Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman. Haven’t decided yet.