We stayed steady enough in this thread that I figure we can keep trying a monthly thread.
I know I’m a day early. I usually start these things the night before the new month, but I’m going to be out celebrating my Birthday tonight so I’m doing it now. (I’m 46 tomorrow, send cards! )
I am reading Exit Strategy and although I’m not hating it, it is rather uninspired and slow moving. I probably won’t keep up with the series (if it becomes one.) I have several in the queue, and I don’t know what I’ll grab next.
I am also reading books on Game Programming and am thinking about taking another shot a games. Not the actual programming part - I already know how to program, but related fields like how to make the 3D models and stuff. It is slow going, especially because I’m not too artistic. But it is an interesting hobby and even if we’re not successful it will have been fun just to do.
I still haven’t started this. My household’s been in an uproar this week and I can’t follow fiction well when I don’t have my wits about me.
Instead, I’ve been reading Quirkology: How we discover the big truths in small things, by Richard Wiseman. It’s about various experiments done in behavioral psychology. I kept stopping whichever family member was closest to tell them interesting little tidbits, like the (disputed) study that found suicide rates to be higher in areas where country music was popular. I also enjoyed reading about the study that was trying to find the funniest joke in the world, and Dave Barry’s readership sending in loads of jokes that all had the same punchline (“There’s a weasel chewing on his privates!”).
ETA: :smack: I forgot to tell you Happy Birthday, Khadaji!
I haven’t tried this one yet. I think her Otherworld series is uneven: I loved the first, third and fourth books, but the rest were not as good. She has a new one in that series coming out soon.
After finishing *Eye Of The Needle * by Ken Follet, I just began Stephen King’s Everthing’s Eventual. I’m only 4 pages in to the first of several short stories so I have no opinion yet on whether or not I will be launching it across the room in disgust or rushing home every night to plop in my favorite chair to read more.
I start this but didn’t finish it. I thought it was too gossipy, but I don’t know what I was expecting. How are you liking it?
I’m still reading War and Peace, the Maude translation, Inner Sanctum 1942 edition with the booklet/bookmark and everything. It’s not a rush home and flop in the chair kind of book (good way to describe a book, The Chao Goes Mu!), but when I’m reading it, I’m staying interested.
I like a lot of detail in historicals, and W&P has it. Some of the dialogue is clunky, but I’ll lay that to the translation.
Currently reading Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, as well as Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which frankly I’m having trouble reading both because it is kind of slow to start, and I can’t hold the frickin’ thing in one hand while my daughter sits on my lap, which is the way I get my reading done these days.
Later this month I’ll be starting The Great Gatsby for my library reading group. I think I read it in middle school, and I’m looking forward to reading it with a mature perspective. The thing that I remember from my first read is that “the billboard is a symbol - syyyym-bolll; can you say that, kids?”
I’m a few pages from completing The Civil War: A Narrative- Fort Sumter to Perryville Vol.1 for the umpteenth time. I made a pact with myself when I was a teenager that I would read the trilogy every year during the holidays. (Definitely not a flop-in-the-chair either!) Unfortunately, last year I was only able to complete vol. 2 before life got in the way, so I started a couple of weeks early on my birthday.
Eh. I’m about 70 pages in and I can’t quite figure out the tone. It didn’t really help that the author just launched in without an adequate introduction, so I don’t have a good sense of the intent (i.e., why does this book exist?).
Presently half-way through Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. I really enjoyed the first book in the trilogy (Night Watch) & this book takes the perspective of the Dark “Others”. Oh, and the two movies based on these books are fun if you like this sort of thing: Nochnoy Dozor & Dnevnoy Dozor, the latter having the most enjoyable subtitles I’ve ever seen in a foreign film and I hope that the DVD release retained them.
I’m also reading Owls of the World that I got for my b-day a couple of weeks ago.
I just finished reading Smoke and Mirrors (a collection of Neil Gaiman’s short stories and poetry) My Amazon order that I just placed included World War Z and Brian Aldiss’s Hothouse (the cheapest hardcover edition of that was leather bound :mad: ; even if I compromised on that book and went with a paperback it was expensive). My book to read while I wait for those is probably going to be The Void Captain’s Tale which I’ve had sitting around for months waiting for me to read it…
I’m reading *Friday *again by Robert Heinlein. I think I last read it in college.
It’s so ludicrous, but that’s Heinlein. The heroine gets kidnapped, tortured, and raped at the start of the book, but dismisses her captors as amateurs, and thinks the rapes are “silly.” She’s obviously too intelligent, highly trained, and broadly cultured to let something like rape and torture cause her any stress. Afterwards, she goes to New Zealand to have sex with her commune.
'tis the season to be reading the most depressing bunch of books, ever:
Maus I, by Art Spiegelman Maus II, by Art Spiegelman The Laramie Project, by Moises Kaufman The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, by Janet Malcolm Babi Yar, by Anatoly Kuznettsov The Face of Battle, by John Keegan
I should just take them all back to the library, put them on hold again for later and re-read The Joyous Season, by Patrick Dennis.
Heat (An Amature’s Adventures As Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker and Apprentice to a Dante Quoting Butcher in Tuscany) by Bill Buford. So far so very good.
I’m also reading Face of Battle by John Keegan (on and off … since his Price of Admiralty, I’m a bit careful about things that Keegan wrote, good Lord what a turd that was). I don’t find it so depressing, rather, it’s been rather illuminating so far. I’m also still at Moby Dick, which is hi-la-ri-ous, and Canterbury Tales, which is not, unless you enjoy fart jokes…it may pick up yet, I guess. My entirely non-fun reading these days is Physical Geography by Strahler & Strahler and Human Geography by whoever for an exam. Well, not entirely unfun, actually, I learn a lot, but it could be better.
My current reading pile contains: Sunshine by Robin McKinley–a baker is kidnapped by a group of vampires who lock her in an abandoned house with a starving vampire. And that’s just the first 50 pages.
A Handbook to Luck by Christina Garcia–her latest book. I’m only a chapter in, but according to the jacket it’s about three people from around the world whose lives intertwine over twenty years. The first chapter about the magician’s son is pretty good.
Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt–It’s been a while since I’ve read this.
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