I thank the posters who have included at least some few words about the books they’re reading. Just listing the authors and titles isn’t very useful, I’m afraid, since I’m much more interested in hearing my fellow posters’ views about these books than in reading Amazon or other reviews.
I’m currently re-reading Saul Bellow’s masterpiece, Herzog. I’m a compulsive letter writer, and so is Moses Herzog. I can seldom watch a movie or a TV show or read a book without wanting to send the creators or the actors or the characters a letter or two. Except Herzog (unlike me) actually writes them down (though he never sends them). He is a highly literate but minor scholar who is falling apart from the end of his second marriage and the death of his career, and perhaps as part of his attempt to re-integrate himself he writes his letters not only to family and friends, but to great figures both living and dead (oh, how I love his letters to Nietzsche!). It’s the letters, naturally, that I enojy the best. The novel is sometimes so wryly funny you think Woody Allen had a hand in writing it.
I’m also most of the way through Pascal Boyer’s fascinating analysis of the evolutionary origins of religion, Religion Explained. The title makes it look like the work of an extremely pompous and self-important scholar, but Boyer’s nothing like that at all. In the early part of the book, the author politely debunks all of the hypotheses and theories of the origin of religion that I’d ever heard or imagined (and there are few things I love more than being shown to be completely wrong about something!) I’m only getting bogged down in the later chapters where he covers material I’m just not that interested in, such as “Why Rituals?” and “Why is Religion about Death?”
And I’m slowly plodding through Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present, but I’m not enjoying it much. It’s a very important work of scholarship that presents American history as lived by the common and/or oppressed people, the people whom history almost always ignores. The official Amazon review states that it’s a lively, readable book, but for some reason, I’m not finding that to be particularly true. Maybe that will change as I read on.
For lots of fun and relief from these heavier books, I’m re-reading for the n’th time Kenn Amdahl’s utterly delightful little book about extremely basic electricity and extremely basic electronics, There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings . I majored in electrical engineering for a while so of course I knew all this material (and much more) long before I picked up this little gem (which is as suitable for 10 year olds as it is fun for electro-phobic adults), but it still makes me smile warmly at it’s educational silliness.
Just finished Jarhead by Anthony Swofford, which I really liked, then followed that up by re-reading **The Time Traveller’s Wife ** by Audrey Niffenegger, which makes me cry every time I read it, and is one of my favourite recent books.
I think I might re-read the Iliad and Odyssey and Aeneid next, but I don’t really have the time at the moment (moving house at the end of the month).
Like a few others in this thread, I’m gobbling up Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Scion. But some people would probably guess that of me. I’m loving every minute of it.
Next on the list is the conclusion to Lynn Flewelling’s Tamir trilogy. Not nearly as compelling as the Nightrunner books, and it has been a long time since the second book, but I’m still looking forward to it.
Is this the trilogy that started with The Bone Doll’s Twin? I’ve been waiting for the third book to be published.
After finishing the wonderful Widows’ Adventures (thanks lissener), I started a YA fantasy, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner. I like his writing style – simple words can make a nice rhythm.
Kiki Strike Inside the Shadow City Yes, it’s a kid’s book. A tweenage girl’s book, in fact. I bought this as an end-of-school-year gift for a friend’s 13 year-old daughter, and I made the mistake of reading the first chapter…I’m really enjoying this.
Just started this book, and am reading it concurrently with How To Be Bad by David Bowker. Palahniuk’s style is similar to Bowker’s, at least in comparison to this book of Bowker’s. I have read nearly everything of Palahniuk’s, and this is my first Bowker, so I might be completely off base here. But so far Bowker’s book is making me want to read everything he’s written as well.
Next on the agenda, Insatiable by Gael Green. Read a chapter at Barnes & Noble the other day and had to own it!
I just finished Jim Butcher’s latest ‘Proven Guilty’. Loved it. Before that I was re-reading Megan Whalen Turner’s ‘The King of Attolia’, which is her third, all of which are very good and getting better with every one. Also recently finished ‘Warring States’, the fifth Jurisdiction novel by Susan R. Matthews, a favorite author. ‘The Water Mirror’, by Kai Meyer, was an interesting book. Also Liz William’s ‘The Snake Agent’. ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ by Holly Lisle was fluffy and fun. Almost forgot, I’m halfway through with ‘Children of the Serpent Gate’ by Sarah Ash. Next in line is ‘Lion of Senet’ by Jennifer Fallon and ‘Smoke and Ashes’ by Tanya Huff.
I’m re-reading the “Otherland” series - I’m on book 3 now and it’s so much better this time without the long wait between books to resume the story. There were many details and characters that I had forgotton about.
I just finished re-reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which the first time I read it - in a marathon reading session like everyone else after its release, I just didn’t like it.
This time I was leisurely with it and actually enjoyed it all, (ok, even Grawp was still tedious). My opinion of #5 has changed for the better.
I’ll be starting on #6 probably today.
Unknown?! I loved that book as a kid! In fact, despite my love for Miyazaki I refuse to see the movie because I know he just didn’t get it right. Unknown?! I knew a lot of other kids who read it, too.
You are going to have to hurry if you want to catch up. I simply can’t put these books down. I knocked out The Ionian Mission in a day and am halfway through Treason’s Harbor. I love a good series, but this is ridiculus.
I’m stalled after books 1 and 2. Most of the story is really gripping, but I get bogged down in the more tedious “lands”, like the Oz and Wonderland clones, or the big kitchen with the cartoon Indians. Does the pace pick up in book 3?
I’m loving every minute of it.