For study: Evidence Act 1995 (NSW)
For recreation: Little Dorritt
Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven
Christopher Alexander et al., A Pattern Language
Enjoying both.
Finally got around to buying a copy of A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, and am reading it now. As an aside, it includes a photo of Hemingway and Sylvia Beach standing in front of her bookstore, Shakespeare & Company, and I recently read a copy of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote which was purchased by my neice at that very store and which bears its imprint. Pretty cool!
Just finished Markus Zusak’s The Messenger. I really enjoyed it - it’s about a slacker adolescent, cab-driver, card-player who starts getting messages on playing cards deliverd to him. It’s got an Amelie-ness about it, (interconnecting lives, random acts of kindness) but less whimsical. Marcus Zusak is also the author of The Book Thief, which everybody, but everybody has to read. I think I’ve plugged it on these boards before, and I’m passing my copy around my friends; it’s one of the best books that I read last year.
Am on a Vonnegut kick at the moment, finished Cat’s Cradle last week, half-way through Galapagos at work. I love everything he does, and am steadily working my way through his backlist.
Work-related, I’ve just finished up Lian Hearn’s Otori sequence, an excellent fantasy saga for older teens, based on fuedal Japan. It’s all ninjas and honour, passionate, forbidden love and destiny. A little slow at times, but overall, a solid series. Paul Stewart’s Edge Chronicles look good, so I might tackle them next.
I’m quarter of the way through A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Susanna Powers, but I spent the last few months binging on non-fiction (mostly conflict/politics, with a thoroughly rewarding foray into biography) so I haven’t picked it up in a few weeks.
Last but not least, I’ve rediscovered my love for Antartica, with David Crane’s Scott biography and Sara Wheeler’s Terra Incognita. I know I have a copy of The Worst Journey in the World somewhere, so I’ll have to dig that out.
Right now I’m reading The Illywhacker by Peter Carey. I discovered this australian author some years ago, and I have enjoyed almost all of his books so far. I recommend him to you, if you haven’t read him yet. Oscar and Lucinda was one of my favourites, although it was quite difficult for me to understand some theological/religious aspects in the first part of the book. I haven’t seen the movie but would like to (but I’m not sure it’s a good movie…)
Finished* In the Company of the Courtesan* by Sarah Dunant and The Girls by Lori Lansen; working my way through Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, The Oracle Glass by Judith Merkle Riley, and Life of Pi by Yann Martel.
His latest novel, Theft (incidentaly, the second of his books that I’ve failed to finish) has been longlisted for this year’s Booker prize. It’s odd, he’s the sort of author I think I’ll enjoy, but he fails to hold my attention. I’ll give *Theft * another go next week, I think there’s a reading copy in the staffroom somewhere
I kind of agree with you because he’s often doing digressions, so that’s sometimes a bit difficult to follow… What I enjoy is the variety of characters, and their uncommon lives (not really realistic, but… )
I think I’ve read he has already won the Booker prize twice, so, he cannot have it every time ! 
I just had to read Beloved by Toni Morrison. Have to say that I can’t figure out how this got named the best book in the last 25 years by the New York Times. It Sucked, except for the last 20 or so pages.
I felt guilty for not finishing this one too. It got so many glowing reviews but I don’t understand how. Nothing ever happened. It’s one of those books I feel obligated to like and read. I hate those kind of books.
I’m reading Ride the Wind by Lucia St. Clair Robson, a wonderful novel about the last of the Comanches with a horrid romance-novelesque cover. If I hadn’t had it recommended to me so highly, I never would have thought to give it a chance based on that awful cover.
After that, I plan to finish The Light Bearer . It’s a great read and I have no idea how I’ve missed it all these years.
I’m also still slogging through Shogun. What the heck is up with this book? I’ve been trying to read it for about a year now. Every time I pick it up, I’m engrossed in the storyline but as soon as I put it aside I could care less. Odd.
Just finished skimming through Her smoke rose up forever : the great years of James Tiptree, Jr. Science fiction short stories, though some of them weren’t nearly short enough. Before this, the only story I’d read by this author was The Screwfly Solution, and I’d still call it my favorite.
Currently browsing through Nutrition for Dummies by Carol Ann Rinzler. I’m usually very interested in books on nutrition, but this one isn’t really grabbing me. I guess it’s because the author has no axe to grind.
In the car, I just started Watership Down on audiotape, and I’m planning to hear Gone With The Wind next. I’ve read both of them at least a hundred times, but recent board discussions have made me want to pick them up again. I’m going with audiobooks because I don’t seem to have actual reading time these days. 
Out of curiosity, was the movie based on the book?
I’m also currently reading this.
I just got back from a trip to Utah, and it placed the book (which I was familiar with) forefront in my mind. I bought it at a Barnes & Noble outside of Salt Lake City. Great read.
In a related note, I also just read a recent issue of “Outsider” magazine that was sort of an “Everest 10 Years Later” issue. They talked to some of the people that Krakauer highlighted in “Into Thin Air”.
I am currently finishing up Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses when I am in the mood for fiction, reading Jarod Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel when I am looking for non-fiction, and going through a comprehensive collection of George Orwell’s essays when I am looking for something short.
The list of books I have ‘on deck’ to read is too long to put in a post, and it gets longer every time I go into a book store (as evidenced by last friday’s dopefest where I ended up leaving with five new books to add to the list).
I’m reading Perdido Street Station by China Miéville, after seeing it recommended here on the board. I’m about half way through. Interesting book: intellegent, well written but also unremittingly bleak (can someone tell me why English writers loathe London?), and at the same time about three dry witticisms away from being a Terry Pratchett rippoff. I’d like to see how it turns out, so please don’t spoil the ending.
I’m also re-reading A History of Britain Part II by Simon Schama. Great book.
I just finished reading Philip Dray’s Stealing God’s Thunder: Benjamin Franklin’s Lightning Rod and the Invention of America., whioch I recommend highly:
I’m going through a couple of books I picked up in upstate New York last month – James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers (the first one he wrote featuring Leatherstocking/Deerslayer/Hawkeye/Natty Bumppo, appearing here as an aged and somewhat comic if incredibly able backwoodsman) and Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, which I’ve never read before. Interesting (especially to someone into mythology) and very weird. I have mixed feelings about it, but it’s an easier read than I’d have thought.
After that, I’ve got a stack of unread books, including Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Just started reading Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgommery. While I found her book “Emily of New Moon” horribly depressing (I put it down after 3 chapters), The Blue Castle was a great book, and the short story I read from Chronicles of Avonlea was hillarious (about two former lovers who refused to talk to eachother, but always stayed in eachothers’ presence. The woman refused to speak to the man until he apologized for some percieved wrongdoing, the man refused to speak to her until she spoke to him, at which point he’d happily apologize for anything she wanted him to, both were distant relatives of a man renowned for his stubborn-ness.)
I read this as Under the Banana of Heaven** and thought, huh, I wonder what that’s about.
RAGULEADER, I love L.M. Montgomery! I’ve read the “Green Gables” books a dozen times. IMO, the best one is Rilla of Ingleside, about Anne’s youngest daughter Rilla; it’s the last in the “Green Gables” series. It is set during WWI and IMO is one of the best books ever written on the impact of the Great War on those left behind.
I am reading The Ruins, Scott Smith’s second novel. Smith’s first novel, A Simple Plan, bowled me over, and I have very high hopes for this one. Can’t read much at a time because of eye problems, but so far it’s quite creepy.
No, but this one was