I’m re-reading Martha Grimes, I’m currently up to The Old Silent. I’m getting saturated; not sure I’ll make it through the whole series.
Up next is my winter reading project, which is to re-read (or read) all of Dickens. I’m waiting for a biography of Dickens that I have on order, which I’ll read first.
ETA: Sebhal, coincidentally, Peter Ackroyd’s biography of Dickens was the one I wanted to get, but it’s not available on the American side of the pond.
I’d have trouble keeping track of a memo pad. I’d end up using it for something else, or losing it.
How about this? Get a pad of sticky notes, and put a sticky in each book you’re reading. Use it as a bookmark. Write the book’s title on the sticky. When you’re finished, put the sticky on your fridge. When there are three or four stickies on the fridge, put the info on your computer – at the Goodreads site, or in a Word or Excel file.
Think that might work?
Maybe! I’ll try it.
Ah what the heck - I’ve just joined goodreads as well and added myself to the SDMB reading group. I hope everyone will welcome me!
Crime and Punishment and I’m loving it. I picked up and promptly put down The Idiot when I was about 13 or 14 but my dad was trying to wrangle me into a convo about C&P during Christmas and I had to shamefacedly confess I’d never read it. I’m now breezing through-I’m actually quite surprised by how accessible I’m finding it.
Me too.
I did that last year as well - I thought if it’s not good after 100 pages it’s not likely to improve, and true to form it has that annoying “let’s call every character by three different names” shtick that I detest in Russian authors.
So far Crime and Punishment seems quite easy, as far as getting into the plot and prose. I’m reading the traditional Constance Garnett translation (cheapest) but I’ve heard some new translators have come out with more exciting versions. Believe me, I’m surprised myself, I generally avoid Russian lit (have only ever read Anna Karenina). I think I might move on to Gogol next…
I’ve got Patrick O’Brian’s The Far Side of the World on the go right now, and I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes by Jaclyn Moriarty and Scandal of the Season by Sophie Gee next up my list.
Here is my list for last year: 118 total.
Right now I’m reading The Two Towers and Models of the Universe: An Anthology of the Prose Poem.
Over the holidays I read The Butlerian Jihad and The Machine Crusade in the Legends of Dune series and I’m debating whether I should get The Battle of Corrin from the library and finish up the series. I think I should. I want to see Erasmus and Agamemnon get theirs.
I wasn’t all that impressed with the legends of Dune books - I never picked up any of them beyond the Machine Crusade (and consequently don’t know if Agamemnon or Erasmus get theirs).
This is my bathroom book, and has been for a while. I was actually most annoyed with it after I got it, because as a biography, I think it sucks. I’d love to read a biography of London – but I’d like it chronologically, and Ackroyd doesn’t provide that. He goes of on interesting tangents that show life in London at different times, but not how London became, well, London. One of the cases where I’d have preferred a drier, simpler book. But then I didn’t know Ackroyd was a novelist before I got that book, maybe that would have kept me more wary…
Here’s my 2007 list: 125.
I finished Bangkok 8, which I enjoyed though I thought it both dragged and got a bit unbelievable toward the end–not so badly that I won’t read the next one.
My box from Powell’s today included a nice boxed, hardback set of Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy (on sale for $19.99) which I liked well enough to upgrade to the better version, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, Cambodia: A Book for People Who Find Television Too Slow, The House on Dream Street, Dharma Punx, Hunt’s 1962 Mental Hospital to replace my old copy, and The Quillian Games (Pendragon book 7). I also have The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao and Howard Dully’s My Lobotomy, which I’ll be reading soon because my students listen to Dully’s NPR piece in one of my winter courses.
I really love the Bangkok books by John Burdett. What I enjoy most is the southeast asian buddhist viewpoint regarding us farangs, as well as the integration of the supernatural world into daily life.
I’m reading the PS Publishing collection of short fiction by “luscious Lucius” Shepard, Trujillo , not to be confused with the Subterranean Press book of the single novella, Trujillo.
Because Shepard’s fiction is so “true” and contemplative, I’m also reading what promises to be a fantastic story, Season of the Witch , by Natasha Mostert. It’s gothic, suspenseful, and deeply involving so far.
My total for 2007, so far as I can tell, was about 37.
A good chunk of that was D&D and Star Wars novels, but I branched out as well. A few Nero Wolfe books, The Three Musketeers (can’t believe I never read that before; it was really good), The Devil Wears Prada, Running With Scissors, the first two books in the Sign of the Zodiak series … a few others at random.
Currently I’ve cleaned up an Ebberon and a Dragonlance book this week. Started another Dragonlance novel and I’m working through a Dr. Who book. I’ve also been taking my time through a great hostorical on the Middle Ages by Morris Bishop.
I also came upon a few boxes of older books and reread a good half-dozen in the past week or so, skipping parts I knew I didn’t like. Such as The Stand.
Me three. I’d never heard of the website before.
Meanwhile I’m currently reading **The Song of the Dodo ** by David Quammen. The subtitle of the book is Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction. I’m not that far into it yet, but am quite enjoying the author’s writing style. The first part of the book is about Darwin and Alfred Wallace and I have to say that I found this paragraph quite striking:
Charles Dawin in 1855 was a patient, sedulous forty-six year old. He knew that the notion of evolution by natural selection was going to cause a shitstorm of resentment in Victoria’s England, and not just among rock-hard clergy. Most of Darwin’s own friends among the scientific elite and the comfortable gentry were also disposed toward loathing that notion. For Alfred Wallace, the situation was slightly different. He knew, as Darwin did, that a cogent theory of evolution would rattle tea carts in the rectories, raise eyebrows in the country mansions, and put solid chaps off their sherry at their better clubs. But Wallace, unlike Darwin, didn’t care. He was a hungry young man with nothing to lose.
It’s not exactly sedate scientific prose. 
I’m working on A Confederacy of Dunces right now. I like it, but I’m not sure I can recommend it to anyone. Ignatius J. Reilly is such an asshole that I can’t bear putting anyone else through reading about him.
Finished A Storm of Swords, starting A Feast for Crows.
That one wasn’t my favorite, but it was still pretty darn good.
I’m waiting on a new Martin – Hunter’s Run, a SF he co-authored with two other guys. There’s a new Wild Cards collection coming soon too, Inside Straight. I wish he’d concentrate on the SOIAF books, but I guess they’ll be finished eventually. Sigh.
Yeah, there were a couple of things that blindsided (but delighted, in a plotline way) me in Storm. If Feast is even half as good, I’m going to be happy about it. I have to say, Martin always manages to catch me off-guard. Every time I’m pretty sure what direction he’s going, he swerves and surprises me.