For those who might consider joining us on Goodreads, we’re trying maybe to get a couple of group reads going. Suggestions are always welcome. Come be assimilated by the Goodreads Collective!
Thanks for the recommendation, Gulo gulo. I’ll keep an eye out for it as well. I’m now just under 200 pages into The Song of the Dodo. I’m in the section on dwarfism and gigantism on islands and the causes of each. I just finished reading about elephants ability to swim and the prior existence of dwarf elephants, now extinct. Man, how cool would dwarf elephants be?
I’ve joined now, but no promises about keeping up with the reading; I’m notoriously bad. But it’s addicting, adding books to my list there!
I finally finished the biography of Julia Child (the execrably named “Appetite for Life”), and it was slow-going. Partly, I think, because biographies tend to be more clinical, and also because I knew what would happen in the end. 
So I didn’t want to read finish it, because then Paul and Julia would really be dead. Yes, I’m a dork.
I’m now on Eugenides’ “Middlesex,” about eight years after everyone else, but it’s much more enjoyable and going quite quickly. After that, I have a collection of MFK Fisher essays to read before I have to decide what’s next on my plate.
Finished Vargas-Llosa’s Bad Girl, which was – okay, I finished it, anyway.
Just started Paul Theroux’s Pillars of Hercules, in which he travels clockwise around the Mediterranean, starting in Gibraltar. This is a trip I’ve always wanted to take myself (though my fantasy involves a small but comfortable yacht), and he’s a wonderful writer, so I’m planning to spend the weekend lounging on the sofa reading.
I drive my husband crazy with that.
Him: Let’s go see some movie based on a true story.
Me: Real people always die in the end. I like fiction.
Him: Grr!
Recently I’ve read (many of them Christmas gifts):
Weird New Jersey, Volume II Amazon.com Autographed edition! A great read.
Filthy Shakespeare: Shekespeare’s Most Outrageous Sexual Puns – Amazon.com An outrageous book, indeeed. Ms. Kiernan rewrites Shakespearean quotes, replacing all the archaic language and allusions with explicit references, and in many cases goes totally overboard. Eric Partridge’s Shakespeare’s Bawdy is overall better, and certainly more scholarly, but Kiernan’s book is a fun read. The chapter titles are so outrageous that I can’t read them aloud when my daughter’s present.
A series of Unfortunate events II – The Reptile Room m-- at MiliCal’s request. Amazon.com
** Rumpole Misbehaves** by John Mortimer – another Gift. I;m a big Rumpole fan, and I;m amazed he’s still cranking them out. This one’s got iPods in it. Amazon.com
** All Flesh is Grass** by Clifford D. Simak – Never got around to it before, and it was cheap. Amazon.com
Staying Dead – Laura Anne Gilman Amazon.com She;s Guest of Honor at Arisia in a week, and I thought I ought to brush up on her stuff.
I finished George MacDoanald Fraser’s Quartered Safe Out Here: A Recollection of the War in Burma, and it was excellent.
Today I will finally begin Louise de la Valliere, by Alexandre Dumas, the last Three Musketeers story that I have not read.
*Louise de la Valliere * is actually the middle section of The Vicomte de Bragelonne, but the book is SO long in French that it’s been divided into three separate books in English translations: The Vicomte de Bragelonne, *Louise de la Valliere * and The Man in the Iron Mask. Of those three, I read *Iron Mask * first, then Vicomte, so I’ve not done it in proper order, but these books used to be hard to find in Thailand (much easier now), so I had to read them as I could find them. (I did read The Three Musketeers and *Ten Years After * in proper order first, though.) With Louise, the Musketeer saga will be over for me.
Okay, I finished all four extant A Song of Ice and Fire books and am eagerly awaiting the next one.
I started FOUR books (I’m apparently going back into my switch-off reading habit):
Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes That Run Our Government by Dana Milbank
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture by Bishop John Shelby Spong
Our Dumb World: The Onion’s Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition
I’m interspersing Our Dumb World with the other three because, as with The Onion itself, reading more than an article or two at a sitting tends to make the funny go away, just because your brain stops seeing the text as funny. I think it’s sort of like when you stop smelling an odor after a few minutes…you get sensitized to it.
Rescuing the Bible is a long-time reread. I think I read this in the mid-90s first.
The other two are first-time reads.
I just finished The Grenadillo Box, by Janet Gleeson (we’re reading that as a group at Goodreads, if anyone wants to join us).
I’m also reading a de-cluttering book because of all of the clutter/hoarding threads.
Just started reading a book of Dickens’s Christmas stories.
Also Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys and Kim Harrison’s The Good, the Bad, and the Undead.
I did, of course, mean Twenty Years After, not Ten Years. :smack:
(*Ten Years After * is actually the subtitle to the full French version of The Vicomte de Bragelonne.)
Hunter’s Run, an SF collaboration by George R. R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, and Daniel Abraham.
I was all set to be mad at GRRM for working on this book instead of the next Song of Ice and Fire title, but I learned today that Hunter’s Run has been in the works for the last 30 years, and GRRM did his part about 15 years ago.
I’m enjoying it. Angry misogynistic human meets stoic alien.
Amazon should be sending the new Stephen King book pretty soon – Duma Key – the reviewer on NPR today said it was frightening. I think he liked it, but my impression was he only reviewed it because it was going to be a best seller. He reviewed the new Grisham at the same time.
Just finished The God Delusion by Dawkins which I thoroughly enjoyed, although I sense that only the choir really listened.
Just finished off another book of essays on Satanism as well and have started The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde of Thursday Next fame. I don’t quite know why he stopped writing about her as she was a great character in a very interesting world, but I guess I should give this series a chance before I decide whether I like it better or not.
I finally wended my way to the library yesterday and picked up Dune: The Battle of Corrin. I need to finish this series while I remember what happened in the first two books.
Recently finished The Dirt On Clean by Katherine Ashenburg and Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink. Both non-fiction and very entertaining.
I started this last night and noticed the same thing. However, I showed it to my daughter and now every time I want to pick it up again I’ll have to wrest it away from her.
I enjoyed Roman Blood, and I’ll pick up the next book in that series, especially since **shiftless **says the next few are even better. I also bought a copy of The Silver Pigs, which is the first of another mystery series set in ancient Rome.
I’m trying to finish The Wreck of The River of Stars, by Michael Flynn, before my copy of The Grenadillo Box arrives.
*Wreck *is pretty good. The author has created a character for each of the 16 possible combinations of Myers-Briggs personality types and thrown them together on an obsolete starship where they either squabble or get it on or disregard one another. Misunderstandings abound, and considering the title I don’t think they’re headed for a happy ending.
At first the character analyzation seemed a little forced. He spends a lot of time describing how one person’s perception of another’s action is mistaken. I like Flynn’s writing very much, though, and the novel is growing on me. He’s skilled enough that I haven’t been at all confused by the multitude of characters.
Wreck sounds interesting. I just finished When Asia Was the World, a pretty good history through memoirs. I got and am going to try A Thorn in my Pocket, which is Temple Grandin’s mother’s account of Temple’s childhood with autism, but the first page or so makes me how well it’s written. A report is forthcoming. Now, however, though I would like to drink tea and read all day, I must hie me to three hours of meetings followed by three hours of teaching.
I started reading A World Lit Only by Fire by William Manchester, and then read some Amazon reviews berating the guy for historical inaccuracies. I couldn’t decide whether it mattered or not. I don’t expect historical novels to be accurate, so do I care if this is the Inside Edition version of the Middle Ages? I decided that I do.
I remembered that I bought Will and Ariel Durant’s books a few years back, and decided to see what they have to say. They’re amazingly entertaining, and until someone tells me that their history is wrong, I’ll stick with them.
My bedtime book is Kindred by Octavia Butler. It’s about a black woman who gets snatched back in time to the pre-War South.
Amazon says Duma Key is coming, and I also bought The Grenadillo Box for the group read, but it’s not here yet. Looking forward to it, after all the positive comments at Goodreads and here.
Just starting an old friend–Heinlein’s The Rolling Stones.
I hear ya. I finally decided I’d just start with books read in the last year, so as to avoid being parked on there entering books for ages.
OK, I finished the The Last Guardian of Everness. It was OK, but I have so many in my queue that it wasn’t good enough for me to read the second book. It didn’t catch me early on, but did pick up some in the last 1/3 of the book. It got some great reviews on Amazon, so perhaps this is just me.
I had started The Dark River but then found that I had forgotten enough from the The Traveler that I needed to go back and reread it. This causes me some personal concern because there was a time that I had great retention. I dunno if this is because I am getting old or just more busy, but it makes me a little sad.
So I have finished the Traveler and will start the Dark River tonight.