I just finished Confederacy of Dunces and have started the new Garrison Keillor book, Pontoon.
I recently finished Pratchett’s Making Money.
Just finished Saturday by Ian McEwan, which I really enjoyed. I’m starting Dante’s Inferno tonight and re-reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover, both for school. I just dug out my box of Pratchett books from storage so I’m probably going to pick up either Night Watch or The Wee Free Men for my for fun, not required reading. I’m also working on Diane Middlebrook’s biography of Anne Sexton, which is not strictly required, but I’ll be using it in a big project for one of my independent study classes, along with Searching For Mercy Street, which hasn’t arrived yet. I’m a big Anne Sexton fan, so both of these seem more like for fun than required reading…maybe I’ll hold off on the Pratchett for a few days until I’ve got the Middlebrook finished.
I hated Lady Chatterley the first time I read it when I was 18, and so far I’m not liking it much now. Sometimes I end up liking books like this after we talk about them in class a bit, so I’m hoping that’ll happen with this book since Lawrence is so highly regarded and all.
Me too. For the first time, but man, is that an awesome book.
And I just finished Kafka’s Diaries.
Next up: Max Stirner’s The Ego and its own (Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum ).
I just finished Ian Toll’s excellent Six Frigates about the first purpose-built U.S. warships – reads like a novel, really, an great read. I’ll start The Line Upon a Wind by Noel Mostert on the Napoleonic naval wars next for my non-fiction fix, with Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose as a back up (some controversy about this one, it seems). For fiction, I have Mark Helprin’s A Soldier of the Great War started, but it doesn’t really grip me. I’m a bit disappointed that he’s not come back to the walking part and keeps adding chapters on Alessandro’s war experiences…it seems a bit disjointing.
Among the books I’ve put on backburner are Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy, Gore Vidal’s Creation and Norman Mailer’s Naked and the Dead. Didn’t really get caught by any of them, so they’ll have to linger.
A plug for something I finished the other day: Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick. Great book. I must get his other ones…
I’m reading the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, by Dorothy Sayers. I’m up to the fourth one, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, written in 1928. I’m really enjoying them.
I have ordered a copy of The English Passengers, since it’s so popular in our goodreads.com Straight Dope group, so I’ll be reading that soon.
I re-read Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” for the first time in about 20 years. That is one powerful book of sisterhood, let me tell you.
Then I started on the Lemony Snickert books, having gotten all 13 hardcovers at the thrift store for $10. If “A Bad Beginning” is any indication, that is one great series of books for children and adults, let me tell you.
Just finished Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking. Meh.
Just started Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees. Can’t put it down.
I read it back in May, I have to say that I disagree. I hate to play spoiler though so let me know if you’re interested in my $.02.
Just about finishing McCathy’s The Road. Nice cheery little romp. have to imagine Oprah’s demo loved it. After a couple of decades of reading Cormac, this reader thinks he peaked with ATPH. (Actually, I quite like this book.)
Last 2 were worth reading as well. Dog Days by Jon Katz will please any animal lover or dreamer of a - uh - simpler life. And CC Pyle’s Amazing Footrace by Geoff Williams was an amazing and amusing true tale of a 1928 footrace from LA to NY.
Gotta hit the lobrary tonight and restock.
Of the books listed above, I strongly recommend anything by Winchester.
glances askance at your first book
You know, I think I would have liked that one better if the childhood reminiscense chapter came at the beginning or end of the book, not right in the middle of the 18th century action. But like I said, I’m giving Winchester another chance with the OED so we’ll see what my verdict is when I start reading The Professor tomorrow or the next day.
I found that one unsatisfying toward the end, but still a worthwhile read.
Loved that one. It’s a female-bonding-coming-of-age story without being too “chick-lit” IMO.
My current one is To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry by Will Blythe, which I got for my husband for Father’s Day and get to read now that he’s done with it. An interesting look behind enemy lines, since the writer is a Carolina fan. 
Great book. I read it and loved it; passed it on to my dad, who read it and loved it; then my son, who read it and loved it. My mom is reading it now and… natch, loving it.
I just finished An Ice Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris. The most disturbing one yet, in this series. Very creepy.
Right now, I’m reading, In Secret Service by Mitch Silver. A spy thriller with the Duke & Duchess of Windsor spying for the Nazis. Not the best thing I’ve read recently, but not the worst, either.
Next up – UltraViolet by Nancy Bush.
Right now, I am committed to seeing “Lisey’s Story” by Stephen King through to the end. Not sure it’s worth it.
Then I have to get back to **Middle Age ** by Joyce Carol Oates. And on to the big pile waiting on the shelf.
The I got my head turned by faculty recommendations from their summer reading, in the alumni weekly: “Edward P. Jones’s masterful novel, The Known World”, “T. C. Boyle’s utterly disturbing novel, The Tortilla Curtain.” So I may have to hit Borders for these. Anyone read them?
Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund, a novel about Marie Antoinette. Interesting but does nothing to develop any sympathy for the subject.
Rick Steve’s Italy 2008 because I want to go to Italy next September. Frommer’s Italy 2008 is also in the que.
I’ve read The Known World. I spent the first few chapters confused about who all of these characters are and the rest of the book wondering why I should care about them.
I do have books I like. I really do. It’s just that all the books I’ve read that are turning up on this list I didn’t like.
The Protector’s War by S.M. Stirling, it’s part two of a triology, and I’m enjoying most of it, except that I wish the author would have kept all the prayers and bs about the “sky goddess” out of it, it really disrupts the flow.
Maybe it was because it was a part-two of three and I didn’t know it, but I did not care for this at all. I hate to lay down a book, but I think I ended up laying this one down.
I finished A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers last night.
Next up: Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller, then The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, and I can’t remember what the next two books in the stack are…
The last few months I’ve been having trouble getting through any one book, so right now I’ve got a couple on the go, some old friends and a couple new ones.
The main ones are The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss and A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. I’m coming in behind the curve on A Song of Ice and Fire. It’s been recommended to me more than once but until now I never bothered picked it up.
I’ve mostly been going the audiobook route and knitting as I listen, so there I’m thinking of listening to either The Three Musketeers or A Brief History of Time (yay for the library!).
Tortilla Curtain may well be described as “utterly disturbing”, but more for Boyle’s sneaky racism than for anything else. I thought it was a good read, but like Drop City, it raised the occasional alarm in my head. I’ll not go into it since you’ll still want to read it; by all means, do read it, since it’s very good, and then come back and tell me what you think.