Now starting [The Psycho Ex Game](Amazon.com - 107k -), Merrill Markoe’s novel about a man and woman that begin an email correspondence detailing past crazy exes.
What about you?
As a bonus question, do you have something like Bookman’s where you live? It’s a wonderful place- a huge buy/sell/trade store with all kinds of stuff, and way cheaper than most other bookstores. Granted, everything’s used, but in very good condition.
I’m still working my way through the Aubrey–Maturin series. I’m just finished The Commodore, which is number 17 in the series. The last few titles I’ve knocked out one a day.
I’m currently reading Simon Winchester’s The Meaning of Everything, a history of the Oxford English Dictionary. Several years ago I read Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman that dealt with one aspect of the OED and greatly enjoyed it.
I’ve been on a Coots & Crones binge – books with older characters, handling aging in different ways. Mrs. Bridge by Evan Connell, The Widows’ Adventures and Waltz in Marathon by Charles Dickinson, and Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym.
Great books, all of them, but now I feel like it’s time to read something with teenagers.
The Mountain’s Call A fun little fantasy with a female protagonist. She hears the “call of the moutain” a call reserved only for men. There she journeys to become a rider of white stallions - gods in animal form. It is fast paced and not too bad so far.
The banker disappears creating a mystery for the schoolmaster to solve. I had high hopes, but it is not living up to my hopes. Poe is a mere incidental character and I can’t imagine why the author bothered to include him (so far. Perhaps his identity become important later.)
I just finished The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow and it was every bit as good as AuntiePam promised in the last Whatcha Readin’ thread. It’s about a young girl who, after witnessing a loved one burned at the stake, sets out to rid the world of witch persecutions, using physics to disprove the existence of the demonic. Except it’s much more entertaining than that sounds.
One of the narrators is Newton’s Principia Mathematica [and for a seminal book, it’s really kind of a smartass]. In fact, the whole thing is a love-letter to reason, fighting ignorance and books. If that doesn’t do it for you, it’s also got shipwrecks and pirates, abductions, freaks in jars, kidnappings and Ben Franklin. What more could you want?
Next up is a Swedish police procedural, before the frost by Henning Mankell.
I just finished The Woman in Black on the advice of a fellow Doper. Very well written. It was a bit predictable, but still the scariest thing I’ve read in a good long time.
I’m now reading about three books on prepping for the GRE, but that’s probably not what you’re looking for.
Coming towards the end of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings now. It’s done a lot to calm some of the concerns which have tempered my attraction to Buddhism, although it hasn’t made me -quite- ready to don the saffron robe yet, so to speak.
My other reading material is The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins. A lunchtime conversation a few months ago convinced me to brush up on my Darwin/evolution, and this excellent book was the means to that end.
Wow good. Quite unlike anything I’ve ever read. The main character, Ignatius, has to be seen to be believed. Well, not see, but you know what I mean. The plot is labyrinthe, with various plot strains weaving in and out through each other, meshing to a believable, natural and hilarious conclusion. Guarunteed to beef up your vocabulary, and also arm you with many a fresh insult. I simply cannot wait for the oppurtunity to tell someone, “You should be lashed until you drop!”.
I just finished that about a month ago and enjoyed it immensely, as did Jakeline.
Currently, I’m slogging my way through Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged for the first time. The first 200 pages or so seemed to go fairly quickly, but I’ve slowed down quite a bit. The story is still keeping me interested, though.
Hey, I know that this question was directed at bubastis and that s/he already answered you, but I just wanted to chime in and second their recommendation. That book is unbelievable. Totally worth buying.
This weekend, I finished John James Audubon: The Making of an American by Richard Rhodes, and started Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s Shadow of the Wind, the latter based on someone’s (I don’t recall whose) recommendation in a previous “Whatcha Reading” thread.
That Audubon book is good, though perhaps a bit over detailed in spots. (Do I really need to know if it was March 13th or March 14th that he painted that particular grebe?)
