Well, horses do have a limited range of body language…
Just started the audiobook last night and was up till 3am listening. Fascinating, absorbing and utterly terrifying! This one’s going to give me nightmares, I just know it – cold, slippy, precarious, dangly, unsteady, falling down and not getting up, ever kind of nightmares.
Just wait until they start hallucinating because of frostbite, hunger and altitude sickness. That’s a whole new kind of scary.
Get out of my book pile.
But I like it here!
Okay, but beware. I keep brown recluses there.
Spiders. Why did it have to be spiders?
:: shudders ::
I have officially declared The Painted Bird unfit for human consumption. I only read five chapters and there have already been five brutal murders/tortures. The last straw was when
the village women beat a woman with rakes, then shoved a bottle of manure up her holiest of holies and kicked her until it broke and she bled to death
Vile and without merit. I don’t care if it is Holocaust Literature and therefore Above Reproach, it’s nasty and it’s being returned to the library as soon as I can get there tomorrow.
Another one here who agrees completely with this review.
Well, I had some books arrive in the mail today, so I’m currently reading The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick. I’m about three chapters in and really enjoying it so far.
If you haven’t already read them, next try SS-GB by Len Deighton and Fatherland by Robert Harris. Both are great what-if books about a Nazi victory in WW2.
I just finished Atlas Shrugged (Rand) (my all-time favorite novel) - 3rd or 4th read).
Right now I’m reading American Gods (Gaiman) (second read).
Next I’m going to read Leadership, (Guiliani)
I read about 100 books a year, and usually about 1/4 of them are books I’ve read before. Nineteen Eighty Four is a good example - I’ve read it at least twice a year for the last 10 years or so. This may be part OCD, but I attribute it to grabbing whatever is nearby when I finish whatever I’m reading. If I haven’t planned ahead and gotten something new, or can’t find something in my (small) library that interests me, I often stumble across something I read a while back and take a second look at it.
Other recent re-reads include Good Omens (Gaiman/Pratchet), I, Lucifer (Duncan), Catcher in the Rye (Salinger) and Moby Dick (Melville).
Recent first-time reads include Treasure Island (Stevenson), War and Peace (Tolstoy) (aka War, what is it good for?), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Hugo) The Art of War (Sun Tzu), and Russka (Rutherford).
Elaine told me that, too. 
I’m halfway through Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. It’s been in my TBR pile for a while now. It’s a quick read and I’m really enjoying it.
And I’m almost finished with Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. I burned through most of it a while back and then put it aside for awhile, but I’ve enjoyed it overall. The plot kind of meanders, but the characters are interesting.
Khadaji,
I just finished the first in the series and enjoyed it. Thanks for the heads up!
Read them a while back and loved them :). Fatherland, in particular, was eerily realistic and an excellent story too!
As for The Man In The High Castle, I really enjoyed it, right up until the last chapter when it suddenly got… weird. And the ending didn’t tie anything up; it’s basically like the author just said “OK, that’ll do. Cut, Wrap, Print, I’ll be at the pub if anyone needs me.”
I’m aware the book was written largely with the help of the I Ching, which explains some of the disjointedness, but I still think Dick could have done a better job on the ending.
I’ve started reading Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress; so far I’m enjoying it but the odd manner of speaking that the main character has is a bit off-putting. I know it’s supposed to add “colour” and represent the multi-national makeup and history of the Lunar Colony, but I’m finding that it’s breaking the narrative flow and making it harder to follow what he’s talking about at times.
I’m glad you enjoyed it. That’s what these threads are for. The downside of course is, my queue is overflowing!
You ain’t kidding. I have 469 books on the to-read list. Ack.
Just finished Hands of Flame by C.E. Murphy, book three in her Negotiator series. As mentioned a thoroughly mediocre urban fantasy. I just realized that I dislike the protagonist who betrays nearly every one she comes in contact with. Mind you, the people we are led to believe would also betray her. However, they seem to only do so, IMO, when pushed to do so by her. In any case, while I enjoy some of Ms. Muphy’s other works, I cannot recommend this series.
The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Douglas Brinkley. It’s a great read albeit a tragic one. Most of the deaths occured not because of the hurricane but because of the inefficiency of FEMA, Mayor Nagin and the breakdown of the NOPD. Props to the US Coast Guard, though. They did a stellar job.