[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
If you like short stories, Joe’s collection is excellent. It’s called 20th Century Ghosts, and every story is a winner.
[/QUOTE]
Interlibrary loan request submitted. The librarians will be burning me in effigy by the end of this thread…
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
Also reading a recommendation from another board – Kitchener’s Mob – written by a US soldier who fought in France in WWI. I didn’t know that trenches were more than deep ditches. The book has the standard trench plan on the endpapers.
[/QUOTE]
The library didn’t have it, PaperbackSwap didn’t have it, but Project Gutenberg has it as a free downloadable ebook. I hate the idea of reading a novel at my computer, but I’m going to give it a shot, anyway.
Note to everyone with Heart Shaped Box in their pile: it was loads of fun.
Over the winter I’ve been reading British history for context of Shakespeare’s historical plays and then reading the plays. I just finished re-reading Alison Weir’s
The Princes In The Tower and then Richard III.
Aaaand, upon reading what I just wrote, I swear to Og I’m not as pretentious as that sounds.
Taking a break from that, my next book is Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens. Like Eleanor I really like British royal history.
P.S. twicks and koeeoaddi, A Soldier of the Great War is my very favorite book. 
I am reading way too many different books right now. A few:
The history of the ancient world by Susan Wise Bauer–an interesting and educational summary of the history of the world from historical beginnings to about 300 AD. What a project, but she does it well.
Applesauce needs sugar, the story/memoir of a family on a little Canadian farm at the turn of the century. Nice!
Never done, a history of American housework. Somewhat scholarly, early 80’s academic feminism. Interesting.
Sergeant Nibley, PhD: an unlikely Screaming Eagle, fascinating account of WWII and his experience in the 101st Airborne as an intelligence officer.
Mind of the Raven by Bernd Heinrich - a book about experiments designed to assess the intelligence of ravens. Yum.
[QUOTE=Jodi]
Over the winter I’ve been reading British history for context of Shakespeare’s historical plays and then reading the plays. I just finished re-reading Alison Weir’s
The Princes In The Tower and then Richard III.
[/QUOTE]
So, do you think Richard murdered them? Alison Weir does, doesn’t she?
Being only vaguely familar with Shakespeare’s play, my first exposure to the story was Sharon Kay Penman’s novel Sunne in Splendor, which is semi-famous for its sympathetic portrayal of Richard III. Later I read Josephine Tey’s mystery novel The Daughter of Time, where a Scotland Yard Inspector investigates the historical records and tries to determine if Richard actually killed his nephews. So I’m inclined to think of Richard as sadly maligned by history.
(Not that I didn’t enjoy Ian McKellen’s wicked Richard III.)
[QUOTE=koeeoaddi]
The library didn’t have it, PaperbackSwap didn’t have it, but Project Gutenberg has it as a free downloadable ebook. I hate the idea of reading a novel at my computer, but I’m going to give it a shot, anyway.
[/QUOTE]
I found it cheap at Amazon, a first (only?) edition hardcover for less than $5. It has an owner’s name in it, written in that genteel old penmanship, dated 1926.
Does the Gutenberg site have the trench maps?
My wife got me a 1st edition copy of Cosmos by Sagan for Christmas, so that is my bedtime book. On deck is **I, Lucifer **. I read about it in another thread and decided to pick it up. I just got Winterwood, the latest from Patrick McCabe and a new author Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End. It was very highly recomended by the good folks at Powells, so I picked it up.
[HIJACK]
[QUOTE=Eleanor of Aquitaine]
So, do you think Richard murdered them? Alison Weir does, doesn’t she?
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I think he offed 'em. The thing is, there’s really no one else who would have had the authority to do it, and whom Rickard would not have ostentatiously made an example of after the fact. The most damning evidence IMO was his complete silence on the matter until the day he died – no deploring their unexplained disappearance, no vows to avenge them, no investigation. He was as guilty as OJ, IMO. Which doesn’t mean he wasn’t also historically maligned, since the Tudors did quite the hatchet-job on him after Henry Tudor took the throne. I quite like The Daughter of Time, which I’ve read several times. But I’ve never been persuaded by it.
I really enjoyed Princesses, BTW; I found it really entertaining. Have you read Aristocrats? If you like Princesses you may like it as well.
[/HIJACK]
[QUOTE=Fetchund]
Mind of the Raven by Bernd Heinrich - a book about experiments designed to assess the intelligence of ravens. Yum.
[/QUOTE]
I might pick that up, it sounds really interesting. I grew up in Alaska and the ravens were always the most inventive animals around. They were always able to open up the garbage cans the bears failed at, which meant that the next morning you were always welcomed by a wide variety of garbage spread across your driveway by either bear or bird.
I’m about to go spend a few days on a (non-working) ranch in the middle of nowhere in west Texas. It’s very secluded and an hour’s drive to the place after you leave the paved road. Another half-hour drive and you’re in Mexico.
So I decided to take some reading material appropriate to the setting: All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, and The Last Picture Show, by Larry McMurtry. I’ve seen the movies and enjoyed them both and I’ve read some other McMurtry, so I’m hopeful about these.
[QUOTE=Jodi]
I really enjoyed Princesses, BTW; I found it really entertaining. Have you read Aristocrats? If you like Princesses you may like it as well.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve heard of that one, but I haven’t read it yet. I see that she has a new book out: A Royal Affair: George III and His Scandalous Siblings.
Still re-reading Inkspell then I will get into Inkheart. 
Just started reading The Color of Magic . This is my first time reading any Discworld books and I’m loving it.
[QUOTE=congodwarf]
Just started reading The Color of Magic . This is my first time reading any Discworld books and I’m loving it.
[/QUOTE]
You lucky bastid!
Artifact by Greg Benford, big book about digging up some alien thingie that the Myceans buried 3500 years ago. Not that far in it yet.
I’m also reading a collection of technical tutorials in my field for my book review column. It’s hard to review things when you know all the authors. Technical people can’t be quite as bitchy as the reviewers of real literature.
I’ve got Cryptonomicon lined up, as well as a Tom Swift Jr. book.
I just finished The Thirteenth Tale. It was kind of disappointing; it adequately emulated the genre, but I found it a bit over the top.
I moved on to Jodi Picoult’s The Tenth Circle, but after about 100 pages I found it too disturbing for right now and I’ve put it down. I saw part of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and I just am not in the mood for mean people and bad things happening right now.
So I’m reading the Griffin & Sabine books, and admiring the pretty artwork. Lined up after that I have Plutarch’s Lives and Livy’s History. I heard an interview on NPR with a historian/classicist about the history behind the movie 300, and it reminded me how much I liked that material. So I’ll dive into that once I’m done with Griffin and Sabine.
[QUOTE=Dunawake]
The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks - Just started it, but it looks to be pretty good. Won “Best Sci-Fi Book of 2006” from the Amazon.com editors, so I’m hopeful.
[/QUOTE]
I love his stuff. IMO his Culture series is even better. Feersum Enjiin was a little weak though.
Currently reading Complicity by Iain Banks, which I’m liking but not loving. His sci-fi is much stronger. Also reading The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe. Too many characters, not enough plot for my tastes.
[QUOTE=yanceylebeef]
On deck is **I, Lucifer **.
[/QUOTE]
Funniest book I’ve read in ages.
Currently:
The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks.
I haven’t read much sci-fi but I’m enjoying this.
On board:
Something Dangerous by Penny Vincenzi.
The sequel to No Angel, one of my favorite guilty pleasures.
The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza and the Fate of God in the Modern World by Mathew Stewart.
Looked interesting and its gotten excellent reviews.
And if I get bored with any of the above, I always have the Magic Mountain. I’ve been stuck on pg. 40 for eight months give or take a few days.
From a recommendation on the board I have just started reading The Histories by Herodotus. After that, I am planning on creating a collection of Hugo winning Science Fiction novels so I’ll be reading those in publication order.