Whatcha Reading, Spring Has Sprung Edition

Cafe Society
81

Like many here, I’m currently reading several books, and have a huge TBR pile. Amongst others, right now I’m reading Our Inner Ape by Frans de Waal, a primatologist who examines chimpanzee and bonobo behaviour in terms of the light that it can shed on human behaviour. I’m about 100 pages into it, and am finding it well worth the read.

I’m also part way through Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. It’s interesting but hasn’t held my attention sufficiently that I haven’t been distracted by other books.

I just finished reading Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes, a geneticist at Oxford, who amongst other things analyzed the DNA of the “iceman” discovered in Italy several years ago, the DNA of Anna Anderson who claimed to be Anastasia, and the DNA of the putative remains of the Romanovs. The books is a few years old now, but is about the mitochrondial DNA of Europeans, and trying to trace it, including whether the matrilineal ancestry is traceable primarily to those who arrived with farming technology or the already “settled” hunter-gatherers. It was really quite a fascinating book. The only part I enoyed less was the fictional stories of each of the “daughters of Eve”. Overall, though I found quite a compulsive book.

82

I just finished Reaper Man (Terry Pratchett, of course). In my ongoing quest to read the Discworld books in actual chronological publication order (but not all consecutively – interspersing other books in between).

Then I spent all day yesterday reading B.S. answers on my students tests – which I was grading for an Object Oriented Design and Analysis class. These were more free-response style questions (not coding) and lots of BS to wade through! I need something lighter now.

Just started on a lighter-looking (and shorter looking) Forgotten Realms title – Murder in Cormyr, Chet Williamson.

83

Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James. Very humorous. He tells tales about growing up in postwar Australia.

84

I just finished reading A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier By Ishmeal Beah.

I have to say that this is a pretty damn good book. The way Beah describes the warzone is almost poetic. It’s so calm, and yet you get the full effect of it. If a book can make you see the horror of war without trying to throw in that shock value, then its definitely worth my time.

85

In the middle of Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde. It’s the fourth book in the Thursday Next series.

86

I’ve recently ordered a bunch of books online and I’ve been reading them as they arrive. I’m finishing up The Man From the Diogenes Club by Kim Newman and President Gore and Other Things That Never Happened: A Book of Political Counterfactuals by Duncan Brack. I’ve started The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross, The Nymphos of Rocky Flats by Mario Acevedo, and The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze. Newly arrived today are If Hitler Had Won… by Richard Osborne, Monster Island by David Wellington, The Scorpion’s Sweet Venom by Bruna Surfistinha, and The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford.

87

[QUOTE=PastAllReason]
<SNIP>

I’m also part way through Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. It’s interesting but hasn’t held my attention sufficiently that I haven’t been distracted by other books.
<SNIP>
[/QUOTE]
I had that in my queue, but when I leafed through it at Borders I decided I would pass. I think you have confirmed for me that this was a good decision.

88

Just started Tamsin by Peter S. Beagle. I don’t know yet whether it will prove to be a good book overall, but the writing is decent. I think I’ll be searching out his other stuff.

89

[QUOTE=Laughing Lagomorph]
I’m reading Post Captain, the second book in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series.

I read the first one a couple of years ago and it didn’t grab me like I thought it would. I had been looking for a good series of fiction books I could really get into and was hoping that would be it. I liked it ok but not enough to run right out and get the next book in the series.

Well, as I say I finally started this second one a couple of weeks ago and I am hooked. I have barely been able to put it down. I love the period and nautical detail, the characterizations, the conversations and all. This was what I was hoping for when I read the first book.

And yes, I’ve already run out and bought the next book in the series.
[/QUOTE]
I think the first book is a bit hard to read. Not only is the nautical terminology daunting, but O’Brian’s writing style takes some getting used to. It wasn’t until I was on the third book that I was really hooked, and decided I would save money and shelf space by just buying the box set. I enjoyed the first book much more when I re-read it later, after I’d finished the whole series.
I’m still going through Tony Hillerman’s mysteries - I’m up to The Wailing Wind, with only three more books to go. I have really enjoyed these, and I’ll be sorry when I’m done with them.

I read Jim Butcher’s new book White Knight - it was okay, I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as some of the earlier ones. I bought Kim Harrison’s new book, For a Few Demons More, and I’ll read that when I’m done with the Hillermans.

90

[QUOTE=Skammer]
Right now, I’ve finally gotten around to reading Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. I’m about 3/4 of the way through it so far. I like it, and it has reminded me that I’ve always meant to go back and read Baum’s original series of Oz books. I need to do that.
[/QUOTE]

For the life of me, I’ve failed to get into this book (it’s been sitting unread, the bookmark about 150 pages in, for months now). I like the musical just fine, I like the underlying concept of the book. Hell, I like the idea of presenting Oz at a flashpoint of racial and technological unrest. But the descriptions of the conflict, of the feelings of all the characters who are being discriminated against and those who are oblivious, of the extraordinary detail of backstory and undercurrent has me bored to tears!

My current reading since February or so has been finally getting around to Stephen King’s Dark Tower series in one fell swoop. I’m on the final pages of book 6, but am probably going to take a break before the final book, as I’m a little oversaturated on the story.

Yesterday I picked up from the library a book whose story I expect to be anything but deep, but still a fun, frivolous pseudo-mystery that I can read as a palate cleanser and readily forget: Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth.

Either that, or Vonnegut’s Slapstick has been tempting me from my bookshelf since his death.

91

Finally getting to the end of Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War.

92

[QUOTE=congodwarf]
Just started reading The Color of Magic . This is my first time reading any Discworld books and I’m loving it.
[/QUOTE]

Interesting that you mention Discworld. I read the first two books a few years ago, and about a year-and-a-half ago I started on a rotation of three book series: Discworld, The Dark Tower, and Ender’s Game. I started with the third Discworld book (Equal Rites). Cycling through each respective series, the last books I’ve finished have been Pyramids; Wizard and Glass; and Children of the Mind. Also interspersed with these series have been the occasional outside book. I’ve recently read Dave Sedaris’ Naked and Bob Thompson’s autobiography An Actor’s Life — It’s Better than Selling Shoes!.

But for this spring, I am currently in the last “chapter” of the Gaiman and Pratchett book Good Omens. My girlfriend got it for me after I got her the first two Discworld books for Christmas (she’s always been a Gaiman fan, but had never read Pratchett outside of Good Omens). After Good Omens I will pick up the next Discworld book I haven’t read: Guards! Guards!.

Unfortunately, with going to school part time, I don’t have a whole lot of time for reading.

93

I am halfway through US Grant memoirs and letters. It is over 1200 pages but is very interesting.

94

I recently finished The Thousandfold Thought by R. Scott Bakker. It is the third in a trilogy. The first two books are great, the last one is very good…but I was a bit let down by the ending. I hate that.

Also read Brave New World recently. Hilarious and frightening.

Currently I’m reading Carl Sagan’s Dragons of Eden which is really interesting. I’m plowing through it.

Books up next are Broca’s Brain, Shadow of the Giant, The Kite Runner and others. I have a reading “stack” (actually 2 stacks, but I try to minimize my book addiction) that I rummage through after I finish a book, and pick out another that I’m in the mood to read. So I never really know what I’m going to read next.

95

[QUOTE=Hoopy Frood]
Interesting that you mention Discworld.
[/QUOTE]

I’m working my way through Pratchett myself, and I’m now up to Thief of Time. Hubby turned me on to him a while back, and he dug out all of them from the boxes of read books (he never throws out books!). Some of the others I have read lately are: the 2nd book of the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs, the vampire series by Laurell K. Hamilton, the Rachel Morgan series by Kim Harrison and a few other authors like Charlaine Harris and Carrie Vaughn’s “Kitty” series.

Mostly, I’ve been rereading/editing Hubby’s latest completed novel, and glancing over his shoulder at the one he is currently writing. I’m his spell checker, syntax checker and sounding board for ideas. We’re still waiting on if the one before that has been accepted by the publisher. DTF.

Olive

96

I’m about halfway through Jan Morris’ Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress, the first part of her Pax Brittania trilogy on the history and “aesthetics” of the Victorian British Empire. (I earlier finished the second book in the trilogy, Pax Britannica: Climax of an Empire, and the third part, Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat arrived in the mail today.)

I love these books – they’re slowly climbing up my list of favorite books of all time. They’re beautifully written, and just incredibly interesting. Because Morris doesn’t set out to give you a standard “dates and battles and prime ministers” type of history, she’s free to find the most interesting parts of this vast, diverse, fascinating phenomenon called the Empire. You want to know the exciting story of the murderous religious cult of Thugs in India and the attempt to stamp them out? It’s here. How about the incredible sieges of Cawnpore or Lucknow (and the brutal retaliations that followed them), or the Great Trek of the Boers in South Africa, or Mr. Stanley finding Dr. Livingstone, or the Great Irish Potato Famine? All here. Or even if you just want to know what it was like to live in a little town in the wild Canadian west in the mid-1800s, or see what a young city like Sydney was like at the same time – that’s here too. It’s really just a fascinating set of books – I can’t read them near a computer, because I keep wanting to jump up and check to see if some new fascinating fact is true, or find further information on some great new character. I highly recommend the series to everyone.

97

[QUOTE=Olive, The Other Reindeer]
I’m working my way through Pratchett myself, and I’m now up to Thief of Time. Hubby turned me on to him a while back, and he dug out all of them from the boxes of read books (he never throws out books!).
[/QUOTE]

You say that like it’s unusual! It’s near heresy around here for someone to throw out a book! I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the concept that someone would think it’s different not to throw out books…

98

I’m working my way through the Discworld books. I just finished Wyrd Sisters, which got me to thinking I’d like to re-read MacBeth. So I’m reading that.

I’m also reading Living with the Devil by Stephen Batchelor.

99

This might be a good place to plug Bookmarks magazine. I subbed after Pages folded, and I wish I had known about it earlier. Unlike Pages, Bookmarks has real reviews from different sources, not just publisher blurbs. Very few ads, lots of book talk. The latest issue features Emile Zola and Jack Kerouac. Check it out.

I’m still reading The Terror. I must be a glutton for other people’s punishment, because every night I really look forward to getting back on those ships, locked in that ice, with that monster out there somewhere. :slight_smile:

100

[QUOTE=Just Some Guy]
You say that like it’s unusual! It’s near heresy around here for someone to throw out a book! I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the concept that someone would think it’s different not to throw out books…
[/QUOTE]

Well, not “throw out”, but just not have them in myriad boxes in a small condo. When I had a box of books, I’d either take them into work, and let my co-workers take what they wanted, trade with family and friends (“I’ll give you three John Connellys and a Stephen King for a Nelson Demille and a novel to be named later.”), give them to the resale store at the library or church or school, or even, leave a couple at laundromats, hoping someone will pick it up and take it with them (I’d leave a sign - “Free - take one”).

The only ones I kept were textbooks, self-help books (I have a set of “how to” books - “How to Unleash Your Inner Bitch”, “How to Unleash Your Inner Slut”, “How to Unleash Your Inner Cleaning Talents”), cookbooks and anything in hardcover.

He saves everything - he has at least 20 boxes of books at the other house, about 8 here, plus four bookcases full of cookbooks here, and one VERY large built-in bookcase at the other house of his textbooks and classics. He also saves the rubber bands that hold the stalks of brocolli together, string, old catalogs the instructions for every appliance he’s bought in the past 30 years, the extra screws and nails that come with “some assembly required” things (except, I suspect they really aren’t “extra”) and every business card someone has ever given him. When we bought this condo, we had to get an extra room just for his ‘collections’. He says “But, what if this is something we need at some point?” and, surprisingly, he’s been right many times.

But, no, we don’t toss books in the trash (although, that’s really where some of the things I’ve read belong - I don’t read romances anymore for that reason).

Olive