Books you're currently reading???
 

Instead of all the music/gaming entertainment. How bout the current/last book you've read?

Right now I'm reading book 3 of stephen kings dark tower series. Book 5 should be out this month (if it's not already) and the whole series is a good read if your a king fan.

I've been in a King/Koontz rut lately, but I still have to read from Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman daily.

Cryptonomicon was recommended in a previous book thread. I cannot put it down, it is as good as advertised!

I can't read. Rho reads books to me and I memorize them. So, when I do pick one up, it looks like I can read.

Well now I'm starting to read "White Fang" by Jack London.

If you really want a good read pick up "Brave New World" I don't recall the author but I know that theres only one author.


Good reading to you!

_White Fang_ is on my short list of "books which suck so bad I threw them across the room rather than finish reading them".

Currently I'm reading Pratchett's _The Color of Magic_. I've been resisting getting sucked into DiscWorld for years, but with the Vorkosigan series apparently finished and the Harrington series just plain stalled, I think I have room for a new literary addiction.

Aldous Huxley.

I've completely lost interest in the Wheel of Time series. Someone predicted this in the previous thread, I forgot who.

I've been re-reading Vonnegut some, "Breakfast of Champions", "Slaughterhouse 5". I find I can't put one of his books down after I've started reading.

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", Philip K. Dick. Better than "Blade Runner", and well-written to boot. I think I'm gonna read more of his work.

"A Youth in Babylon" by David Friedman.... entertaining memoirs of Friedman, an exploitation film producer

"Mission Jupiter: The Spectacular Journey of the Galileo Spacecraft" by Daniel Fischer

"Egypt's Dazzling Sun: Amenhotep III and His World"

I'm currently reading Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (anthropology) A history of the Mongol Empire by I don't know, and The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan (classic fiction)

Yeah thanks perth. I loved it, but the first 3 chapters were hard to get through.

I read A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge yesterday. (Er, I actually read sixty pages in about two hours the day before, but most of it was on Thursday when I read from 9 AM to 2 AM.). That was such an incredible book! It started out magnificently and finished awesomely: the book is dense, the end-of-the-book excitement lasted for a hundred pages. One of the main characters occasionally refers to her grad school courses in Applied Theology. The book is strewn with awesome lines like "He was in the shade now, only sunlight was touching him".

The language was masterfully done: it felt like he wrote from the perspective of the characters instead of describing the characters from the perspective of a man living in modern America. This meant that it took me a chapter and a half to figure out what exactly the wolf-like Tines were, but I thought they were so cool when I finally did. Actually, that happened quite often: huge events were approached subtly and naturally, so that I didn't realize how cataclysmic the events were until I was several pages into them.

That was a great book, Torrere. That really was a great hook slowly discovering just what they were. I wonder if he built them as he wrote or if he had them figured out ahead of time?

The Wheel of Time series starts out really well; the first three books are a very fun adventure, the next three* are full of huge events, then the series becomes stuck in morass. Three notable events have happened in the last three thousand pages. Now, after each book is released, theories run abound that "Robert Jordan is getting everyone into position, and the series is really going to take off now!". Unfortunately, less and less happens in each book (rumor has it that only two chapters in the tenth book advanced the story). By now, the theory is that Robert Jordan has written himself into a corner and he would be hard pressed to stall for an eleventh book (this may be why he's writing prequels).

I generally recommend people to stop on the fifth book, while the series is still good. The Amazon reviews for the first books in the series are flooded with messages of "don't even start!".

* There is debate as to whether the six and seventh book should be counted as part of the "big things happening" group or the "not worth reading" group.

i finished illusions by richard bach for the...nintieth time the other day. always get something different out of it. very 'small' book that isn't as light a read as it first seems.;)

Re: Wheel of Time.

I dunno, it just really seems like he is dragging stuff on way longer than necessary. Its one thing to want to write a big, sprawling epic of a story. Its quite another to go on for 5 pages explaining just why person A is pissed off at person B. I can't make myself finish book five. I keep wishing someone would just kill all the main characters off already. Starting with Nynaeve, closely followed by Rand. Bleh.

On the other hand, I have thorougly enjoyed the "Voyage of the Jerle Shannara" series by Terry Brooks lately. Despite the numerous books in the Shannara series, Brooks can at least tell a complete story without this "Tune in next week!" crap.

Nynaeve isn't all /that/ bad. I think that the most efficient amputation for the series would be to kill off or simply abandon the entire Perrin sub-plot; Perrin, Faile, Berelain, and all.

Mission Compromised - Oliver North (yes really. It's a surprisingly good thriller/mystery/spy novel. Of course, he had help. And made himself a (minor) character in his own novel)

I've been reading too much heavy shit lately, wanted something that wouldn't tax the cranium so much.

i just read the 1st book of the wheel of time and based upon this thread and the general feeling i got from book one, i don't think i'll finish the series(even though i bought book 2 and misplaced it). I remember noticing that he wastes time on the details of traveling far too frequently...I think he was trying to follow tolkeins formula, but the characters are not as charasmatic or exciting.

On the other hand i also just read "Lamb". What a great book! It's written from the perspective of "Biff", Christ's best friend, and addresses the missing 30 yrs of Jesus' early life. hysterical. Highly recommended reading. 84 thumbs up, as my son would say.

i have had countless friends and one exhusband who raved about the wheel of time series...given that it had so much...enthusiasm placed upon it i tried valiantly to force my way through the first book to no avail.....i don't know how many times i have heard, "ah, if you just finish the first one you will see", i don't really care. i don't like to be bored. if a book doesn't grab me by the first 300 pages- guess what? it just gets added to the stacks of books littering my house never to be heard from again. i was a huge fan of the sword of truth series by terry goodkind but i found the same problem as i tried to read the 8th book 'a naked....somethingorother'. just dull, dull, dull.

      The problem I had with the "Wheel of Time" series is that it takes three books to cover three chapters worth of actuall events. It's annoying. Mostly since a lot of 'major events' become meaningless. Like a couple of major villians get knocked off and you think, "okay, two down." Then they get brought back. Useless waste of a few thousand pages...
      I recently read William Peter Blatty's "Legion." Loved it. Of course I tend to like stories with the good guys that are out of their league, in the "No, they really can't win" kind of way. Good stuff.
      I've liked all Ayn Rand's fiction, but don't read "We the Living." Not unless you've been happy for to long and are ready for a little depression.

I've stayed away from "We the Living" myself, but I've read the fountainhead twice. I enjoyed atlas shrugged except for the ending. The long narrative from John Galt at the end got a bit much (I think it was him) and put it down with a few pages left to read

Rand actually has the honors of being my favorite book quote. When Howard Roark replied to Tooheys' question of what he thought of him in the fountainhead. "But I don't think of you". Quite possibly the best line in written history. (At least in my mind :D)

Bad Blood: Crisis in the American Red Cross
by Judith Reitman

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...16614?v=glance

Currently....

Edward Debono - I am right, you are wrong
95% - slow read

Edward Debono - Serious Creativity
90% slow read

D Chu - Explosive Power & Strength - Complex Traing for maximum results
decent - 80%

T Baechile, B Groves - Weight Training Steps to Success
decent - 80%

J. Carr - RF Circuits
30% - very technical slow read

Recently

Edward Debono - Sur/Petition
Good- but slow reading

Anyn Rand - The Fountainhead
Excellent but long

Farenheit 451 is an excellent read. It's getting more and more relevant.

The stack next to my bed:
Nostromo, Joseph Conrad
Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Roberto Calasso
Winterhawk, Craig Thomas

Joseph Conrad, in Nostromo anyway, is like a huge biscuit of shredded wheat. I need to just sit down and make one night a week readin' night. No TV, no Internet.

I've actually been thinking about doing more book reading...now if I would just drag my sorry ass up the street to the library...

      Yeah, I liked that, not quite as much as when Galt started talking the idiot bastards through the process of fixing the turture machine in Atlas Shrugged. Oh, yeah the Galt narrative was way to much like reading her non-fiction stuff. Save it for non-fiction books, I say. Really drags down the storyline.

Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk

(This is a very strange and disturbed man. I'm only about 5 chapters into the book so far, and the plot has taken some really dramatic twists, even for one of his books. Oh, and if you haven't read it, you need to read Fight Club, even if you've already seen the movie, especially if you haven't.)

i'm on the fourth Harry Potter book. I started reading them a couple of weeks ago, because I wanted to see what all the hype was. I don't really feel like finishing it.

If you like King Arthur stories:

Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King.

this is an alternative viewpoint like the mists of Avalon, but written from the eyes of Derfel, one of his knights. The author bases his story on true events and battles, and it makes a lot more sense than the fairy tale type story we've seen on tv and in movies. Plus, it is written very well, and moves at a nice pace.

8.5/10

the sequels are just as good.

Sword of truth series.

A little preachy, but good readin'.

Just finished Wolves of the Calla. I dearly love the gunslinger series and am so relieved that Stephen King has them all finished. Now I can stop praying for his health every night.

Just another thing off my list.

Sword of Truth is getting a lot preachy recently...

Anyway, I just finished reading "What Liberal Media?" by Eric Alterman. It was pretty good, but I think I'm overwhelmed by the number of recent political books, so I'm now reading "Wasp" by Eric Frank Russel and "Sandman: King of Dreams" by Alisa Kwitney.

"What Liberal Media?" was pretty depressing, especially the last chapter, on Richard Mellon Scaife. I was reading it just as the news broke about Soros donating to liberal causes, and I listened with disbelief as people like O'Reilly screamed about it. Just a bit of interesting timing there.

"Wasp" is a lighthearted science fiction book apparently about a terrorist in an interplanetary war. I'm not too far into it.

"Sandman: King of Dreams" is essentially a summary/retrospective on Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic book. It's a beautiful coffee-table style book with tons of art from the comic and other related work.

Next up: Another book by the author of "Wasp", and then a translation of "Arabian Nights".

The Cryptonomicon lately, which is fantastic in my opinion. i'd have to say that i agree with the consensus about the wheel of time. i got a portion of the way through Path of Daggers and gave up. he's created a scope larger than he can deal with now, in my opinion. all of the female characters and a few of the males have kinda degenerated into cliches, from what i can remember.
A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin, is fantastic. i haven't read the third book in the series yet, but the first two were very good reads.
Also, Women, by Charles Bukowski. great stuff.

I just finished The Davinci Code, and am about to start Angels and Demons. Both by Dan Brown

I really liked davinci code, but I do have a few minor coimplaints. 1. I thought the charachters figured things out way to easily, they didn't ever really struggle and were almost always right. 2. Ending was lame.

Last Man Down - Battalion Commander Richard Picciotto, FDNY

I'm a little more than halfway through Quicksilver, and I like it even more than I liked Cryptonomicon. I've always had a thing for the period it's set in, though.

Now I have pirates on the brain, so I'm going to read some of Rafael Sabatini's books next. If I'm not sick of the 1700ishes by then, I'll go through the Three Muskateers books. It looks like Project Gutenburg has most of this.

I have also been meaning to read Richard Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights, partly for the stories themselves, but also because I'm curious about Burton and I hear the book has copious notes.

I was just starting on Dune: Butlerian Jihad (yes, I shamefacedly admit that I'm reading the "Dad's dead, so lets rape his literary legacy and make lots of money off it" series) but have switched over to Tony Hillerman's Talking God, mostly because the Hillerman book is a paperback, and the Dune-ish hardback is occupying too much space in the "bag of shit I take to work when it snows just in case there are no nuts".

A friend of mine gave me the Hillerman book, but I can't remember if I read it already or not. Might read the first chapter, have it all come back to me, and move onto something different.

Yah, I read Dune: House Atreides a while back. I read the old series as a yout and really got caught up in it... this series not so much. Why are we posting on the bad engrish thread, when we've had a couple of these book threads before? I'd hate to think we're dumbing down the cellar. :)

I was too, but I could barely make it throught the end of the second book.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Because it was the first book thread that I stumbled across, and was filled with the posting spirit.

Lead to a more grammatically correct book thread and I'll follow. :cool:

I haven't read any...any...of the Dune books. I've always meant to, but they keep getting pushed down the stack by quicker reads.

I've seen the movie and both Sci-Fi TV series, so I'm sure I have the Dune universe thoroughly covered. ;)

I'm reading this book called Mapping Human History by Steve Olson. It is the most interesting book I've read in a while. It's actually influencing what I might change my major to. It describes how humans came to be through studying genes. It really is an awsome book.

"The Family" by Mario Puzo. It's a historical bio-drama of sorts about the Borgia family when they held power in the Vatican. Puzo considered them the first crime family in history, and wrote it with them in the same positive light he had cast the Corleones and the Clericuzio.

Gotta love Puzo. The world's a darker place without him.

Puzo wrote some good stuff...try Fools Die. Its also very eloquent, as most of his books are.

Oh yeah, and this is my 100th post! Yay!

Just finished Pattern Recognition by William Gibson.

It's different from his usual, since it's actually set closer to now ... which was a little strange to figure out, because time references are few and far between. We eventually know it's after 9/11/01, but not how far.

There's a couple of different subplots that more or less lurch through the book. I thought the pacing was extremely uneven on this one, which was a bit distracting, and the main character has a better backstory than her current existence, but it does pick up a bit. Unfortunately, after plodding along in minutae for the first three-quarters of the book, he seems to come to the realization that he's reaching the page limit for a salable novel and rushes to the finish line in an unsatisfying (for me) way.

Oh, and somebody has to tell him to lay off on the word "crepuscular" though. Once is too often. I know for-sure it's used twice, possibly three times. Oh yeah, and "liminal".

Nice vocabulary. Now go back to writing.

Oh, and what was Voytek doing with the ZX81s? Not the physical construction, but what was he going to run on the array? Or is that the next book? Could be, you know, since that was more interesting to speculate on rather than the truth behind the Footage.

International Law and the Use of Force - Christine Gray
Einführung in das Völkerrecht - Kimminich, Hobe
Have to do some homeworks!

Moby Dick - Melville
Her Privates We - Manning

I just finished Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn. The story is set in an imaginary land much like Japan during their feudal conflicts. It's a good read.

The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire - Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence. Deepak Chopra.

I've never read Chopra before, but happened by this and thought it looked interesting. It's probably a bunch of crap though.

a bunch of $25 crap.....!:mad:

Golden Buddha, Trojan Odyssey and White Death, all by Clive Cussler. I'm a bit behind in my reading.

Brian

Black Metal meets the Neo-Cons.... now thats a book review.

Lately read East of Eden... read it, you know everyone in the book.

I'm back at Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Evil shit.

Oh forgot, I'm also reading Jesse James : Last Rebel of the Civil War. So far its putting his career in the context of pre and wartime Missouri. Pretty ferocious times.

Brian R- I've never heard of any of those Cussler titles. Please tell me none of them involve Dirk Pitt. Please,please, please for god's sake man !
Not that I should be throwing stones. I've just finished The Black House ( Stephen King/Peter Straub collaboration) and loved every page.
Having said that I should point out i'm not drawing a comparison between these authors in terms of quality, only in the escapism/fantasy stakes.

Rendezvous With Rama ( Arthur C Clarke) is coming out this year as a major Hollywood production. As far as I can tell Morgan Freenman is driving with Arthur himself navigating. It's being touted as a sci-fi- bar raiser but Hollywood and their money's involved so i'm worried, but optimistic.

Speaking of major Hollywood productions, does anyone know when O. Scott Card's _Ender's Game_ is coming out? I heard it was going to combine Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow.... I can't wait to see it.

www.frescopictures.com seem to have the goods.

did you see this? it doesn't shed much light, but it does indicate that the movie IS being made, so that's good news. at least......those books are right up there on the top of my all time favorites list.


oops. wrong link try this one


novice beat me to it.

Yeah pal, like you were even in the race.

Finished Norse Mysteries and Magic by Edred Thorsson this AM, and totally unexpectedly started reading The Treasure of Green Knowe, a children's book by L.M. Boston. (how do you read a book unexpectedly? You finish one while lying in bed, and think, " you know, I should still be reading right now" ... and you reach out and grab the closest thing).

Great series of books for kids, by the by ... very magical, make the mystic real in unexpected ways. Good for about bright second or third graders and beyond. I enjoy them as an adult.

Thank you amazon.com used!!

sorry novice
 

Trojan Odyssey involves Dirk Pitt...and has some interesting plot twists that do NOT involve saving the world.

I will not spoil the book for you by even dropping a hint.

Brian

"dum dum da dum, dum DUM da dum..."

" Trojan Odyssey" Sounds like Greek porn

BTW it's "Books you're reading".

I've recently finished:
August 1914* by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

*Technically, I didn't finish it. I noticed that there were a whole slew of characters, checked the cool chapter listing at the end of the book, and realized that the set of characters and timeline and storyline in the first half of the book only had a few more chapters at the end of the book. So I read a bit more, and didn't read the 2nd book within the book. The story that I did read was remarkable, though. It felt like he had really captured the confusion of war.

I bought a bunch of Dover Thrift Edition books, because they're inexpensive and almost certainly worth reading.