What are you reading now?

[rickvanr]

I'm not a big fan of reading books. I can handle magazines.

The last book I actually read was "Sundiata : An Epic of Old Mali" It was alright. The next book I'll read will probably be "Occidentalism". Both, not by choice.

 

[Deepdale]

Just started "Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder" by Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor of Charles Manson.

 

[dephlt]

The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan.

A friend recommended the Wheel of Time series to me a while ago, and I've enjoyed the books so far.

These are next on my list:
- The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan
- The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Leguin

oooooomg

truly wonderful series, i've got ~20 pages left of the tenth book,
about to start to new one that came out a couple of weeks ago

read it

 

[Kernow]

I'm currently working my way through Iain Banks' sci-fi books. I have read Consider Phlebas and am nearing the end of The Player of Games. (I have also read The Algebraist, but as this is not part of the Culture series, I don't think it matters I read it out of sequence.)

I just finished Through a Glass, Darkly by Jostein Gaarder (he wrote Sophie's World if you've heard of that).

I'll have to check that out - I really enjoyed Sophie's World, and hadn't realised that he'd written another book.

 

[maxterpiece]

A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid.

Recently finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly close by Jonathan Foer. It had a lot of really great parts, but was also sorta hokey at times.

Last book that I really loved was A Confederacy of Dunces. It's hilarious.

 

[Lyle]

Gibson's Pattern Recognition. Bought a while ago, just getting around to it....

Ah, I just got finished with that one a week or so ago. It was my first Gibson book. I'd gone to the library looking for Neuromancer, but it was already checked out, so I got Pattern Recognition instead.

 

[Lau]

I just finished rereading As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee, and have just read The Railway Man by Eric Lomax. Both of them very good indeed.

However, I'm stuck in the middle of dissertation hell, so have been unenthusiastically skim reading a lot of books with long titles and longer subtitles. Current skim read: The Social Life Of Things: Commodities in cultural perspective.

 

[jelloshotsrule]

trying to wrap up the chronicles of narnia series before the movie comes out. reading them in the revised order (magician's nephew first); read them when i was young in the original order. i'm more than halfway through the voyage of the dawn treader at the moment. then just silver chair and last battle.

after that it's back to some non fiction. probably a book about rich christians in an age of poverty.

 

[Applespider]

truly wonderful series, i've got ~20 pages left of the tenth book, about to start to new one that came out a couple of weeks ago

I didn't spot that new one... and it's too late to order it for the flight! Might pick it up at the airport although I usually prefer to reread the set (or at least the last one) before I start the newest one.

I'm reading 'Underground London' by Stephen Smith which is an amusing, semi-factual jaunt about what lies under the streets of the city. We've been in the sewers, now in the Guildhall and heading for the Tube.

 

[jcarm24]

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - debating whether its worth picking up "The Da Vinci Code". Anyone's thoughts/reviews?

 

[maxterpiece]

Ah, I just got finished with that one a week or so ago. It was my first Gibson book. I'd gone to the library looking for Neuromancer, but it was already checked out, so I got Pattern Recognition instead.

Neuromancer was given to me as a gift like 10 years ago. I have never gotten around to reading it. how good is it?

 

[miloblithe]

Recently finished Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel". I liked it enough to start reading his newer "Collapse", which I'd recommend to those who liked the first book. Also recently finished "Lies My Teacher Told Me", another good read. And a book called "Pyongyang", which is by a French-Canadian cartoonist and about his time in North Korea. Very good.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Neuromancer was given to me as a gift like 10 years ago. I have never gotten around to reading it. how good is it?

All the three books in the Neuromancer trilogy are excellent! Highly recommended.

 

[Nickygoat]

I'm reading 'Underground London' by Stephen Smith which is an amusing, semi-factual jaunt about what lies under the streets of the city. We've been in the sewers, now in the Guildhall and heading for the Tube.

Is that any good? It's been on my Amazon wishlist for a while but I've never gotten around to getting it.
About to start 1914-1918 and have just read both parts of A year in the merde - my best friend is from Paris, so it's a useful stick to beat her with . My girlfriend wants me to read Kierkegaard - to understand the Danes, but I'd rather burn my eyes out with a hot poker - we're negotiating
Jeg elsker dig Stine

 

[Lacero]

I was currently reading BOM's interview with Chris Nolan: here. But right now, I'm reading my typed response to this thread.

 

[clayj]

I was currently reading BOM's interview with Chris Nolan: here. But right now, I'm reading my typed response to this thread.

Typical Lacero... you probably read the instruction not to write anything witty like 'this thread', and then you went and did it anyway.

All the three books in the Neuromancer trilogy are excellent! Highly recommended.

Ditto this recommendation. Neuromancer is a MUST read. I own three copies of it myself... one OLD paperback and two hardcover editions (10th anniversary and 20th anniversary). Wish they'd made a movie of it before its ideas became cliché...

 

[Macaddicttt]

I'll have to check that out - I really enjoyed Sophie's World, and hadn't realised that he'd written another book.

He's written quite a few other books. I've read two others by him, Through a Glass, Darkly, which I had already mentioned, and The Solitaire Mystery. I liked Through a Glass, Darkly best of the three, but for some reason it's hard to find in the US, while the other two are easy, but you're in the UK, so you shouldn't have any trouble finding it.

 

[Lyle]

Neuromancer was given to me as a gift like 10 years ago. I have never gotten around to reading it. how good is it?

Well, if my library had had it the other day, I'd be able to tell you. I've heard it's good. I didn't realize it was part of a trilogy, though.

 

[Lacero]

Ditto this recommendation. Neuromancer is a MUST read.

I never read Neuromancer. My class had the opportunity of William Gibson reading it outloud for us. I have the book on my reading to-do-list.

 

[im_to_hyper]

I am currently reading "Blue Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson. Is is the third novel in the "Mars Trilogy" which includes Red Mars, Green Mars and this book.

The series is all about colonizing and terraforming Mars over the course of a couple hundred years and integrates some religion and politics and environmentalism. Good books. Read them. Now.

 

[clayj]

I am currently reading "Blue Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson. Is is the third novel in the "Mars Trilogy" which includes Red Mars, Green Mars and this book.

The series is all about colonizing and terraforming Mars over the course of a couple hundred years and integrates some religion and politics and environmentalism. Good books. Read them. Now.

The Sci Fi Channel is supposed to be doing a miniseries based on the books... if done right, this would be AWESOME.

Wait until you get to the bit in Blue Mars where KSR explains the inner workings of the human brain... fascinating and brilliant stuff.

 

[crdean1]

Currently:

The Cost of Discipleship by Detrich Bonhoeffer
Mere Christianity by CS Lewis
The Last Jihad by Joel Rosenberg
Acts


Recommended:

anything by John Krakauer

Yak Butter and Black Tea by Wade Brackenbury (excellent little book about travels in Tibet)

Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell

Anything by Grisham

Anything by Joel Rosenberg, excellent new author www.joelrosenberg.com

 

[FoxyKaye]

The Sci Fi Channel is supposed to be doing a miniseries based on the books... if done right, this would be AWESOME.

OMFG, really? Don't know what everyone else thinks, but I thought they really hit the nail on the head with their Dune miniseries.

There's a lot of interesting (and explicit) sexuality in the Mars books - I hope SciFi doesn't shy away from all of it (can anyone say, "tabling?"), expecially since it tied in to the greater theme of new genesis for Mars.

 

[Blue Velvet]

I absolutely worship John Irving's novels...

But I've had a big fat hardback copy of Until I Find You sitting by my bed for the last two months and I haven't got further than the second paragraph.

Can't get into the frame of mind for reading at the mo which is a shame because there is a large stack of unread novels currently in a cardboard box in the kitchen patiently waiting for that rainy day.

Titles in there include:

• Life of Pi — Yann Martell
• The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency — Alexander McCall Smith
• Man and Boy — Tony Parsons
• Atonement — Ian McEwan
• Restoration — Rose Tremain
• The Virgin Suicides — Jeffrey Eugenides (loved Middlesex)


Books I've enjoyed in the last year...

• How To Lose Friends and Alienate People — Toby Young
• The Corrections — Johnathan Frantzen
• The Secret History — Donna Tartt
• Comet in Moominland — Tove Janssen

 

[Agent Smith]

Just finished reading Michael Ondaatje's "In the Skin of a Lion". Absolutely beautiful piece of writing. Prior to that, I read David Mitchell's Number9Dream and Cloud Atlas, both of which were runners up for the Booker Prize, and both of which are wonderful. I am going to be starting Phillip Roth's "The Plot Against America".