What books are you reading right now?

It's a PAGE TURNER! So much intrigue.

 

If you want intrigue

 

ZOMFG, Little Levite wants this motherfucker all the time. All the time. Like I read this to him five, six, eight times a day. He likes it read with a snappy rhythm, like a beat poem.

If it's not this, it's Little Gorilla or something by Sandra Boynton, or this one book Baby Be Kind. Over and over and fucking over.

It's only when you have to read these things on demand multiple times a day that you figure out just how dedicated to the importance of your kid learning literacy you really are.

Turns out, a lot.

 

BabySquirrel doesn't request it. It's just the one in arm's length from the chair from which I nurse. The other close books are kind of boring.

I have it memorized though. That and Lllama Llama Hoppity Hop for the same reasons. It's in arm's length, but I got bored of it. I'm in need of a library trip.

 

Just wait....

 

I found an early copy of Richard Wright's Black Boy. Unfortunately it's not a first edition ($$$), but it is a 'Buy War Bonds' copy. The back inside flap has a message supposedly written by the author encouraging people (namely men) not to be "dudes" during the war, but to use their money to buy war bonds.[/quote]

You know i found a first edition hardback cover of Harry Potter and the Goblet of fire New york edition in a charity shop not too long ago...Kind of fills up the hole in my heart when my little sister destroyed my first edition of the Philosophers Stone. Jesus Christ i cried then.

 

DaddySquirrel knows I don't hang on to books and very rarely reread them. (I feel as if I should share the knowledge and wonder instead of hoarding them since I probably won't reread them.) He wondered why I had a bunch of YA books. I said I was saving them for when our daughter is old enough to read them.

She's a genius, so she'll probably be reading them after her first birthday. Then on to War and Peace.

 

When I told my daughter how many boxes of books I had packed she was incredulous.
She couldn't understand why in this day of digital books I would haul around hundreds of pounds of books.
Most of them aren't worth anything, but I don't think I could get rid of them.

 

I posted this in the thrift stores thread, but it's worth repeating. I found a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for a $1.00. From the parts I've read here & there, William L. Shirer avoided the blah, blah, blah, & blah writing found in many history books.

 

I continue to think that The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich is probably the best single account of the rise of the Nazi regime and the events of World War II. Shirer was a very fine journalist, and was actually there for a considerable portion of the history he recounts so vividly and carefully. It's a wonderfully intelligent, coherent, accessible book, written clearly and cleanly, without the endless and wandering academic critical analysis that plagues so many later histories.

And for a buck, what a steal!

 

Although I'm reposting here (we previously had this discussion)--That's what I've heard & read. While I don't expect The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich to be an "easy" read, I hope that it's not a dry "yawner."

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A book that I didn't buy, but might go back for (if it's still there, cool; if not, no big deal) is Stephen King's The Stand. A "post-apocalyptic horror/fantasy novel" sounds interesting, but it would have to be extremely well written to keep my attention.

 

I finished Catch-22 a few days ago. While I can appreciate Heller's flippant and downright absurd sense of humor (he makes it work), my attitude towards Catch-22 was influenced by another book that I recently read, Andy Rooney's My War. During WWII Rooney spent most of his time with several flying squadrons, and although he never repeated the "we die, you fly, " saying/cliche, he clearly wanted to dispel the myth.

I don't know much research it would take, but I'd love to know what Rooney thought of Catch-22.
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On a much lighter note......

I flew through Interview With A Vampire. TBH I liked the movie better, even though I'm not a fan of Tom Cruise.

I'm currently reading A Drink Before The War by Dennis Lehane. So far so good.

 

I recently finished two early novels by Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before The War and Darkness, Take My Hand. Lehane is one of my favorite "guilty pleasure" authors (Mystic River, Shutter Island, and The Given Day) along with Tess Gerritsen.

ADBTW was a good read. Lehane was clearly influenced by and paid tribute to Chandler & Spillane.

DTMH was a follow-up to ADBTW. Unfortunately Lehane dropped much of the humor, and included too many scenes that triggered "what the hell was he thinking" and "no f*ck*ng way" responses in me.
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Is it any good? I have one of the Mammoth Books of Erotica, which is a mixed bag. Some stories are good, some are boring, and quite a few are downright creepy.

 

And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini. I've read his previous two novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. I highly recommend ATME & ATSS, not so much TKR (it's a good read, but the implausibility factor is high).

About three quarters of the way through ATME I began to grow weary of the numbers of characters introduced and the switching between present tense and past tense because it got confusing. Fortunately, at that point Hosseini started focusing on the main characters and bringing the story (stories, actually) to a conclussion.

Both ATSS and ATME are on my re-read list, which is important at least to me because I rarely read books twice.

 

I just finished The Fault In Our Stars by John Green.
Very well written, smart, and funny.
Does a realistic job of telling the story of two teens with cancer honestly and without smaltz.
Working on Paper Towns now and it's pretty good too.

 

I've seen academic, medical, and religion books about sex with much more misleading titles (guess which group uses the most "prurient" titles) . Some of them would make good reference books when specific information is needed, or be useful for general research. Very few of them are good straight reads.

The variety in a collection of articles would most likely be more interesting than a long book by one or two authors.

 

I really enjoyed The Stand. I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic horror/fantasy, but I thought it was very well-written. That being said, there are a few points in which the pace slows down considerably and you have to trudge a little bit, but I was glad I finished it.

I am currently reading 1984. I love science fiction, so the fact that I've never actually read this yet is pretty baffling. I figured it was time.