What books are you reading right now?

The Naked God - Peter Hamilton.

 

Just picked up Joe Abercrombie's Half a King; his latest book which just came out.

 

Just started City of the Sun (1.99/Kindle) - WW II spies, romance and political intrigue centered around the large Jewish community and the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo in 1941.

 

Still working my way through The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Some of my recent 'light' reading:

The Smell of Apples by Mark Behr. I'm not sure where Behr is trying to go with this novel. It reads as though he "hammered out" the start of what was going to be a much larger and more detailed novel, refined it a bit, and then stopped.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. I stopped reading this about half way through; I can usually force myself to finish a book even if I don't like it. Perhaps in 1952 this book was actually something special. IMO it's a case of a so-so book being heralded as great because of the ethnicity of the author, not based on the content of the book.

When The Music's Over by Ross David Burke. A novel witten by a schizophrenic who indulged in heavy (in both senses of the word) drug use. I won't reinvent the wheel here, there are many summaries online. Worth reading.

 

Ooh, that sounds good!

 

Star 1 - A SciFi short story collection featuring many authors and edited by Frederik Pohl. It was originally published in 1953 but you wouldn't know it through the tech the authors describe.

 

Hollow World - guy with terminal disease builds time machine and is thrown into a murder mystery in the future.

 

I rcently finished the other two books in the Hunger Games triology by Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire and Mockingjay. IMO Collins was wise to stop the series after Mockingjay. As the plots became more involved, the novels became more implausable. Yes, I know that they're 'futuristic fiction' novels aimed at young adults, not middleaged male geezers.

I'm in the middle of John Irving's Until I Find You. It's an entertaining read, but Irving clearly borrows very heavily from at least three of his other novels--The World According To Garp, A Prayer For Owen Meany, and A Widow For One Year. I quit reading Pat Conroy novels for this very reason (how many times can he rewrite The Prince Of Tides and present it as a new novel?).

 

I have just finished reading "Day of the Triffids". An excellent post-apocalyptic story. A true classic that stands the test of time (first published in 1951).

 

This doesn't actually belong in this thread, but since this is a reading thread, here goes.

The People, Yes by Carl Sandburg. FWIW a 1st edition hardback with DJ.

Copied from another thread:

I thought that I hit it big when I found a copy of Native Son by Richard Wright that is marked as a first edition. My research indicates that it's a second revised printing of the first edition, possibly (??) a Book Club edition that isn't marked as such. Disappointed ! It's still worth more than the 25 cents that I paid for it.

I also bought a book of poetry titled Magic Casements. It's a fourth printing and is pretty battered. What is interesting is there is a handwritten poem on the first two pages titled Memory of a Journey, signed (??) by Babette Deutsch. BD was a poet, poetry critic, etc. who did write a poem by this title which was published in the New Yorker magazine 09-18-37. I haven't been able to determine if the signature is actually BD's because the few signatures that I've found on-line vary greatly. Not that it would be valuable if real, but I'd still like to know.

 

Currently reading the latest Greywalker novel, Revenant, by Kat Richardson. An extremely enjoyable series.

 

Halfway through The Naked God by Peter F. Hamilton.

 

Just downloaded Wolf's Head (retelling of the story of Robin Hood) for free.

For e-book readers, I recommend BookBub, a daily e-mail with a wide selection of limited free or very cheap e-books (beyond the typical freebies).

The latest BookBud deals - Latest Deals - BookBub

 

I went through the process of registering, but it requires "like" ing on Facebook or Twitter, so I gave up on it...

another site that I use a lot for epubs is TUEBL I've been getting a fairly large assortment of books there.


EDIT:

I just went to my email and saw that in spite of cancelling the registration, I still received the confirmation email. So maybe it will work even though I didn't Like it in Facebook.

 

I just finished Nightwoods by Charles Frazier. It was an interesting read, but not a great one. Frazier has a hard time making the reader really empathize with the characters, which was forgiveable in Cold Mountain (an excellent read), less so in Thirteen Moons (Frazier never seemed to figure out exactly where he was going with this novel). I'll give him credit for not trying to stretch Nightwoods into a longer novel.

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Not exactly reading-related. I bought two Erte fashion books, and two Vogue covers books at a charity thrift store on the off chance they might be worth something. I won't be booking a flight to France anytime soon, but the books are worth a lot more than the $2.25 that I paid for them.

Also scored Dilbert 2.0 20 Years of Dilbert in hardback with the protective cover/case for $3.24.