What books are you reading right now?

Go BG go! I knew I was smart to like you. I'm a big Middle English fan. Just a word of caution, though: the "Pearl" poems are written in the West Midlands dialect, which is much more Saxon and thus denser to us moderns than Chaucer's London dialect (which, as you already know, is what ended up evolving into our English). But it's hella worth it: gorgeous rhythm, and a very Saxon-influenced propensity to alliteration.

 

Since my only free time is in the car, I'm doing the Jack Ryan novels in order... Just finished Cardinal of the Kremlin last week and am into Clear and Present Danger now. It's interesting to go back an listen to how the Russians and Afghanistan as a whole were perceived in the late 80s and early 90s. I'm addicted to my audiobooks. I only have Sirius so that other people in the car with me don't have to listen to my books

 

Excellent. That's their fifth edition: I own the third edition, and I can tell you it's got good notes, and the copy is quite clean.

 

Yesterday I just started a new book fresh in the local library circulation. Can't say I've ever had the chance to be the first one to read a book from a library. I think I upped my nerd level by achieving this.
Anyways, the book is new by one of my fave Sci-Fi authors. His name is Robert J. Sawyer. He's written a number of excellent trilogies over the years. I finished his WWW trilogy last year. Fantastic series about a blind girl "seeing" the world wide web, and interacting with it, as though it was an AI entity. I'll probably re-read that series in the future. And I'm not one for re-reading novels.
This current book looks promising. Its called Triggers. From what I could understand from the book jacket, an American president has been shot, and simultaneously a terrorist bomb with EMP effects triggers a random group of people to access each others minds. One of the minds happens to be the president, who knows of some dangerous military missions to come. So now the trick is finding who now knows what the president knows... oooooooh Hehe
A lot of his books are very inventive, and never duplicated. I find his ideas original and fresh, never recycled. He's written books about politics, religion, myths, morality, war, aliens, immortality, mind control, cloning, the list goes on.
I highly recommend this authors works.

 

the trashy Sherbrooke Bride's series by Catherine Coulter, I needed some mindless bodice ripping romance lol

 

I started The Department of Magic yesterday. I think it's one of the free books I got here, yay!

It's an interesting concept (sort of government conspiracy meets paranormal urban fantasy), but it's maybe a little too government-y for my taste.

 

The Arrival, by Shaun Tam [* -]


--to note:
I'm not sure if I can accurately recall where I originally received the recommendation to this title, (for some reason, TCM is the only thing coming to mind, and it might have been at least over fours years' past) but the impetus of recognition this past week took ahold of me to plunk down an hour to enjoy the stunning visual storytelling of a journey long before realized by generations of unknown friends' of my forefathers. Wholly worthwhile.

 

Doing some professional reading now. Just finished The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Amy-Jill Levine and Mark Zvi Brettler, eds.), a very interesting piece of work that takes the NRSV Xian scriptures and pairs them with footnotes and scholarly essays showing what Hebrew Bible texts Jesus and his lads were riffing off of, how Jesus' teachings are either mirrored or treated differently in Rabbinic literature, and other such goodies.

Currently working on Ancient Jewish Magic, by Gideon Bohak, a fascinating analysis of how Jews used magic in the postbiblical eras of ancient times.

 

Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House by Tom O'Connor. Ph.D.

 

this reminds me of one of my favorite trilogies... it's by an author named Tad Williams. his small amount of fame originally came from a watership down style novel about cats called Tailchaser's Song and a nice fantasy trilogy with a hero named Simon Snowlock...

anyway, the trilogy i'm talking about is called "Otherland" and it was frickin awesome. it's written in the future where theres virtual reality for our internet everywhere and there's actual real estate and you cruise around. well, a bunch of kids go into comas while online around the world and the main heroine starts looking into it when her brother's one of the victims. i want to re-read it just typing this out.

on another note, i just picked up the latest in what might be my favorite series ever... it's by matthew woodring stover (who wrote a few star wars novels the last few years) and the first in the series is called "Heroes Die". it takes place in a dystopian corporate caste future where we've found a way to teleport ourselves to a paralel earth that has magic and elves and dragons and shit.

so what else do we do but send over "actors" there to go on adventures, fuck shit up, and start wars all while implanted with brain recorders so that people back on dystopian earth can digest it as movie entertainment.

on top of this great premise, the main character is a complete badass and stover himself has a background in martial arts so does the best writing i've ever read when it comes to the fight scenes, detailing kicks and strikes on pressure points sublimely.

the newest one i'm reading is called Caine's Law, but Heroes Die is the first.