Philip Pullman's The Subtle Knife. Just finished Northern Lights. One of the most captivating stories I've read for a long time. :)

I just started reading "Drinking, a love story" by Caroline Knapp.

I'll report back my thoughts when I am done.

As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner.

Ian Watson: Jonah Kit
Sci-Fi about mindimprinting on whales and the true nature of the universe and God

America
By John Stewart and the rest of the show w/e it's called.

Yesterday I just finished "Cold Moutain" and tonight I rented the movie. The book was fantastic and the movie was pretty good... I mean it is hard to put 2 seperate storylines in a 2 hour movie but it was not bad. But the book is highly recommended by me.

The Doomsters, by Ross Macdonald.

Martin the Warrior, By Brian Jacques. The 7th book in the Redwall series. I plan on reading all 17 of them.

I finished The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Ancient Greece a few days ago, and it was a highly enjoyable read. Lots of detail about the armor and weapons, how they fought, the carnage, etc. I was able to vivdly picture in my mind how it must have been. My only gripe is that he used a few quotes multiple times throughout the book.

I'm now about half way through the Zombie Survival Guide, and it is very funny, in a subversive way.

I'm reading "A Wizard of Earthsea" because one of my best friends gave me his copy to read over winter break as part of my Christmas present.

Also reading a book on angels. Can't recall the title, however.

I just finished "Fight Club" and "Survivor" by Chuck Palahniuk.

I need a break from Palahniuk and might come back to "Diary" after reading a few other books.

Next up is "Going Solo" by Roald Dahl.

Then, "Fast Food Nation" because I have been meaning to read it for the longest time now.

Nikolai Berdyaev

The Destiny of Man

The holiday book-dump is upon me. Between certificates to stores, books given to me, and three weeks of uninterrupted free time, I've got a lot of reading done and to do.

I'm now on Mario Puzo's "The Godfather". Got the movie trilogy collection last year and the novel this year. It's very good, and a very different experience than the movie. It's a much more zoomed-out picture of his fictional 1940s crime family where the movie was more exclusively driven by Brando and Pacino's characters. I was amused to read a good chunk of pages on the criminal struggle for control of Hollywood and showbusiness that was left out of the film version.

Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" will follow. I need to read a book that I don't already know the story of. Both Eco and the book itself have been praised by literary consumers that I trust, so he's next.

Stephen King's "The Drawing of the Three" is next after that. The Gunslinger didn't particularly appeal to me, but it wasn't bad. The Dark Tower gets so much acclaim that I'm going to have to read another one of its installments before I decide whether or not to read them all or drop it.

Xenomorph: Drawing of the Three was solid. If you like it enough to read Wastelands, you are in for a treat. But then comes Wizard and Glass, and you fall asleep.

I ripped through the rest of Snow Crash and then knocked out Black House(without reading The Talisman, dammit!) and Hubbard's To The Stars, which was like a book for children. Now I have Under the Banner of Heaven, by Krakauer, about crazy Mormons.

King Leopold's Ghost

it's a history of the colonization of the congo, and the mind blowingly horrendous stuff that went down there... pleasant bed time reading.

Vittorio(sp) the Vampire

another Anne Rice novel...

audio culture, christoph cox and daniel warner, eds.

a most interesting collection of texts about sound--i found it late last term, and am going to use it for a class this semester.
so its work-reading.
well worth checking out--only problem is the editing of the texts is sometimes quite brutal.

Neal Stephenson's System of the World... this is the third in the Baroque Cycle... I just can't put this series down.

The only drag is that I will be finished before too long...

Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev.

My morning busride fodder of late has been Hunter S. Thompson's newest "Hey Rube" Nice 2-5 page articles that makes reading in 15 minute intervals easy.

Anything by Greg Iles is fantastic but you have to be okay with uncomfortable topics like a guy haveing to tell his wife he cheated on her because his mistress is dead. If not he has written two very good historical novels titled Spandau Phoenix and Black Cross

Just finished "Diary" by Chuck Pahluniak (sp?)

A weird story, but I love his writing style.

I'm re-reading "Nine Princes in Amber" series, by Roger Zelazny. Awesome fantasy series. The only books I've re-read.

I just finished Seleb Carr - The Alienist. Amazing book, very good read.

Moby Dick. Seems like I should have read it before, but I never have, so I thought I would give it a go.

real life problems and their solutions by r edynbry Itsfrom 1940 and gives Q & A on kids marriage, courtship etc. Very interesting to read the "place" of the woman in her husbands life and also social rules and the disaster or the childless marriage. All very proper

Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons

Devils Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three

America (the book)
Anna Karenin- Tolstoy
One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
A Handmaids Tale- Atwood

I cant seem to finish one but they are all very good

Barcelona by Robert Hughes - it's supposed to be mainly about architecture (and I know jack about architecture), but it gives a very broad foundation of Catalan history and culture. Just a fascinating read about a fascinating region.

Lionel Casson's Travel in the Ancient World - oddly engaging writeup on a somewhat niche subject (happened to see it in a bookstore, figured what the hell).

I am also half way through How the Bible Became a Book by William Schniedewind, and there's just no escaping the fact that the topic is far more interesting than this particular book.

If anyone can recommend substitutions on the subject (ie early Semitic literature, and textualization of oral tradition in general) I'd greately appreciate it. Oh, but not Friedman, Finkelstein, or the other DocHyp flunkies, that's not exactly the direction I had in mind.

Which would most likely indicate that your type of book is good. Dan Brown is a mediocre writer and there is very little reason to read anything he has written.

If you want to see whom he is trying to immitate, get The Name of the Rose at that same library (I promise it's not as scary as people make it out to be); if you want to see where his ideas came from get Holy Blood, Holy Grail, not that that one's a particularly good book, but at least you won't have that same subject matter digested through Brown's stilted writing.

Quite in keeping with your reading material, your avatar seems to be a screenshot from Rome: Total War (a Greek phalanx, in fact), I just gotta say that I absolutely love that game (off topic as that is), and starting a new campaign during finals was probably one of the worst decisions I've ever made. :)

How is that? I keep seeing it in the "staff picks" at the local book stores, can't seem to decide whether I should get it.

Just finished a 15 year old journey in finshing the DarkTower series by Stephen King. Phenomal stuff, can't recommend the series highly enough.

I'm about 75 pages into this beast called Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell which my family got me for my birthday. It is tough going, set in England in the early 1800s and written in that style. I'm mostly reading it to try and figure out what made them get it for me.

Just finished reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, which was a bit 'pulpy'.

Just started Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose, which is probably one of the most interesting and fascinating books i've ever read. And thinking about it, its the first non-fiction book i've ever read by choice (i.e out of school)

I just finshed 'Martin the Warrior' and now I'm starting 'Outcast of Redwall'

Brian Jacques rocks, When I get done with his Redwall series. I'm going to start with his newer series 'Castaway of the Flying Dutchman'

Just finish "Going Solo" by Roald Dahl, man, I love his books, and the autobiographies are awesome.

Up next, I'm finally getting around to "Fast Food Nation".

I'll read that while I suffer myself through "memoria de mis putas tristes", trying to stay on top of my Spanish.

Almost finished with "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov.

I have long wanted to read it - and now indeed realize why it is regarded a true classic.

Chronicles by Bob Dylan. Boy, he sure does jump around alot in his "narative". Enjoyable enough, though.