It is supposed to be finished in one more book. I'll wait until Jordan gets the series done before I buy them though. Then I'll pick them up on Amazon for $2 apiece. He's probably going to die before he ever finishes that fuckin' series.

Right now I'm still thinking about finishing Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson. It's book two of The Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Book one was OK, but I'm having a tough time getting into book two. I'm a couple of chapters in already. I just have to get around to finishing it.

I've just started reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln.

Thud! the newest of Terry Prachett's Discworld series. A buddy of mine picked it up for me for my b-day.

AutoCAD and its applications 2006 by Terence M. Shumaker and David A. Madsen....biggest.book.ever.

Chronicles of Narnia...again Preparing myself for the release of the movie.

I've got about six in the fire right now, but the main one is China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. He's a very, very evocative and clever writer. his books are very good, but some of the imagery is extremely disturbing. Also I've got Lewis' Pelelandra, second in the Space Trilogy, Democracy in America and some crappy NJO book.

Atropos, my gf is reading Narnia for the first time in prep for the movie(s) -- she commented "They're very childish."

Just finished the original The Adventures of Pinoccio by C. Collodi (pen name of Carlo Lorenzini). Now I'm reading The Rule of Four, bu Ian Caldwell and Justin Thomason.

Pinoccio was fun and a little suprising. For example, he kills the talking cricket with a hammer in the third chapter.

The Rule of Four is a DaVinci Codesque thriller, but much more reserved. So far so good.

A Sack Full of Teeth, Grant Buday. Just picked it up. Finished and returned War Trash to the library, finally. Ha Ming, I think? Usually hate war books but I was strangely drawn to that one. Really like his writing style.

wheel of time book 8

i'm reading Harry Potter & the Goblet Of Fire for the hundreth time...

i started reading the series again so that i can read all six in a row.

Spoiler: i'm almost finished it,

i'm at the part where Harry & Cedric have grabbed the cup and Cedric is about to get killed.

i can't wait to finish it, cause i'm alot less familiar with the last two books!

Just finished "Brave New World' and now moving on to "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

I finished A Feast For Crows (fourth in the Song of Ice & Fire saga and the only contemporary fantasy worth reading imo) by George R. R. Martin a few weeks ago, and just finished The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing.

I found the former to be a bit of a let down to be honest. As it's essentially half a book, it was missing half the characters, and I didn't enjoy the new POVs. Still fantastic, but it's the first in the series which seems to contain padding (not in the Wheel of Time sense though, at least this padding was still enjoyable :p). I say seems, because we only really got half a book, and until we get the other half, and the next book after that, it's impossible to really discount any of the apparent padding as, well, padding. Anyway, slightly less than genius is still very good.

As for The Fifth Child, well, I was pretty disappointed. I wouldn't say it's a bad book, but I think one really needs to be a parent to relate. The basic premise is this - David and Harriet are determined to achieve domestic bliss through a traditional blueprint of family life. So, they purchase a large house and have a multitude of children. By the fourth child everything's still going swell, and they appear to be living their dream. Enter the fifth child, a cold, violent, large and ugly child who only seems vaguely human. Sounds like an interesting premise, yeah? Unfortunately I found the writing style to be very dull. I thought the ideas presented were somewhat interesting, but ultimately drawn rather poorly. At the same time, I think I'd have found it more interesting if I was female, a parent, or married and wanted to have kids. Still, it's a short read so I can't complain.

Finally getting around to reading a book by Dan Brown. I'd thought I'd start with Angels and Demons and then move on to The DaVinci Code.

The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman. It's a history of the events leading up to, and the first month of, the first world war. It's supposed to be one of the best histories of this war ever written; I'll soon find out :)

Thinks.... by David Lodge.

Honestly couldn't finish Human Stain by Philip Roth, and I hate leaving books unfinished.

Kadath, I loved Perdido Street Station! His next book The Scar is set in the same world just after the events in PSS but I thought it was even better! His most recent book Iron Council is a bit disappointing though. King Rat, his first book, ain't a bad read if you like him as a author.

Excel Data Analysis for Dummies by Stephen L. Nelson. Isn't my life thrilling? :)

Just read Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea, pretty good. Am now starting Jean-Paul Sartre 'Being and Nothingness", the most technical philosophy book I've read so far in my life, has taken me 3 attempts to read the introduction. Hopefully all the long-windedness will have some value when chatting up existentialist women. cantona

Well, the use of the word technical here is a little misleading. Obtuse might be a little more accurate I think. Indeed quoting from Being and Nothingness is a good way to get to the heart of the smouldering 'indy' types.

Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte... meh, not fantastic, not bad though.

I saw Walk the Line on Monday, and I got Cash's autobiography, which is an awfully rambling kind of book of remembrances

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

I've been trying to finish that book for a year now...it gets so tedious...

At the moment.

Half a Life by V. S. Naipaul

I am reading Elanor Rigby by Douglas Copeland... and I swear that the main character, Liz, is based on Maleficent.

Just finished the saga "The Thorn Birds" by Colleen McCullogh. Pretty good read...entertaining if nothing else, though I did learn a lot about sheep stations in Australia.

I'm reading Fahrenheit 451 again right now. Before that I read Brave New World for the billionth time.

I need to read something not about a future messed up society next, I think.

Imperial Hubris: Why the West is losing the War on Terror. Probably one of the most sober albiet one sided assesments of the war on terror Ive read.

Palahniuk's Choke. I'm about halfway through and I'm already having to take breaks as the torment grows thicker.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. So far so good, only about 1/4 done with it. To me it is not written to be complete fiction like other books with magic, this seems like it could almost be possible....maybe I am completely wrong....

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

The Green Mile. Stephen King could make a career writing non-horror prison novels...

how truly frightening.. Do I need to pick up a copy of this book?

Gee after reading the reviews on Amazon.. I'm thinking no, and i'm thinking i shoudl be really insulted... If only I had more energy..

Reading "The Mediterranian Caper" by Clive Cussler. I just now found the Dirk Pitt series. Pretty interesting, for downtime books.

The Gunslinger by Stephen King. Time to start on this set.

Requiem for a Dream - Hubert Selby, Jr.

So far, the book is quite excellent, though it takes a bit of getting used to the writing style. Paragraph breaks are not very common and there are no quotation marks or indications as to who is saying what when something is being said other than picking up on each character's speaking style.

Update:
I'm further into the book and if you've seen the movie, the book is just as crazy from a literary perspective. I swear to god, I recently read an 8 page long "paragraph" in which one "sentence" went on for at least 2.5 pages (I didn't bother to look and see exactly how long the sentence is). It's really quite effective at creating a certain "feel" though, I'm enjoying it a lot.

Just finished rereading some of my favorites out of the "Anne" series of books by LM Montgomery: Anne of Avonlea and Rilla of Ingleside. I'd tkae up reading Anne of the Island if I could find it, but it's gone missing... :(

Instead I'm going to start reading Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. I think it will be interesting.

Schrödinger's Cat by Robert Anton Wilson

snowy, I've been wanting to read Guns, Germs & Steel for a while now. Can you give us (okay - me) a review when you're done?

Tolstoy's war and peace. I'm really enjoying it as I like reading books set in that era. Needless to say it is well written.

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami.

"Scotland: From Prehistory to Present" - by Fiona Watson.

Just finished "Freakonomics" and have started "Fifty-two Pickup" by Elmore Leonard.

midway thru wheel of time book 9-winter's heart

Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman. Very amusing collection of essays on popular culture.

The instruction book for the X-Box game "Psychonauts".

Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire
The sequel to wicked...

Last of the Breed by Louis L'Amour....have read it numerous times before. I tend to reread books I really like.

Currently, I am reading the responses to the thread "What are you reading right now?"

Am I the only one who has replied to this simple and obvious question?

Right now I am reading (aside from this forum....props to BigBen)...

The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan (just started getting into the Wheel of Time series a couple of weeks ago, not too bad...if a little bloated)

The Age of Gold : the California Gold Rush and the New American Dream by H.W Brands (excellent book on the culture and events leading up to and during the California Gold Rush)

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (read Ender's game, but had never gotten around to this "sequel", if you can really call it that, until now)

Well I got it for Christmas even though it's old. Disclosure by Chrichton. Actually pretty good if you can handle the old school technology in it.

I just got done with State of Fear, which was a fantastic Chrichton book (theme here?) Anyways, I loved it, he put a lot of time and research in to getting his facts, then spun a great story around it.

darmok, you need to get through all the ender books, you should also check out the parallel series "Ender's Shadow" Those are good as well.

Just finishing A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. Very good book. Probably start on the second one when I finish this one.

really good series - I haven't got book 4 yet, but will soon...

I'm about to finish "Marine! The Life of Chesty Puller" by Burke Davis.

After that I'm going to start on "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand.

Time Enough For Love by Heinlein. Also, some others.

Just started reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. So far it's been really good, though I'm only about 80 pages in.

Glen Cook, Garret (name of main character) novels. He's a much underlooked scifi/fantasy author. His Black Company series of novels I also enjoyed.

down and out in paris and london, by g. orwell.

classic look at the real life of the underclass of the "first" world.

I love the character of Francie - she's so wonderfully written.. That book was on the required reading list when i started high school - I loved it then - -and it's like an old friend now... :) If you like Tree -- Joy in the Morning - also by Betty Smith - is another wonderful read...I

I hope you enjoy it..

Glamorama -- Bret Easton Ellis

Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card

I love Orson Scott Card and everything that he writes. Started reading his books back in high school when i somehow discovered 'Ender's Game'. And since I tend to reread things that i like, i've read that whole series several times, and now i've started back in on the Alvin Maker Series, of which Seventh Son is the first book.

Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart
by Gordon Livingston.

Some pearls of wisdom from his writings:
--Only bad things happen quickly.
--Not all who wander are lost.
--Feelings follow behavior.
--Forgiveness is a form of letting go, but they are not the same thing

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson. Its a must.

"Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared Diamond. I din't like "Guns, Germs and Steel" that much but I find "Collapse" to be a very interesting dissection of past and present societies around the world and why some succeeded and some died out.

I think you're one of the few - he distorted a lot of the facts for his own spin, and the book was as badly written as anything Dan Brown ever put out! I think the concept of the "State of Fear" was interesting, but he dropped the ball in the execution.

IMO, of course.

:)

Really? I've always avoided it because I thought it was a western series (you know ,, cowboys) not my type. I may have to check it out. My fav King story was Salem's Lot, and the Stand was a close second.

I really like Ghost Story by Peter Straub too.


I am currently reading Airframe by Crighton

Just finished, Cobweb by Neal Stephenson and Frederick George... it was a book Stephenson wrote and release using the psydonym Stephen Bury. It's not a bad little techno-thriller set in the lead up to Gulf War 1.

I have just started reading Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values. It was written by Michael Adams who is one of the key people at Environics, one of the bigger North American polling companies.

I hope I'm not the only person here who really enjoys fluff; usually my only free time for reading is right before bed and books that require thinking don't help me fall asleep. I'm reading The Copper Beech by Maeve Binchy. I've read several of her books and loved them; I just started this one so I have high hopes.

I loved The Copper Beech. If you like her stuff, try Scarlet Feather next. Have you tried Rosamunde Pilcher? She wrote a book called "The Shell Seekers" and it's sequel of sorts, "September".

I'm in the middle of Phillip Pullman's Trillogy "His Dark Materials", I'm just starting book 3, "The Amber Spyglass".

Lucifer: I loved that Pullman series... I just gave it to my son to read.

Leto, you won't be dissapointed with the Dark Tower series. It's a really great read. I am on the 3rd Song of Ice and Fire book by George R. R. Martin called A Storm of Swords. Great series so far, but they keep killing off my favorite people while the slimier characters thrive. It's probably going to end up being a seven part series and the fifth should be released late this year (I hope). So I guess there is plenty of time for them to get theirs.

I have just stared "My year of Meats" by Ruth L. Ozeki. So far it has the strange potential to be good. will provide short review when im finished.

Oh, I love Maeve Binchy. While I didn't like Quentins' as much as some of her other books, it's a good bit of fluff. I really enjoyed Evening Class, Tara Road, The Glass Lake, and Echoes. Echoes is probably my favorite of hers. Her book of short stores, London Transports, is also very good.

What I'm reading right now: Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, by Stephen Greenblatt. Greenblatt's a well-known scholar in the field and I've read a lot of excerpts of his other works (more scholarly than this) in my Shakespeare/Elizabethan lit classes...I had no idea he had written this book until I saw it at Costco of all places.

While highly speculative about Shakespeare's actual life, it does draw on a lot of historical detail about the time, and I find that fascinating. Greenblatt has done a great job of recreating Shakespeare's world, and I'm impressed so far.

"Light in August" by William Faulkner

"excavation" by James Rollins

I just finished Twelve the other day, by Nick Mcdonell (his first novel, he was only 17 when he wrote it). The focus of the book is on a loosely connected group of "high society" teens in New York...so uh, think sex, drugs and pop culture references. Hunter S. Thompson had the following to say about the book -

Uh, Thompson was no doubt on crack when he said this. Twelve isn't a bad book by any means; it's well written, concise (too much so even...finished it the day after I bought it), and captures the sense of loneliness and isolation the author is going for very well. On the other hand, the characters lack depth, and Mcdonell doesn't really draw any conclusions from the events contained within. The book has received a lot of praise from critics, one crackpot suggesting that it may knock Catcher in the Rye off the "required reading list". All this shows is how absolutely out of touch these people really are (after reading everyone from Thompson to the New York Times praising this novel I was expecting genius, what I got was the OC in prose...an exaggeration but you get the idea). In any case, I'd say Mcdonell is a writer to watch out for...in uh, thirty years when he has something to write about. :D

Still a decent read though.

Also, I just started reading Heart of Darkness yesterday...I don't know why it's taken me so long to get 'round to this one, but eh...so many classics, so little time ffs.

This title just reminded me - while it's kind of pain in the butt to read on screen --

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/

has a ton of e-books available for download-- you just need microsoft's free e-book reader... I still prefere hard copy books but it's cool to have some of these titles - especially if you have a Palm...

I read all my books on Palm. The twist is, MS Reader (the only reader that will read MS e.book files) is only available for Windows Pocket PC. If you have a Palm OS Palm, you'll have to use another reader and .pdb files.

But...there are ways to break .lit files down to their html base, then turn that into a .pdb file.

that UVA site does let you download the books in Palm format..

Sorry, hadn't looked that the link yet. I just always have to put in my two cents about the lack of MS Reader for the Palm OS. I realize it's competition, but e-books don't drive handheld sales.

New Leaders of the World - John Pilger

Love his brutally honest style.

Sort of stuck in the 19th century:

The Ionian Mission (Aubrey/Maturin series) by Patrick O'Brian
Sharpe's Tiger (Sharpe series, obviously) by Bernard Cornwell
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

I've been reading the Aubrey/Maturin books for quite a while, enjoying them both for the sail pr0n and the fun and the drama, so I decided to check out the Sharpe books to get the same thing but on land so to speak. It's a decent read so far. Jane Eyre is for class, and it's taking me forever to get through, because I have to put the book down ever so often because I want to pummel Mr. Rochester with a codfish or something. Seriously, he must be the least attractive/charming romantic lead ever.

Now reading Deep Fathom by James Rollins. His books are decent, but they are all the same.

They always have two sets of humans, the good group and the bad group. Generaly the bad group is either trying to stop the good one of trying to kill them.

All his books have to do with new relics being found, or isolated areas of earth being discovered, lost tribes of people being discovered...

They always have fantastical evolutionary offshoots from current earth species.

There is always a growing romance between a couple.

Ever single one of his books has these elements to it, and yet I still read them all... back to back. They are not the best, but they are decent, and worth reading. I have one more of his books to go but I am going to save it for the beach in the summer. It seems like good beach/summer reading material.

<u>The Man Who Was Thursday</u> by G.K. Chesterton.
While listening to BBC7, I heard the beginning of this intriguing book when turn of the century anarchists collide with an undercover cop. It sounds more a bad James Bond film than a book that is entertaining with humour, adventure and the typical G.K. Chesterton penchant for interlacing though provoking questions that play into the story, yet, you sense, it applies to the here and now.

That applicability to today, despite having been written nearly 100 years ago, put it next on the list. I didn't get to hear how the story ends. I know it will be good.

Right now I'm juggling a few. I decided about two weeks ago to re-read the Dark Tower series (because I'm obsessed), and I'm running through Song of Susannah right now.

I'm also reading Earth by David Brin. It's a book I read years ago and remember almost nothing but having liked it. However, my uncle (who I haven't seen in years) gave me a signed copy, so I thought I'd go through and get back into it.

I'm also, for class, reading a lot of Chekhov. He's an author I'd heard of, had some interest in getting around to, and thus I decided to take a class on his work. He's not Tolstoy, so don't go into him expecting that. But I find him to be good. He has a wonderful gift for finding the beauty in even the most perversely depressing situations, something I try to do and thus appreciate.

Once A Runner by John L. Parker, Jr. As far as I'm concerned, it's the definitive novel for distance runners, and I usually reread it every couple of years. I think that I'm about to start training for something soon, so it serves as good motivation, although I still can't quite get my head around some of the workouts they do.

Next up is a biography of Khrushchev by Volkanovsky, I think.

Right now, I'm juggling a few of them while in school, it's been hard to get reading (outside of class) but it's worth it.
:thumbsup:

Just finished Life: The movie - Neal Gabler [for media and american pop culture] and on bullshit [pleasure reading]

Right now, I'm switching off between:

non-fiction:

The world is flat - friedman
smart mobs
college student's guide to the law :D

fiction-wise:
Invisible Monsters by good ole' Chuck P. - Another solid novel from him.

cya.
will.

I just finished reading Oh, The Things I Know by Al Franken. It was pretty funny and short so you can finish it in a day which is always good :)

i'm reading:

"the Vampire Lestat"

by:

Anne Rice.

I'm reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Tex told me I had to because it was one of his MANY favorites. It's really good so far, but I'm not too far into it.

Truth and Duty : The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power
By Mary Mapes
(website)

Very interesting book chronicling the behind-the scenes of the infamous CBS Bush-National Guard story. A nice little inside look at the politics of news-making, developing separate from a concern for reporting the truth and asking the tough questions. Not to mention how the specter of one potential mistake can be manipulated to overshadow an otherwise important truth.

If you think there's some vast liberal media conspiracy, led by the likes of Dan Rather, you'll probably hate the book. If you're a sensible person (*ahem* sorry, letting my politics peek through there ;)) you should enjoy it.

Going to start George Orwell's 1984 tomorrow..

I started it a few years ago, but wasn't "into it" at the time.. This time around I am going to give it a fair shot.

Mojo: Conjure Stories
edited by Nalo Hopkinson

It's a collection of short stories which, according to the back of the book: "explore the perils of personal magic" and "brings together some of the most honored voices in modern fantasy and brilliant new talents of African Diaspora ficion. Exploding the myths of zombies and voodoo curses, these narratives range from the ancient rites of the Ibo, to unmarked graves at midnight, to quiet suburbs at dawn - and prove that where heartache and faith meet, you will find the crossroads for conjuring magic."

I'm always on the lookout for inventive and unique approaches to fantasy (no more "Chosen Ones" please) and so far, this anthology has surpassed all of my expectations. I love how the magic in these stories is lashed onto human nature. Both are dangerous when misunderstood.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. One of the best books every written; I've finally gotten around to re-reading it.

"The Rise and Fall of Great Powers" - Paul Kennedy. It traces the evolution of the great powers of the world in the last 500 year such as the US, Britain, USSR, China and Japan. Just getting started, it's a huge book.

Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday... the new bio of Chairman Mao. This one ain't too flattering.

When I'm not reading student papers?

I am going back through the entire run of Strangers in Paradise, by far the best romance/espionage comic book ever produced.

Gilda

Change of plans.. No 1984.

Going to read Flannery O'Connor's short stories instead.

Unless Mao or one of his buddies wrote it, it'd be hard to be flattering towards him.

Well, since my Spring Break just started, I'll have some free time to catch up on a couple of books. Thinking of getting into The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) finally.

Sewer, Gas and Electric by Matt Ruff. I picked it up because his first book, Fool on the Hill, was an excellent read. I picked it up year's ago on the advice of the person behind the counter a Bakka Books (a local speculative fiction book store).

Sewer, Gas and Electric is not quite as good. There are many good ideas at play but there almost seems to be too many things happening so the focus is a bit off. It just isn't as solid and enrapturing as Fool on the Hill.

I will have to chime in on the Gunslinger series too. It is the first set of books from King that I have enjoyed. I would put the first three or four of the series up there with my all time favorites like LOTR and The Hobbit. The subsequent books have left me a little "meh," but I vow to see Roland through.

I'm reading Passionate Marriage currently.