Now reading...

[fasstrack]

It was last year, actually, but I wanted to recommend Ralph Ampersad's (hope I got his name right) first-rate biog of Ralph Ellison.

[billyboy]

Just finished Watchmen, and really enjoyed it.

Started Moby Dick yesterday, and I'm completely digging it. I've even laughed out loud a couple times. It's been one of those books on my list to read, but never have, and I'm not getting any younger. I was worried it would take forever to read, but I feel like I'm going to plow through it. I guess we'll see! I'll let you know when I finish it.

Also reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Reading The Hobbit to my kids, and Kidnapped to my 10-year-old.

[jlhoots]

Alice Hoffman: Skylight Confessions

[BillF]

Finished the Anthony Burgess autobiography "Little Wilson And Big God"

Nice bit of reading with local interest, Richard!

[sal]

Reading some Kafka stories. "In the Penal Colony", "Judgment" and several others in this book.

[A Lark Ascending]

A fascinating tale of a famous set of stories told from a different side of the fence.

I think we're living in a golden age for popular history. It's great to see so many books around with real narrative drive.

[paul secor]

Deaf Sentence - a novel by David Lodge. Plot concerns a retired professor who is slowly going deaf, then explores several other tangents. Reading it made me more aware of taking care of my hearing.

[Jazzmoose]

What?

[B. Goren.]

[BillF]

Deaf Sentence - a novel by David Lodge. Plot concerns a retired professor who is slowly going deaf, then explores several other tangents. Reading it made me more aware of taking care of my hearing.

I always like David Lodge's stuff and was pleased to read this recent one.

[T.D.]

Couple of authors were recently recommended to me:

Henning Mankell, who writes popular Swedish detective stories. I've read some (Kurt Wallender series, in English), and they're pretty good, though I prefer the full-length novels to the precursor (though subsequently written) novellas.

I'm trying to track down Larry Devlin's Chief of Station, Congo, may be able to borrow a copy this weekend.

[paul secor]

What?

Trying to hear what's written on your computer screen doesn't work, Mark.

Edited April 9, 2009 by paul secor

[BruceH]

Just re-read In Search of Wonder by Damon Knight. Can't remember exactly when I first read it, but I think it was sometime in my late 'teens. A hell of a long time ago, anyway.

[Bright Moments]

a good read!!!

[Jazzmoose]

I forced myself to finish A Study in Scarlet last night. What a chore, and what a bore. It didn't help that the last book I read was a Louis L'Amour novel; Doyle's description of the American West, and the people who lived there is atrocious. The idea that a westerner of that time would leave camp on a hunting trip and get lost because he wasn't watching his backtrail is something only a city dweller could come up with. And the idea of building a big, huge fire in the middle of nowhere, thereby attracting god-knows-who is absurd.

Oh, well; it's the short stories I remember fondly anyway. That and the Hound of the Baskervilles. I won't give up on my revisit to Holmes yet, but this was a bad first step.

That's not encouraging! I'll probably move it further down the queue.

Looks like my complaint (thankfully!) only applies to that one book. I was going to stick to a chronological reading, but decided to skip The Sign of Four and jump into Adventures to get to the short stories. Excellent stuff, and the added nostalgia factor this time around is a bonus as well.

The only problem is, I remember what started me smoking now. I keep visiting pipe websites...

[fasstrack]

Serendipity: I found a pile of books left for trash in Hastings, NY yesterday. Hope to get to all, as all seem interesting. Titles: Saints and Strangers (George F. Williston---should I know him?); Managing Your Mind Through Food and Thought; The Ritz on the Bayou (Nancy Lehmann); Black Hamlet (Wulf Sachs, a 1947 edition. I've heard of neither author nor book); The Jew of Rome (Lion Feuchtwanger. Publishing date: 1936); The Secret Life of Dogs (David Sipress. A Steve Gross-like comedy cartoon book).

Will report back..........

Edited April 10, 2009 by fasstrack

[BillF]

Looks like my complaint (thankfully!) only applies to that one book. I was going to stick to a chronological reading, but decided to skip The Sign of Four and jump into Adventures to get to the short stories. Excellent stuff, and the added nostalgia factor this time around is a bonus as well.

I'm reading Study in Scarlet now, having started with The Adventures .... I think Holmes is ideally suited to the short story form and that Doyle hadn't yet fully found his way when he wrote Study.

[Jazzmoose]

I agree. The pacing of Study is horrible, whereas the pacing of the short stories is excellent. On the other hand, assuming I'm remembering the Hound novel correctly (it's been decades, so maybe not), he could use the longer form as well. I think you're right in that he just hadn't found his way yet.

[BruceH]

Angels and Ages by Adam Gopnik.

[jlhoots]

Graham Lock: Blutopia

[sal]

I'm reading "Haunted" by Chuck Palahniuk. I've come to quite like Palahniuk over the past year. This one is good so far, although I'm not enjoying quite as much as his earlier works.

[jazzbo]

Re-reading complete prose of Pushkin, and also re-reading Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns.

[A Lark Ascending]

A fascinating tale of a famous set of stories told from a different side of the fence.

I think we're living in a golden age for popular history. It's great to see so many books around with real narrative drive.

Finished this - highly recommended if you like an exciting telling of the story of Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes and the collision with Athens and Sparta. The author looks very young, almost punkish and his style can be a bit breathless and and tabloid-ish with lots of use of contemporary terms to describe these events (part of his aim - to indicate the relevance of these events to our world). I imagine lovers of 'fine writing' will be outraged and immediately turn to their Herodotus but everyone else is promised a good time.

Edited April 20, 2009 by Bev Stapleton

[Shawn]

Just finished up:

Richard Matheson - I Am Legend

Now trying to figure out what next....

[Jazzmoose]

I imagine lovers of 'fine writing' will be outraged and immediately turn to their Herodotus but everyone else is promised a good time.

You know, that one sentence is enough to qualify as a great review for me; I'll add it to my list!

Currently reading Crunch by Jared Bernstein. I was hoping for something along the lines of Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics (which is kind of like James Burke's Connections, but on economics), but this isn't it. It's a book on economics written for those clueless about economics. I have to admit that it's interesting to read a book written right before things went batshit that warns that things are worse than we think and could very well go batshit...