The ' What are you reading? ' Thread!

I was a lit major, so I usually finish books. Don Quixote makes me epic fail, though.

I love Terry Pratchett--highly recommended if you like thoughtful, funny fantasy that's almost like life.

Does anyone have any other author suggestions for a Prachettphile?

12th Planet

I thought about reading that bc Dickens character David Copperfield brought it up in the novel

Physics: I just got done reading "Hyperspace" Michio Kaku and the "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene. Both are excellent except I have never been able to convince myself of the validity of the string theory. Although my mind tries to say yes, my gut says no.

The Siege of Leningrad.

Douglas Adams, P. G. Wodehouse, a novel called 'Three Men In A Boat', by Jerome K. Jerome, is also extremely funny in a Pratchet-esque way. It's about three young English city dwellers (to say nothing of the long-suffering dog, Montmorency) who decide to take a boating holiday down the Thames in the late 1800's. Enjoy!

And lest I be accused of ignoring the American talent, anything by Tim Dorsey is gold. Gold!

Robert Rankin (Nostradamus ate my hamster, The hollow chocolate bunnies of the apocalypse etc)

An I opener 4x2, did you get the new addition of it or an older copy.

Right now I am readin Secrets of the Unified Field, J Farrell

he is my favorite. it is sad he died. i will checkout brent weeks.

Three Cups Of Tea

The Cosmic Serpent DNA and the Origins of Knowledge by Jeremy Narby

The Alphabet vs the Goddess by Leonard Schlain (re-reading)

and The DaVinci Code for fun.

loved Ishmael AC and Quinn's The Story of B is even better!

Recently finished the Bob Dylan Chronicles and James Baldwin Another Country. Enjoyed both.

We've had a few threads like this in the past and I'm always impressed with how much people on here read and what a wide variety of stuff they read including a whole lot of nonfiction.

Someone mentioned Charles Dickens above, and how other books were mentioned in his novels.

My favorite Dickens is "Our Mutual Friend". Did anyone else read that and do you remember how the junk man who couldn't read hired that sheet music seller/shyster guy to read to him, and they chose Gibbons' "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"?

So in the evening the the guy would come over and the way Dickens described the reading session was to say that "they declined and they fell".

They declined and they fell until ten, when the candle sputtered . . .

Also the guy the junk man hired to read for him was only marginally more literate than the one who couldn't read at all, and he was just making shit up as he read if he didn't quite understand it, and since the junk man couldn't read at all, he never knew the difference, they kept declining and falling just the same.

A collection of Emerson's essays and also a book called Streams in The Desert.

Berlin Diary by William Shirer

Not that I read this recently but a fine piece of fiction I enjoyed greatly a few years ago was Eureka Street by the Irish Writer Robert McLiam Wilson. I should check out if he's written anything else since.

I also read Ripley Bogle by him. That was also good but a bit sinister and depressing.

Im reading 'Who Built The Moon' by Christopher Knight.

The Spontaneous Healing of Belief: Shattering The Paradigm of False Limits - By Gregg Braden.

You've got to read it to believe it!!!

I received it from a friend for Christmas. She said she and everybody in her office has read it. She said it's amazing!

Now that I finished Duma Key I'm going to start on it.

Yes! I gave it to a couple of friends for Christmas too so that we can discuss the book....:)

Yes...before I felt that I HAD to finish it no matter what. I don't torture myself anymore. If I don't like it I toss it.

The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein.

SDM

Depends... There are those books where you get part way through it and you don't have a damn clue who is who and need a road map to figure out the characters, the plot and what not.. usually don't finish those and find a deserving home and someone with a fetish to details to bequest said volume to....

Then there are those where friends, critics and what not have proffered endless praise. So you embark into the pages... and you think.. "What the fuck was the fuss all about... this sucks" So you put it down go to other things but there it sits on the night table... So you go back ... find the book marker where you left off for another try... And you say.... Yeah it does suck big time and ... yet again another volume to be gifted ... this time to someone who might be more likely to subscribe to the wave of plaudits that washed over said book.

Of course there are those where you have been dying to read... Like Kafka's the Castle... but you make the mistake of picking it up when you just aren't in the right frame of mind to commit to it.... For those I might read a couple of paragraphs and say.."This ain't the time..I shall return"

Then there are those that you say... Damn I spent $30 for this piece of crap.. So you resist the urge to jump to the last few pages but do an Formula 1 job of speed reading to the end...

Ron Paul "Foreign Policy of Freedom"

Ayn Rand "Atlas Shrugged"

"The Tipping Point"

Stephen King Dark Tower series

I didn't finish "Emma" by Jane Austen, though I liked her other books. I found the character of the title to be insufferably stupid.

It was really a stretch to make it to the end of "A Passage to India" by E.M. Forster. That was one of the worst books I have read, I hated the characters and their timid, insipid ways.

I read "Wuthering Heights" by Charlotte Bronte and while I realize this is a lot of people's favorite book, and that I am supposed to like it, I kept asking myself "am I obligated to finish this?" I did make it through but it really pissed me off.

Of course those are all well written books, that goes without saying, I just couldn't engage with the characters, I didn't give a shit what happened to them, I didn't like them as people. I didn't respect them.

The thing I don't like about a lot of modern literary fiction that I've tried, is that I don't feel the authors like their characters. It offends me to think that an author would write a whole book about people they don't really like.

That's just me. I couldn't bear "The Accidental Tourist" by (Anne Tyler?), the people were dreadful losers in my eye, why should I read about people like that when you walk down the street and that's who's there? Christ if I wanted real life I'd look out the fucking window.

I think I have a very old fashioned taste in reading, I want heroes and moral lessons. Not some 350 page suicide note which is how I see a lot of modern fiction, just as bleak and depressing and amoral as it gets.

I can say I have old fashioned taste in plots and characters, but I love a lot of science fiction and William Gibson is one of my favorite authors, so it's pretty hard to pigeonhole what I like.

Anygood?

I still have NO LOGO sat on my shelf waiting for me to pick it up.

Marry Me.