What books are you reading these days?

[Oracle of Mythos]

Currently I'm reading the first book of Nora Roberts Circle trilogy called Morrigans Cross. Its great read about sorcerers, shapeshifters and an uber vampire named Lilith.

[Kor Qel Droma]

I read a few pages of The Count Of Monte Cristo every other day or so. I bought it on the second day of August and I'm just about halfway through.

[Mortis Nai]

Genealogy of Morals & Ecce Homo.

[karka]

Das Parfum

Mr Cevdet and His Sons

[Dark_Raven]

"Misery" by Stephen King

 

I read it once a long time ago, time to refresh my memory. I'm 3/4 done with it, its pretty good.

 

Number one fans.

[Baley]

Slow Man

Slow Man is a 2005 novel by South African/Australian author J.M. Coetzee, and concerns a man who must learn to adapt after losing a leg in a road accident. The novel has many varied themes, including the nature of care, the relationship between an author and his characters, and man's drive to leave a legacy. It is Coetzee's first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.

Amazon Sample.

 

Technically, I finished that the other day, and I'd recommend it to you, but you'd have to forsake your lily vamps and blowhard dragons, so I dunno, I think meta would enjoy his writing. As for what I plan on reading, well, In Cold Blood's pretty high on my list, as is that Saul Bellow novel they gave him (mad) props for in Stockholm (though, granted, I'd have to buy it first).

[metadigital]

in the last couple of months:

Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels)

Common Sense (Thomas Paine)

Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man (Christopher Hitchens)

On the Suffering of the World (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Teach Yourself Jung (as tangential background information for another book I am currently reading: The Seven Basic Plots (Christopher Booker))

An Attack on an Enemy of Freedom (Cicero).

I have a subscription to New Scientist and Scientific American

[Musopticon?]

Common Sense (Thomas Paine)

Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man (Christopher Hitchens)

Sadly, me too.

 

I've also been reading some mre Chomsky and trying to come up with enough inspiration to start my novella.

[WITHTEETH]

Atlas Shrugged currently by Ayn Rand

 

Was Common Sense by Thomas Pain any good?

[Musopticon?]

If you discount the mildly hilarious Christian connotations(like the American people as the chosen of God), it's alright. Worth a study anyway, since it had so remarkable effect on the minds of the colonists.

[WITHTEETH]

If you discount the mildly hilarious Christian connotations(like the American people as the chosen of God), it's alright. Worth a study anyway, since it had so remarkable effect on the minds of the colonists.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Do you know of a book that goes over the founding fathers of the US when creating the Declaration of Independence and Bill of rights, and how they all came to decide on what, what materials they used to decide what they did? I was reading about the federalists a bit and I'm still wanting more.

[Musopticon?]

I've heard Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. [Harvard University Press, 1967] being credited before and I've used it somewhat to as a source(ripped version), but I'm sure you could find a more recent book.

 

Wiki's article on the American Revolution has an extensive list of specialized studies(that also seems to hold Bailyn's book) which you should probably peruse.

Edited December 2, 2006 by Musopticon?

[Stewdawg24]

Recently, I've been reading "How we are Hungry" whcih is a collection of shortstories by Dave Eggers.

 

I just finished a book that I've been meaning to read for years "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking. I can't tell you how well this book was written. Hawking breaks down infiniately difficult ideas in ways taht allow the laymen to undertand the priciples benhind them.

 

In addition I'm reading David Sedaris' "Holidays on Ice" which is funny as hell. Actually, I recommend anything by Sedaris.

Edited December 2, 2006 by Stewdawg24

[Atreides]

Finished Phantom by Goodkind a few days ago.

[Enoch]

Recently, I've been reading "How we are Hungry"  whcih is a collection of shortstories by Dave Eggers. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I own that one, but haven't gotten to it yet. I think it's somewhere under this stack of clutter on my desk.

 

I recently finished Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. A pulitzer-prize winning romantic novel about 2 cousins (one a Jew who escaped the Nazis in pre-war Prague, the other a native of Brooklyn) who make it big in the comic book business in the 1930's. I really liked it.

[Xard]

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

 

Clearly one of the best books I've ever read.

[metadigital]

Was Common Sense by Thomas Pain any good?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I read it on the train in about half-an-hour (it's not long); it is credited with being the most widely distributed pamphlets in history. The impact on the US Constitution is evident.

[blue]

Edward P. Jones, Lost in the City & All Aunt Hagar's Children (story collections inspired by Joyce's Dubliners).

 

From Jones' ferocious heart and pen: "Old Boys, Old Girls."

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fiction/040503fi_fiction

[metadigital]

I'm really enjoying

What If Our World is their Heaven?:

The Final Conversations of Philip K. Dιck

(Edited by Gwen Lee & Doris Elaine Sauter).

[Colrom]

"The Proud Tower" by Barbara Tuchman - a history book about the western society in the years leading up to WW I.

 

She also wrote "The Guns of August" about the start of WW I and the German execution of von Schlieffen's plan up till the beginning of the French counter attack known as the "Miracle of the Marne".

 

A great writer.

[Archmonarch]

When I have time, I'm reading through the Deathstalker series by Simon Green. Fairly decent space opera, if not overly original.

 

In my spare moments, I'm reading the scifi anthology Future Shock, a collection of short stories about near future problems/worst-case scenarios.

[Musopticon?]

I've been salivating over this "what if" history book series I saw mentioned at the Wikipedia Tartessus-article, but so far haven't found any of them.

 

I'm just finishing George Yule's Study of Language, which has been a delightful look into the very core of lingual genesis. Indeed, it is one of the very few study books I'd gladly read again.

Edited December 5, 2006 by Musopticon?

[Hurlshort]

When I have time, I'm reading through the Deathstalker series by Simon Green. Fairly decent space opera, if not overly original.

 

In my spare moments, I'm reading the scifi anthology Future Shock, a collection of short stories about near future problems/worst-case scenarios.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I had to stop reading the Deathstalker series when they all turned superhuman. It's cool to be a studly fighter, but it got a bit ridiculous after awhile. I have the same rouble with the Star Wars books...I mean you can only survive so many close calls.

[kumquatq3]

"Misery" by Stephen King

 

Number one fans. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Run Champ Bailey! Run!

[Baley]

I've read Seize the Day and I've read Jailbird, but as I'm not gonna go into detail, and I'm not gonna evaluate, analyze, criticize, let's just dub them trinkets of the untrife variety (though at least one of them is quite brilliant) and move on to a Larkin poem,

 

Church Going

 

Once I am sure there's nothing going on

I step inside, letting the door thud shut.

Another church: matting, seats, and stone,

And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut

For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff

Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;

And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,

Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off

My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Move forward, run my hand around the font.

From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-

Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't.

Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few

Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce

"Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant.

The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door

I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,

Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

 

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,

And always end much at a loss like this,

Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,

When churches fall completely out of use

What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep

A few cathedrals chronically on show,

Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,

And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.

Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

 

Or, after dark, will dubious women come

To make their children touch a particular stone;

Pick simples for a cancer; or on some

Advised night see walking a dead one?

Power of some sort or other will go on

In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;

But superstition, like belief, must die,

And what remains when disbelief has gone?

Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

 

A shape less recognizable each week,

A purpose more obscure. I wonder who

Will be the last, the very last, to seek

This place for what it was; one of the crew

That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?

Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,

Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff

Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?

Or will he be my representative,

 

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt

Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground

Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt

So long and equably what since is found

Only in separation -- marriage, and birth,

And death, and thoughts of these -- for whom was built

This special shell? For, though I've no idea

What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,

It pleases me to stand in silence here;

 

A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,

Are recognised, and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete,

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself to be more serious,

And gravitating with it to this ground,

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,

If only that so many dead lie round.

 

Philip Larkin at Famous Poets and Poems.com.