What Are You Reading

[Miss Caroline]

My boyfriend bought me the Graveyard Book for Christmas. Still reading it on and off... it's quite good.

My mum lent me the 19th Wife. It's okay. I like the plot but the writing (especially the 19C inserts) is a bit rubbish.

 

[MrNewportCustom]

Skin

No, it's not what it sounds like; it is not porn!

The entire title is: Skin - The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing and Retouching Faces and Bodies. It's by Lee Varis.
There is not a single nude photo in it.


Yet another Lee

 

[stephen1965]

Lanark by Alasdair Gray. LANARK, a modern vision of hell set in the disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow...a profound message about humankind's inability to love, and yet our compulsion to go on trying. Compared with...Dante, Blake, Joyce, Orwell Kafka, Huxley and Lewis Carroll
'Tis pretty good so far.

 

[Darhling]

The Calvin & Hobbes tenth anniversary book. There is nothing like reading comics when you are ill.

 

[K.D. Lightner]

I just finished my second book on the African ladies detective agency, called Tears of the Giraffe. I love the series, teaching me about African people in Botswana as well as a cool lady detective.

I have now started Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. I am ashamed to tell you that I have never read the book, one that has made a number of "best 100 books" lists. I am even more ashamed to tell you I have never read a Woolf novel, old radical feminist though I may be.

karol

 

[Lamplight]

Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis

A first edition from 1927! I'm hoping to find old editions (hopefully first) of Babbitt and Main Street as well.

 

[will333]

"My Bookie Wook" by English stand-up comedian/actor Russell Brand. Hillllarious.

 

[carebear]

"Dragon Days" by H. John Poole, author of "The Last Hundred Yards".

Just finished his "The Tiger's Way" and "Tequila Junction". All contain modernized (and much more effective than current doctrine) individual and small unit tactics. Also they take a 4th Gen warfare perspective look at the current geo-political situation we are in. Posit a major state player as contributing to global instability to advance its own goals, has a pretty good circumstantial case in support.

 

[Incorporeal13]

Hmm. At the moment I'm reading:
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells
Life In The Liberty Years (Hallmark Book)
Books Of Blood Volume II by Clive Barker
Nightmares And Dreamscapes by Stephen King
Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg


...I'm a bookworm, I love them, and tend to 5-6 or more at a time. My boyfriend can't figure out how I keep up with them all, or where I store this information. I just can't imagine a life without books, though. The only problem is, by doing this, I run out of new books to read quickly... but then again, i also read a lot of them over and over again until the spines show it.
Nothing like cracking into a book you have, where you know all the dog ears and page marks. It's like being united with a long lost best friend.

 

[vonwotan]

I'm re-reading The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl while I wait to track down the last two Modesty Blaise novels missing from my shelf.

The Dante Club is set in Civil War era Boston, 1865, and is a historical novel with Henry Longfellow, Oliver Wendel Holmes, James Lowell and J.T. Fields (Ticknor & Fields) as characters. It's a murder mystery with killings based on the punishments in Inferno. The backdrop is a struggle between the members of the Dante Club to publish a translation of Dante's works and the Harvard establishment to prevent its publication.

 

[Harp]

Hmm. At the moment I'm reading:
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Nightmares And Dreamscapes by Stephen King
Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg


...I'm a bookworm, I love them, and tend to 5-6 or more at a time.

Kerouac never appealed to me and I tend to shy away from King,
though his On Writing is a personal favorite.

I've read Flagg's Fried Green Tomatoes thrice, drawn to its
study of love and human happiness, which elevates the book far above
a simple Southern yarn. However, I thought FGT a poorly structured
work and in this respect found Flagg a disappointment.
The film adapt was better than the book, but FGT's basic theme
is music for the soul.

 

[Harp]

I'm re-reading The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl while I wait to track down the last two Modesty Blaise novels missing from my shelf.

The Dante Club is set in Civil War era Boston, 1865, and is a historical novel with Henry Longfellow, Oliver Wendel Holmes, James Lowell and J.T. Fields (Ticknor & Fields) as characters. It's a murder mystery with killings based on the punishments in Inferno. The backdrop is a struggle between the members of the Dante Club to publish a translation of Dante's works and the Harvard establishment to prevent its publication.

Veritas. Et vae debello verum Harvard.

You might want to try Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club,
set against the same background and time but more tepid than terrible.

 

[AmateisGal]

Ian Fleming's Dr. No.

 

[WH1]

Guerilla Prince
a history of Fidel Castro, not quite as good as I was hoping. I dont really like the writing style, a little to "gossipy".

Also rereading Great Expectation by Dickens. I am enjoying it immensely, haven't read it since high school.

 

[John Boyer]

I am re-reading Out of My Life and Thought, the autobiography of Albert Schweitzer. I have always been intrigued by this theologian, musician, scientist, philosopher, medical doctor and missionary who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. John

 

[draws]

My Latest History Book

Having always been interested in American History but never ever having read much relating to the US Constitution, I have decided to pick up "The 5,000 Year Leap" - A Miracle That Changed the World by W. Cleon Skousen.

Unbelievable!!!! I thought that I knew American history. I am a novice when it comes to the writings of the founding fathers. Their genious at understanding the writings of Cicero in 64BC, the power of the human form as well as the need to not repeat the errors of the past is well documentd.

What is truly amazing is that, if one follows the writings of their letters and treatices, they predicted (Benjamin Franklin) the conditions that we now see developing in America 235+ years later.

Highly recommended reading for all who enjoy historical accuracy.

Dennis

 

[John Boyer]

...I have decided to pick up "The 5,000 Year Leap" - A Miracle That Changed the World by W. Cleon Skousen.

Unbelievable!!!! ...

Dennis,

Likewise, I found The 5,000 Year Leap a wonderful reintroduction to an interpretation of American constitutional history. Interesting that it has become so popular, given that it was first printed nearly 30 years ago. You might also like The American Republic by O.A. Brownson, one of my favorites, or Rights and Duties by Russell Kirk.

John

 

[draws]

5,000 Year Leap

John, I will take you up on your suggestion.

I must admit that this is all new to me and I have gained a grasp of our founder's true intent. I am also very fearfull that, with our journey toward the easy life, our complacence will cloud the inevitable decline of the republic and this book warns what will happen if that cloud grows too thick and/or soupy.

What really fascinates me is just how knowledgeable the founders were with their comparisons of the end result of Tyranny versus Anarchy (the extreme ends of the political spectrum).

This book clearly documents how those two extremes can take root when either unethical financial gain at the government level supercedes reason at the one end of the scale or when government ceases to exist altogether at the other end of the scale.

In light of these two arguments, their collective knowledge and common sense is even more unemaginable. This book is truly enlightening.

I will follow up with your suggestion and thanks for your response.
Dennis

 

[John Boyer]

I wonder how Boethius' epistle might have read had Lady Philosophy
not banished the sirens of Poetry from his prison cell.

Harp,

Boethius' epistle is my only experience with the prosimetric form. His poems reflect both, an enthusiastic knowledge of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Seneca and others and a working familiarity with a wide variety of metrical forms and patterning.

I who with zest penned songs in happier days,
Must now with grief embark on sombre lays.
Sad verses flood my cheeks with tears unfeigned;
The Muses who inspire me are blood-stained.
Yet they at least were not deterred by dread;
They still attend me on the path I tread.
I gloried in them, in my youth's full spate;
In sad old age they now console my fate...

Boethius' the Consolation of Philosophy


John

 

[Incorporeal13]

Kerouac never appealed to me and I tend to shy away from King,
though his On Writing is a personal favorite.I've read Flagg's Fried Green Tomatoes thrice, drawn to its study of love and human happiness, which elevates the book far above a simple Southern yarn. However, I thought FGT a poorly structured work and in this respect found Flagg a disappointment. The film adapt was better than the book, but FGT's basic theme is music for the soul.

Kerouac definitely doesn't seem to be for everyone. I know many people that find him dry. I'm pretty big on all the Beat writers, though, for some reason, and he stands out as a favorite.
FGT is far from the best structured book in the world, but, being from the South, I love to read down-home books that remind me of people in my area and my childhood. This is probably why I'm also so into Rebecca Wells books, especially Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood. I do agree that FGT was better in movie form, however. But I just can't stay away from the book as well.
As for King, On Writing is one of my favorites as well, probably because I write a lot. I dearly appreciate his love for the horror genre, whether it be books, comics, movies, or whatever else. He keeps in good tradition and at the same time opens new doors. I'm a humongous horror fan, so, that said, it's obvious why I like him.