Updated 'What are you reading' thread

[HoodieMcFoodie]

[Voxcaster]

Just thought I should update. Don't read damned. Worst book I've read in a while. Now I'm working on child of God by McCarthy and every now and then read a bit of this is a book by Demetri Martin

[tgfmike]

Finally, two months later, I've finished Bleak House. Now I've started The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

[tgfmike]

The Sixth Man - David Baldacci

[BigDaddyLH]

[DuncanAngus]

Currently (NPI) it's Rising Tide about the 1927 Mississipi River flood. If you like history, and in a lot of ways that disaster changed everything.

Prior to that, it was "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand. She did a great job on research but I wasn't crazy about the style at times. I will say it is an AMAZING story.

[Stratburst]

Originally Posted by tgfmike

Now I've started The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

Just whipped through that. I suggested it to my mom as a Christmas present to my 13-year-old niece. She read it in a day and a half and said:

1) "This book is way too dark for her!"

2) "I can't stop reading it!"

She ended up buying it for me. It's a fast read and a very engrossing one.

[Barncaster]

"Lone Wolf" by Shmuel Katz
It's a biography of Vladimir Jabotinski, one of the major personalities behind the establishment of Israel. A fantastic read if you like world history.

[SpiderWeb]

"River Of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey" - Candace Millard

[BigDaddyLH]

[BigDaddyLH]

This is on order. Been meaning to read some more science.

[BigDaddyLH]

Just picked this up from the library (waiting for the shuttle from doggie daycare). When the book was popular I avoided because I assumed a bestseller couldn't be that good, but I'm about 50 pages into it and really enjoying the writing.

[hannigan]

As child I was given an abridged version of Gulliver s Travels and was underwhelmed .

So here I am 40 or so years later looking for my next book to read and I run across the full original version.

I had for all these years incorrectly thought it was a childrens story.

Just finished reading it and absolutely thoroughly enjoyed it.

Written as a social and political satire .

I am not very familiar with that period of history (1700 something) so it was a pleasure to have extensive foot notes on that aspect.

The social satire has stood the test of time very nicely .

I found myself contemplating the fractal nature of man among many other thoughts as I read.

The book is comprised of 4 journeys . Some brief highlights :

In the first where he is giant he urinates on the Queen s palace to douse a fire.
It also explains how they deal with his enormous excrement.
I would have liked that in my childhood version.

In the second trip where he is small Gulliver is forced to cavort naked on a gigantic bare breast of a courtly girl. Do to scale he is repulsed .

In the third it reads like a science fiction fantasy with a flying city.

And lastly the 4th where he live with horses who are much more culturally advanced than the Humans this journey is the most scathing satire of the whole book.

Bawdy ?...Yes

Misanthropic ?... Yes.

Sexist ?.. yes.

A great read ? Yes.

[P Thought]

Jonathan Swift is something else. You might like "A Modest Proposal," where he suggested that Ireland might solve its famine problem by simply eating its children, since they had too many to feed anyway.

I'm dragging my college-prep sophomores through our English-department bookroom, which has titles as new as 1975, in numbers enough to supply 100 or so kids at a time, though sadly some of us have closer to 200 students, and many copies have to be read carefully, since they're falling apart.

Right now we're reading Something Wicked This Way Comes, a terrific book by Ray Bradbury. Every time I focus attention on Bradbury, I get all stirred up, as Bradbury does, over what our culture has allowed to happen to mass literacy, language and thought, and I rail at the kids to each battle it personally, by reading and reading and reading and writing. In the college-prep classes, many are on it already, but in "regular" classes. . .och, tamale.

By the pricking of my thumbs. . . .

[Ethical]

I'm re-reading The Player of Games (Iain M. Banks) as it's been five or six years since I last visited this title.

It still holds up well IMO and I'm still enjoying it.


><

[blowtorch]

I expect to be finishing up Keith Richards autobio this week. It's been fun.

I really should jump into finishing Harlan Ellison's "Spider Kiss" after that. I borrowed the book from a guy in one of my bands like, 4 years ago or so.

Yep, I'm that guy.

[SpacemanD]

Just finished "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami. My favourite author of the moment.

Now reading "Lipstick Traces" by Greil Marcus.

[adkima00]

In the middle of Mary Mary by James Patterson and just started One Train Later by Andy Summers.

[SpiderWeb]

[Esaaal]

Last month I read "Life" by Keith Richards. I just read "American Sniper" by Chris Kyle and am currently reading "Black Hawk Down" by Mark Bowden.