I always have a few books I'm reading at the same time.

Currently, there's Gone Fishin' by Walter Mosley... a good story dealing with the early days of Easy and Mouse when they were pretty young. Love Mosley's writing; very descriptive (sights, scents and sounds) but keeps the story ticking along nicely. Only a few pages left to go in this one.

Also, reading The Talisman by Stephen King & Peter Straub. Started reading that one last summer but got sidetracked and returned it to the library unfinished. I don't remember where I left off with it so I'm starting over. Straub can get overly wordy, but it's pretty regular Stephen King fare: good character development, a page-turner, but usually a bit of a disappointing finisher (big build-up to a cheesy climax often enough). Still I'm looking forward to getting to the final Dark Tower book when it's available at my local library; I finished the 2nd last one last week (still amused that he wrote himself into the story).

And there's also Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything which I got for Christmas. I'm a quarter of the way into that one. Very engaging, informative and humorous. This one gets passed around the family when I'm done it.

Another one I'm looking forward to reading as soon as I can borrow a copy is Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I saw it in the book store this season and it looked interesting. Maybe I'll buy it; the paperback version is on sale for 30% off at Coles right now...