Books: What book are you reading right now

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Peace
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 12:48 AM

I just finished "Great Thoughts" by George W Bush. It was a waste of eleven seconds.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: mrdux
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 02:26 AM

Just finished the "Bartimaeus" trilogy, a nicely written fantasy by Jonathan Stroud. About to start "The Name of the Rose" (Umberto Eco).

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 08:48 AM

"On Fencing" by Aldo Naldi
"Trials and Tribulations" ed. by White
"Against the Gods: the Story of Risk" by Bernstein
"Renaissance Fencing" (I forget the author)
"Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" (as I have been for the past 17 years).

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: GUEST,ib48
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 11:39 AM

The bible,god bless you all.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: DougR
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 03:13 PM

"Spymistress," by William Stevensen.
Kendall: I'll give "The Nightingale's Song" a look see.
DougR

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: ragdall
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 06:33 PM

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: skipy
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 06:40 PM

The roman nights at the tomb of the scipion. Dated 1825, only taking a little look through it, as I found it in a skip today. It is now on Ebay!
Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 07:49 PM

skipy! That looks like quite a find!!

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: robomatic
Date: 12 Feb 07 - 08:11 PM

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Wesley S
Date: 13 Feb 07 - 03:06 PM

Orwell's 1984

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Cluin
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 01:57 AM

Just finished "Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?", a Carter Family biography.

Just finishing Morley Torgov's "A Good Place to Come From".

Just starting "I Never Sold My Saddle", the Ian Tyson autobigraphy.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 03:03 AM

Just finished A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, and have started Tom Robbins' Skinny Legs and All, but I'm trying to be good and save it for my olidays next week.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 04:35 AM

Hey, don't scoff. I'm reading My Life With the Saints by a young Jesuit priest named James Martin. He describes real people with warts. Right now I'm on the section on Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and inspiring thinker and writer who practiced Zen, fell madly in love with his nurse when he was in the hospital, and somehow died in Thailand when an electric heater fell into his bathtub.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 07:06 AM

Cluin--

What did you think of Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? I thought it was fascinating. Particularly the insights into the music business in the 20's and 30's.





Right now I'm finishing An Imperfect God (Washington's relations with his slaves--and how it changed--drastically). Also fascinating--and a very complex relationship.

And starting Rough Crossings (the relations between slaves and the British during the Revolution.) Also looks excellent.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 09:34 AM

An anthology called "The Rendezvous Reader" -- a collection of writings by and about the fur trade and mountain men of the American West.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: heric
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 09:46 AM

Mister Pip

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: JennyO
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 10:24 AM

I'm a one-book-at-a-time person, and at the moment, the book is "Interesting Times" by Terry Pratchett. Just getting started on it.

I'm trying to gradually work my way through all the Pratchetts. Funny stuff!

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: jacqui.c
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 11:29 AM

Thanks to Liz the Squeak I'm onto the fifth book in the Dark Is Rising series and can't put the @*$#($&* thing down. As a result I'm getting to be sleep deprived, but the story is good. There are some really good books around for younger readers now.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 11:59 AM

Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe. Yes, I know, I should have read it years ago, since it's a seminal work of 20th century American Literature. I recently finished Jack's Book, a biography of Kerouac, and Angel was a major influence on him, Ginsburg, Miller, and the other beats.
Last one prior to this was an autobio by Gabriel Garcia Marquez called Living to Tell the Tale, and I found it exceedingly slow going.
from Look Homeward, Angel, as exact a description of greed as I've come across...
" He ground out the life of his cigarette against an ashtray, and began a rapid window calculation of his horses, asses, kine, swine, and hens; the stored plenitude of his great barn, the heavy fruitage of his fields and orchards. A man came toward the house with a bucket of eggs in one hand and a bucket of butter in the other; each cake was stamped qwith a sheaf of wheat and wrapped loosely in clean white linen cloths. He smiled grimly: If attacked he could withstand a prolonged seige."

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 12:12 PM

Thanks to a gift, brought all the way from OZ by a friend, I am just starting "Folklore of the Australian Pub" by Bill Wannan. It's full of stories, poems, songs...all put in the context of pubs and their place in the culture...

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Gulliver
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 01:38 PM

Finished "Death of Achilles" by Boris Akunin (who is mentioned above), which was a great read. Can't wait to get more by him.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Becca72
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 02:45 PM

I'm almost finished with "Missing; the execution of Charles Horman" by Thomas Hauser, something my Spanish teacher recommended, oh, 15 years ago and I'm just now getting around to reading.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: HouseCat
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 03:31 PM

Hey Joe, you should try Thomas Merton's "Seeds". I read his "Seven-Storey Mountain" when I was too young to comprehend much of it and I need to go back and read it again.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Rog Peek
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 04:25 PM

The Squad by T Ryle Dwyer.

The story of the intelligence opertions of Michael Collins, based on interviews with members of the group of assasins who were recruited by Collins to eliminate those considered to be enemies of the Irish fight for independance. They did this by targeting detectives and army personel who were engaged to quell the insurgency. These iterviews were carried out by the Bureau of Military History in the early fifties, interviewees being given an assursnce that the material would not be released in their lifetimes.
This is the first book to make use of these interviews.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Raedwulf
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 06:28 PM

Old Soldiers Never Die, Pvte Frank Richards, DCM & MM, 2nd Btn Royal Welch Fusiliers, WWI.

Simple, straightforward & utterly readable - almost exactly as though you were talking to him.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Cluin
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 09:31 PM

Ron,

I also found "Will You Miss Me..." fascinating. Those Carters sure got around for a long time. Some of the stories about their dealings with Ralph Peer and Jimmie Rodgers and "Doctor" Brinkley (the quack who "cured" erectile disfunction by cutting a chunk out of your testicle and replacing it with a hunk of dried goat's testicle), and Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. They wouldn't turn their backs on John R. during the worst of his drug addiction because of guilt over Hank Williams early demise, apparently.

And yes, the picture it shows of the recording industry in the 30s and 30s is a real eye-opener. Ralph Peer apparently looked down on the hillbilly and "coloured" music that made him a rich man.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Riginslinger
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 10:45 PM

"Big Bill Haywood & The Radical Union Movement," by Joseph R. Conlin.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 11:40 PM

"JESUS and YAHWEH, The Names Divine," by Harold Bloom. It has interested me for the last few years why the followers of Jesus broke away from the normative Judaism of the time, and also made him God.

"White Noise," by Don DeLileo. This is a comic novel of a small mid-western college where the protagonist/narrator is the head of the Department of Hitler Studies...and he doesn't even know German! So much for doing research using primary sources.

BTW, I read them serially, not at the same time, holding each in front of the alternate eye at the same time.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Jun 07 - 01:44 PM

".. holding each in front of the alternate eye at the same time."

and who did the split brain surgery? ;>)

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: kendall
Date: 22 May 13 - 02:48 PM

Churchill's Triumph by Michael Dobbs.

It's about the meeting of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin in Yalta. I can hardly put it down. Stalin was an evil bastard, Roosevelt a sick, dying old man and Churchill a Monarchist, somewhat egotistical has been, but, damn he was right.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 22 May 13 - 07:12 PM

Wish You Well by David Baldacci. It's for my YMCA'x book club.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 22 May 13 - 08:08 PM

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford: being Chinese or Japanese in Seattle 1942 and 40 years later. Very interesting.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Ron Davies
Date: 22 May 13 - 08:56 PM

1775:    A Good Year For Revolution, by Kevin Phillips

Among many other points, explores the aftermath of Lexington and Concord.   " The First Continental Congress had specified that the other colonies' support for Boston....would depend on the British being the aggressors". The Patriots were aware of this and acted immediately, sending the news that this had been the case , "prefaced and packaged" on a chain of couriers and fresh horses, Massachusetts to Georgia, with newspapers along the way "embroidering the apocryphal details of atrocities".

In addition, they sent the news on a fast schooner to London so that it could--and was--published in quite a few newspapers there.

They were determined to win the propaganda war on this. And they did.

General Gage sent a terse report-- stating that the Americans had fired first-- which arrived weeks later.   By that time quite a few Britons did not believe him.

It is actually unclear who fired first.

Now, according to a friend of mine who visited Lexington just recently, Lexington is perfectly fine with the idea that the Americans fired --"the shot heard 'round the world"---first.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Ron Davies
Date: 22 May 13 - 09:06 PM

Of course there were many Britons who already were against the American policy of the king and his ministers--and were therefore predisposed to believe the Americans over their own government.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 22 May 13 - 09:16 PM

Just finished Z by Therese Ann Fowler. It's a novelized account of the life of Zelda Fitzgerald. Highly recommended.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 May 13 - 09:24 PM

MtheGM has been wanting me to read a 1987 book by David Lodge titled How Far Can You Go?, a humorous look at young people growing up in the Catholic Church in the 1950s to the 1970s. Right now, the young people are in the early 1960s, and in the process of losing their virginities.

Brings back a lot of funny memories of my growing up Catholic.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: bobad
Date: 22 May 13 - 11:39 PM

"Fug You"....No, I am not railing invective upon the Mudcat community, this is the title of the book I am currently reading. It is Ed Sanders account of the flowering years of New York's downtown bohemia in the '60s starting with his founding of the underground magazine Fuck You/A Magazine of the Arts, the travails of running his Peace Eye Bookstore and the founding of (along with Tuli Kupferberg) and career of his band The Fugs.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Becca72
Date: 23 May 13 - 12:50 PM

Just started "No Regrets - A Rock'n'Roll Memoir" by Ace Frehley

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Bill D
Date: 23 May 13 - 12:59 PM

Once again (never finished it in 2-3 tries)delving into Wonderful Life by Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould.

Much of it is technical detail, but the overall descriptions and astounding implications make my brain churn.

"Gould's thesis in Wonderful Life was that chance was one of the decisive factors in the evolution of life on earth. He based this argument on the wonderfully preserved fossil fauna of the Burgess Shale, animals from around 505 million years ago, just after the Cambrian explosion"

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Rog Peek
Date: 23 May 13 - 01:08 PM

Recently read "Woody, Cisco and Me" - Brilliant, couldn't put it down.

Rog

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: May Queen
Date: 23 May 13 - 03:59 PM

I Bought "Contented Dementia" as recommended on here and the A L Lloyd biography at the same time and am trying to read both at once! I know I can learn a lot to help my poorly mum from the former but the latter is just sooo interesting!

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: jacqui.c
Date: 23 May 13 - 07:45 PM

I'm reading the second book of the Game of Thrones series. Now thinking of joining Netflix just to get hold of the DVDs.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 23 May 13 - 10:20 PM

I'm reading "Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor". Actually, I'm reading about half the book, the side by side transliteration of the cuneiform being beyond my ken.

For relaxation I've recently completed the series of Shardlake mysteries, and John Shakespeare mysteries published to date. It is interesting that two authors would place the setting of their series in Tudor times covering Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, respectively. Having read each series in immediate consecutive order added to my enjoyment of them.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 24 May 13 - 07:19 AM

I've just finished 2 Police Procedural books by Swedish authors.

The Golden Calf / Helene Tursten ; translation by Laura A. Wideburg, 2013

The princess of Burundi / Kjell Eriksson ; translated from the Swedish by Ebba Segerberg, 2006

My local library has further books by each author & I'll be borrowing them asap.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 24 May 13 - 08:25 AM

The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Stories of the Bible by Jonathan Kirsch

It's about all those bizarre stories in the Old Testament that preachers never mention because nobody quite knows how to make sense of them. Examples:

Genesis 19: Lot offers his daughters to a mob of would-be rapists. Later, after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the daughters get Lot drunk and rape him in order to get themselves pregnant.

Genesis 34: Shechem rapes Dinah, then wants to marry her. Dinah's father and brothers negotiate a marriage contract which requires Shechem and his whole tribe to get circumcised. They do so, but then Dinah's brothers attack Shechem's city and kill everyone.

Genesis 38: Tamar, a widow, wants one of her husband's brothers to impregnate her, in accordance with custom, but her father-in-law won't allow it. So Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute and tricks her father-in-law into impregnating her himself.

Judges 11: Jephthah, bargaining for God's support in an upcoming battle, vows to make a sacrifice of whoever first greets him when he returns home. It turns out to be his daughter. Unlike the story of the Binding of Isaac, this one does not end happily.

Kirsch has no definitive answer to what these stories mean and why they are in the Bible, but he reviews all the commentary from the Talmud on down to the latest scholars.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Elmore
Date: 24 May 13 - 09:47 AM

Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: kendall
Date: 24 May 13 - 09:52 AM

I'm reading a book on gravity; can't put it down.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Elmore
Date: 24 May 13 - 01:09 PM

Groan

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: Max Johnson
Date: 24 May 13 - 02:13 PM

So Disdained Nevil Shute. Really good.

Subject: RE: BS: What book are you reading right now
From: GUEST
Date: 24 May 13 - 03:31 PM

'How to Furnish Your House' by Walter Wall Carpeting.