What are you reading the week of March 21, 2010?

[DUgosh]

Outlaw Mountain by JA Jance

[WhiteTara]

1. The Tree Book by Jeff Meyers

and various articles on mushroom culture and of course, seed catalogs.

Planted the first tray of seeds yesterday.

[Chemisse]

2. I just finished Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

[azmouse]

3. "The Year of Living Biblically" by AJ Jacobs

It's both funny and informative.

[hippywife]

4. God's Problem by Bert Ehrman (non-fiction)

God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer.

[abluelady]

5. "as it was written" by Sujatha Hampton

[YankeyMCC]

6. Sounds from the unknown: a collection of Japanese-American tanka

translated by Lucille M. Nixon and Tomoe Tana.

[NEOhiodemocrat]

7. A Place Of Execution by Val McDermid

and The Alantis Code by Charles Brokaw

[pscot]

8. Just finished the Tawny Man trilogy

by Robin Hobb. I don't read much fantasy, but these kept me up past my bedtime for more than a week. I'm reading Best American Essays of 2008 and Best Essays on Abraham Lincoln, and I have a Ross Thomas krimi on top of my book pile.

[LWolf]

9. Just finished one and started another:

I just finished "The Art of Racing In The Rain" by Garth Stein. A moving story about a dog and his man. While I enjoyed this book, written from the perspective of the dog at the end of his life, I preferred "Sight Hound" by Pam Houston for this type of story.

I just started "We Need To Talk About Kevin" by Lionel Shriver. It's written in a series of long, unanswered letters from a wife to her estranged husband. 400 pages of unanswered letters. Fortunately, she is reminiscing and so, as she brings up her memories, there are a few interactions where conversation is not all one-sided.

It's kind of creepy so far; she's dancing around the event that destroyed their lives and marriage (their son shot up his high school) yet still, writing the letters is obviously her way of processing the tragedy. Talking to the only person who could possibly relate, even though they are no longer "talking."

[JesterCS]

10. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

Sue me. i love Star Wars. have read my 30 or so SW books about 30 times each lol. They never get old.

[Broken_Hero]

11. Just finished Tommyknockers this past weekend,

its one of Kings more...bleh novels, I give it a 4 out of 10, 5 being average.

I'm currently reading Last Days of Krypton by a Kevin Anderson. So far its really not grabbing me, but I'm only 30 some pages deep. After this book I think I'm going to read Wizards First Rule by T. Goodkind.

[vixengrl]

12. What a nice week I'm having-- I've gotten

Charles Stross' The Trade of Queens (finished it--liked the political overtones, can see where there might be some more story-lines, and as always, I dig Stross' style and humor) John Scalzi's The God Engines (really a dark little long short story--something different from him, but enjoyable), also, I found Martin Amis' The War Against Cliche for $3 at a discount store.

(I've been on something of a literary kick since reading Clive James' Cultural Amnesia and discovering Hitchen's literary reviewing in his collection Love, Poverty, and War Amis quotes James as saying that literature does not depend upon literary criticism, but society depends upon both--to which my first thought was, "I like my job, too". But no, I was a lit. major- so I find I gravitate to this stuff.)

And I'm just short of finishing an awfully fun novel I also got at the discount store--The Chinatown Death Cloud by Paul Malmont. This was so much fun because I cut my teeth as a juvenile on those pulp Amazing Stories authors (um, forty years after they came out--I'm not so old!) Having some of these authors as characters in a pulp-style plot was a hoot and a half.

Today I picked up a graphic novel: Joe Sacco's Palestine--I'm about halfway through, and really--I encourage people to read this who haven't. Also, I got The Invention of Air by Stephen Johnson--it's about scientist Joseph Priestly who discovered oxygen and was apparently even cooler than just that! And I got Book Six of The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy from Eoin Colfer, because it isn't healthy to just dislike the ideas of books on principle without confronting their existence, and also I got Jeff Vandermeer's Finch.

An eight-book week is an awesome thing.

[fadedrose]

13. THE MOONPOOL by P. T. Deutermann

Didn't care for. The moonpool is a deep pit that holds waste water at a nuclear facility. I liked THE CAT DANCERS and SPIDER MOUNTAIN by this author, but speed read thru this and couldn't wait till I was done.

[fadedrose]

14. RETIREMENT HOMES ARE MURDER by Mike befeler

Cute story about guys in their eighties solving a murder...