What are you reading the week of June 6, 2010?

[DUgosh]

The Shadow Dancers by Margaret Coel A Windriver Mystery

[CoffeeCat]

1. She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb...

I'm a little late to the party. This book was all the rage a while back.

I thought it looked interesting and wanted to give it a try. I'm only on
chapter three, but I am incredibly impressed with the richly detailed writing
and the interesting characters.

I'm into it.

[Captain Hilts]

3. I came close to reading that once. I might give it a look now. nt

[JeffersonChick]

9. She's Come Undone - I enjoyed that one.

[AngryOldDem]

33. It's really good.

"I Know This Much Is True" is also excellent.

[Onceuponalife]

37. They're both great

I love Wally Lamb. "True" is my favorite.

[murray hill farm]

2. Rereading Kurt Vonnegut this summer.

Just finished "Cat's Cradle" this evening! Moving on to "Slaughter House Five" now. It has been so long since I read these books, it is like reading them for the first time. Maybe even better.

[JeffersonChick]

10. Which one is your favorite? n/t

[murray hill farm]

20. Sirens of Titan.....

or maybe Cat's Cradle....oh wait, I loved Breakfast of Chamnpions and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. But wait...Slaughterhouse-Five is great. Ha! Who can choose!

[XemaSab]

4. Just wrapped up Lolita for the 5th time

:D

[On the Road]

7. I Loved That Book

Nabokov was a magician with words. As a teacher he always mocked the idea that good literature was "simple and sincere." It is deceptive, he would say, and extremely complex.

I am reading Lawrence Durrell's Justine for the fourth time myself. It gets better every time.

[Bobbieo]

12. Just finished Nelson DeMille's 'The Lion's Game' published in 2000

The antagonist, Asad Khalil, survived and is again in a new DeMille novel, "The Lion".
DeMille is a fascinating writer with an acerbic tongue! Those fundamentalist Muslims are something else!!! Descending from a matrilinial native tribe makes it difficult for me to understand their sexism.

[On the Road]

23. XemaSab, You Might be Interested in This Clip of Nabokov Discussing Lolita

on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldpj_5JNFoA

Found it by accident last night. Also, here's part of a fictional film depicting Nabokov as an English teacher:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boSFjzWJXcU&feature=related

If you haven't checked out Nabokov's nonfiction, it is very worthwhile. Several books of college lectures on respectively literature, Russian literature, and Don Quixote (which he says everyone misinterprets). Also his autobiography, parts of which has some of his best writing IMO.

Never thought of looking for this kind of thing on Youtube, but there's a ton of stuff, including TS Eliot and Dylan Thomas reading their own works.

[XemaSab]

26. Interesting clip

You're right, I never would have thought to look for that on the YouTubes. :)

[Starbucks Anarchist]

5. "Noir" by Olivier Pauvert.

It's a France-based murder mystery/thriller with a political bent.

[GirlAfire]

6. Against My Will...

...I am reading notes from my CivPro class and five books on the subject. UGH. No more personal jurisdiction, I beg of you!

[Liberation Angel]

8. Always have a stack by my bed, but not too much fiction

I read the New Yorker every week (a Christmas gift from my 20 year old daughter with great short stories and better reporting)

Reading Shirer's "The Nightmare Years" about the rise of the Nazis from 1930-39 (because it mirrors the rise of the BushNazis and the still present threat of fascism here and globally. (He was a journalist for a Chicago paper and others in Germany who wrote Rise and Fall of the Third Reich).

Just read Arthur Koestler's story of being in a Stalinist prison

and a book called "the Divine Matrix" (or something like that) about synchronicities, quantum mechanics and the holographic/fractal universe.

Also ancient texts on Northeast Native history (early colonial primary documents on culture, religion, language etc by people who took good notes and wrote their observations and actually TALKED to Native folks and paid attention)

Finally, I often have a few books around about stuff like the Essenes, Gnostic stuff, archaeology, ancient and prophetic writings (and hallucinations I imagine) and I love to read some Edgar Cayce, Blavatsky and stuff on the Vedas, Tibetan stuff, Anthroposophy Lemuria, anything ancient and wild in our gnarly history of thoughts and imaginings.

Not to mention my stuff on herbs, healing and Shambala warriorness

That's just what's scattered around my bed and bedside desk and nightstands.

Hey - You asked

But understanding the Nazi stuff is important to me - to understand the relevance to what is afoot right now with global corporofascism.

So tonight its Shirer: The Nightmare Years (because we are in them again in many ways - and it may actually be a WORSE precursor to what followed now than then only now we are ALL going to be treated as the Jews in Europe were treated.

[JeffersonChick]

11. I'm reading The Accidental Santeria

[TheMadMonk]

13. Niven and Pournelle at the moment.

Something here prompted me to pick up the Mote in God's eye and chisel the dust off.

[krispos42]

29. Always a good read...

...the first time I read that book it was very difficult to stop reading.



I was reading Niven and Pournelle this week, too... "The Legacy of Heorot".

[MrSlayer]

14. I'm re-reading the Forgotten Realms Drizzt series by R.A. Salvatore.

Currently in the Paths of Darkness trilogy. Just brilliant fantasy writing.

[Ernesto]

15. I'm trying to "read" my immediate family's mind-set. nt

[DUgosh]

40. I've read that one before

But not very well and I won't try it againg life's to short

[old mark]

16. Reading through all of Nelson DeMille's work in order...sadly, I'm starting the last one

except the current book that I don't have yet...

mark

[pnorman]

17. Several this past week, all "spoken word books" from Audible.com

One of them was "The Big Rich", about the four largest Texas oil families/dynasties. It comes in three parts, and I've marked the second part for re-reading in the immediate future. That part includes much on their role in far-right politics.

I'm posting here mainly so that I can follow this thread more easily, for suggestions on what next to read.

[scubadude]

18. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

OOps, it's not fiction. Oh well, it's what I'm reading at the moment.


The authors own synopsis:

This book employs the comparative method to understand societal collapses to which environmental problems contribute. My previous book (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies), had applied the comparative method to the opposite problem: the differing rates of buildup of human societies on different continents over the last 13,000 years. In the present book focusing on collapses rather than buildups, I compare many past and present societies that differed with respect to environmental fragility, relations with neighbors, political institutions, and other "input" variables postulated to influence a society's stability. The "output" variables that I examine are collapse or survival, and form of the collapse if collapse does occur. By relating output variables to input variables, I aim to tease out the influence of possible input variables on collapses.

It is very good. He is a great author.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_%28book%29

Scuba

[hippywife]

19. We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates.

Don't know why I've never read any of her books before now.

[murray hill farm]

21. A wonderful book!

Loved it!

[hippywife]

22. I'm a little concerned

that it might turn very depressing. I'm at the point just after the prom.

[murray hill farm]

24. Keep going!!

If you quit now, you will be depressed. Not so if you finish it.

[hippywife]

25. Thanx, I will.

I wasn't planning on putting it down. I couldn't at this point anyway. :hi:

[murray hill farm]

27. It is one of the best books that I have ever read!!

It will stay with you for a long time. You will be glad that you read it.

[JitterbugPerfume]

28. I 'm finishing Cannery Row

and next I will read something by Philip K. Dick. Maybe The Man in the High Castle or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep .


I am ready for something different .

Cannery Row is pure poetry . If you haven't read it , do so. NO one writes like Stenbeck

[YankeyMCC]

30. The Windup Girl

by Paolo Bacigalupi

[japple]

31. Just finished reading Steve Martin's The Pleasure of My Company

which was a very pleasant surprise. I had trouble getting into it until I let myself go and wander along with the main character. Then I realized how crazy-wonderful, brilliant and sweet he was. It was fun and I'll look forward to reading Shopgirl.

I'm now reading Valerie Martin's book, Trespass.

[closeupready]

32. Ruth Rendell's Sight For Sore Eyes.

n/t

[azmouse]

34. "Contagious" by Scott Sigler

[fadedrose]

35. JUNKYARD DOGS by Craig Johnson

This is the fifth in the series about Sheriff Walt Longmire in Wyoming . . .

Do yourself a favor and read it, better to start with the first one..

http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/J_Authors/Johnson_Craig.html


Do yourself another favor and read James Doss' series about Charlie Moon, Ute police officer in Colorado.

http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/D_Authors/Doss_James.html


These are all mysteries with a bunch of humor....

[matt819]

36. Here goes

Just finished Close Case by Alafair Burke and am about to start 212. She's James Lee Burke's daughter and is a good writer in her own right. Mostly the usual police procedural (the Ellie Hatcher books) or the DA procedural (Sam something or other). Good reads.

Also just finished listening to 14 by TJ Ellison and have started Judas Kiss. Also police procedurals. Not great, but passes the time. She strains a bit on her metaphors - blood at a crime scene is the victim's fatal essence. Also, gerbera daisies turn up in every book, and the reader pronounces it with a hard g, and that drives me nuts.

Still making my way through the audiobook of Under the dome by Stephen King. In the middle third right now. Only listen occasionally, but I'm enjoying it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

38. Bedside book: The Remains of an Altar by Phil Rickman

It's part of series of ambiguously supernatural mysteries dealing with the traditions of the Welsh border country.

I just finished my latest purse book, Real World, by Natsuo Kirino, and I haven't figured out yet what the next one will be.

[bluethruandthru]

39. A Reliable Wife....wow!

About halfway through...never a dull moment in this book!