What book are you currently reading, and

[MoseyWalker]

can you tell us how you feel about that book?

[Redbear]

1. Im reading Chomsky's "Failed States"

and its great but very depressing.

[Der Blaue Engel]

6. Okay, now I feel really stupid

:blush: :D

[Der Blaue Engel]

2. Blue Moon, by Laurell K. Hamilton

Part of the "Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter" series. It's guilty pleasure reading, and not terribly well written but requires none of that pesky "thinking."

[Droopy]

3. I'm currently reading the manual to my new digital camera

It's rather dry. They need to do something to spruce up those things- maybe a few pictures or something.

[MoseyWalker]

8. been there recently, done that

it is so dry, has incomplete information to provide for a good story, and leaves one feeling used.

[MoseyWalker]

4. I should have warned everyone

I'm bookmarking and going to buy a bunch of what's recommended. I'm in a "buy books till you die" kinda frame of mind right now!

[ruiner4u]

5. *sniff*... I cant read!

Otherwise it would be the guide to British Byrds

[MoseyWalker]

7. why can't you read?

are there any alternatives?

I wish you the best.

[Mz Pip]

9. Tyrannosaur Canyon

Recommended by someone here on DU. Pretty good. SOrt of a cross between Michael Chriton and Tony Hillerman. Desert canyons, dinosaurs and murder. Not bad for a rainy afternoon.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[cwydro]

10. I'm reading Out Of Africa

again. She writes beautifully. It's like a dream.

Also reading a number of Everest books. Got fascinated re the 1996 disaster. But always interested -and then the boy I grew up across the street from many years ago summitted in '04. Wow.

[reyd reid reed]

11. I'm reading The Husband...

it's no-think reading, but this time of year that's all I can manage. It's zipping along like a house a-fire, though.

Damn.

[momophile]

12. The Ugly American, again

it's for a book club next week. This book makes me mad as hell, and it makes me proud as hell. Mad that we (the US) have screwed up so much on foriegn relations, and proud that I served in the Peace Corps.

[MoseyWalker]

13. I'm proud of you, and hope

you tell some stories sometime about your experiences.

[momophile]

15. thank you, that was nice of you

every now and then I drop a Peace Corps story. Too many and people want to kick me.
:hi:

[alarimer]

14. Just started "On Beauty" by Zadie Smith

I enjoyed her other books. I read everything that I can and it makes no difference to me if something is hyped up the wazoo as the next Hemingway or is considered "trash".

I have probably read everything on Oprah's reading club for example. Not because she endorsed it necessarily but I wouldn't avoid it just because she endorsed it either. I am a book whore basically. LOL.

As for this book, I haven't gotten into it far enough yet to form any impressions really.

[leftofthedial]

16. The John Lennon Encyclopedia

Exhaustive . . .

I've come to realize that John Lennon was a complete asshole. Yoko was a psycho.

And this book tells *their* side of the story.

I guess such inconceivable success at such an early age takes a toll.

I think he was an asshole before the Beatles even though.

Private and public personas can be so different. I know some pretty famous, pretty "admired" people and some of them are w-a-y the opposite personally, while others are just incredible people all around.

He was nowhere near in George Jones' league as an asshole though--JL was more enigmatic than despicable, while GJ is just despicable.

[MoseyWalker]

18. Well..................

John was never a compete asshole. He, was after all, dealing with personal issues and his own thoughts and ideas at the time, and trying to put it all together into some comprehensive, understandable process.

Yep. Yoko was probably, and probably still is, nuts, but that has to be part of the equation. Look at the accomplishments of John; even the attempted accomplishments.

Sometimes being "ahead" of your peers causes others to feel that a person is an asshole.
Sometimes, others who write of those times with limited understanding have few clues.

I would definitely recommend other Lennon biographies to provide a clearer image.

[leftofthedial]

22. I'm pretty familiar with John

I've read a couple of other biographies, though it's been years and I don't recall the titles--"Imagine" maybe was one. I've been a fan since before the Ed Sullivan Show appearance.

I'm not diminishing his contributions to music, to popular culture or to the peace movement.

But this book has a level of detail that's pretty impressive and it's clear that John was consistently a jerk. He treated people badly throughout his life.

In fairness, he seemed to recognize it about himself from time to time.

[Ikonoklast]

17. "Cicero" by Anthony Everitt

Good biography about one of the greatest politicians that ever lived. Might have been the Karl Rove of his time. My first read by this author, and a fine one.

"The First Emperor" by Everitt is next; bio of Caeser Augustus.

I know, I know, but I really do enjoy this stuff.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

19. A hint on keeping up with newly published books

I subscribe to the New Yorker. It is extremely cheap when you subscribe, considering the amount of reading matter. I recently got two years for $45 at a business rate.

Oftentimes, there are articles that are parts of books in the process of being written. And book reviews of several biographies of one person, as in this week's review of books about Lorenzo da Ponte, who was Mozart's librettist on Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi Fan Tutti.

This also applies to fiction.

In their last issue of the year, they list all the books that parts of have appeared in their pages. If you just read the non-fiction stuff, you'd be pretty damn well informed.

Back in the 70s, they serialized an entire book in three issues, THE FATE OF THE EARTH, by Jonathan Schell. It was about all the detailed effects of a nuclear blast that most of us didn't know about before then. Like the electromagnetic pulse and the blinding of most animals and people who saw the blast.

Anyway, for a voracious reader, I would recommend subscribing to The New Yorker for cheap and wide-ranging reading matter. Probably Harper's and The Atlantic Monthly are also in that category.

Edit: They have authors in there like Malcolm Gladwell("Freakonomics"), Oliver Sacks, and Joan Acocella and Jeffrey Toobin and of course the amazing war correspondent Seymour Hersh.

Some of the articles that are part of books become movies a few years later. The example I remember was the biography of Alfred Kinsey that became "Kinsey" starring Liam Neeson.

[MoseyWalker]

20. thanks for the tip and info

:thumbsup:

[ZombieNixon]

21. Game Guru: Strategy Games

It's one of my college textbooks. It's got some good pictures and it's at least worth a decent skim. :P

[Bullwinkle925]

23. "Saving Fish From Drowning" by Amy Tan ....

Our current book club selection. I've just begun and am enjoying it so far. I like Ms. Tan's narrative style and makes me feel as if the protagonist is actually speaking to me. I'm appreciative of her cynical humor and wit.
Hope you get a wonderful booklist from this thread.
Happy Hunting.
:toast:

[nytemare]

51. I just bought that off of Amazon!

For a buck something. I have loved her books, and loved the movie "Joy Luck Club". They need to make more of her books into films.

[deadparrot]

24. Two:

"A Feast for Crows," by George R. R. Martin, and "Islam in the World," by Malise Ruthven.

The former is for pleasure, and is the fourth book in a fantasy series I love, so I'm enjoying it considerably more than the latter, which is coursework; it's interesting, but a little dry and is basically recapping a story I already knew.

[Orsino]

25. The Barsoom Project

Part of the nigh-forgotten Niven-Barnes Dream Park series. Just finished a holiday dash through all the Potters.

[seemunkee]

26. A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke

About an English bussinesman who goes to France to work for a year. Not sure if I like it yet only a short way into it.

[YankeyMCC]

27. The Aeneid

This is odd because I thought I had already replied to this thread but just noticed my post isn't here.

Oh well.

I'm enjoying it a great deal. I like the ancient classics and Virgil is a poetic as Homer yet something about the story is almost modern in how it flows making it a little easier to follow. Very enjoyable and classic.

[CrownPrinceBandar]

28. Heinlein's "Citizen of the Galaxy"........

Its ponderous and boring.

[BreweryYardRat]

29. I'm bouncing around-Bernard Cornwell and John Maddox Roberts.

Cornwell's "The Pale Horseman" and Roberts' "A Point of Law."

Both are excellent.

[Superman Returns]

30. The Looming Tower

This scholarly book is one of the most fascinating book I've ever read, detailing the rise of Zawahiri, Bin Laden, and the modern Islamic terrorist movement. Extremely detailed, fair, and gripping. You learn that these people literally want to turn back time and remove all modernity and secularism from the Middle East yet you also get a 3 dimensional view of their personalities and that they are not evil incarnate but simply men rebelling against a political order they feel is against the life dictated by Muhammed.

I know Chris Wallace used this book to criticize Bill Clinton, but he just plucked one thing out about Somalia and and exaggerated it. Honestly, if anything influenced Bin Laden about his view of American "weakness" it was Vietnam and at barracks bombing and retreat from Lebanon; both happened under Republican Presidents. In the book, Bin Laden constantly cites these two events, and as also mentioned, Bin Laden took a lot of credit for terrorist attacks like Somalia, but in actuality had little involvement.

[Parrcrow]

31. The Good Earth

My daughter has to read it for school, so I'm reading in case she wants to bounce some ideas off me.

Its great.

[GenDem]

32. "The Audacity of Hope" by Barack Obama

I'm only to page 35, but it is very good.

[Nikia]

33. I'm reading Collapse again

Maybe, I should read books that will help me feel more positive instead of a bit depressed.

[WCGreen]

34. The first Nero Wolf book....

And Guns, Germs and Steel...

[Critters2]

35. Saved from Sacrifice by S. Mark Heim

He was my systematics prof in seminary, and is now this Girardian guru-type. I really think Rene' Girard is onto something, theologically-speaking, and Mark makes it more accesible for the simple-minded like me!

I'm likin' it!

[tigereye]

36. just finished The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

it was very good - the language and descriptions were beautiful. But there was something lost in the narrative, I'm not sure what. I'm also halfway through re-reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith. The books have a lot of similarities in their cultural analysis of the immigrant and the diaspora.

I'm also reading a mystery by Sujata Massey called The Bride's Kimono. Fun characters and setting.

[UTUSN]

37. An oldie, "Eva, Evita: The Life and Death of Eva PERON" by

Paul L. MONTGOMERY, 1979. Excellent detail about the obscene shennigans, moral and political, of the PERONs. I knew they were fascist pigs, but the devil is in the details, or the details ARE the devil. Now I hope nobody posts that whoever this MONTGOMERY is is a wingnut pig himself. He actually uses the word "SUCK" in describing Juan PERON's activities with minor girls.

Just before this, it was Kitty KELLEY's "SINATRA". What can I say, it was beneath me back when it was new, but I'm INto KK now, and only wish she had done it really really good on the BUSHes the way she did Frank and Nancy. KELLEY does a fantastic job in gathering masses of verified details. SINATRA was a horrendous sociopath. Amazing how the superficial image the media most often transmits can be SO ignoring of the real persons.

Next will be KK's Jackie Oh, just to finish my lifetime KK jag. What can I say, I was at a used book store.

[Strawman]

38. Mutual Contempt - Jeff Shesol

About the feud between RFK and LBJ. Only part way in, probably won't finish before classes start again and I have no time to read non-class-related stuff, but I'd highly recommend it.

[retread]

39. "A People's History of the United States" Howard Zinn. Fascinating read about

how we got to where we are.

[WCGreen]

48. I think, as he gets chronicles our time, he loses objectivity because

he was such a part of the left protests from the 50's on...

[Penndems]

40. I'm re-reading "Last Train to Memphis", by Peter Guralnick

It's Volume One of a two-part biography he wrote on Elvis Presley. Absolutely the best chronicle of the man's life you will ever read. Guralnick's writing style is such that the book reads more like a novel than a biography.

I highly recommend both "Last Train to Memphis", as well as Volume Two, "Careless Love", which covers Elvis from 1958 to his death.

[Xipe Totec]

41. City of Silence - Listening to Hiroshima

The author is a co-worker. She gave me a copy. Very powerful stories.

[Rabrrrrrr]

42. "Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation" by Brueggemann

It's fantastic!!

[XemaSab]

43. Deep Survival,

Dummies Guide to Horses, Return to Wild America, and... nothing else right now. :(

They're all good. :)

[gemdem]

44. I'm reading two books right now

"Team of Rivals" and "John Adams" -- both excellent reads. They're autobiographies, but almost read like historical novels as they bring their subjects to life.

[edbermac]

45. Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953 by David Bronstein.

Riveting action on the board.

[Richard Steele]

46. I am 31 pages into "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer.

I would normally be about 150 pages along by now,
but this is a book that really forces me to slow
down and pay attention to every word.
About half of it is second-language, semi-stream-of-consciousness
narration from a Ukranian teenager armed with
a single semester of English and a goddamn THESAURUS.

That sounds like unreadable crap, dunnit? But it isn't.
It's just brilliantly done, and I already recommend it highly
after only 31 pages.

[PADemD]

47. "Dark Nature, A Natural History of Evil" by Dr. Lyall Watson

From the cover:

"A stunning exploration of the origin and nature of evil.
-Can rampant worldwide violence be dismissed as "human nature"?
-What can account for everyday acts of murder and terrorism, the Holocaust, or the Unabomber?
-Why have we learned to accept atrocities in modern cultures?
-What is the source of evil?

"Utilizing a vast array of sources, from Charles Darwin to Annie Dillard, Watson examines the driving forces behind behavior as well as the invisible order that preserves the delicate balance between "civilized" society and anarchy. Dark Nature is a monumental exploration of the forces that hold our world together."

[ashling]

49. Moral Minority by Brooke Allen

actually, I just finished it. Its about the "big 6" founding fathers (Franklin, Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Madion, and Hamilton) and what they reakky felt about religion and the seperation of church and state rather than what Falwell et al. say about them.

I had just finished the section on Jefferson when I read about Ellison taking the oath on TJs Koran. I have been meaning to post on the topic.

Jefferson goes to great lengths to show that our common law did not derive from Christianity.

I find these passages about Madison very enlightening in light of the Koran/oath thing and the Air Force/Evangelism thing:

Oaths with a religious foundation, such as those sworn on the Bible, Madison found equally unconstitutional.

" Is not a religious test as far as it is necessary, or would operate, involved in the oath itself? If a person swearing
believes in the Supreme Being who is invoked, and in the penal consequences of offending him, either in this or a future
world or both, he will be under the same restrint from perjury as if he had previously subscribed to a test requiring
this belief. If the person in question be an unbeliever in these points and would notwithstanding take the oath, a
previous test could have no effect. He would subscribe it as he would take the oath, without any principle that could
be affected by either.

****

"The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of
Constitutional principles *** The Constitution of the U.S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national
religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religios worship fo the national representatives, to be performed
by Ministers of Religion, elected by a majority of them; and these aare to be paid out of the national taxes. Does
this not involve the principle of a religious worship for the Constitution as well as the representative Body, approved
by a majority, and conducted by Ministers of rligion paid by the entire nation?

*****

"Better to diarm in the same way, the precedent of Chaplainships for the army and the navy, than to erect them into
a political authority in matters of religion *** Look 'thro the armies & navies of the world, and say whether in the
appointment of ministers of religion, the spiritual interest of the flocks or temporal interest of the Shepherds, be most
in view: whether here, as elsewhere the political care of religion is not a nominal more than a real aid."

(pages 123 - 117)

This was a really good book.

[haf216]

50. I reading three right now

Dune Frank Hebert -Just started it so I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get into it.

True stories of Law & Order. It was a xmas gift. It's pretty good. At lest now I know what they mean by "ripped from the headlines."

Under the Banner of Heaven Jon Krakauer- I'm rereading this, it is a really good book, and I usually pick up something new when I reread nonfiction.

And I just finished Eden Close-Anita Shreve It's a easy read, but a good one.

[ellisonz]

52. Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy...

A beautiful work.

:patriot:

[hippywife]

53. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

I'm not far into it but so far I like her style.

I'm also reading "Living Peace" by Fr. John Dear, SJ.

[fudge stripe cookays]

54. "Thunderstruck" by Erik Larson

Very cool.

And like "The Devil in the White City" it is very much a study in contrasts. That one compared the incredible vision of the men who created the 1893 Columbian exhibition in Chicago, trying to create this beautiful idealized "White City" with the monster killer Holmes who was murdering people while it was going on.

This one contrasts the vision of Guglielmo Marconi in creating the wireless with the murderer Hawley Harvery Crippen (who killed his wife), and brings together how he was apprehended later with his girlfriend by the use of the device.

I had always been interested in the story of Crippen, his wife Belle Elmore, and girlfriend Ethel LeNeve. This gives you much more background. The captain of the ship they took across the Atlantic from London saw the man and his "son" behaving in a less than father/son fashion, and wired Scotland Yard that he thought the wanted killer was onboard. A detective was able to catch a faster ship across the ocean and apprehend them when they debarked.

The captain later achieved even more notoriety as the captain of the Empress of Ireland, which sank in the St. Lawrence in 1914, with just about as many victims as the Titanic.