What are y'all reading?

Was going to post a "what are y'all reading?" thread but decided to call this one forth from the archives...

I'm currently reading It by Stephen King. Man what a ride! This novel is on par with my other favorite SK novel The Stand. I just read about the first visit to the house on Neibolt street and I'm assured that there's another visit which is supposedly even MORE descriptive and scary. YIKES!! :D I've been reading books for a number of years (in the Army I thought those "cargo pockets" on BDU's were specifically designed to hold paperbacks) and that scene was among the most descriptive, gripping, frightening, and pure-D kick@ss I've ever come across. I was THERE man!

Just finished Be Cool by Elmore Leonard. That dude has dialogue down cold. Just how does an eighty (plus) year old man write such accurate dialogue between streetwise gangsters? Amazing.

Come on people, what are you reading??? :eek:
 
I just finished One Man's Wilderness by Sam Keith. It's based on the journals of Richard Proenneke. It's about the first year he spent up in Alaska on Lake Clark. He built his own cabin, and survived off the land for the most part.
 
Just finished "Jeff Cooper-The Soul and The Spirit" a biography of the Col. by his youngest daughter Lindy Wisdom....excellent inspirational read!!:cool:
 
Recently finished Biggest Brother, the biography of Major Richard Winters of the 101st Airborne. I'll start Caleb Carr's The Italian Secretary tonight, a new Sherlock Holmes mystery by the author of The Alienist.
 
Just read Tony Horwitz, "Baghdad Without a Map". Mrs. Horwitz was working in the Middle East, so Tony was trying to freelance from there. It made a darn good book though, and it did money.

Now I'm on to William Langewiesche, "Sahara Unveiled". Supposed to be one of the best travel books ever. (And it turns out, he lives in my home town of Davis much of the time. Who woulda known?)
 
Currently reading Biggest Brother: The Life of Major Dick Winters, the Man Who Led the Band of Brothers.


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The Thieves' Opera: The Remarkable Lives and Deaths of Jonathan Wild, Thief-Taker, and Jack Sheppard, Housebreaker.

The author - Lucy Moore - studies the world of 18th century crime and punishment using these two men as her central characters.

Excellent stuff so far.

Available from Amazon here.

maximus otter
 
I just finished "The zombie survival guide".Funny as hell and well written.I'm currently borrowing "The battle of Britan" from my grandmother.She is a ww2 vet and survivor of the blitz so this book has some extra depth.
 
Well, the aforementioned Alafair Burke novel did not read as well as her father's works, but Jack Whyte's, "The Lance Thrower" did read well.

I just finished Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, a novel about three generations in search of the real Dracula, Vlad III Tepes. Is he still alive and a threat to them and where do those books come from? This is a 600+ page book that picks up momentum like a heavy train, slowly at first, but then it becomes unstoppable.

I am now reading the second of two collaborations by S. M. Stirling and David Drake, The Warlord and The Conqueror. These are actually a rerelease of five former paperback novels, long out of print, that make up "The Raj Whitehead Saga". This is a series of stories set on an Earth colony planet after the collapse of the interstellar empire had led to the loss of interstellar flight and the loss of almost all techonology. The planet on which Raj finds himself is more or less at the technology of Earth in the 1870s or so and the political structures are very much based upon the Eastern Roman Empire around the beginning of the 6th Century CE and the reign of Justinian and Theodora. Raj is, clearly, the Byzantine general Belisarius, and he is picked by a battle computer left over from the pre-collapxe days to be an instrument to reunite the world and to begin the climb back to the stars. The books are good stuff if you like military s-f. The authors wrote a sequel in which the cloned mind of Raj and his computer were sent by a probe to a planet that was clearly modelled upon the Rome of the late Republic of the 1st Century BCE. The book is The Reformer and there is a sequel by Drake and Eric Flint (with whom Drake collaborates in the "Belisarius Series"), The Tyrant. I read them first and they are also good reads.
 
I just finished reading Diary by Chuck Palahniuk. Great off beat, dark humored book.

Currently reading two others, The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison and Collector of Hearts, Joyce Carol Oates. Bluest Eye is just a chance to sample Morrison's work after she won the Nobel Prize (the book holds your attention, especially when you know that the main character will slowly go nuts). Collector is a bunch of short stories by Oates; she has very unique views in short story writing.
 
I just finished the latest Harry Potter book and now I'm reading The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. I read Angels and Demons by Brown a couple of weeks ago and I enjoyed it so I'm trying another.

I've been reading James Joyce's Ulysses for 27 years.
 
Chris Mapp said:
I just finished One Man's Wilderness by Sam Keith. It's based on the journals of Richard Proenneke. It's about the first year he spent up in Alaska on Lake Clark. He built his own cabin, and survived off the land for the most part.
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Have you also seen the "Alone in the Wilderness" DVD featuring Richard Proenneke's film footage? I'm guessing you have, since watching the DVD was what got me to read the book in the first place, but you never know... Good stuff.

I'm currently revisiting The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
 
Reading Gabrielle Walker's Snowball Earth - an interesting tale regarding geologist Paul Hoffman and how he postulated a revised theory of global catastrophe - that of the earth freezing over completely (not your normal Ice Age) - and how it triggered the Cambrian Explosion spawning the diversity of life as we now know it. Although the concept was first promulgated around the 1940s or 50s by Brian Harland and is met with criticism yet today it is a fascinating read and I have to admit I had been ignorant of the theory until The Science Channel's "Miracle Planet" series hooked me into it. Cool (literally) stuff!!! :D

"Miracle Planet" is a Most Excellent series BTW
 
Currently "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton, and "Preparing Sons to Provide for a Single-Income Family." by Steve Maxwell. Just finished Philip K Dick's "A Scanner Darkley" and just did not get what the hype on that one was about.

Patrick
 
heathah said:
Foxe's Book of Martyrs

Helps me put everything in perspective.
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The Anglicans make a huge deal out of those of their faith martyred by the Roman Catholics but are strangely silent about the Dissenters from the Anglican Church who died in prisons or were duly executed by the state.


Mycroftt, what did you make of H.P. & The Half Blood Prince? Please respond by PM so as not to give anythin away to those who have yet to read it. I will also be very curious to hear what you make of The DaVinci Code since I read it last year.
 
Marcelo Cantu said:
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stevenson is one of the coolest book I've ever read. No life changing moments and also very long but just superb.
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Hi Marcelo. Is 'Cryptonomicon' really heavy on Math? Not my strong suit. I've read a couple of reviews and got that impression. The book otherwise sounds fascinating.
 
Well, since I have taken that quiz which revealed that Satanism was the right religion for me I've got me a socalled Satanic Bible written by Anton Szandor LaVey. I have read most of it and I must say it's interesting reading though I don't agree with some of its premises and practices (for example witchcraft which I hold in true contempt) . However for the most part it's nothing spectacular written there, mostly common/earthly sense which is self-evident to freethinking and non-submisive individual.
 
cgd160 said:
I just finished (last night) the Gunslinger/Dark Tower by King . It only took 20 years :eek: . Now I'm going to move on to Underworld by Graham Hancock .
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Hi CGD. I've read a couple of Graham Hancock books. Good stuff. Let us know how 'Underworld' is. Write a review! THX...ADBF
 
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