What are you reading?

[JoeP]

I've just finished The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien, which is an epic fantasy about a quest to destroy the One Ring through which the Dark Lord of the title would be able to conquer and control all Middle-Earth.

I'm now ripping through the Narnia series which, OK well you know that one too.

[D. Scarlatti]

I was reading H.L. Mencken's obituary of William Jennings Bryan, and laughing so hard I literally shit myself. Fortunately I was sitting on the toilet at the time.

[wei yau]

I'm about to start Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana.

If I finish this before my trip to London, I'll need to get another book.

[pescifish]

Originally Posted by JoeP

...which is an epic fantasy about a quest to destroy the One Ring through which the Dark Lord of the title would be able to conquer and control all Middle-Earth.

[TomJoe]

I just re-up'd my subscription to First Things and the January issue just arrived in the mail yesterday.

[TomJoe]

Originally Posted by Warren

I'm reading Wicked - The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, kind of a prequel to The Wizard of Oz.

I saw that book in Borders. It looked interesting. How is/was it?

[Ymir's blood]

Started reading The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux today. Not much left, I should finish it tomorrow.

[Adora]

Temaraire by Naomi Novik. Dragons, the navy, and Napolean. Eh, good summer reading.

[username]

It occured to me that I never respond to thise sorts of threads so I figured I would break with tradition.

I am currently reading "Awakening the Buddha Within" by Lama Surya Das. Seems pretty good so far although I am only about 30 or so pages into it.

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

Harry Potter 5: Order of the Phoenix, but I'll finish it soon, so my mommy bought me book 6.

Some book called The Living Legacy of Marx, Durkheim, & Weber.

[Veritas]

[Ymir's blood]

I finished up The Phantom of the Opera yesterday and started on Stephen King's Danse Macabre, a discussion of horror from the Fifties to 1980.

[pescifish]

I started in on another Terry Pratchett book, Thud!.

And I ordered some books from Amazon.com, so the next book will be Good Omens, the Pratchett/Gaiman collaboration. Another Gaiman book was on the order, plus a couple of Tanith Lee's.

[Ymir's blood]

I finished Stephen King's Danse Macabre yesterday and started on Personal Darkness by Tanith Lee. That was finished today. Tomorrow will probably Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by R.L. Stevenson.

[godfry n. glad]

The Great Wall of China, by Arthur Waldron.

In response to a thread here at ff, I requested this via the interacademic libraries lending system and dropped the other three books I was reading to "scan" this. Unsurprisingly, I've been sucked into it.

It's mostly about Ming dealings with the neighboring nomads and how the "Great Wall" is a very modern distinction, there having been "walls" and "long walls" back into Chinese history to the fourth century BCE.

Those walls are not much like the western conception of the Great Wall...that conception being based upon the Great Wall which now exists and is a product of the Ming dynasty in the 16th century CE. Instead, they were primarily rammed earth or mud brick walls.

The author repeatedly makes the point that wall-building was a punctuated event in Chinese history, occurring when other measures to deal with nomad neighbors, including trade, tribute, and military cohersion, had failed. This, he amply demonstrates, was often due to the factionalism of the imperial court.

[godfry n. glad]

More!

I have sinned. When the last ones came, they came with a special offer sheet. I couldn't resist.

So, I got:

Eastern Religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto, an Oxford Press book edited by Michael D. Coogan.

The Fate of the Corps: What Became of the Lewis and Clark Explorers After the Expedition, by Larry E. Morris.

The Root of the Wild Madder: Chasing the History, Mystery, and Lore of the Persian Carpet, by Brian Murphy.

and

The Complete World of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Philip R. Davies, George J. Brooke and Phillip R Callaway.

Now I have to place them all away so I can continue my conversation with liv about the wall-building phenomena.



Now I shall go see how much I have to pay for my sins.

[Ymir's blood]

In my last post, I'd said my next book was to be The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by R.L. Stevenson. It has been read but while digging through stacks of books trying to find it, another book caught my eye. The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession and the Everlasting Dead by Heather Pringle. It was purchased sometime last year, IIRC, at Barnes and Noble in the discounted section but forgotten about as I was reading fantasy at the time.

An excellent book, it starts out by talking about the Mummy Congress, a worldwide gathering of mummy expert/enthusiasts that took place in Chile. Then it goes on to cover the mummies of Egypt and South America, bog people, the Roman Catholic Incorruptibles and then the people responsible for keeping Lenin's corpse daisy fresh. The final part discusses cryonics and even has a passing reference to the disembodied heads in Futurama. There is also a full color photo section showing some of the mummies and related subjects discussed.

Yesterday, I started on 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King.

[Crumb]

And what is wrong with my new book thread? Hmmm?

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by Crumb

And what is wrong with my new book thread? Hmmm?

Hey! I posted there. This one has seniority over yours. Plus, your thread is....your thread.

[Ymir's blood]

Originally Posted by Crumb

And what is wrong with my new book thread? Hmmm?

I didn't say anything was wrong with it. It wouldn't have made much since for me to post an update in a different thread though.

[SharonDee]

Just to update liv ... she and wei yau are granted stays of execution. I thoroughly enjoyed The First Man in Rome and am taking a breather before starting The Grass Crown.

In the between-time, I have read the latest Stephen King book, Cell, and have begun Terry Pratchett's Once More: With Footnotes. I'll probably read Pratchett's The Unadulterated Cat after that.

[livius drusus]

I'm glad we survived the SharonChop.

[Dragar]

I read Thud! over Christmas (just more of the same - which is really just what I love to read when it comes to Pratchett). I'm starting on The Da Vinci Code now. It's already provided me with a couple of chuckles, but I'm trying to enjoy it as a pseudo-historical conspiracy theory fiction work as opposed to any great literary piece. It's working well enough up to the third chapter.

[pescifish]

Originally Posted by Crumb

And what is wrong with my new book thread? Hmmm?

I don't get why you opened a new book thread when it seems you want to steal folks from here. What's wrong with this one, which has been hearty and popular since it was opened? Actually, the fact that you chose to open a new book thread really depresses me regarding the way bulletin boards seem to work.

Anyway, I enjoyed Thud! and my two recent reads of Pratchett books cause me to think I should probably get some more of his series. I'm reading Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere now.

[hedwig]

I read Thud! when it first came out and really loved it. Same with Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. The former was great because I love the dwarf politics in the series and the latter was great because it was just a truly engaging story with great characters (we're hoping to get a new cat this spring and I've been trying to talk my mom into naming the new cat Fat Charlie ).

I'm usually re-reading one book while reading a brand new book at the same time. My current re-read is Pratchett's The Truth (one of my favorites) and my new book is The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman. Both of them are hilarious. Hodgman's book is basically an almanac full of entirely fictitious "facts."