What are you reading?

[Adam]

No one needs to read Ender's Shadow.

[Ymir's blood]

Cause of Death : A Writer's Guide to Death, Murder and Forensic Medicine by Keith D. Wilson.

....

[Deadlokd]

I just started Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. So far, so awesome.

[Qingdai]

Dying Earth Stories in Honor of Jack Vance by various authors. I suppose I should have read some Jack Vance first, but Neil Gaiman, Kage Baker are among the authors of the stories. So I just got it anyway.

[Lance]

Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut, but I'm not finding much time for reading these days.

[Waluigi]

The Grapes of Wraith. Decided to go for a classic to shake things up.

[freemonkey]

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

[Qingdai]

Caligulette read that one. How are you liking Bright-sided?

[Nullifidian]

Originally Posted by Waluigi

The Grapes of Wraith. Decided to go for a classic to shake things up.

Unless it's a story about a haunting in a vineyard, I believe the title is The Grapes of Wrath.

I'm also going for a classic novel right now: Stendhal's The Red and the Black.

[freemonkey]

Originally Posted by Qingdai

Caligulette read that one. How are you liking Bright-sided?

I'm enjoying it, but then, I'm a bit of a cynic.

She exposes the self-help and motivational industry and prosperity theology, among other things.

[Ymir's blood]

Sounds intriguing.

[ceptimus]

Actually, I'm listening to the audiobook of this one - I got it from the Apple store on my iPod.

IQ: How Psychology Hijacked Intelligence by Stephen Murdoch

[freemonkey]

Murder in the Name of Honor, by Rana Husseini

[Waluigi]

Finished The Grapes of Wrath. Discussed with a friend whether the end is uplifting or not. He thinks it is; even when you think they have nothing left to give, they still gave something. I don't think it is; the family gets broken up, and there's no inkling of hope, just a set of circumstances that keeps them from getting ahead.

Anyway, after a depressing book like that, I decided to read something a little more upbeat, so I picked up What the Dog Saw, the Malcolm Gladwell collection of essays.

[The Man]

The work I'm focusing on the most intently at the moment is The Recognitions by William Gaddis. It's about a struggling painter whose style is undiscernibly similar to that of the Flemish masters, and is given an offer to have his works passed off as lost paintings from obscure painters for far more than they would sell as his original works. Gaddis uses the case of forgery in the art world as a metaphor for forgery in the world at large, and what's most haunting about this work is that it's over fifty years old, yet still resonates perfectly about our modern world; perhaps moreso than when it was written.

I'm also reading a pair of books that end with the Kennedy assassination; Libra by Don DeLillo and American Tabloid by James Ellroy. DeLillo's novel focuses on Oswald as the central character and also features an internal investigation by U.S. intelligence attempting to piece together what actually occurred in the assassination; it's written in DeLillo's highly eloquent, literary style and still makes for rather fast reading. Ellroy's novel includes many of the same characters and was indeed inspired by DeLillo's novel, but Ellroy focuses much more on the collusion between organised crime, big business, and elements of the government, with the overall implication being that the FBI, CIA, etc. are all themselves a type of organised crime. It's written in a rapid-fire format that reminds me of Hemingway, though it's interspersed with a large amount of period slang that makes most detective fiction seem soft-boiled by comparison. It's so effective that I've already ordered the sequel, The Cold Six Thousand, as I expect to be through with this by the end of the upcoming week (it's a lot shorter than the 950-page monster The Recognitions).

I've also been reading Mao II by DeLillo and V. and Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon, but it's been awhile since I picked them up. I also have the final sections of The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón and 2666 by Roberto Bolaño unread, which I intend to get to eventually since both are superb. Nothing wrong with any of these works in fact - I would recommend all unconditionally. Working in a book store just makes it difficult to remain focused on a single work

Since I see someone above was reading Card, I'm just going to say that, if I had it all to do again, I would've stopped after Speaker for the Dead and not allowed subsequent volumes to lessen my enjoyment of the first two novels.

[Caligulette]

Diary of a Wimpky Kid Dog Days. First non-sciency, non-politicky book I've read in quite some time.

Like it quite a lot.

Also - a book the name of which I cannot remember about the Making of Singin' In the Rain. I like it mostly, though it's a bit repetative. Really I wanted to know more about Cyd Charrisse and Jean Hagen. Mission accomplished there, really.

[Kashmir]

Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson.

Read it a couple of years ago, but I'm finding details I missed the first time.

[freemonkey]

I just started reading The Three-Arched Bridge , by Albanian author, Ismail Kadare.

I had not heard of him before, and I can say right now that I will be reading more of his works.

[Ymir's blood]

Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, bought used last night for $8.

[Beevetene]

30 and it depends on the deals. Last year I went at 7:00 pm Thursday. The year before I went at 11:00 pm on Thursday and was about the same spot in line. I want a laptop this year, but wont be able to get one at Best Buy where I normally go unless I go Thursday morning. I value family and Thanksgiving over the deals...call me old fashioned. I will watch the deals at Staples and Wal Mart and Best Buy to map out what my plans are.

[Watser?]

[freemonkey]

[SharonDee]

If audio books count, I'm "reading" Stephen King's Under the Dome. I am enjoying the story so far and it has the usual King staples: ordinary kids turned heroes, bad guys turned worse guys, good guys, scary situations, gross mind-visuals ... and (so far) little to no science in the fiction. At least he didn't even try this time. (The Tommyknockers, anyone?)

[Qingdai]

I just read the Coyote series of books by Allen Steele. Funny, the first science fiction books I've read in a while that cite source articles for what he based the science in his fiction on. Enjoyable, I'd bet you'd like it Ms. SharonDee.

[wildernesse]

My airplane book this time is Down River by John Hart, which is a mystery that takes place near Salisbury, NC. I am enjoying it quite a bit.