What are you reading?

[Waluigi]

I enjoyed his debut novel, so I thought I would give the second one a try. It's not quite as captivating as the first book, but it's still quite enjoyable.

I'm not normally in to mysteries, but I indulge on occasion and at least these books teach you a little about chemistry.

[Caligulette]

http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780316033756-0

Just Food - which is so far pretty darned good.

I missed being able to see Anthony Bourdain, whom I think would like aspects of this book.

[Clutch Munny]

A Most Wanted Man - John LeCarre: More existential despair and jolting moral outrage from a very fine writer, this time skewering the worrr on terrrrr.

Sandman Slim - Richard Kadrey: Funny, sometimes vaguely tragic, incredibly violent supernatural take on the tough-guy hero novel. Plenty of juicy metaphors and things going splat.

[teasasue]

Originally Posted by Clutch Munny

A Most Wanted Man - John LeCarre: More existential despair and jolting moral outrage from a very fine writer, this time skewering the worrr on terrrrr.

Sandman Slim - Richard Kadrey: Funny, sometimes vaguely tragic, incredibly violent supernatural take on the tough-guy hero novel. Plenty of juicy metaphors and things going splat.

I have noticed you almost always post more than 1 book, do you normally read more than 1 at a time?

[Clutch Munny]

I do. In fact I doubt that I've ever listed all the things I'm reading at once, because most of them are specialized academic works and nobody would give a rat's patookas. E.g., in the past 48 hours, I've read substantial chunks of Jennifer Lackey's Learning from Words, Chandler, Davidson, and Harootunian (Eds.) Questions of Evidence, Bernard Williams' Truth and Truthfulness, and Robert Audi's Epistemology. Bored yet? I'm also reading Ramsey Campbell's Creatures of the Pool (bedroom), Gene Wolfe's The Knight (upstairs bathroom), and Todd Downs' Bicycling Magazine's Complete Guide to Bicycle Maintenance and Repair (downstairs bathroom). But I usually only mention the books that I think are worth a mention.

I very much doubt that I'm alone among ers in always having several (or as many as a dozen) books on the go at once.

[teasasue]

cool, I would get lost if I tried to read more than 1, I have tried and it doesnt really work so well with me

[Nullifidian]

Originally Posted by Clutch Munny

I very much doubt that I'm alone among ers in always having several (or as many as a dozen) books on the go at once.

Certainly not, nor are you alone in leaving the more detailed and technical stuff out. Although if the truth be told, some of what you listed sounded rather interesting. Certainly more interesting than the technical papers and monographs I read in biology.

In the semitechnical sphere, I'm still reading Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic-Industrial Complex by Nocella, Best, and McLaren (eds.).

There is a bit of academic jargon here and there, but nothing too difficult to get through. Most of the essays are quite good and they get to the heart of what's wrong with the way academia is situated: pretending to be a bulwark of intellectual freedom while relying on state and private funding that opens it up to political control and domination. The worst essay in the bunch was by Joy James who, perhaps not coincidentally, is the one with the Ivy League credentials. After six pages of vague rhetorical gestures at "other ways of knowing", I gave up on her essay. Professors who taught a broader cross-section of students, rather than just the scions of the elite, were usually far more pragmatic and grounded.

I'm also reading Down the River by Edward Abbey. Summer is usually my time to hike, swim, go ocean kayaking, and generally reacquaint myself with nature and remind myself why I wanted to study biology in the first place, and this book is only slightly outpaced by Desert Solitaire as my favorite example of his nature writing.

I'm reading some fiction too, but that goes in the LibriVox thread.

[freemonkey]

Originally Posted by Clutch Munny

I very much doubt that I'm alone among ers in always having several (or as many as a dozen) books on the go at once.

You're not. What I read is generally much lighter, though. I'm reading The Invisible Gorilla And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us; Skid Road (a history of Seattle), plus a bunch of super easy books on social networking (like ...for Dummies fare, so I can have a basic understanding that I can then impart to others who want to get the benefit, but don't really care to "struggle" through the books themselves. (Can someone tell me why we need a 256 page book on Twitter?))

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by Nullifidian

Certainly more interesting than the technical papers and monographs I read in biology.

Yeah, I left out the papers too.

E.g., Friday I read:

• Cutler et al (1988) Juror decision making in eyewitness identification cases.
  
• Luus & Wells (1994) Eyewitness identification confidence.
  
• Bodenhausen (1988) Stereotypic biases in social decision making and memory: testing process models of stereotype use

...plus another one I can't now remember, because it turned out not to be useful.

[Crumb]

I generally just read a single book at a time. I have on occasion read two at a time, and when I was in college I would be reading many different books all at once. I find it more enjoyable to just be focusing on one at a time though.

[Adam]

I usually have two or three going at once, minimum. I've sort of been in withdrawal lately, as I've been forcing myself not to read anything else until I finished Gravity's Rainbow, which I finally did over the weekend. I'm glad it's finally done so i can read something else, but at the same time I'm sad that it's over.

[teasasue]

I am now reading Kiss of Crimson by lara Adrian

[kking]

Dostoyevski's The Idiot.

Two hundred pages in, I'm enjoying it thoroughly.

[Ymir's blood]

Nothing since I've not finished the last book I mentioned. Figured out the plot twist as soon as it was foreshadowed (confirmed online) and haven't been able to return to the book since it's currently has one of the protagonists being confronted with a colorful character, Sixties (pre hippy) style.

[teasasue]

Originally Posted by Ymir's blood

Nothing since I've not finished the last book I mentioned. Figured out the plot twist as soon as it was foreshadowed (confirmed online) and haven't been able to return to the book since it's currently has one of the protagonists being confronted with a colorful character, Sixties (pre hippy) style.

oh that sucks, maybe you will find a new one soon that will peek your interests,

[wei yau]

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson. So much hype about the book I had to see for myself.

[teasasue]

Originally Posted by wei yau

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson. So much hype about the book I had to see for myself.

let me know how it is

[Sock Puppet]

I finally got around to reading the first two Discworld novels, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, after having read 3 others completely out of sequence (which doesn't really matter much with this series; I've read Going Postal, The Truth and Monstrous Regiment, which all do fine on their own even though they include characters who were introduced earlier).

I found a diagram of all the Discworld books at one point that shows which depend on the others and which don't. So I believe Equal Rites is the next one I need to read for the Rincewind arc. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it at the library or the used bookstore, so I picked up Making Money instead, which is a sorta sequel to Going Postal, which I loved. I was going to start it this morning, but being my first day back to work and waking up at some hideously early hour, I spent the van ride bobbing my head and drooling instead.

[JoeP]

Was it this?


The L-Space Web: Discworld Reading Order Guides

[Sock Puppet]

That's it!

Okay, so Equal Rites wasn't the next Rincewind novel. I don't think I've ever seen Sourcery anywhere.

[Crumb]

[teasasue]

I started reading the Harry Potter books this past Friday, and I am now half way finished with book 3

[Nullifidian]

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by Adamus Prime

I usually have two or three going at once, minimum. I've sort of been in withdrawal lately, as I've been forcing myself not to read anything else until I finished Gravity's Rainbow, which I finally did over the weekend. I'm glad it's finally done so i can read something else, but at the same time I'm sad that it's over.

Good book, IMO, but it frustrated me. I thought there was a truly fabulous novel trying to escape from it, but rarely succeeding. Too much of the cleverness struck me as contrived. I remember thinking that someone sharp and funny and lyrically gifted should write with a bit less craft. But then, I think that about a good many contemporary intellectual novelists, and clearly much of the intellectual novelist/reviewer world disagrees with me!

[teasasue]

well I have finished the 1st 3 books in Harry Potter now I am awaiting the next 3, so while I am waiting I have went back to the Meradeth Gentry series and I reading A Lick of Frost by Laurell K Hamilton