The Official What Are You Reading Thread

[GPCR]

A few books I'm slowly working through:
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East- recommended
The Plague- second reading
Book of Kings (Shahnameh)- in its original Farsi

Some books I ordered through Barnes and Noble, but haven't touched yet (they had some clearance going):
Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya
Palestine: Peace not Apartheid
The Shi'is of Jabal 'Amil and the New Lebanon: Community and Nation-State, 1918-1943
The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer: And the Birth of the Modern Arms Race

[Little Bobby Tables]

Stuff I'm in various states of reading:

The Color of Magic - Terry Pratchett
Snuff - Chuck Palahniuk
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America - Ann Powers

Stuff I want to read after that:

Proust was a Neuroscientist - Jonah Lehrer
This Is Your Brain on Music - Daniel Levitin
Eat Here: Reclaiming Local Pleasures in a Global Supermarket - Brian Halweil

[alex]

finally finished reading No Country For Old Men, some six months after starting it. I think it makes a little more sense now. going to have to go back & watch the movie again.

[nippletwister]

I'm working through Dress Your Family in Courdoroy and Denim

[daoist]

fuck everything else, I'm not stopping till I'm done with Watchmen.

[Fuzzy]

that's the spirit.

I've been working on Sin City and I'm most of the way through book 7 now.

[KGBCarrie]

I'm about halfway through Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife. It's all about the history of zero and how it changed the world. Pretty neat stuff if you're interested in that kind of thing.

[LucasPukus]

Yeah, I saw that book and thought it would be cool.
Am reading "Kabul Beauty School" right now. I just want to get through it and then go online and see how its working now and what happened to the people after the book was published--especially the girl that wasn't a virgin and this author blew her cover.

[Talenos]

Finished Story and the rest of the Y: The Last Man series. Fairly happy with the way that ended.

Now starting World War Z.

[Little Bobby Tables]

Finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Color of Magic, and closing in on finishing Snuff. Add Free Culture by mr. Lessig to the list.

[nippletwister]

A co-worker loaned me Women by Bukowski.

I started it while sitting in a dental office waiting room. Then I realized I shouldn't be reading it there.

[DunMiff/sys]

Finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Color of Magic, and closing in on finishing Snuff. Add Free Culture by mr. Lessig to the list.

How is The Unbearable Lightness of Being?

[Fuzzy]

mildly tolerable

[Little Bobby Tables]

It's pretty good. It took me a while to get into the writing style of the book, but I'd say it was a worthwhile read.

[DunMiff/sys]

so bearable.

ahahahahahahhaaaa ... sigh.

[Turbo]

Currently reading The Pelican Brief.

I plan to go as HST for Halloween, which of his works should I seek out? I'll get to them in 3 weeks when I get to Ames. Anyone have a good idea of an order to read them, in case I run out of time?

[Fuzzy]

Bruto:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hell's Angels
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

bump up campaign trail if you're into politics, but even if you're not the book is still awesome

I'm re-reading the first book of the wheel of time

[DunMiff/sys]

I'm re-reading the first book of the wheel of time

does it take a while to get rolling?

/sorry.

[Turbo]

bought and read The Rum Diary by HST. Apparently he started work on it when he was 22 but not published until 1998. Supposedly they're making a movie of it to be released next year, but it seems this movie has been planned for a long time.

if this book is like the others, then it should be a good read ahead

[Fuzzy]

I'm re-reading the first book of the wheel of time

does it take a while to get rolling?

/sorry.

much faster the second time through. the beginning is rich with humorous stuff and tidbits if you know what's going to happen throughout the series.

[LucasPukus]

Middlesex--Jenna lent it to me and I haven't gotten very far, but I do find it very engrossing. It also made me want to read "Look Homeward, Angel" by Thomas Wolfe. Anyone read that?

[DunMiff/sys]

sitting before me:
after dark - haruki murakami
what i talk about when i talk about running - haruki murakami
jurassic park - michael crichton
genes girls and gamow - james d. watson
the elephant vanishes - haruki murakami
after the quake - haruki murakami
the screwtape letters - c.s. lewis
underground - haruki murakami
the woman in the dunes - kobo abe
the satanic verses - salman rushie
how proust can change your life - alain de botton
contact - carl sagan

i have a lot of time to kill so for the next five months, this is it. no more books.

[LucasPukus]

you like karuko murakami a lot, eh?

[DunMiff/sys]

i thought i'd read everything by him since i have a lot of time to kill this year.

right now i'm halfway through How Proust Can Change Your Life. freaking hilarious - and helpful, oddly enough. this might be the first book i ever picked up that was labeled "literature/self-help" on the back.

and that's HARUKI Murakami.

[LucasPukus]

Yeah, I spelled it right, then bumped the keyboard. sorry. I'm really interested in "How Proust Can Change Your Life." I wish you could lend me your copy.

[Little Bobby Tables]

Finished Free Culture, now moving on to The Paradox of Choice

[nippletwister]

I am now reading Watchmen as well as The Time Machine Did It by Schwartzwelder. Time Machine is more of a read-it-on-the-toilet sort of book.

[Little Bobby Tables]

Finished Paradox of Choice, now alternating between Kafka on the Shore and Eat Here

[DunMiff/sys]

kafka on the shore is one messed up and awesome novel.

[daoist]

fivesd lent me "bitter is the new black". She said she enjoyed the book and assured me a vagina is not required to like it. So I agreed to give it a shot.

The whole idea is it's a memoir where the author is a total bitch and then gets her comeuppance at the end.

So the beginning is this story about what a bitch she is. She goes on and on about bullshit fashion (halt hammerzeit would love this book, I'm guessing) and how great she is, etc. So the point is you are supposed to hate her. Then at the end of the book you're glad she got shit on or whatever.

Anyhow, It worked. By page 16 I was fed up. So I wanted to see the author punished for this bitchiness.

But then I thought of another way for her to get what she deserves:

I STOPPED READING THAT PIECE OF SHIT.

I won.

[Tom the Cat]

In the past couple weeks I've been on a graphic novel binge; Finally getting around to reading stuff that has been given or lent to me to read.

I read straight through Transmetropolitan, which was fucking amazing.
I started Sandman, which I thought started out slow, but has started to get good in the second collection.
I interrupted Sandman when I got my hands on Watchmen, and that's going along really well. I think I may have been subjected to an out-of-context page from the comic somewhere on the Internet, though, because I picked up almost immediately on the fact that the doomsayer was Rorschach.

Once I'm done with these, next on my list to read is A New Earth. My parents are raving about it, and while I think it sounds a lot like that 'The Secret' stuff, I figure I'll give it a chance.

[nippletwister]

So did I. No big deal. It's not like it's a huge shocker or anything.

[Epaminondas]

I read On Plato's Republic, by Simon Blackburn

I didn't want to read the whole republic, so this one was quite good.

[Fuzzy]

Book 2 of the wheel of time. really enjoying it the second time through

[Little Bobby Tables]

Finished Kafka on the Shore this morning. It's fabulous. Can't recommend it enough. Now it's on to After Dark.

[Tom the Cat]

Well, I'd been doing one or two issues of Watchmen a night, but once I got about 2/3 of the way done with the book, I just finished the rest of it last night. Couldn't put it down.

Great stuff. Really a fairly surprising and ballsy ending. No compromises. Heh.

[Zapruder]

Just finished Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis...very funny, and very engaging. I don't normally go for detective noir stuff so easily, but I guess throwing in a bunch of sexual deviance helps.

[Zapruder]

bought and read The Rum Diary by HST. Apparently he started work on it when he was 22 but not published until 1998. Supposedly they're making a movie of it to be released next year, but it seems this movie has been planned for a long time.

if this book is like the others, then it should be a good read ahead

A bit tamer than the others, but still very good. You can almost watch him gain his footing as a writer as you read it.

The movie is in development hell, but Depp is still slated to star as Thompson (Kemp).

[nippletwister]

Well, I'd been doing one or two issues of Watchmen a night, but once I got about 2/3 of the way done with the book, I just finished the rest of it last night. Couldn't put it down.

Great stuff. Really a fairly surprising and ballsy ending. No compromises. Heh.

I was kinda pissed with the ending, but I suppose it works. "Tentacle alien" seemed too out of left-field and incongruous with the rest of the narrative.

Of course, I was totally bummed when Manhattan popped Rorschach, but what can you do? I guess it works.

[Tom the Cat]

Well, I'd been doing one or two issues of Watchmen a night, but once I got about 2/3 of the way done with the book, I just finished the rest of it last night. Couldn't put it down.

Great stuff. Really a fairly surprising and ballsy ending. No compromises. Heh.

I was kinda pissed with the ending, but I suppose it works. "Tentacle alien" seemed too out of left-field and incongruous with the rest of the narrative.

Of course, I was totally bummed when Manhattan popped Rorschach, but what can you do? I guess it works.

I think it works just because it is so far from left-field. I mean, to a certain extent you can guess where it's going, but to another extent you keep thinking, these are heroes! They'll fix everything before it's all too late!

And then they do, and they don't. And they do. Kind of.

[Little Bobby Tables]

Finished After Dark. Also great. Now, on to World War Z.

[Gretyl]

I'm working my way through Bruce Sterling's Distraction, which is fun for blending politics and cognitive science from a mid-90's perspective.

Also, just picked up Robert Reed's Marrow from the library. More space opera-ish than my usual SF tastes, but the writing's keepin' me interested.

[Crump's Brother]

Also, I can't recommend Maus enough. Part current and part historic biography of the artists father and his experience as a jew during the holocaust (and much more). I'd suggest this if superhero type stuff isn't your cup of tea.

I finished Vol. 1 of Maus yesterday. Makes me very glad I saw this post when it was made. Once I finish Vol. 2 and Fun Home I'm going to go back and finish reading Choke.

[TeleportThis]

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

[Dr. Faustus]

I'm still slogging through Sartre's Being and Nothingness. It's slow, hard going at first but gradually gets easier and makes more sense. The introduction has the reputation (according to several reviews I've read) of being the densest and most confusions portion of the book. Once familiar with the key vocabulary terms and concepts, it isn't nearly as bad.

I also read Jim Thompson's After Dark, My Sweet which is a pulp noir masterpiece as well as John Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer. Manhattan Transfer was good, but definitely not great. I was kind of underwhelmed by the end of the book, even if his sort of collective narrative was an interesting idea which fits New York City quite well.

I'm going to start James Ellroy's American Tabloid and am trying to finish T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain which my parents bought for me some time ago. I've had company and been busy with work lately so I haven't read nearly as much as I want to.

[Little Bobby Tables]

Done with World War Z and closing in on Weird Like Us. Next is Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

[nippletwister]

I finally finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon tonight. I've been wading through it for months, reading lots of stuff in the meantime, including Watchmen, which couldn't have been more fitting.

If you like comic books and 600-page, tiny-print novels that are about, among other things, the Golden Age of comic books, read this novel.

[LucasPukus]

Finally finished Middlesex. On to ....?

[nippletwister]

How was that? Chick lit or not?

[DunMiff/sys]

Done with World War Z and closing in on Weird Like Us. Next is Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

World War Z was faaaaaaaabulous. hilarious and thought provoking on more than one occasion. my copy of blind willow sleeping woman is in storage.

[DunMiff/sys]

Just read Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe. sand sand and more sand then some sex.

working on Invisible Monsters and The Satanic Verses.

[Zodiac]

Skeletons on the Zahara

[nippletwister]

I'm slowly, slowly working through Cat's Cradle again to kill time before The Dark Knight Returns gets here.

[Turbo]

I'm almost 2/3 the way through Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. It's a scary book.

[Dr. Faustus]

I have Louis Celine's Conversations with Professor Y and Confederacy of Dunces (which surprisingly I've never read) up next.

I want to read Journey to the End of the Night as well now.

[nippletwister]

Confederacy of Dunces

Odd. I haven't either, and a coworker of mine has been bugging me to read it for months. I should really read that.

[Tom the Cat]

A friend lent me Soon I Will Be Invincible. Just started it last night. The first chapter has quite a bit of promise.

[Fuzzy]

Book 2 of the wheel of time. really enjoying it the second time through

finished. on to book 3.

[Little Bobby Tables]

Done with World War Z and closing in on Weird Like Us. Next is Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Finished Weird Like Us. Still working on Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. It's fantastic

[Dr. Faustus]

I'm posting this passage from Death on the Installment plan just because the book had such a large effect on me.

"The most exquisite deaths, remember that, Ferdinand, are those that attack us in our most sensitive tissues....." He had a precious, elaborate, subtle way of talking, like the men of Charcot's day. His prospecting of the Rolandic, the third ventricle, and the gray nucleus didn't do him much good.....in the end he died of a heart attack, under circumstances that were anything but cozy. An attack of angina pectoris that lasted twenty minutes. He held out for twenty minutes. He held out memories, his resolutions, the example of Caesar.... But for eighteen minutes he screamed like a stuck pig....his diaphragm was being ripped out, his living guts....a thousand open razors had been plunged into his aorta....He tried to vomit them out at us....I'm not exaggerating. He crawled out into the living room.....He damn near hammered his chest in...He bellowed into the carpet.....in spite of the morphine...You could hear him all over the house and in the street....He ended up under the piano. When the cardiac arterioles burst one by one, it's quite a harp....it's too bad nobody ever comes back from angina pectoris. There's be wisdom and genius to spare.

The themes are all in that paragraph. Life is constant deterioration marching onwards towards an inevitable death. Our lives are like a loan that has to be paid back bit by bit until nothing is left. That notion of being on borrowed time drives the entire book. No greater meaning is attached to anything,


I'll let it drop after this, because I've gone on about this book far too long already.

[Fuzzy]

that's pretty sweet

[TeleportThis]

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I finally finished this after finding it again after moving. It was well...kind of depressing, but good. One of those books you would appreciate more reading it as a teenager though.

In between starting this book and finishing it, I also read:

Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud
Ghost World, Daniel Clowes
David Boring, Daniel Clowes
The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Kim Deitch
The King in the Window, Adam Gopnik
The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
The Sandman: The Doll’s House, Neil Gaiman
Watchmen, Alan Moore

Yeah, I was on a graphic novel kick, having taken a class on sequential art over the summer. (Understanding Comics was the text book for the class).

Watchmen and Sandman are really good. Boulevard of Broken Dreams and David Boring were pretty good. Didn't like Ghost World so much. The King in the Window was a children's book I picked up in some bargain box.

[LucasPukus]

How was that? Chick lit or not?

I'm not really sure if it's chick lit. I'd say no, I've definitely read girlier novels, and it's basically written from a man's perspective. The love story line was very understated, except for her crush on her female friend when she was in HS. Best part is the storming of Smyrna, I truly didnt know that history at all, as embarassing as it is.

[Little Bobby Tables]

Finished Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. I wish there was another 200 pages of it.

I'm a little over halfway through Proust Was A Neuroscientist. Good stuff so far.

[nippletwister]

V for Vendetta finally got here. Starting tonight.