What Book Are You Currently Reading?

[Hudini]

The Fry Chronicles: An Autobiography by Stephen Fry. Not sure if I'm enjoying it really.

This reminded me that I purchased Hugh Laurie's "The Gun Seller" a couple of months ago and haven't even opened it yet. It should be my next read after I finish "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee", which I've borrowed more than three months ago...

[bluewaters71]

Love, Janis. By Laura Joplin.

[danielcaux]

Bang! by Brian May et al. Most awesome guitar player evah!

And some of Lovecraft tales and also Dawkins' Greatest Show On Earth. The problem is that I keep cycling between them and starting all over again and again.

[rosm]

A love in Paris - Remco Campert... in Dutch, cause I don't think he ever got translated

[Hudini]

Taking a break from what has turned into an extremely heavy read of "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee", I've read Erlend Loe's "Doppler" through once again yesterday afternoon. Great as ever, strongly recommended to anyone.

[justabagofatoms]

Wicked, Gregory Maguire. This became a bestseller and had a Broadway play based on it, which naturally made me want to avoid it, as I am a bit of a snob with me literature. Anyway, people raved, I was bored, there it was. I won't bother describing it, as I stopped after three mind-numbing chapters
I think my dog Max could write a better book, and he can't type for shit.
Don't take my word for it, though. You might love it.

[J Ed]

Peter O'Donnell - Modesty Blaise
which was a long running comic strip, turned into a series of novels by the comic strips author
I found about half the books in the series and I'm in the middle of the third book: I, Lucifer

Modesty Blaise is a criminal mastermind who retired wealthy at the age of 25 and now works as a freelance agent for British Intelligence
she is accompanied on all her adventures by Willie Garvin, her 2nd in command from her former criminal Network, a former mercenary she rescued from a prison in Saigon who regards her with unquestioning reverence and always calls her "Princess"
the adventures they go on are similar to James Bonds, but with more gruelling handtohand combat sequences, supposedly described in absolutely realistic detail, alternating with preposterous comic dialog about antique collecting, classical music and obscure words in the dictionary while they wait patiently to make their next move in the caper
three volumes in this particular imaginary world is getting mighty addictive

[snifferdog]

Currently, What Caesar Did for My Salad which is a book that explains the origins of all sorts of foods. Not a book to read when you're feeling peckish. I've just finished reading two of Henning Mankell's Wallander books - they were pretty good but perhaps not to be read on a full stomach.

[nosaj]

life inc.(How Corporatism Conquered the World, and How We Can Take It Back), by Douglas Rushkoff. Very interesting read so far - I am almost half way through it.

Better book than The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, so far.

What a world we live in.

[Beowulf]

'And Another Thing ...' by Eoin Colfer.



[See here for details]

[Flying pig437]

Richard Ellman's biog of James Joyce. I think Joyce is pretty much as I'd expect from reading about him on wiki and here and there although when he goes off on one about something he's really weird for e.g when somone says they don't find his music chapter in Ulysses better than real music he get's anonied!!!

[J Ed]

Peter ODonnell - Modesty Blaise: the Impossible Virgin
book 5 of the series, I havent been able to find book 4
the Impossible Virgin is a geologic feature in Rwanda, not Modesty who is very much a sexy superspy
in this adventure Modesty performs an emergency appendectomy in a cave while besieged by a private army outside
and if thats the wackiest thing that happens in this adventure, its only by a notch, the writer has a completely outrageous imagination grounded in obsessively researched technical detail
these books owe a lot to Fleming but 007 never had to perform an appendectomy, his adventures were a stroll in the park by comparison
J Ed awards the Modesty Blaise series the J Edwardian Medal for Fine Literature

before this I read
Umberto Eco - The Prague Cemetery
the fictional autobiography of the man who wrote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
the fictional author being a professional forger who works freelance for various 19th century secret services, fabricating evidence to implicate supposed enemies of the state
in high concept style, Eco makes the book itself a forgery, with all but the narrator being genuine historic personalities of the era, doing exactly the things historic research tells us they did, but historians have never figured out who wrote the Protocols so Eco must forge that bit of history and make a convincing autobiography of it
and to be completely in character, the narrator treats us to page after page of antisemitic rants
thus much of the book is unpleasant and embarassing to read in public, with some very dazzling bits sprinkled throughout (eg the bit about the corpses hidden in the sewers, which turns out to be a lesson in 19th century Parisian sewer infrastructure: as a former Public Works employee Im actually interested in that sort of stuff)
but his previous book the Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana was a much nicer read

[Flying pig437]

James Joyce-Portrait of the artist as a young man. I've started it once or twice before but never got past the first sentence which I hated. It's a very straightforward novel compared to Ulysses in fact I'd say it's so straightforward it's artless. No idea what it all means but it's not very interesting to me 'cause it just seems to be about the Roman Catholic church esp. in Ireland when Joyce was, erm, a young man. I'll get to the end then start Ulysses again. I'm making it one of my pastimes to study it. In fact I'm only bother in with APOTAAAYM 'cause some of Ulysses relates to it.

[starsee]

I just finished H.P. Lovecraft's "At The Mountains Of Madness" and now I am reading "The Improbable Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes" anthology on my Kindle.

[Meandthem]

Just reading a book about the war in (former) Yugoslavia and the schism of the peace in a region that lives in the shadow of centuries of hatred and retaliation.
...AND on the lighter side - a book on Carl Barks' oil paintings.