Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine So what are you READING?

I started DROOD, but got interrupted-- 'bout time to get back into it.

Interestingly enough, Matthew Pearl has written a book which also just came out dealing with the same subject, in a way. It takes places after Dickens' death, rather than before.

Synchronicity at work, I guess. Or zeitgeist.

I'm reading another Tamora Pierce quartet.
This one is on wild magic creatures like winged horses, ogres, harpies and dragons.

The lead character is a young girl, orphaned by bandits.
She's not Gifted the way humans are but she IS able to talk with animals.
A badger god comes to her with advice and portents.

A lot of fun.

I finished Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther. Much better than I thought it was going to be. A bit too romantic (but that was the era).

Next reading Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. So far one of my favorite books. Cobalt you'd like it.

That sounds all kinds of awesome!

A similar book, if you like that sort of thing (spacefarers forced to deal with a primitive society, with some broad comedy strokes), is the The Flying Sorcerers, by David Gerrold adn Larry Niven.

I haven't been reading much lately, I've been trying to corral some of the ideas in my head to put on paper. but what I have been doing is remembering some of the old sci-fi stuff that I read as a kid and haven't seen since.

One story was about a conspiracy to surplant individual governments on earth by a group of scientists that had established a base on the moon. A teenager was trying to stop it, only to find out that his astronaut uncle was in on it along with his parents, that he thought were dead. It was a kids book. One of the things i remember was that speed limits were according to your own permit. And that was based on your reflexes. As they improved, so did your speed limit. As they declined, so did your speed limit. I think the last line of the book was something along the lines of "It's gonna be a wonderful conspiracy!" because the conspiracy was supposed to be altruistic.

There was another one that was a series, i think the kids name was Brant, or something like that. It was a sci-fi hardy boys, really, but I dug it back then.

And I've been thinking about E.R.B lately, since i read about the movie on John Carter they are supposed to be making.

Okay, picked this book up a few years ago and never read it (Had a kid, free time disappeared). So, i put it in the library (re: bathroom) and have been reading it during visits over the last day. Bradbury was a master at creating a new language out of freeflowing mental rivers, it reminds me in a way of all that gnatty jive from shows like the rockford files. Sorry, forgot the title of the book: Lets all kill Constance.

Haven't finished it yet. Its not a long book and I would ordinarily finish it off in about two to three hours, but I don't have that kinda time chunks anymore.

Okay, its a beautiful sunday, Carol and Sam are at the movies, the Braves lost, and I am gonna hit the beach chair, lay in the sun, soak up some rays, finish a beer, and read The Chamber by Grishom. I know, its not exactly literature, but I have knocked out some Dick Francis books lately and feel like something similar, but with a lot more words.

Enjoy this beautiful sunday, folks.

Just finished Neil Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book". As a Gaiman fan it felt new and familiar at the same time. This time we get a baby whose parents are killed and he gets adopted by the residents of a graveyard.

I'm reading China Mieville's new one The City and The City. It's a police procedural, with fantasy elements, rather than a fantasy book like his other ones (eg Perdido Street Station).

I've also nearly finished all of Richard Yates's books. (The author of Revolutionary Road). They are really brilliant!

Somebody several pages back mentioned "The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo", which sounded interesting, so I added it to my never-ending list of books to go read (I often take recommendations from this thread but take years to follow-up on, so fear not posters, some of us do read your thoughts and take them to heart).

It was actually a really great read. A very solid mystery with some surprises. It starts out very slow, and because its in Sweden there are some references and names that are hard to follow at first and distracting (for an American that is). But that soon goes away and 1/4 into it, the book really picks up and gets very good. After that I was totally engrossed and read it in two days.

What was also excellent was the author was very blunt about their being no easy answers, and honest about how pervasive abuse is in our culture(s), towards women, but not limited to that. He does a great job mirroring that with some more casual coldness people show one another on a much lesser level even though they are friends...I thought it was a pretty daring connection for him to make. The characters are pretty likeable too.

All in all, a great read! Up next...*possible* the first Twilight book, since its sitting on my desk.

China Miéville! His new book hasn't been released here yet, but it's definitely going to the top of the list when it's available.

Now I'm reading The End of Overeating by David Kessler. No earth-shattering news, so far, but he presents a good story of how the food industry combines fat, sugar and salt in many, many foods - a combination which triggers the powerful reward system in our brains (well, many of us) and breaks down rational control over what we eat.

Ya.

It's not like his other ones but it's really good. I went to a q and a session he did and he's also completely GAWJUSS!!!

What is your favourite of his? You should definitely read his short story collection, Looking For Jake, there are some great ideas in that.

Anything else along the Bas Lag book theme that you'd recommend?

Hard to choose a favourite, but probably Iron Council, which I saw described as "a love story disguised as a protest story or a protest story disguised as a love story". (And I still can't get his horrible mosquito people out of my mind.) Perdido Street Station was the one I read first and it took me a while to get accustomed to the universe - should probably reread it.

I haven't read Looking for Jake, only a couple of the stories in it. Looks good, though!

I'm still reading Tamora Pierce stories.

So far: I've finished 3 of her 4 book (called Quarters or Quartets) series; 2 books about the Copper Isles = to a 4 book series; and am on the second book of another 4 book series.
whewww

After these 4, I just have one more quartet to go, that my school's library has, anyway.

What I like about them most, is that kids and adults work together as the kids grow into their various magic based powers.
There's a lot of respect that builds between the characters and their powers are always used imaginatively.

They're also sort of generational, which I enjoy.

I may have to settle for thses last 3 books and leave the rest for the city library this summer.
sigh

Gah! This thread is like a book-brothel with the number of great reads it makes me want to take to bed every night! I love it! Keep pimping them out people!

As for me, I've unfortunately only had time to read one book recently and even more unfortunately it was [small voice] Angels and Demons by mega-millionaire Dan Brown.

I kept hearing that this one was so much better than The Da Vinci Code (which I had actually enjoyed for its page-turning readability and some of the interesting ideas it expressed - though certainly not for its extremely pedestrian use of the English language or its predictability) but I was quite disappointed.

Once Langdon gets to Rome and starts to look for the missing cardinals it picked up a lot but there's a full 50% of the book to get through before that and that was full of some of the most groan-inducing characterisation and exposition I've ever read. I literally had to force myself to keep going.

The last half is pretty exciting in its own trashy way though and I think this part could make for a good movie. I hope so anyway since my sister is dragging me to see it this week.

Did I mention that Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer was really good. It's in your face and unapologetic but I loved it.

Anyways reading something light and fun right now. Peter Maye's Anything Considered. It's a southern france escapade type of book. Here is an intro I found that sums it up exactly.

"A Snooping Maid, A Neopolitan Beast, A Shady Lord, A Corsican Hood, An Ex-Girlfriend, A Bibulous Monk, A Retiring Detective, A Japanese Bodyguard, An Etonian Villain, A Fair Accomplice, And An Unlikely Hero.

A rollicking caper set on the Cote d'Azur and in the luscious landscape of Provence.

Bennet, an English expatriate living in France, has champagne tastes and a vin ordinaire bankroll. He has abandoned a successful career and found an ideal village to idle in. But a business scheme fails to work out, and he finds himself broke.

Not a man to be downhearted, he places an ad in the newspaper volunteering his services -- any services, Anything Considered. The most attractive response comes from a rich Englishman named Julian Poe who has developed a means of producing superb truffles and is close to cornering the immensely lucrative truffle market.

Bennet signs and - bliss! He finds himself in Monaco and able to live in a style to which he has wished to become accustomed including eating to beyond his heart's content. He is joined thre by the beautiful and experienced (in many ways) Anna, a New Yorker who has put in time in the Israeli army.

But soon ---sniffing the financial potential of the truffle --- Sicilian and Corsican Mafiosi intrude. Life gets hectic. Ham-fisted goons working at cross-purposes, French village busy bodies and an order of monks dedicated to the god Bacchus all play a role."

LOL I thought you were describing the plot to Tropic of Cancer (which I haven't read) and I was wondering why the heck it had been so controversial.

I listened to the audiobook version of World War Z about a world-wide zombie war. Interviews with survivors, with various actors reading the different parts. Not a big zombie fan, but it was very interesting from a survivalist/emergency strategy point of view. Surprisingly light fare compared to the next one:

Family of Secrets by Russ Baker. George Kenney, interviewing Baker about the book on the Electric Politics podcast , said it made him physically ill to read it and I'd have to say it took me pretty close to that.

Baker goes deep into the history of the Bush dynasty with a thoroughly researched and documented investigation. The web of connections, some of them officially denied, is disturbing and wide-reaching.

Although Baker spends a lot of time discussing Poppy Bush and his associates' links to the Kennedy assassination and many other events of the past 50 years, what I found most disturbing was the re-examination of Watergate. To cut to the chase, Nixon may have been a creep, but he was set up by the Bush clan with the Watergate scandal.

Baker also examines W, and while there are revelations, I think, with the internet, that we have been afforded better coverage of what shenanigans he's been up to, even if we don't know all the details.

Baker, in the final chapter, writes: I discovered that Poppy was not really the sentimental preppy, the oft-bumbling public servant most of us believed him to be. Poppy had led what amounted to a double life, and the secret portion of that life included participation in an astonishing range of covert operations. As I began to examine Poppy's most improbable statements about himself, I found myself struggling through a miasma surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination, Watergate, the American relationship with the Saudis, and other chapters of the American experience that have never been properly explained. While I was in my reporting phase and sharing some of my more surprising findings with colleagues, one of them suggested, only half in jest, that the book be called "Everything You Thought You Knew Is Wrong."

I may be stretching the topic here, but I read a letter from the Christian Appalachian Project this morning. Appalachia contains some of the poorest regions in the USA. Often, families can't afford to feed their children properly, and so the only decent meals they can get are at school. Hence, when school lets out for summer these kids are SOL.

One of the tasks of the Project is to feed these luckless youngsters when school's out. If you feel you can spare some money, their website is
http://www.christianapp.org/ .

Thanks for bringing attention to something which is an important but incredibly neglected issue, KC.

A lot of the kids I work with depend on school meals, a lot even stay after school in clubs and things to get the extra lunches.
And I live in Salem, Oregon.
sigh

I'm sure the problem is even worse in Appalachia.

Welcome to my corner of the world. 70-80% of our high school kids are on lunch program, what's called a "type a" lunch. They won't eat it though because then everyone can see that they're "poor." (even though they have all that company). sigh So they buy pizza slice for a dollar, EVERYDAY! sigh^2

Oh yeah, OT

They read "Twilight." Not much else.

I feel funny here.
I've read a number of classics over the years, but now I tend to read humorous fantasy (Terry Prachett), fantasy-scifi, or kids books.


I finished all of the Tamora Pierce books about young people growing up in magical worlds with various powers or gifts, that the school libray had.
I finished 5 quartet mini-series and a two book set.
Then, I started on a Harry Potter type series by Brandon Mull called Fablehaven, which was part of a 10 book intercolegient reading competition.

I read the 2 at the school, now I have to hit the city library (for the rest of the Pierce books, as well.)

I may go to the local book stores, too.
My grand-daughters are almost the right age to enjoy them ~ the oldest is 7 and the heroines/heroes in the books are around 10 - 13 when the stories start.

They're all young by Legion standards, but they all start as students/pages/grandkids with adult mentoring.
sigh

I just read a classic...The Hobbit!

I read it when I was 12 and enjoyed it but didn't love it. (I was a big Llyod Alexander fan though as a kid)

I loved it this time around. I haven't read a book this fast since high school. Read it in 5 days.

I want to read Fellowship of the Ring next but may read Donna Tartt's Secret History.

Yes, Twilight.

We had a Twilight dance, too.


Our kids seem to eat, though.
Pizza is one of their choices.
I work in a Middle School, though.