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

Right now, Posts, lol. Trying to find some that interest me so I can complete this damn challenge I set for myself.

Since my last post I have finished the Lord of the Rings trilogy and have also read...

The Colorado Kid
Pillars of the Earth (pretty good)
The Name of the Rose (great)

Currently reading The Alchemist (a bit too self-helpish for my tastes but not bad)

^ I hated The Alchemist. What a disappointing book. Coelho is made out to be this incredible author (and I'm sure some of his other books are better) but I found that one to be so trite and ordinary and (not spoiling anything here Ultra Jorge) but it's BIG, IMPORTANT message is so weak and superficial it almost feels like it came from a bumper sticker!

A self-help children's book for someone who has never done a moment's introspection is probably a good way to describe that book. Ugh!

As far as shockingly pedestrian, bumper-sticker level philosophising and woefully-written, fictional self-help books go though, nothing can beat The Celestine Prophecy for me. Easily the *worst* book I have ever read. I still cringe at the thought of it. Ugh x a milion!

The Name of the Rose looks fab though. That's been sitting on my shelf waiting to be read for about six months now. I need to get around to it one day soon. I've been putting it off hoping I'll forget the events of the movie and therefore be surprised by what happens in the book but I don't think it's working. Guess I'll just have to go in spoiled.

Tell me Ultra Jorge - was the Latin a problem for you? I remember reading the first chapter or so a while ago and thinking that there were a few paragraphs that I just couldn't understand and wondered if I was even meant to.

---

The book I'm currently reading is called The Tall Man by a journalist called Chloe Hooper. It's a true-life account of the death in custody of an Aboriginal man on Palm Island off Australia's east coast and the resulting court case of the policeman accused of his killing.

It won pretty much every Australian book award going a couple of years ago and it's not hard to see why - it's an incredibly good book. A very multi-layered one too. It doesn't just tell you the story of the doomed man and his alleged killer but also paints a very moving and intense portrait of the history of Aboriginal culture and identity in Australia and the problematic relationship that exists between the 'whitefella' and the 'blackfella' here today.

It's a somewhat sad and moving book but Hooper writes with a fairly light and easy-to-read prose so it never feels too heavy, and the story of the death, the riot that followed and the eventual court case is such an interesting one that the pages almost fly by.

Highly recommended.

I'm currently taking a little trip back in time with John Gardner's James Bond books. I get on kicks like that every once in a while.

And I am contemplating buying Rhino Ranch. It closes out the Last Picture Show series from Larry McMurtry. I say thinking about it because Dwayne's Depressed was so much of an end to the story I don't know if there's much more to say that wouldn't be very maudlin, akin to emotion porn for me. And I just ain't that deep. Ask anyone here.

Hey Blacula. Thanks for the heads up on the Alchemist. I was hoping it would get a bit deeper. Sadly though there are probably people who need this type of book. Certainly it's a simple fable and not much more.

The Name of the Rose I either could figure the Latin out myself (the gist of it) or would sometimes look it up. The toughest part of the book was the intense history regarding different orders of monks, heresies, and religious controversies of the middle ages. I had to wiki almost all of that so I can see how that played into the book.

Just started reading 2 books,

The Dude's Guide to Pregnancy which is a humourous look at pregnancy from a male perspective

and

Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven the sequel to his sci-fi classic Ringworld

I'm currently re-reading All-Star Squadron, and have started T. Jefferson Parker's the Renegades. He's a favorite author of mine.

Right now I'm reading Dark Prophecy: A Level 26 Thriller Featuring Steve Dark, the digi-novel version, on my iPad. Pretty great read so far and the best use yet of the iPad for interacting with the material you read. Every ebook should be done this way.

Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann

Not two far into it and I have no idea where it's going... has something to do with someone walking a tight rope between the Twin Towers... not exactly light vacation reading but a couple of friends and I started a book group with this as our first book...

John Gardner's Scorpious, a James Bond thriller. Part of it is set in Hilton Head, SC. That may be the second time he used that setting, if I recall correctly. I think he used it one time before with the Nina Bloefeld story.

Currently reading Truman by David McCullough. I have Cleopatra: a Life by Stacy Schiff on deck.

Jazz: A History of America's Music by Geoffrey Ward & Ken Burns. It's the companion book to Burns' documentary.

No Deals, Mr. Bond!

What happens to my contribution to this particular thread if I CAN'T read?

future king...you know that person/machine who reads all these posts to you? Have them post what they're reading.

Silly person from north of the border...

I am ashamed to say that I am not currently reading anything of note.
Can anyone recommend anything good for me start back on? There are so many choices when I walk into a Chapters/Indigo store nowadays!

My Mac Photoshop tutorials. Again.

One of these days I'm sure it'll all sink in...

I'm halfway thru "Just Kids"- this year's National Book Award winner by punk poet/musician Patti Smith & I highly recommend it.

It's an autobiography/biography of Smith & her dear, departed friend, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

The story is ravenously compelling & Smith's spare prose is achingly beautiful. Sometimes, I have to stop & re-read a passage just to soak in the heart-rending perfection of it. Plus, it's so emotionally raw & honest, that I've found myself on the verge of tears more than once while reading it.

Even if you have no idea who Smith & Mapplethorpe are, this book is a must-read for any fan of fine literature.

Excel tutorials.

:rolleyes:

There is not enough caffeine on the entire planet to save my braincells. I fully expect them to melt from boredom and start dribbling out my ears by Thursday or Friday. But hey-- anything for a buck, right?

Here\'s a short article & an excerpt from "Just Kids".

Lately, not much. I occasionally get to read out of the big book of amber, but thats about it. Been to busy lately to read much.

I just finished Neil Gaimen's Neverwhere. I liked it a lot. Not the greatest book ever, but a really good enjoyable read.

Prior to that I had read "How The Other Half Lives:Studies Among the Tenements of New York" by Jacob Riis. This book was written in 1890 and was a sensation of the day exposing the actual conditions of the poor of New York. I think what made the book such a success and influence was the actual photographs included in the book. At times it seems like Mr. Riis is blaming the poor for a lot of their own ills, but the trust of the book is that it is the environment that shapes the people. And reading it with a modern day sensability, you can see some very obvious racism. The Italians are used to living in dirt and like it that way. The Germans are hard working and regimented. Black people love to gamble to the point of it being a compulsion. The Jews worship money. etc. The book is good for the photos and descriptions of tenament life.

For Christmas last year, my mother bought an anthology book of horror stories, 13 More Tales of Horror, it's a sequel to a anthology book called 13, and both stories focus more-or-less on stories aimed at teenagers. However, 13 More was published in England, so that's where all the stories take place.

I've three stories left to read in 13 More, but I've started re-reading some of the stories in 13, including a couple I haven't read so far even though I've owned the book for years.

One of the noteworthy stories that I find myself constantly re-reading in 13 is called "A Little Taste of Death" by Patricia Windsor. A teenage girl named Louey is spending the summer with her grandmother in the South (not the Deep South, but more like Georgia or South Caroline) while her parents go on an anniversary vacation. Louey reads an ad in the newspaper which brings her to remember an incident from her childhood. When she was younger and travelling with her mother on a train, a man gave her a red lollipop. Her mother told her to throw it away, but Louey kept it and tasted it. The ad in the paper is calling for anyone who had a similar experience to come to a meeting, it might be the difference between life and death.

Louey attends the meeting, and most of the people there, teenagers, are all talking about "changes" they are going through, supposedly brought on from eating the lollipops they were given. Louey, though, has no idea what they are talking about, and leaves as the group discusses committing suicide rather than submitting to these horrible changes. Subsequently, as the people who attended the group start showing up in the obituaries, Louey's finding it harder to control her temper around her grandmother, and begins dreaming about one of the boys she met at the group, Bobby Lee. This is adjacent to a vandal having trashed Gran's living room the night of the meeting, and heads to a climax when someone boils a dog on the kitchen stove.

Bobby Lee comes from Louey, intending to kill her as he did the others. But she simply tells him off. You see, she only had one lick of the red lollipop before her mother threw it away. So, she doesn't have to go with him, as she only had a little taste of death.

What compels me towards this story is how the reader is left to analyze and try to guess just what these "changes" are that have fallen those who ate and finished the lollipops.

I recently read the "Wizard of Earthsea" trilogy by Ursula K. LeGuin. It is supposed to be a classic among fantasy literature, but I thought it was really really dull.