What book are you currently reading?

[Smellincoffee]

Recently finishe Then Everything Changed, a book about three alt-history scenarios (JFK dies before taking office, RFK survives the assassination attempt, Ford manages to win against Carter) and the politics that ensued. Friendly to the Kennedy clan, hostile toward Nixon. Reagan's thunder is stolen out from under him repeatedly.

Now reading The Forgotten 500, the story of 512 airmen stranded in the Balkans who were tasked with building a runway so some C-47s could stop by and rescue them.

 

[Meteor Man]

Recently finishe Then Everything Changed, a book about three alt-history scenarios (JFK dies before taking office, RFK survives the assassination attempt, Ford manages to win against Carter) and the politics that ensued. Friendly to the Kennedy clan, hostile toward Nixon. Reagan's thunder is stolen out from under him repeatedly.

Now reading The Forgotten 500, the story of 512 airmen stranded in the Balkans who were tasked with building a runway so some C-47s could stop by and rescue them.

How's the latter book? I'd like to check that out.

 

[BuckeyeJim]

 

[downtown]

Infinite Jest was *awesome*. I love DFW.

I'm reading The American Idea, the very best of The Atlantic Monthly

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Well I finally read Last and First Men (due to leaving the book up home last time I visited and only getting it last week). So I've decided to start re-reading David Eddings' Malloreon, and what did I do? Yes, I left the first book up home (lucky for me I've read the series so often I can nearly recite it verbatim).

 

[SuperJay]

So I've decided to start re-reading David Eddings' Malloreon, and what did I do? Yes, I left the first book up home (lucky for me I've read the series so often I can nearly recite it verbatim).

Ha, nice! Those are fun little books. I haven't read Eddings in years and years, but I first picked up the Belgariad and the Mallorean when I was 14 or so, and they were my first "favorite" fantasy novels. I still have a soft spot for Garion, Belgarath, Polgara, Durnik, Silk, Barak, Ce'Nedra....

"Beware Zandramas!!"

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Yeah it's great fun, though I got into him through The Sapphire Rose in college. My father had most of the Belgariad lying around during my childhood and I thought the books too frivilous back then.

 

[Annex]

I finished The Road a little while ago and now Im 50 pages into The Shining.

 

[BuckeyeJim]

Infinite Jest was *awesome*. I love DFW.

I'm reading The American Idea, the very best of The Atlantic Monthly

What's awesome about it? It reads like Amateur Hour at the local Starbucks. I can't count on one hand the amount of major flaws that detract from this hot mess. I'm certainly hoping there's some serious payback at the end of this cliche riddled, boring, repetitive, pedantic novel.

 

[Atticus]

I think I'll reread George RR Martin's A Game of Thrones before the HBO miniseries airs next month.

I tried to read it last summer, but noticed that there's nothing in common with me and the people of the book. It's like they're from a whole different world.

White Jazz on the other hand is interesting so far, but the writing style makes it very hard to read. Probably even more so in a translation.

I had longish pause in reading this, and when I continued, found it quite enjoyable.

Now I've just started Clavell's Noble House, which is the last of his novels I'm going to read, since everyone thinks Whirlwind is terrible. At the start at least it's better than Gai Jin, which was a little bit soapy.

I'm also reading Smullyan's What is the Name of This Book? and Colin Wilson's The Outsider.

 

[downtown]

What's awesome about it? It reads like Amateur Hour at the local Starbucks. I can't count on one hand the amount of major flaws that detract from this hot mess. I'm certainly hoping there's some serious payback at the end of this cliche riddled, boring, repetitive, pedantic novel.

Did you like any of his other books? I thought the plot was clever, and I greatly enjoy DSW's literary voice, although I admit that his essays are stronger than his fiction works. I'm not sure if the ending is the fireworks display you're hoping for though.

 

[BuckeyeJim]

This is my first DSW book. All of my hipster friends from OSU all tell me incessantly that I have to read it and how brilliant it is. Whatever.

Granted, I'm 250 pages in, but I find the plot going nowhere fast for 250 pages. And I find his literary voice to be rather insufferable. He tells the whole damn story in the most overt, boring, and uninteresting manner possible. "Jim had a brown drug-addled dog." Great. And it takes this tone for pages and pages and pages. I know he was 27 when he wrote it, but man, it reads like satire you'd find in a college satire paper. It's just...amateurish. I cannot stand his pointless pontifications. But the worst part... the WORST part, is how one dimensional and similar each and every character is. We got it: Everyone is stressed, drug addicted, and has mental problems. We got it.

He strikes me as a boring, less poignant Vonnegut wannabe.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Recently finished Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser. An investigative journalist, Schlosser examines the history of the fast food industry and the agribusiness monopolies that support it, its relentless campaign against government health and safety legislation and workers' rights, a mass marketing campaign that has infiltrated state schools, its devastating effects on local farmers and ranchers, and (of course) public nutrition, with particular focus on young children. The book is perhaps most tragic and sickening when discussing the state of meat packing plants: a hundred years after The Jungle, little has changed.

 

[jtb1127]

the Civil war by Bruce Catton

 

[Glassfan]

Well I finally read Last and First Men...

Olaf Stapledon? Great old SciFi!

Just finishing up Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy, by David Stevenson, 2004, 564 pages. A "complete" history of the war period with politics, economics and revolution. Very informative and eloquently written.

 

[Cutlass]

Atlantic by Simon Winchester.

Pale Demon by Kim Harrison.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Olaf Stapledon? Great old SciFi!

Just finishing up Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy, by David Stevenson, 2004, 564 pages. A "complete" history of the war period with politics, economics and revolution. Very informative and eloquently written.

The old stuff is the best, I find. Noty knocking the new guys, there's some intruiging readers out there, but it seems the biggest ideas are all from the past.

 

[Snerk]

Min Kamp, book 3 by Karl Ove Knausgård.

 

[BuckeyeJim]

I've put Infinite Jest on hold until April so I can stay on a 4 book per month rate and I'm reading On the Road, and My Antonia.

 

[Aysee]

Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett. Believe it or not, I've only been introduced to the Discworld series of novels recently, and have gotten hooked. Pratchett's work is simply amazing on so many different levels.