What are y'all reading now?

[zmudshark]

Originally Posted by jdp211

Gravity's Rainbow

My favorite book of all time. Read it three times. Just finished Inherent Vice, in anticipation of the movie. Was disappointed in the movie(he tried), loved the book.

[LJohnny]

Originally Posted by ORMojo

Speaking of reading, one of my favorite authors of all time just started writing an one-line advice column for a while! That might seem strange, but it is interesting so far.



A couple of articles on this:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...ne-agony-uncle

http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/h...ow-online.html



The site is in Japanese, so here is the link via Google Translate: http://translate.google.com/translat...m/&prev=search



And a fan is maintaining an English translation here, making for much easier reading: https://mrmurakamisplace.wordpress.com/

Big Murakami reader here as well. Haven't enjoyed his last 2 books as much as the others, but still great stuff.


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[exapkib]

I love it when this thread floats back to the top.

Fun reading:

Reamde - Neal Stephenson
Quicksilver - Neal Stephenson
A Short Stay in Hell - Stephen Peck

Work reading:

Culture and Imperialism - Edward Said
Event, Metaphor, Memory - Shahid Amin

[ojingoh]

Perfect books for this crowd:
Training and racing with a Power Meter 2nd Ed. - Hunter Allen and Andrew Coggan

Also Etape 20 Great Stages from the Modern Tour de France, by Richard Moore
And Half Man, Half Bike, the Life of Eddy Merckx, Cycling's Greatest Champion by William Fotheringham

[pcxmbfj]

Severed Souls by Terry Goodkind
Latest mediocre effort in the tired series.

[malcolm]

Reading spillover right now, about illness mostly viral entering the human population from animals, think ebola and the like, so far very good.

Just finished the "Men that United the States", good read but not as good as I anticipated.

Also just finished "Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world" It was really good. Assuming it's accurate most of what I knew was urban legend and myth. Spends a lot of time looking at his and the mongols influence on modern society.

[bking]

"Also just finished "Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world" It was really good. Assuming it's accurate most of what I knew was urban legend and myth. Spends a lot of time looking at his and the mongols influence on modern society."

enjoyed this as well. in the west we have so little knowledge of eastern history.

[malcolm]

Originally Posted by bking

"Also just finished "Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world" It was really good. Assuming it's accurate most of what I knew was urban legend and myth. Spends a lot of time looking at his and the mongols influence on modern society."

enjoyed this as well. in the west we have so little knowledge of eastern history.

Agreed. This book basically refuted anything I thought I knew about Genghis Khan. The contributions to the modern world explained in the manner they do seem hard to argue with.

[pitonpat]

So, I typically have several books going at once.

Currently reading, In the Kingdom of Ice, by Hampton Sides- it's non-fiction about the 1879 voyage of the USS Jeanette, a steam/sail barkentine vessel, sailing to the North Pole in search of the purported "open polar sea" that was speculated to exist. While I have been a lifelong reader of exploration literature, I had never heard of this voyage until I heard an interview with the author on NPR. My better half remembered and got it for me at Christmas.

Also, Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett, about early 1900's coastal Maine. A slim, poetic novella which illustrates the insular, intimate nature of a fishing village at the turn of the century.

And, The Sandcastle Girls by Vermont author Chris Bohjalian. A novel about the Armenian genocide of the Mideast during WWI.

Finally, a quirky novel of Florida, alligator-wrestling, and a swamp dredging ghost. It's called Swamplandia, by Karen Russell. I know... I have schizophrenic tastes in reading!

[fuzzalow]

I/we had relocated over the summer, as some of my friends and acquaintances on this forum already know, from 11030 to 10021. This has trivial relevance to this thread other than I now have working proof as to the superiority of the Nassau County Public Library system over the NYC Public Library system.

NYC Library does not have as much. What it does have is always wait-listed. Oh, the bother! It has slowed my throughput down dramatically. Sigh. Yeah, I know - poor baby.

What I managed to squeeze in since I last posted to this thread:

Flash Boys by Michael Lewis - an easy read on high frequency electronic stock trading. This is a business I know and it was not all that interesting because IMO the big story wasn't the mechanics of computer-based trading but the changes to the financial market structures that allowed this type of trading to happen. But Mr. Lewis spins a good yarn for the average reader, as always.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty - a favorite book to speak of in certain social circles without apparently anyone having actually read it. I had to check this book out 3 times from the NYC Library and got through it 1/3 at a time. A dense read and utterly comprehensive and intricate as to its topic matter and its associated complexities. If you are into this kind of thing, great fun and work, albeit enjoyable, at the same time.

World Order by Henry Kissinger - Henry's books are almost always dense reads but this one fell a little short for me. I came away from reading this book more disturbed about the permanence of interminable risk and how flimsy & base the driving forces were behind their perpetuation.

Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music by Greil Marcus - on the recommendation from a conversation had in a thread with a Paceliner. Dated in its coverage of an early period in rock music but salient as to the crucible of its underpinnings. Look forward to reading his newest work The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs

The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works and How It's Transforming the American Economy by Charles Fishman - a book full of anecdotal reportage and lacking any analysis or insight.

I got some new ones I'm looking forward to reading but they either aren't in yet or I'm wait-listed to get 'em.

[Black Dog]

Right in the middle of Wide Eyed and Legless. It is the story of the British ANC Halfords team in the 1987 tour de France. Great story written by a journalist who lived with the team during the tour. Tons of insight and behind the scenes stories about this ill prepared team in their 1st and last tour.

[Wayne77]

Station Eleven: best book I've read all year. Well written. Non-formulaic. Flawed characters that you still "get". Love it!

[Anarchist]

A new book from Conrad Black

Rise to Greatness

http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Greatness...e+to+greatness

1150 pages of history. The man can write a book.

[JAllen]

Dogmatics in Outline by Karl Barth. It's a published series of lectures that Barth gave at a university in Bonn in the summer of 1946 outlining the huge volumes of Kirchliche Dogmatik. Interestingly enough, he gave the lectures from memory and without a manuscript... Hell, I couldn't even tell you what I had for breakfast!

[oldpotatoe]

with ultegra but this is a good read.

http://www.amazon.com/11-22-63-Steph...3+stephen+king