What Are You Reading?

Started Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War series out of curiosity. It's fairly decent, but if the whole series is as serialized as the first two books, I may have to read the whole damn series all the way thru without alternating with other authors. i've never done that before.

Tried a Palhaniuk (however it's spelled, the Fight Club guy) novel, but couldn't get into it. I swear, guy hasn't had a new idea or technique since Fight Club. It was tiresome to the point of wanting to choke myself.


Before that, a nonfiction about the looming extinction of various kinds of tortoises. Apparently the problem is the Asians, and douchebags like me who keep them as pets.

I just read a sci-fi novel by Greg Costikyan called First Contract, an entertaining little satire that has very capitalist aliens coming to Earth to offer a deal to humanity, a deal which has the whole Earth becoming a "developing planet" trying to find its place in a galaxy-wide economy full of much more technologically capable competitors. Funny and lightweight, the story follows a former tech company CEO as he struggles to build a company and find a product within Earth's production capability to sell to the aliens.

Just read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Finished Stranger in a Strange Land a couple weeks ago.

I'm reading this thread.

Just finished up two older books:

The Flowering of New England by Van Wyck Brooks
Christianity for Modern Pagans by Peter Kreeft (an apologetic work based on Pascal's Pensees)

Still working on The Federalist Papers. The ones about taxation are a bit of a slog.

High Profile- a Jesse Stone novel by the late Robert Parker

Rereading American Gods, ripping through at a good pace.

I just finished Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett. I'm unsure as to which book to read next (I hear they follow a sort-of kind-of order of sorts).

The Clash of Gods for my art history class, and Fat: The Anthropology of an Obsession for my anthro theory. Assorted articles and shit for my other classes.

Just finished re-reading Rex Stout's Death of a Dude. While on vacation at the Montana ranch of Lilly Rowan, Archie is caught up in trying to clear the name of her foreman, Harvey Greve (previously seen in the short story The Rodeo Murder) who's been jailed for killing the "dude" who got his daughter pregnant on his last trip out west. Face with the prospect of doing without Archie 'til October, Nero ventures forth from the brownstone to the west to catch the real killer. Getting Nero out of the house is always fun, and seeing how he & Archie with both the locals and the other dudes in the area.

I recently got a new copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, so I may well be starting that one soon.

Google up his bibliography, it should be listed in order. That's what I do when I find a new author I like.

I'll have to come back to this thread when I have more time. That said, at the moment I'm not reading anything.

To clarify, I'm reading professional journals, because I'm over a half year behind on them and they have good stuff for my job. Otherwise I wind up reading technical stuff like the O'Reilly book on MS Access or Kiyosaki's (the "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" author) book on real estate investing. If I'm really lucky, I'll read some military history. I really can't remember the last time I read fiction for pleasure.

Yep, flowed right into book three. I like it, though - each book is a fun, fast read. Guess I''l plow thru all 5 of the extant volumes before I move on.

Lately I've been going back through Shirley Rousseau Murphy's Joe Grey series, starting with Cat on the Edge and on up to Cat Fear No Evil which I'm on right now for the first time. Joe & Dulcie and the Kit have to deal with a rash of burglaries, a dead waiter, and a mysterious threat against one of their special friends that will follow her from San Francisco back home to Molena Point.

Recently read Stephen King's "11/22/63". A man goes back in time to try and save JFK. I thought it was great and loved the historical aspect.

I'm about halfway thru a biography of Robert Morris, financier of the American Revolution.

I'm about 1/3 of the way in on this one and enjoying it. So seems like something that's bound to end up in a movie or a TV show at some point

They've already optioned the rights for a movie. No details yet on cast/crew that I know of.


I've just finished the new Dark Tower book The Wind Through The Keyhole. It takes place between books IV and V. It's similar in tone to book IV in that 80% is flashback/story and contains a story told within a story. It doesn't change or further anything in the DT universe, but it's a good read & it's nice to enter Mid-World again - even for such a short visit.

Read "A Princess of Mars" and enjoyed it. Slogged thru most of "Gods of Mars" and got sick of it. Wow, Burroughs just went WAY over the top and around the bend in the s econd novel! I gave up and moved on to the next book in Taylor Anderson's Destroyermen series.

Try some Ray Bradbury. But I bet you've already read some.

I've been wondering about the Dark Tower books for ages but I've just never motivated myself to take on such a huge task.

Summer of '68 - story of the 1968 baseball season.

I'm also reading the Eye of the World series. I had read the first 3-4 books but stopped when I thought Jordan would never finish it. He is gone now and another guy is going to finish it based on Jordan's notes.

How much of his other work have you read? A lot of his other works tie into the series. Some a little (It, The Stand), some a lot (Insomnia, Desperation, Salem's Lot).

If you have the time, you should definitely read the DT series. Each book has a different tone: Book 1 - Acid Western, Book 2 - NY Crime, Book 3 - Fantasy, Book 4 - Straight western, Book 5 - Magnificent Seven redo, Book 6 - Dark & depressing, Book 7 - Sweeping epic that closes the door (or does it?), New book - Nested short stories.

Whether or not you like the ending, the characters will stay with you.

Whoa! The DT series is the only Stephen King I have not read. Maybe I read one. After reading this, I might give it a try. Interesting. I was not aware of the tie-ins.

actually I havent read all that many of his books. Besides 1963, I read Under the Doom and Dead Zone, maybe a couple of others.

where he drifts away from uber-creepy i like him. The Creep-fest stuff just isn't my cup.

it's like Dean Kontz - i LOVE how he writes but i seldom care for the subject matter.

Though I read Dean Koontz, I find him to sometimes be a pale imitation of King. I have read all of King's work except for the Dark Tower series. I suggest you try some more King. Some of the more recent collection of short stories and Cell or From a Buick 8.

I just finished up reading Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Quite a fantastic memoir and piece of psychiatric literature.

While I was waiting for Microsoft's malware detection tool to check over 2 million files, I read Tony Hillerman's The Sinister Pig.

I'm glad that it didn't soley revolve around Jim Chee like A Dark Wind did. He was almost like a supporting character. I couldn't actually tell you who the protagonist was. The only real similarity in story telling was that it opened up with an unidentified dead man.

I think that the Prot. was Budge.

Good read.