This week, I are mostly reading....

metaoblivia

I'm reading children's mysteries, Nate the Great, The Sebastian Barth Series, Herculeah Jones, ect.. I'm an MFA writing student and my manuscript is a children's mysery, so my reading follows suit.

Blush_01

Gaskell's North and South. I love the Classics, plus I have to read it for college. Win-win!

dudara

North and South is a good story alright.

I've just finished "The Worst Jobs in History" by Tony Robinson. Very entertaining.

Based on recommendations in a thread below, I've started "The Magician's Guild" by Trudi Canavan

John

I'm reading Sir Thursday by Garth Nix. Nice break from study.

Saintly

Just finished 'The Kiterunner.' by Khaled Hosseini. It's a beautifully written book with a dark fairytale quality to it. Absolutely loved it.

Saintly.

Dades

Just started King's "The Dark Tower" series.

Just finished "The Light of Other Days" (Arthur C Clarke & Stephen Baxtor).
I won't say what I thought of it, only that it rhymes with "Light".

Undergod

Reading "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas. Much the same as his other stuff, chronologically confused, inconsistent, badly translated, and overall a jolly good read. Swashing buckles and "'pon my honour"s and heroism. Great stuff.

theCzar

Undergod wrote:

Reading "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas. Much the same as his other stuff, chronologically confused, inconsistent, badly translated, and overall a jolly good read. Swashing buckles and "'pon my honour"s and heroism. Great stuff.

I love that book, revenge has never been done as well.

I'm reading The Lost Continent by Billy Bryson, great book.

Chinafoot

Blush_01 wrote:

Gaskell's North and South. I love the Classics, plus I have to read it for college. Win-win!

Hehe, finally finished it. Kept forgetting about it

Started a Drama in Muslin by George Moore. Looks interesting so far.

shatners basoon

The age of reason by Jean Paul Sartre and the wind up bird chronicle by Murakami.
Both excellent novels so far, Sartre can be a bit heavy so i unwind with Murakami.

beans

The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins

It's a study of evolutionary mechanisms, basically an explanation of how evolution works. Illuminating and engaging, nice humour, if a little bit terse in places. I like what I've seen so far anyway

Blush_01

peachypants wrote:

Hehe, finally finished it. Kept forgetting about it

Started a Drama in Muslin by George Moore. Looks interesting so far.

I will have it read for friday week, honest I will!

I started Flann O' Brien's At Swim - Two-Birds last night. Read about four pages. If that's what Joyce found funny, then I can more easily see where he was coming from. I'll read it some time when I have nothing else to read, but it was positively boring - not even the faintest tinkle of a giggle, for one of the funniest novels of all times. It came across as over-enthusiastic pseudo-intellectualism. Perhaps I'm being too harsh, but I just really didn't like it. I know, I didn't give it a chane, but it wasn't even close to what I was looking for.

Give me Gaskell any day. Mmhm, Mary Barton - plenty of death and a bit of industrial chick-lit mixed up together.

growler

"The Mote in God's Eye" Larry Niven.

Quality bit of sci-fi from the 70's, now out of print sadly.

John

Stephen King's Cell. I'm just about two thirds of the way through it. It started off terrible, gained a lot of ground to become quite good but it's now losing its pace and I don't know how it will go from here.

Nimrod's Son

The Fandom Of The Operator. More comedy goodness from my man Robert Rankin.

dudara

I finished "The Black Magician" by Trudi Canvan and "The Blood Doctor" by Barbara Vine. The former is a quite good fantasy novel, while the latter is a quite interesting modern day/historical detective-type story that is quite good for the most part, but peters out towards the end.

I've just started "Broken Angels" by Richard Morgan (author of "Altered Carbon").

John

Started WG Sebald's Austerlitz. Good so far but hasn't dazzled me like The Rings of Saturn did.

Sgt Sensible

The Sound And The Fury by William Faulkner. It needs 2 or 3 readings to deal with the Joycean stream of consciousness style, jumps in time etc. and has a level of daring that is impossible to find in current literature.

Misty Moon

This week I'm reading The Bone Doll's Twin by Lynn Flewelling. Excellent book, reading for second or third time. Doing that because I was reading the Ill-Made Mute which I got out of the library (fantasy book, can't remember author's name but should make a note of it so I know never to pick up another book by same) and it was just dragging and dragging.

bringitdown

The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks, superb stuff

Nimrod's Son

Molvania: A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry by Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner and Rob Sitch. Amusing.

theCzar

Reading "The Idiot" by Dostoevsky

Jay Tomio

Right now I'm reading Jeffrey Ford's second collection Empire of Ice Cream which is thus far magnificent, and finishing up Stephen Baxter's Emperor (which will be out in July) which a really nice Baxter project, from a writer who usually delivers with either brilliance, or is a bit uneven (even with his collaborations with Arthur C. Clarke).

Right now finishing up reviews on Jacqeline Carey's Kushiel's Scion (which comes out in June) and Jeff Vandermeer's (who I interviewed last week) Shriek: an afterword - which is just a outrageously well crafted, and ambitious narrative from one of my favorite writers.

Piste

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyle. According to my mum everyone's praising it and saying it's brilliant. I'm only a few chapters in and it doesn't seem expecially brilliant so far but hopefully it'll pick up.

byte

Reading The Commitments by Roddy Doyle. The book itself is The Barrytown Trilogy, so I'll be reading all three.

John

theCzar wrote:

Reading "The Idiot" by Dostoevsky

Good luck

Misty Moon

Piste wrote:

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyle. According to my mum everyone's praising it and saying it's brilliant. I'm only a few chapters in and it doesn't seem expecially brilliant so far but hopefully it'll pick up.

This is Ryan Turbidy's/Barry's Tea book club book of the month (or is it book of the week?). Happened to catch two minutes of the show he announced it on but was driving and then couldn't remember what the name of the book was. Thanks for the reminder - off to see what it's about and whether it might be worth getting.

bringitdown

Lunar Park, Bret Easton Ellis

Scratch Acid

Just finished up 'A Wild Sheep Chase' and 'Dance Dance Dance' by Haruki Murakami last week. Fantastic stuff, as always with him.

Started 'Kitchen' by Banana Yoshimoto and 'Where I'm Calling From' by Raymond Carver today.

Gegerty

Just finishing up Money by Martin Amis. Drugs, booze, pornography and filthy talk....great stuff