What BOOK are you reading right now?

I'm reading "The Burning Room", a crime, mystery, detective novel.

I'm a big fan of murder, mystery novels.

I finished Women of Will but have spent time rereading several of Shakespeare's plays as part of the work on my own play. The Taming of a Shrew. Henry V. Romeo and Juliet. Hamlet. Much Ado About Nothing.

Because I enjoyed Far From the Madding Crowd, I am reading the book and enjoying it.

It seems to me that Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy were inspired by similar problems that we have yet to solve.

The Maltese Falcon
~Dashiell Hammett

I've never read any of the classic "hard-boiled detective" stories.
This seems a good one to start with.

It's very good. The initial description of the fat man is a masterpiece.

The Biography of the WRight Brothers by David Mcullough. I needed to know more about these guys and the wright flyer AFTER Kitty HAwk .

Just finished F: A Novel, by Daniel Kehlmann - great stuff.

Half way through the The Dreaming Void (book one of the Void Trilogy) by Peter F. Hamilton

I read his Path Between The Seas about the Panama canal.
Good stuff.

A few years ago an a2k pal passed me this book on Paris by McCulloch, and I enjoyed it, learned some new info - by now, though, I've mixed up what I learned reading that with what I learned from other books. So it goes.

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris
by David McCullough

I looked it up, will keep my eye out for him. (heh)


Instead of a book, today I'm reading a New Yorker article about Matteo Renzi, v. interesting; by Jane Kramer, a writer whose books and articles I've read for years now.

I like Renzi so far. What does the article say about him?

A great deal (New Yorker articles tend to be on the long explanatory side), about nine pages, but not boring. Kramer has written the NYer's Letter from Europe articles for decades now.
To me, this one is worth a read for a variety of reasons - touching on matters I'd wondered about. I had also mixed up him somewhat with the relatively new major of Rome (they both like bicycles), but now I have them straight.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/29/the-demolition-man

Just finished The Dreaming Void (book one of the Void Trilogy) by Peter F. Hamilton yesterday. Started book two of said trilogy, The Temporal Void.

I plan to find this book. Seems interesting.

“The end of the world. Let me tell you about the end of the world. It happened fifty years ago. Maybe a hundred. And since then it's been lovely. I mean it. Nobody tries to bother you. You can relax. You know what? I like the end of the world.”
― Thomas M. Disch, 334
If Charles Dickens has written speculative fiction, he might have created a novel as intricate, passionate, and lacerating as Thomas M. Disch's visionary portrait of the underbelly of 21st-century New York City. The residents of the public housing project at 334 East 11th Street live in a world of rationed babied and sanctioned drug addiction. Real food is displayed in museums and hospital attendants moonlight as body-snatchers. Nimbly hopscotching backward and forward in time, Disch charts the shifting relationships between this world's inheritors: an aging matriarch who falls in love with her young social worker; a widow seeking comfort from the spirit of her dead husband; a privileged preteen choreographing the perfectly gratuitous murder. Poisonously funny, piercingly authentic, 334 is a masterpiece of social realism disguised as science fiction.

I am rereading Jonathan Bate's book, Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and Times of William Shakespeare.

Bate (that is the correct spelling) is brilliant. I am so unhappy with American education, particularly after someone on these fora told me that my standards are too high, that I was reassured when Bate described the grammar school curriculum of Shakespeare's day. Boys in I believe the fourth form who must by between 10 and 12 were asked to write essays from the point of view of fictional characters like Priam or historical persons like Julius Caesar. They would be asked to solve a problem or make a statement. In other words, practice critical thinking.

He had great things to say about Erasmus as well. Wish Washington would read Erasmus . . . ha!

Oh god, I'm dying laughing at this one.

So many aspects on girls growing up is right on the mark.

2 thumbs up. If you like David Sedaris and Cintra Wilson, you'll also like this.

In the first few pages, Una describes how she forced her sister to agree that if Una ever fell into an irreversible coma, she would visit 3 times a week to keep her eyebrow (singular) under control.

Notes from the Underground by Dostoyevsky. This is a good book and reminds me of why I became a Dostoyevsky fan in my youth. Following is a small quote that made me smile. He's talking about people moaning when they have toothaches.

These moans express the humiliating pointlessness of the pain, a pain that obeys certain laws of nature about which you don't give a damn, for you're the one who must suffer, and nature can't feel a thing.

I'm about to start a new book for my book group: Mission to Paris by Alan Furst. Don't know a thing about it.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I love Alan Furst's WWII era mysteries. Read a half dozen of them already. Don't think I've read this one though.

Beloved Historical Fiction Author E.L. Doctorow Dead At 84
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/el-doctorow-dead_55aeed2ce4b08f57d5d2ead6?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063