What BOOK are you reading right now?

I love Sherman Alexie!!

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Gargamel wrote:

JPB wrote:
gustavratzenhofer wrote:
About fifty pages to go in A Confederacy of Dunces.

J_B really should read this book -- lots of familiar New Orleans stuff.

Got it, started it....

You'll love it!

Me, I've been slogging through Poe's tales of mystery and horror. Early short story writers are a trip, because conventions have not yet been established, and the authors pull tricks you don't see these days. Some of Poe's stuff is campy--"I cannot begin to describe to you the horrors I saw," etc.etc.--he's so dramatic. But keeping in mind this guy's life was a series of nervous breakdowns, an opium addiction, and a marriage to his cousin, you really appreciate how steeped in darknees he had to have been when writing these tales.

Gargamel--

Have you gotten to Arthur Gordon Pym yet?

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sozobe wrote:

I love Sherman Alexie!!

Me too. I loved his movies..... now I know something about his writing. 17 books to read! Yippee!

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Lash wrote:

Gargamel wrote:
JPB wrote:
gustavratzenhofer wrote:
About fifty pages to go in A Confederacy of Dunces.

J_B really should read this book -- lots of familiar New Orleans stuff.

Got it, started it....

You'll love it!

Me, I've been slogging through Poe's tales of mystery and horror. Early short story writers are a trip, because conventions have not yet been established, and the authors pull tricks you don't see these days. Some of Poe's stuff is campy--"I cannot begin to describe to you the horrors I saw," etc.etc.--he's so dramatic. But keeping in mind this guy's life was a series of nervous breakdowns, an opium addiction, and a marriage to his cousin, you really appreciate how steeped in darknees he had to have been when writing these tales.

Gargamel--

Have you gotten to Arthur Gordon Pym yet?

I haven't. But I'm curious. What genre of Poe does it read like? Mystery, horror, fantasy, satire? The novella is such an unusual form, I'm not sure what to expect.

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I'm half-way through The Mermaid's Chair... I didn't care so much for Sue Monk Kidd's first book, A Secret Life of Bees, but I like this one a lot so far.

I loved A Confederacy of Dunces... would be worth a second read.

These are the books I've bought in the last couple of days -- when they'll be read, I dunno.
2 volume set of Grant/Sherman memoirs & Letters
Letters to a Young Chef
The French Laundry Cookbook
We Were Soldiers Once... and Young
Charlie Trotter's

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The Europeans like Poe more than Americans do. Simone de Beauvoir adored him.

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In graduate school at Wayne State, I took Amer Lit: 1830-65, which Michigan requires all English teachers to take, with a Taiwanese prof whose accent was so thick that he said, "Gar Alon Po."

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What BOOK are you reading right now?

"Last night night of the earth poems" by Charles Bukowski

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Dividing my time between Jane Eyre and Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning.

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I'm ripping through Ten Little Indians. I just received Witshes Abroad (Pratchett). I may start that next. I've started and stopped reading the last of the Series of Unfortunate Events (Snicket) and Running With Scissors (?).

I may be going out to buy Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas. I heard an interview and reading on wbur. Sounds good. Here's a link: NYTs

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littlek have you read Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie?

"In the 111-year life of the Spokane Indian reservation, not one person has arrived by accident-until the day the black stranger appears with nothing more than the suit he wears and the guitar slung over his back. The man happens to be the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, in flight from the devil and presumed long dead. And when he passes his enchanted instrument to young Thomas-Builds-the-Fire-storyteller, misfit, and musician-a magical odyssey begins. From reservation bars to small-town taverns, from the cement trails of Seattle to the concrete canyons of Manhattan, Thomas and his Coyote Springs bandmates careen through ancestral nightmares and rock-and-roll dreams, sounding chords of celebration and survival as timeless as their tribe."

Turns out it's not new but I just read a review. I've enjoyed some of his other books so I'm looking for this one next.

Right now I'm reading "Cue the Easter Bunny" by Liz Evans. I guess you could say her character Grace Smith (a disgraced ex-cop turned private detective) is Britain's answer to Stephanie Plum. It's a great remedy for the March blahs.

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Margo, I've never heard of that book, but I love the title. (BTW, how are you?)

I just finished reading The Looming Tower. Fascinating but scary. Well written.

I read this book during a really long travel day... Kiran Desai's Inheritance of Loss. It is a marvelous book...starts a bit slowly as you untangle the strands of the story and locations, but then you can't put it down.

I'm almost finished with The Snow Leopard and wonder why I've never read it before. It is a classic that somehow never showed up on my radar screen. It is now way up at the top of my best books.

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littlek,

I tried and tried to read Running with Scissors. Finally gave up before getting halfway through. It stopped being funny and just seemed contrived.

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Making of The Fittest- by geneticist Sean Carroll.

Little "hunks of fossil" DNA exist in most organisms that can help us solve the mysteries of evolution AND, also assist geologists to reconstruct the early environments that could reasonably account for these DNA changes. Unless youre a total Creationist (who wont want to del with any evidence), I find that this approach is an example of really great interdisciplanary thinking.
I give it 2 thumbs up.

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Kara wrote:

littlek,

I tried and tried to read Running with Scissors. Finally gave up before getting halfway through. It stopped being funny and just seemed contrived.

Not just me then! I'm glad for that.

Tai, I don't think I have read Reservation Blues - is that the book Smoke Signals (the movie) was based on?

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littlek wrote:

Kara wrote:
littlek,

I tried and tried to read Running with Scissors. Finally gave up before getting halfway through. It stopped being funny and just seemed contrived.

Not just me then! I'm glad for that.

Tai, I don't think I have read Reservation Blues - is that the book Smoke Signals (the movie) was based on?

I know the two main characters--I forget their names now, it's been so long since I read it--appear in Smoke Signals. Reservation Blues was a top five book for me, for a long time.

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George wrote (eons ago...)

Quote:

Really? You didn't like A Short History of Nearly Everything?

I have read two or three of his books, but A Short History was different from the others. It was outstanding. I couldn't put it down.

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Kara~
I read it in bits and pieces. I need my science spoon-fed.
It reminded me of the James Burke's "Connections" on PBS.

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(waves to Kara!)

I didn't read Running with Scissors, though the title reminds of another book the name of which is at the tip of my tongue, clearly different since I just looked up R w/ Scissors.

I've read Reservation Blues fairly recently, probably my fourth book of his. Am having trouble remembering the name of the one I liked better. Not sure it was better, but it was my intro to his writing.

Presently reading a present, a book sent to me by a friend. I'm prone to like both travel and food writing, except of course when I don't and it irritates me.

This is a book by John Thorne, with Matt Lewis Thorne, called Pot on the Fire. Just the kind of thing I can get my teeth into.. Looking forward to the recipes at some point, just the names sound delicious - but this isn't a recipe book as such.

http://www.outlawcook.com

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(Waving back, osso...)

George...I, too, like my science in bits, mostly because it takes me a while to absorb, ponder, and try to understand before I move on to the next idea or concept. I did not sit down and read Bryson's book. I listened to it on CDs in my car, so I could jump back (although that is imperfect with CDs, unlike tapes) if I needed to refresh. I listened to it as I drove from my home in NC to our condo in Florida, and took breaks while I picked up Public Radio stations as I passed through metropoliti (heh heh.)

Osso, I love cooking and travel books, as you do, IF they work for me. I loved the chef's first book (blanking on his name, but it is French....Bourdain?) that was such a success, telling all of the outrageous things that happen in a real restaurant kitchen. Then he wrote a book as he traveled through Europe eating his way around the continent. I haven't read the second one, yet.

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