What BOOK are you reading right now?

This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music ~ Lloyd Bradley

(needed something uplifting after the last book i read)

Rereading Douglas Kennedy's The Pursuit Of Happiness. I know I read it quite some time ago but I'm amazed how much of the plot I've actually forgotten. Really engossing: NYC (with lots of colour & detail) in the mid-1940s & early 50s, the McCarthy witch-hunts, family loyalties, betrayals & complicated relationships. Just my cup of tea!

'Shlepping through the alps' by Sam Apple.

In The Heart of The Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick.

Disturbing and fascinating on many levels.

Just starting Jesse Kellerman's Sunstroke.

Just started 'Reading Lolita in Teheran' by Azar Nafisi

Intriguing title, hinge.
Could you tell us a wee bit about what it's about?

Uh, still reading but basically it's a memoir of an Iranian english lit professor and based around a small reading group she formed with some selected students to read banned western classics.

There are four sections, each apparently (I'm in the first 'nabakov' section) revolves around an authors' work and roams haphazardly (but with links) from discussing a book, the author, a group member's life and Azar's impressions of the current Iranian regime. Isn't too structured at the start and I get the feeling she's repeating herself at times. But what she writes about is something I'm never going to experience so I'm sure I'll stick with it.

Apparently there has been a little criticism of it in US academia 'Azar is a tool of Bush neoconservatism' and apparently Iranians aren't fond of it (although it has been translated into 32 languages), and it's probably banned there anyway. Nevertheless Azar has both a western and Iranian eye, and that makes a fairly unique perspective. And at least one thing I learnt from it isn't a lie: the Islamic Republic of Iran has dropped the legally marriagable age of girls to nine years old. If that isn't institutionalised misogynism I'll digest my millinery.

Thanks for obliging, hinge! I much prefer a reader's perspective than relying on book reviews to figure out if I want to read a book or not.

If she's managed to upset both US academics and Iranians, she must have gotten a few things right, I reckon!

This one sounds really interesting. It's now on my "to read" list!

Inkheart , by Cornelia Funke.

First of a trilogy

What was lost, by Catherine O'Flynn.

An excellent read so far.

Just finished "Don't Get Too Comfortable" by David Rakoff.

"The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torments of Low Thread Count, the Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems"

Wonderful. Not sure I would even care what he said, I so much like the way he writes.

I'm now into about my eighth book, because my wife gave me "The Coldest Winter" by David Halberstam that's two inches thick (661 pages).

I'm now on page 47.

<groan>

Well, c.i., you are retired after all. (I've a friend who read "Roots" in one sitting. Of course she stayed up for two days straight.) Good luck

<snort: the torments of low thread-count...>

"On Beauty" by Zadie Smith. Have wanted to read it for a while. Interesting backdrop reading with Obama-ness going on.

I just started this one:


I had just finished reading another book by Christopher Brookmyre

and I liked it.

The Master Quilter (Elm Creek Quilt novels)

The Dark River by John Twelve Hawks, sequel to The Traveler :wink:

just started oswald spengler's :


the librarian brought it up from the bowels of the library .
it won't be an easy read !
hbg