What BOOK are you reading right now?

Wow! There is a novella by Andre Maurois called the Weigher of Souls from the 1930s about a researcher who weighed people before and after death.

I have a long history with that book.

In an embarrassing testament to how sluggish my reading has become, I just started a book that's been on my to-read pile since the end of 2008. It's Rose George's The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters. The author talks extensively about how lack of proper sanitation is among the deadliest killers in the world today, what things could be done about it, and which cultural roadblocks get in the way of us actually doing them.

George also talks about the high end of the sanitation culture. And perhaps surprisingly, that's not us. The Japanese, says George, get grossed out when they first hear about our toilet paper. Japanese toilets are high-tech installations. They heat your seat and massage your back while you're doing your business, do all their cleaning automatically and hydraulically, and automatically put the seat down after you're done. This last feature is aptly called "the marriage saver"; some features of the human condition truly are universal. But the Japanese seem to have perfected the culture of dealing with them.

The reason I put the book on the to-read pile in the first place was an interview with its author on my local NPR station. It's still on their website, and still interesting.

http://www.whyy.org/podcast/102308_110630.mp3

Don't be embarassed, Kara, it was a minor lapsus oculae..

My aging Latin got me through that one, Francis.

My question to you earlier didn't come totally out of the blue. I ordered from Amazon a second-hand copy of Los Cachorros that looked to be a translation; when the book came, it was in Spanish, which I cannot read. It cost too little to return to the seller so I will hawk it around among my Hispanic friends.

the narrator is the key, some can really take you out of the story, i first heard the Harry Potter series with American reader Jim Dale, he's well respected and a great voice, but when i heard the British version with Stephen Fry, unbelievable, far superior in my opinion

something i've found more often than not, authors shouldn't read their own books, Neil Gaiman is one i've found who can quite successfully read his own work

Three Men in a Boat! I haven't thought of JKJ in quite a while.

Thomas? Have you read or heard anything about the following physics book?
From eternity to here : the quest for the ultimate theory of time by Sean Carroll?

I recently got an email suggestion from the NYPL and was wondering if it's a worthwhile read.

POM, I'd like to read that novella. Is it still in print?

No, it is not. You can probably get a very inexpensive copy online from Amazon or one of the other services. I wonder if the man doing the actual weighing was inspired by Maurois?

Reading the nanoshort essays of This I Believe II on the commute to and from work.

And the newly published first edition paperback of the Questionable Content: Volume I anthology.
http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=QC-VOLUMEONE&Category_Code=QC

Hi Tsar--no, I haven't read it. Sorry I can't be of help on that one.

My daughter's favorite artists are Georgia O'Keefe and Rodin, so, when I saw a bio of O'Keefe and a picture book of Rodin's sculpture marked down at a used book store, I bought them.

The bio, O'Keefe: The Life of an American Legend is not well-written. Although its author, Jeffrey Hogrefe, had been the arts columnist for the Washington Post, his prose is awful. Her life is interesting. I knew nothing about her other than that she was cantankerous in her later years. She seems to have battled depression, if not outright insanity, for years. Her life also seemed marked by strange events that allowed her pick up inspiration, or, perhaps, viewing her life backwards in time allows the reader to see events that inspired her in a remarkable way.

finished (with some pauses to re-read a couple of Calvin & Hobbes anthologies), To Ruhleben – And Back (http://able2know.org/topic/1042-270#post-4391972), good read

back to Watership Down and started re-reading Tove Jansson's Moomin books

I just finished listening to an audio book that I was inspired to read again by a comment someone made here earlier... Madame Bovary by Flaubert. I bought the book on iTunes, settling on an older rendition by a Brit reader who was outstanding and helped me appreciate the leisured, descriptive, witty, and perceptive writing that has made this book a classic.

I am reading, not listening, to a book that was longlisted for the Booker....Skippy Dies. I got the PB copy when I was in Ireland this summer and it has worked its way to the top of my To Read pile. I have just begun it so have no opinion yet, but it starts well.

Ireland this summer, schniff, so beautiful.

I'm reading the book Pemerson kindly sent me and am enjoying it a lot. The book is the novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. I haven't read a review. I tend not to do that most of the time, to barely skim the back covers of many books because I like to be have the book unfold for me... enough that the writer is literate and the setting interests me. In this case I was quite a blank slate opening the book, and then was hurled back into the world of the late 1700's in Nagasake and environs. Who knows what will happen to our protagonist? Well, Pem does.. He becomes more interesting as the pages pass, as do the other characters - no stick figures in this book, yet anyway.
I also like the descriptions of everything Jacob is seeing and hearing and learning. These are sometimes near poetic but not what I consider over the top. He writes with clarity and chooses good words that sometimes sound just right to my ear. I'm sticky about that point in that too poetic writing can make me run from the presence of a writer in love with his or her words. There's also an underlying humor afoot.

Nice drawings/illustrations so far too. I'm on page 148/479.

I'm now reading PANASONIC. Got into the first chapter last night.

What balderdash are you trying to sell us CI? Are you really reading a tech manual or are you actually watching television on a Panasonic plasma or lcd tv?

tsar, I'm actually reading the book authored by Francis McInerney about Panasonic. He and his partner consulted the company when they ran into huge operational problems back in the 90's. Did you know that Panasonic was one of the largest companies in the world? That they have more products in homes around this world? Even I purchased a Panasonic TV, one of the first HDTVs on the market, and paid a hefty price for it. It still works real good, and it's in our master bedroom. It's more or less a flat panel TV, but thicker than what's available today.

Panasonic just moved into new quarters not far from where we live - about two miles from our house.

I also read NOMURA (my namesake), and their history. It was fascinating, and I learned a lot from that book. Nomura Securities was at one time the largest investment company in the world, and they're the ones who started the commodities market.

If you remind me in about a month or two about what I've learned from Panasonic (from Mr McInerney), please remind me on this thread.

I'm leaving for India on the 22nd, and will be away for 24-days. ta