What BOOK are you reading right now?

Sounds like something I'd like - I will need to put it on my list - I want to read the Ann Rule book on Ted Bundy and then this one now.

back to Cryptonomicon, interspersed with a re-read of The Land of Laughs

I just started Dorothy Cheney and Richard Seyfarth's book Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind. University of Chicago Press (2007).

The book is a fascinating tour through the evolution of cognition, self-awareness, social relationships, and consious strategizing about them, from the perspective of a species closely related to ours. For the first fifty pages the book has been a page-turner for me. Unless the other 300 are a terrible letdown, this is my best read of this year.

Beyond the Lattice: Broome's Early Years. By Susan Sickert, Fremantle: FACP, 2003

Explores the chequered and often violent history of Australia's currently best example of the success of multiculturalism.

link here [url]

I have that but haven't read it yet. Any good?

Just finished The Slap on your recommendation.....an excellent read! Will read more by this author. Thanks.

Ooh sounds good!

ALmost done with De Lint. The stories improved after the first three. I do like some. I just feel he is too old (b. 1951) to identify so heavily with the under-30 set and I am weary of characters who wear cargo pants and his optimism.

Just started How Nancy Jackson Married Kate Nelson by Mark Twain. The first two stories are full of sarcasm. The book is printed in an interesting format: About four inches wide and nine inches tall. I rather like its shape.

Just picked it up this weekend at the Borders close out sale. They didn't have any Ann Rule left. But it appears I got the last copy of In the woods.

Sounds good, Linkat. It is a very intense story. Let me know what you think of it.

I've just finished a whole run of books I liked.
I liked both that Pemerson sent me - The Swan Thieves, which I said before irritated me in some parts; I liked it as a whole, and I still think of the characters once in a while.
I was surprised how much I enjoyed Franzen's Freedom. Kawabunga! Not to quote Berlusconi in any way, of course.

Enjoyed An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro. I was completely fascinated, strongly recommend it to ... some.

Just finished Balzac's Old Goriot. First I've read by Balzac, though I once read a long book about him, something of a yawn, but this one by him is a keeper.

Presently reading short stories by Guy de Maupassant. I've read him before, in my late teens. So far these aren't the same stories (he wrote a lot in a short time span) though I could have forgotten in a half century. This batch is in a Penguin Classics paperback from 1971 (GoodWill, such a source)
Really enjoying them this time around.

Apparently they're unexpurgated..

Just finished Water for Elephants and am almost finished with The Sparrow. You guys are way too fast for me, but have sure gotten some fine suggestions on this thread

Now reading The Life of Abraham Lincoln by Henry Ketcham. I downloaded it on my Kindle for "free" with other classics. Just into the first couple of chapters, but it reveals Abe's childhood and how the lifestyles were like back in those days. No conveniences to speak of, and tough making money - even $1/day. It tells why Abe was called Honest Abe from very early on in his life, and the many incidences of how he was trusted by everybody that met him. Even his stepmother like him more than her own son.

I've been reading various books, which probably none would be overly interested in but I thought I would post a link to a great resource for Public Domain books.

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Unless you need the physical book, which I sometimes do because I'm weird like that, this has been an amazing site for downloading classics and some great, but not really well known, treasures. The main page gives you a nice intro into a huge collection, and how to download them. I finally was able to finish the complete Conan-Doyle collection, as an example.

Hey, MrSandman, we might be interested in what you read - I am.

We do vary. I for example don't have wifi and am very low on money, so I'm not downloading anything at all to my non kindle or similar device, but I'm a lifetime reader, and not the only one by far.

Not to natter at you, I'm glad you are at a2k.

I loved Ishiguro's Remains of the Day. How a man that young and from a completely different culture could capture the dying of the old British order so well is amazing. Liked the movie as well.

I loved Old Goriot when I read it in English in high school. Balzac and I have the same birthday.

I read Maupassant in French in college. I remember nothing of the stories except the pleasure of reading them.

I loved Water for Elephants.

Same with me, re Maupassant, though not in french. I first read them in - aggggh, something like 1960. I have a weirdly good memory sometimes, mixed with total cluelessness on others, but so far I don't recognize the stories of Maupassant in the paperback I'm reading. On the other hand, I'm only into the third story.