What BOOK are you reading right now?

Still making my way through Herodotus' The Histories, still enjoying it. Reading about two queens of Babylon, Semiramis and Nitocris, and moving on to Babylonian customs, thence to Cyrus planning to subdue the Massagetae - fell asleep at page 97.
500 some pages to go.

What did you think of Mockingjay?

I'll copy a bit from Herodotus on Babylonian customs -

"The most ingenious in my opinion is a custom which, I understand, they share with the Eneti in Illyria. In every village once a year all the girls of marriageable age used to be collected together in one place, while the men stood round them in a circle; an auctioneer then called each one in turn to stand up and offered her for sale, beginning with the best-looking and going on to the second best as soon as the first had been sold for a good price. Marriage was the object of the transaction. The rich men who wanted wives bid against each other for the prettiest girls, while the humbler folk, who had no use for good looks in a wife, were actually paid to take the ugly ones, for when the auctioneer had got through all the pretty girls he would call upon the plainest, or even perhaps a crippled one, to stand up, and then ask who was willing to take the least money to marry her - and she was knocked down to whoever accepted the smallest sum. The money came from the sale of the beauties, who in this way provided dowries for their ugly or misshapen sisters. [...........]

This admirable practice has now fallen into disuse and they have of late years hit upon another scheme, namely the prostitution of all girls of the lower classes to provide some relief from the poverty which followed upon the conquest with its attendant hardship and general ruin."

We do that now osso but informally. Or more formerly where the dating and dance cards are kept up.

I've read Herodotus. If you're not squeamish it's quite amusing. His descriptions, being very taut as in your quote, and his generally louche style provides a good lesson for a budding writer. But there is a translator to praise as well.

This thread should be grateful for you having brought this great writing team to its attention so grabbingly. What with their being so much drivel getting so fashionable these days.

It's a bit like having the most interesting bloke you ever met rambling on about anything he fancied night after night in the pub. For a bloke I mean. I've no idea how a lady might take it.

One might hope she isn't reading Herodotus in order to have read Herodotus. If I saw any evidence of that I would set her straight right away.

I had read Proust before reading Herodotus so I suppose the latter must have been a bit fast and furious to me.

I spent the days of a fine summer's middle three months reading À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past). On a swing sun-lounger with a floral motif half stoned. Leaning back closing my eyes whenever I lost track in one of his sentences. A heatwave on. 82 is a heatwave here. Brewery workers go on double shifts.

I liked it. Not as much as the first two books. A lot of waiting around for most of the book. A bit too much commentary on the use of Katniss as icon for the rebellion.

I didn't mind the ending and was quite shocked and saddened by the one particular character's death. I would recommend the whole series to just about anybody.

~~
Margaret Atwood news:

So she's working on a third book to what I didn't expect to be a trilogy of Oryx and Crake and Year of the Flood.
http://www.vulture.com/2012/05/margaret-atwood-payback-interview.html

I'm quite psyched!!

Madeleine Albright, Prague Winter.

Just finished "The Emperor of All Maladies" by Siddhartha Mukherjee.
Excellent.
Now about half through "World without End" Ken Follett
not his best, but fun.

That's the way I do it.
Cancer.....and then imaginary stone masons of the 1300's.

Joe( )Nation

I forgot to mention that I'm reading Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass.

I am reading Herodotus because it was on the shelf at the GoodWill and 99 cents and I hadn't read it before.

I agree the translator is wonderful - well, to me - and Herodotus' style louche. I'm quite knocked out. I'm giving it a rest at page 100 for a bit, but will get back to it. I'm missing Cyrus already.
The translator is Aubrey de Selincourt. Didn't see this exact version in the Amazon list, 'tis rather tattered. Priced at $1.45 at the time of publishing, 1961.

What I'm giving Herodotus a rest for is a book Roger gave me, Joseph Wambaugh's Lines and Shadows. I read Wambaugh a long time ago, but not this one: a true tale re a group from the San Diego police department trying to intervene in some excruciating attacks by bandits on 'pollos', Mexicans moving across the border of the US and Mexico. It is re much of my time and general area, though I didn't know the extent of all of that then.

almost missed my bus stop coming home

That looks really good beth

Bloody good, eh?

Reminds me of that folk song from the 60s, with a line "Come a wise man, a . . . . man, a fool or a witty, Don't let me die an old maid. Take me out of pity."

Read a short book, "The Play That Changed My Life," edited by Ben Hodges and published by the American Theatre Wing. Hodges put together interviews and essays by more or less contemporary American playwrights that answer the question why I came to write for the theatre. Fun and interesting.

Contributors include David Henry Hwang, Suzan Lori Parks, David Ives, Horton Foote, Charles Fuller, and more.

"Harry Potter" currently reading....complete series....
my favorite one...love it....

I am currently reading "Headhunters" an English translation of a thriller written by a Norwegian, Jo Nesbo. The Norwegian movie version of the book is currently getting great reviews in the United States.

Oh, I'm jealous. Big Nesbo fan here, though I've only read one, The Redbreast.

I had a few rest periods reading Herodotus as well. It is a bit dreary I imagine all in one go.

The odd thing I have found is that the dreariest books have the most telling insights. Maybe the drear is a form of censorship so that telling insights are only available to those who make an effort.

Who is Roger? And what's he doing giving you books about Mexican bandits?

I imagine she means roger.

she capitalizes it to make him feel better, spendi.

as a gesture if you will...

Yes, I agree -- sozlet said something like "she [Collins] wrote it in too much of a rush, she needed to slow down and edit better." The pacing was odd, and everything was less visually clear than in the previous books -- I had a clear mental image of almost everything in the first two, but Mockingjay was frequently confusing in a way that took away some of the impact of what was going on. It wasn't just a "fog of war" thing either, just sloppy writing.

It was also brutal.

So I liked it less than the first two but think that overall it was a fitting completion to the story.