What BOOK are you reading right now?

another wonderful book by Adam Gopnik

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvcr6xKeGc1qbjp9ao1_400.jpg

@ehBeth,

While visiting some folks in Houston last week, we visited the Houston Museum of Natural History where they had two interesting exhibits. The first one on the Medici's, and the second on the Maya's. I purchased The House of Medici, Its Rise and Fall by Christopher Hibbert which I'll begin reading after I finish Rocket Plane.

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@cicerone imposter,

I've started on another one by Gary Shteyngart. I bet I've spelled that wrong, though. No, I just checked it.

Anyone else read anything by him?

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@ehBeth,

I know Gopnik from The New Yorker; what a great writer!

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@panzade,

He is, isn't he.

I know him best from the radio. He's on the CBC frequently. He did the 2011 Massey Lectures

http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/massey-lectures/2011/11/07/the-2011-cbc-massey-lectures-winter/

Quote:

This year the CBC Massey Lectures celebrates fifty years with bestselling author, essayist, cultural observer, and famed New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik.

His subject is winter - the season, the space, the cycle. Gopnik takes us on an intimate tour of the artists, poets, composers, writers, explorers, scientists, and thinkers, who helped shape a new and modern idea of winter. A stunningly beautiful meditation buoyed by Gopnik's trademark gentle wit, Winter is at once an enchanting homage to an idea of a season and a captivating journey through the modern imagination.

he writes and speaks about winter so beautifully

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@cicerone imposter,

I've run out of a stash of new old books, so I'm rereading some of my old old books - and when I saw you mention the Hibbert Medici book, I took it off my shelf and started reading it again. As I remember the book, it gathers more steam as it goes along.

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@ossobuco,

Adds, another Gopnik fan here. Haven't read the Paris book.

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@ossobuco,

Okay I've ordered Gopnik Winter from the online bookstore. Looks good.

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@ossobuco,

Good to know. I just finished reading "Rocket Plane," and will begin reading Medici tonight. Looking forward to it; fascinating family, and it will remind me of the places I visited in Italy a few months ago.

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@cicerone imposter,

If you end up liking the book, he also wrote one on Rome. Now that one I read more than twenty years ago, so my memory of it is worse.

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I just finished, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom. I liked it in a sad, yet, insightful way.

I've just started, Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson

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@JPB,

Will be finishing off Something Red by Douglas Nicholas. The only problem with the whole thing is that the Gaelic dictionary in the back is too short. Plus the too much use of the phonetic spelling to indicate a heavy accent got a bit annoying. Glad those speaking parts weren't too important to the story.

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@ossobuco,

Interesting title! I do a lot of history based article writing at work, I betcha I could make use for a nice Renaissance history piece. But for me, I have to truly be inspired to pick up a history book. There's just so much to read and so little time!!!

I'm going through a really big graphic novel kick for the time being.

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@shogg0th,

I suppose I understand. But you may change with time, as the stories in history can be much more interesting than movies, graphic novels. And I like movies. Sometimes it's the little things.

A book I read a bit at a time, as I too am not exactly driven to read it - but is a good read - is Herodotus's The Histories.

I've no idea if this link is for the best take on the book, or the worst.
http://www.amazon.com/Histories-Revised-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140449086
The one I'm reading is a wretched old paperback book, a translation by Aubrey de Selincourt.

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@ossobuco,

I am reading The Minotaur by Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell). Ruth Rendell began writing novels as Barbara Vine in part to focus on a different aspect of mysteries -- the why, rather than the who. Her Barbara Vine novels, beginning with A Dark-Adapted Eye, describe psychopathology that would interest Freud himself.

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@wandeljw,

I hardly think so wande. Ms Rendell is nuts. She wrote to me once. That's how I know.

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@spendius,

I am reading the Three laws of Performance by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan

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@avianwing,

I hit the jackpot at the Goodwill thrift shop yesterday:

a Michael Connally L.A. detective story I hadn't read yet - Dragons

The Constant Gardener by John Le Carre, which I've wanted to read for quite a while

The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea, by Sebastian Junger, a writer I like a lot

and, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, by a writer I've read at length about but never ran across one of his books, David Foster Wallace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Junger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_le_Carré
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Connelly

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@ossobuco,

Eaters of the Dead - Michael Crighton

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@Aldistar,

"a History of the American People" by Paul Johnson, a notable British Historian, and author of "Modern Times" a ~ 1985 truly excellent history of the 20th century. Like all his works it is a very good read.

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