What BOOK are you reading right now?

You know when you have your first taste of a particular writer & just have to have more? That's what's happened to me with Tim Winton. I was simultaneously listening to Cloudstreet on talking book while reading Dirt Music. Loved both, so yesterday I was pleased to find The Riders (Book & talking book) and a slim novel called in the winter dark. (Aren't community libraries great! ) So now I'll read both of these before starting A Fine Balance again, when it can have my undivided attention. Enough of this juggling!

1421, by Gavin Menzies.

Eyeopening description of the routes of a series of explorations by Chinese armada around that year.
Fascinating.

I wrote a little summary of that book and introduced it as postulated rather than factual, for my 'extensive readers' to be published in Beijing. The Chinese editor wrote back and said 'we should not put this in if it isn't fact'. I dug my toes in, and wrote back lots about what was fact, what was history etc, and I think they finally gave in and put it in! But I hadn't time to unwrap the books before I left on this trip so all will only be revealed when I do! And there was me thinking they'd love all this 'China did it first' stuff!!

I see it as a construct with various levels of probabilty, but Menzies is pretty clear about what he knows for sure and doesn't know for sure. Makes sense to me, and at the least I am getting a wider window - than I had - into life in China at the same time the ital renaissance was starting to perk.

Margaret Atwoods "Oryx and Crake"
I think its absolutely excellent . More than the average dystopian outlook on humanity's possible future. Also reading Sara Douglas' "Axis Trilogy".

Recently finished Robin Hobb's Tawny Man Trilogy and am now keenly awaiting the arrival of the fourth book of "A song of fire and ice" Series by George R R Martin. Cant wait!

Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare

What prompted you to read it?

A Canticle for Leibowitz
Takes the role of monasticism in the preservation of learning through the early middle ages and sets it in a post-atomic-apocalypse future.

I like that book, thanks for reminding me of it.

'The Kalahari Typing School for Men', sequel to 'The No. 1 Ladies' Det4ective Agency', by Alexander McCall Smith. Totally different from anything else. Charming. Redolent of place.

Just finished "Life of Pi"... I don't know what I think of it yet.

George, is this your first meeting with the Canticle? It's one of my favorites.

hehe - I read that a while back...I thought it was a good read...but the ending was a bit of a letdown...still a good read though.

Reading FIRE FROM HEAVEN by Mary Renault, the first novel in her Alexander the Great trilogy (I had previously read the later 2)...very good and doesn't sugarcoat Alexander's conflicted, bloodthirsty character. The last good book I read before this was JUDE THE OBSCURE by Thomas Hardy, his very last novel which shows his strengths and weaknesses. I think it's good to go back to the classics, not as a duty but for pleasure, since so much contemporary fiction is inferior. I am looking forward to the new Philip Roth, which I ordered from my library, to see whether it is as silly as it sounds.

A Canticle for Leibowitz!

Gosh, I haven't thought of that book in forever. Our library teacher in elementary school read it to us on our once a week "read aloud" days.

Now that I look at the book again, I realize she might have been quite daring.

I'm going to have to rush out and buy a copy right away. Thank you, George, for the memory.

I've been reading "Colors Not Found In Nature" its pretty funny but like most pop culture rants, it gets a bit tiresome.

Just finished Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. I found it to be a little challenging, and the characters never got interesting. But I like her descriptions so much that I enjoyed it anyway.

Have now started Vanity Fair.

"A Canticle for Leibowitz" is very much a book of its time, Cold War and pre-Vatican II. At the time I read it (around the time of the Cuban Missle Crisis), I was in a prep school for aspiring seminarians, so it was quite meaningful to me.

I've had a lot of interesting discussions with my son about it. Also gives me chance to use some pretty rusty Latin skills.

I'm reading 'The Colour of Heaven" by James Runcie

It's set in Italy in 1295, about a young boy who becomes a Painters apprentice and is sent on a journey, through Persia, Afghanistan and China, to search for the perfect blue.

Amazing book attention to colour through out and the love of it.

I buy whatever book I run across that has italy or the peninsula in it anywhere. So, of course I will pick Colour of Heaven up if I see it. I've read hundreds of books on italy, and have gotten off of having to - in to, eh! throw it out!

My present Throw It OUT is a book by Dan Brown. I hate to admit I haven't read the Da Vinci code book, mostly because codes don't fascinate me. I have, since I heard of it, figured I really should read it, some day.

but, hey, in my used book store, I found another Dan Brown, a paperback titled Angels Demons. There is a sly, if you look for it, ampersand between angels and demons.

I made it, apparently, to page sixteen, which is where the spine reacts to pages turned.

I was thrown, early on, by a lack of a comma, and then, what can I say, worse, worse and worse. Cruddy writing.
This made me wonder if this apparently heralded writer coned down on purpose. I suppose I could type out what offended me in those sixteen pages. I think I will, but not tonight.

I'm reading Miss Wyoming by Douglas Coupland. I seem to be on a Coupland kick at the moment...bought 3 last week!

I read Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Begining, Book the First and Judy Blume's Otherwise Known As Sheila The Great in a day each. I loved them both.

And, I just started Bill Bryson's A Short History Of Nearly Everything, which is great, of course.

My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." The first two lines of "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold.

It's a story about a girl who's murdered on the way home from school (every parent's nighmare), and it's narrated by the dead girl - from heaven, as she watches those left behind struggle to continue on. It's tragic, and hopeful and even humorous at times.