[séamuis]

In the spirit of the long standing 'What music are you currently listening to?' which I find ever fascinating, and knowing how many quite intelligent and well read people this forum possesses, I thought it would be nice to share what we are reading alongside what we may be listening to. another personal look into who each of us are, and I'm sure (I hope at least) will be a continuosly interesting topic.

So, in the spirit of leading by example, here is what I am currently reading. this is just coming off the heels of my long and slow attempt and both reading and understanding, the Mahābhārata. coming off of that epic, Dr. Rizal's writing is like an incredible breath of fresh air, despite the nature of the story. A true master of intelligent satire I am starting to see.

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[SpecialK]

How to Be a Movie Star - Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood.

Before that it was 2 autobiographies - Chuck Yeager and Jimmie Doolittle, and a prison diary from 1912-era Wyoming.

[boriscleto]

Just got done with Vultures' Picnic by Greg Palast

Vultures' Picnic

He turns what could have been a very boring story into Pulp Non-Fiction.

[JHD]

The World's Wealthiest Losers - Margaret Nicholas

Just picked up... The China Study by Colin Campbell & Blue Zones by Dan Buettner.

[RioRico]

Physical books:

HOW THE GREEKS BUILT CITIES by R.E. Wycherley
WEIRD TALES-- 32 Unearthed Terrors (ed. Dziemianowicz, Weinberg, Greenberg)
THE 1887 EARTHQUAKE in San Bernardino Valley, Sonora (DuBois & Smith)
THE SECRET LIVES OF WORDS by Paul West

eBooks:

RAINBOW MARS by Larry Niven
FOCAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHOTOGRAPHY (4th ed.)

[séamuis]

how can you manage to keep up with so many books at once? I must be terrible multi-tasker. I'm an intelligent enough fellow I think, but I can only honestly read one book at a time, otherwise I feel like I don't take it all in and understand it thoroughly enough.

ask me how many times I've read my favourite book. better yet, ask me how much I loath and despise my favourite book. I must look silly to you, considering it took me several months to read the Mahābhārata by itself, and it took all of my concentration to do it. but maybe thats not a fair comparison.

[RioRico]

how can you manage to keep up with so many books at once?

GREEK CITIES and the earthquake book are for sporadic reading when web response time sucks. The Focal Encyclopedia and the Niven book are for when I'm awaiting posts to catch up with me here -- I just finished-off a bunch of Pournelle in the same mode. The fat WEIRD TALES anthology is for when this travel laptop is monopolized by my other and I must wait elsewhere. SECRET LIVES OF WORDS is a fictionary that puts me to sleep at night.

How can I deal with so many texts? I've done this since I was a kid, when I'd check out a dozen books from the school library every day. Short attention span -- read a page or three, get bored, jump to something else, return when that gets boring. Notice that most of this stuff can be read piecemeal, not necessarily in time-devouring chunks. If I really have a couple hours to waste, I'll drag out some techno-thriller (and mentally critique it).

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Last edited by RioRico; 03-15-2012 at 09:36 PM.

[Daianmixx]

Just finished ,,Last Argument of Kings,, by joe Abercrombie - last volume from ,,First Law,, trilogy.
Very good read specialy for fantasy fans but Abercrombie is a good writer in general.

[Ratmagiclady]

Appropriately enough for All Paddies' Day... Some Moore and older Irish texts. Not enough in the way of books lately, though.

[Raffwal]

I recently bought the 4 book Kindle edition of Game of Thrones, Clash of Kings etc. Having owned the gadget for some months, this is the first real reading I'm doing on it. Pretty handy after getting used to. Oh and the novels? Reading the second book now, I quite like them so far.

[ihasa]

Coasting by Jonathan Raban, The Audacity of Hope by Obama...

Best book I've completed recently was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Talk about emotional rollercoaster.

[stormtech]

Since I have now have a tablet, it has renewed my interest in reading since I can enlarge the text size and choose the brightness on the background. I never....I mean never thought I would want to read a book on a lighted screen - part of the allure to reading was to hold the book, feel and smell the paper. But as I get am getting older, even though I wear glasses, I have found it difficult to read a regular book. The tablet has been a revaluation for me as far as starting to read again.

So to treat myself to my new found gadget that lets me read comfortably once again, I am reading the Lonesome Dove series by Larry McMurty. I read Lonesome Dove a few times years ago, and the movie is my all time favorite. So I thought I would start from the beginning and am now reading Dead Man's Walk and really enjoying it!

[paulh]

So to treat myself to my new found gadget that lets me read comfortably once again, I am reading the Lonesome Dove series by Larry McMurty. I read Lonesome Dove a few times years ago, and the movie is my all time favorite. So I thought I would start from the beginning and am now reading Dead Man's Walk and really enjoying it!

I too, got sucked into the Lonesome Dove books. The movie hooked me years ago, then I went thru the entire LD series. I never dreamed I'd enjoy "westerns", but these are amazing. Enjoy your tablet!

[Clicker]

I read a lot of history, anyone's history grew up reading Middle East history, then Europe's (just a tiny teenie bit) outside of that i read the series of books put out by James Rollins the only fictional writer i follow. I also read The Bible because of Sunday school classes growing up and branched out to other relgions as they're like history books to me.

[RoxnDox]

Just picked up "The Hunger Games" for this weekend's flight to Denver... So it was written as a YA book - so what? Harry Potter was too, and I enjoyed those along with millions of other adults...

Jim