What book are you reading?

[Commodore Norrington]

Currently indulging in The Silmarilion, by J.R.R Tolkein.

First reading, as I figured it be best to follow up thoroughly on my already-extensive knowledge regarding Lord of the Rings.

[Tom]

The Moscow Vector - Robert Ludlum

[Ex Deo]

I just finished up reading the last 3 Harry Potter books again, in preparation for the release of Order of the Phoenix movie and book 7.

Went today to Barnes and Noble and picked up The Plot Against America by Philip Roth which present an alternate history where Charles Lindbergh runs for president in 1940, against FDR and wins, and ends up negotiating with the Nazi's which ends up leading to political discord and anti-Semitism in the US. I'd never heard of it before today but it's gotten numerous positive reviews, so I bought it on a whim.

Also picked up Mythology by Edith Hamilton, which pretty much just re-tells a number of ancient myths, primarily the Greek and Roman ones.

[God]

The Holy Bible.

[Ex Deo]

Originally Posted by God

The Holy Bible.

Planning on making some revisions?

[God]

Noe.

[The Man]

You should think about it imho, there are a few sections in Leviticus that lead to far more intolerance and bigotry than I think is merited

Working in a bookstore as I do I've been driven to pick up a ton of books lately, but I haven't had much time to actually read them yet. It's odd, as The Plot Against America was one of the ones I picked up last week. By all accounts, looks like a fantastic novel. If you're into alternate history novels about the Germans winning WWII, I'd recommend The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick as well; there's also Fatherland by some dude I can't remember, which I haven't read, and The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad, which contains a novel purporting to be written by an alternate-history version of Hitler who immigrated to the U.S. and started writing pulp sf, and critical commentary on it. I haven't read the latter either, mainly because it's out of print, but I intend to order it at some point because it appears to have quite a lot to say on the ideology implied by a lot of popular narratives.

[Honest Abel]

Is anyone reading that new Palahniuk novel yet? Rant?

[The Dude]

picked up a **** load of books this weekend. Got God is Not Great by Hitchens, Letters to the Earth by Mark Twain, The Divine Comedy by Dante and Death by Black Hole by Tyson.

Right now I'm reading Death by Black Hole and it's quite the interesting read. Tyson spends the first part of the book poking fun at the arrogancy of humans in science where some have claimed that we have discovered all there is to be discovered and all that's left is getting the measurements and then having that thought be proben horribly wrong. It does kinda make you say "woah." at certain points when he talks about some of the sciences of the universe and how he jokingly comments that there's some sort of grand conspiracy in the universe meant to embarace astrophysicists and how some of our conventional ideas in regard to space are actually the otherway around.

[Antikhrist]

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. About half way through, it's really good methinks.

[God]

Whoever deleted my post, I was answering a question, you whore. So it's back. ;-)

[Beeble]

Recently finished reading Northern Lights/The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. A lot better than i thought it should be, despite all good i heard about it before. The last 100 pages was just pure brilliance, and i finished them fast as hell :P

[Ex Deo]

Finished The Plot Against America. It was good, but towards the end everything escalated really quickly, which I found to be a bit implausable, but maybe not. It was meant to mimic the escalation of violence and such against Jews in Germany. Also it cops out in the end and everything goes back to normal. Despite that slight hiccup, the rest of the novel is superb.

Went to my school library and picked up a few books to keep me busy while my computer is out of commission.

-American Empire: The Realities and Conequences of U.S. Diplomacy by Andrew J. Bacevich
-The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White (after I finish it I'll be picking up The Once and Future King)
-Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
-Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

[Honest Abel]

The Tree of Knowledge by Humberto R Maturana, Ph.D & Francisco J. Varela, Ph.D.

[eXo]

Trying The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac again.


I really love the way he writes, but for some reason, I can't get through the book. This is my third try, and it's going better, though, so maybe it'll work out. Very liberating kind of book.

[The Man]

Once again I was compelled to make several purchases at the bookstore today. In the interests of subverting religion I picked up Hitchens' god is not Great, the first three chapters of which have been deliciously entertaining and humorous, and blisteringly on target. In the interests of subverting traditional sexual mores I picked up Catherine Millet's The Sexual Life of Catherine M. and Melissa P.'s 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Midnight, both of which caused substantial controversy over the explicitness of the sexual activities described within. I've only read a bit of the Millet book so far, but I hardly doubt the power of various scenes described within to shock. Millet said she wrote her book with the intention of helping to break down sexual taboos; she wrote in her afterword that she would consider it ideal for sexual acts to be considered no more abnormal in public than any other activity. It's an interesting stance to take, not to mention one that takes a considerable amount of guts to express. Melissa P. is notable for having been quite young by conventional standards when her work took place and was published (she was fourteen at the time of her first encounter, and seventeen when the work was published), and I've only skimmed through the work thus far but her age clearly affects the way a lot of her partners interact with her; they seem to consider her as being a lot more naïve than she actually is. Obviously there is a certain prurient value to each of these works, but they're also interesting as psychological and sociological studies. They represent a side of humanity rarely acknowledged out in the open, and I think it's only healthy for society that memoirs such as these are being published.

Whilst on my break today I also read Thomas Pynchon's introduction to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four today, which pointed out some things about the novel I'd never noticed before. There is an almost total absence of racism and religious persecution in his works, which is odd for one with such an obvious disdain for totalitarianism in all its forms. Some went so far as to accuse Orwell of anti-Semitism over this, which is plainly absurd; but nonetheless it seems Orwell thought it more likely that persecution would occur mostly for political reasons than any others when he was drafting the outline of Nineteen Eighty-Four's plot, and after the Holocaust was revealed he appears to have felt that religious persecution and racism were just two more of a long litany of crimes humanity had committed against itself. More interestingly, it points out the fact that Orwell chose to end the work with an appendix, The appendix, which deals with the principles of Newspeak, is not only written in plain English, but it is written in the past tense. I'd never reflected carefully on that before, but the presence of this appendix implies that, despite the utterly dark tone of the novel's ending, the Ingsoc government is eventually toppled. It's almost begging for someone to write a sequel detailing how that might occur.

I need to read some Pynchon now.

I'm also trying to manage a reading of The Brothers Karamazov in there. Vonnegut once commented that the whole of human experience is contained within that one great novel, and from what I've read so far (though I admit it's just the first few chapters and "The Grand Inquisitor") are quite fantastic. The complexity of this book is one that really demands close attention, but Dostoevsky has always been a rewarding author when I've read him before (Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment). The length is somewhat intimidating though.

And, as always, I'm reading a ****load of Chomsky.

[The Dude]

I started reading God Is Not Great earlier and I too find it quite humorous at some points. Right now I'm mainly reading Letters From The Earth by one of my favorites, Mark Twain. I'm loving his take on Satan's banishment and intelligence in the fields of science and how he pokes fun at the arrogancy of humans and he describes them as insane.

[The Man]

Twain is excellent. I'm planning to read The Mysterious Stranger and The Prince and the Pauper at some point.

[XxVivixX]

Originally Posted by The Dude

picked up a **** load of books this weekend. Got God is Not Great by Hitchens, Letters to the Earth by Mark Twain, The Divine Comedy by Dante and Death by Black Hole by Tyson.

I just finished reading the Divine Comedy by Dante and I thought that it was pretty good. Inferno was cool and I liked the ending to it. Purgatory was great because it had a lot of famous people in history there, and Paradiso was just fun because i saw his thoughts on how heaven is. I can talk more about it if you want but I don't want to ruin too much for you now. And yes, I did need some help reading the book in some parts.

[Scrutator]

In recent weeks I've read So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams, A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martins and A Shadow on the Glass by Ian Irvine.