Currently Reading / Just Read (Books/stories/whatever)

[Young Val]

BLACK SWAN GREEN by David Mitchell. I'm only 57 pages in but I know that this is going to be one of those books that changes my life. I KNOW it.

Just read (for the first time) ANAGRAMS by Lorrie Moore (author of WHO WILL RUN THE FROG HOSPITAL? which anyone who values and trusts my opinion about books should just go read immediately and not come back til she's done with it--particularly girls). Loved it, too. Love everything this woman writes; every word she puts to paper. I want to BE her when I grow up.

[Mich]

Fitzpatrick's War by Theodore Judson. It's written as an autobiography that is so "slanderous" of the Alexander the Great-like character that it has been edited and annotated that "experts" of history. It's a great satire of historical texts and History overall, and just a great "man, that was a good book" at the end feel.

Plus, it's steampunk. I have to get ready for my NaNoWriMo...

[Wil]

Brisingr (Bree - sing - er is how I pronounce it) just released today and being a fanboy (not really) I went right down and bought a copy today. I've been told by a few people that is quite a good third (out of four now) book of the series. If you've not read the series at all, don't let the s***** movie taint your impressions of it. They're decently good books that manage to keep your interest quite well, even if they are very cliche. Just don't expect to get a book that is on the level of A Song of Ice and Fire series or The Name of the Wind, both of which everyone who likes fantasy should read.

[locke]

Three books of A Song of ice and Fire are absolutely incredible and amongst the best fantasy ever written. Then Martin lost confidence in his original plan, spent five years trying to rebuild the plot without that plan and delivered a book (really half of a book) that is incredibly indulgent, rambling, directionless, and full of fantasy cliches. It makes the other books look bad by comparison, and it's sort of like getting a book four from rowling in the middle of the harry potter series that decides to diverge with Sirius on Holiday in the bahamas for a year instead of following the plot of hogwarts and the central characters. Book four of Asoiaf is nothing but sideplots, tediously delivered back story (on stuff so marginally related the main characters (that we're aware of at this point) and thoroughly obtusely delivered that only the most ardent fanboys could decode the connections and signficance), and travelogue after travelogue after travelogue. Yay a whole book of 'let's fill in the gaps of where the reader hasn't been on the map before for no particular reason i'm going to tell you, so just consider it a waste of time for now." On top of minor character takes over the book and causes tedious plot machinations you could care less about because they're a minor character. There are precisely seven great chapters in the book, Arya I, II, III, Sam V, and Sansa I, II, III.

and it looks like it's going to take another five years to get the 'second half'of book four that was 60% complete when book four was published. uhhuh. Yeah I don't recommend the series anymore cause it's taking too damn long and the quality fell off to such a staggering degree. A Goblet of Fire barely beat out A Storm of Swords for the Hugo (a bit undeserved imo, but I'm fine with HP winnning one of them) and Rowling put out three books finishing her seven book series increasing the quality of the work from book to book (much as Martin had done before book four) in the time it's taken Martin to write HALF of a book at a quality markedly below where it was before. And she managed to end it beautifully, elegantly, powerfully. I never felt as if there was a misstep, as if a word was wasted. I wanted more but didn't need a single other word. it really proves that just because Martin is dark, doesn't mean his work is more mature. Maybe the fifth book will rescue the series, take it off lifesupport and turn it into one of the most remarkable accomplishments of fantasy again. But what Rowling achieved has really made me realize how kinda empty Martin's world is of relevant meaning, it's more tarantino than Mann, which is a damn shame.

[lyons24000]

I'm reading the Jason Wander Series.

There are supposed to be five books in the series but only three are out at the time. The second book is what I am reading now, "Orphan's Destiny". It is better then part one in character development and plot flow. Besides that, part one, "Orphanage", was a much better read when it comes to story line. I was a little disappointed in it because when main characters died, I wasn't sad. The book moved too quickly and didn't develop the characters enough to feel like they were real.

I'll be reading "Orphan's Journey" as soon as I am done with the book I am reading now.

[Young Val]

I was right. BLACK SWAN GREEN changed my life. It's now got a cemented slot on my all-time favorites list. Read it.

[Wil]

<Insert quote of long ASOIAF rant here>

Good! I thought it was just me who found the entire fourth book boring as hell. The only good parts were really Sansa's stuff and Arya's, as you said. I can't WAIT to see what Arya gets in to doing out in the East as she grows up.

*crosses fingers for fifth book to be good again*

[locke]

Smiles To Go is the best book Jerry Spinelli's written since Maniac McGee. It may be better. I'm biased though, the protagonist is exactly like me so much I'm almost embarassed to continue reading the book. it's delightful charming and hands in face "nooooo" sort of book. wow. Just me through and through.

I mean it's a book about proton death and little sisters, and monopoly and first kisses and being a dumb introvert who's too damn smart for his own good. And making really elaborate plans as a way to avoid the terror of spontaneity.

PD142
Something could have happened.
But didn't.
Around seven o'clock tonight the doorbell rang. It was Mi-su. I don't know why, but I was shocked. She just stood there smiling: black coat, bright red knitted hat with bunny-tail tassel, matching red mittens, matching red nose from the cold, just standing there smiling at me, breaking the world record for adorableness. I didn't think--I just di. I reached out and grabbed her and kissed her right there on the front step...

Hah! I wish.

Mi-Su really did come to the door, but i t was only a kind of second me--Shadow Me--that reacted that way. Real Me just stood there, because making a move now wasn't in The Plan and there were still three days to go. Real Me smiled back at her and said, "Hi. What's up?" and she made a face and said, "Geometry. I hate it. Can you help me?" and Real Me said, "Sure, come on in."

She stayed for a couple of hours and we did her geometry, and most of the time we were alone in the basement and sometimes her face was only inches from mine, and Shadow Me kept kicing Real Me in the shins and hissing, "Kiss her... kiss her now!..." but I stayed with the Plan, and when I went to bed the pillow whispered in my ear, "You blew it."

Shadow Me! wow. such a perfect concept for Adam.

ETA except the real me listened to shadow-me in the kissable moment for a first kiss and didn't listen to what she was actually saying. and when responded to shadow me and kissed her she hit me and ran away. I wish it happened when I was ten, or even fourteen. unfortunately, I was 19. we dated for 19 months after that.

life is f****** wierd.

[Gravity Defier]

I finished Twilight earlier today. I didn't mind it for the first 130 pages or so but little things started to irritate me throughout the rest. With that said, I was expecting much worse, so it was manageable getting through to the end.

And alright, I admit it: the fact that Phoenix/Scottsdale/Sky Harbor/I-10 etc from the PHX MSA were recognizable to me made me a bit happier than it perhaps should have. Thumbs down to her wanting to leave AZ, though.


I wanted to like Edward but he fell just a bit short of that certain unnameable something that does it for me. There were moments, here and there, but overall? Maybe he was too corny or used pet names all wrong. I suppose the control, no matter how much he thought he needed to wield it, was a bit much, as well. Because I saw the trailers before reading the book, I pictured the actor as the character, which worked great whenever she mentioned he was smiling and didn't make a difference otherwise.

Bella? Meh. She was okay. I'll admit having somewhat similar thoughts as her about boys in the past, but she really took them to the next level and beyond. Kind of pathetic.

Not sure if I'll read the second book. I think I'll wait to see on the movie.

[Wil]

Brisingr. Ugh. It was good, but... well it was more of a book of short stories rather than a novel that continued the story of the last two books. It was more like the filler between the first two and the final book. It was, in essence, an almost completely useless read. *sigh*

Ah well, I have "A Wise Man's Fears" to look forward to in April. That should be de... wait for it... lightful. Delightful!

[Gravity Defier]

I read Smiles To Go a few days ago and I got more teary-eyed than I thought I should/could have from that book towards the end. Good read. There was a brilliant paragraph where Will's mentioning things that he's afraid of (everything) while standing at the top of a hill and I was nodding in agreement with most of the stuff he said, to the point I must have looked like a bobblehead.



I am now reading Running with the Demon by Terry Brooks. I made a deal with my mom in October of 2006 that if she read EG (after 9 years of me telling her to do so!), I would read this. Only took me two years to get to it.

[locke]

The Trouble With Boys - Peg Tyre

First off, this is a non-fiction work about the trouble boys are having in school, and what's causing the reverse achievement gap most boys now experience (the bottom quartile of most schools is mostly boys). The author is very clear, that being pro-boy does not mean being anti-girl, and noone, especially her, has any intention of trying to undo the gains girls have made in the last thirty years. But underachieving boys affects us all just as badly as underachieving girls do. And currently our schools are set up in a manner that boys are consistently underachieving, to a greater degree year by year. Just as magnificent reforms have been set in place that have allowed girls to achieve so much, we need to also look for reforms that will up boys engagement in the classroom, and figured out why they disengage from school in the first place. The book is incredibly well written and very readable, it brilliantly follows the thread of how boys interact with the school system from preschool through college. And it's in college that the trouble with boys begins to really affect girls in a negative way. Because now with 57% of girls making up incoming college classes, higher education has discovered that they're getting between 60 and 70 percent of their applications in a given year are girls. That makes it even harder for girls to get accepted to private universities (who can discriminate in the application process by gender to keep a roughly 50/50 parity in the population) and public universities who are barred from discriminating by gender, but still work in subtle ways to try to keep under 60% girls, because once a university reaches 60% female interest in the university drops like a stone. Turns out, girls don't want to go to place where there aren't enough guys to go around

But very little of the book (just the penultimate chapter) is about college. Most of the book traces through the rest of the education system, and the underachievement of boys is systemic in pretty much every school of every kind and every caliber across the country. private or public, rich or poor, boys are being misserved by the system and this book seeks to investigate and lay out why and what can and is being done.

One of the most interesting things being done is a new reading system out of Scotland called Synthetic Phonics. Other programs include allowing reading materials boys may be interested in, both non fiction and fiction, addressing the problems of too little recess and examining whether or not boys simply need to move more (ants in the pants) due to their biochemistry and whether or not attitudes of acceptable behavior need to be more malleable to include the needs of boys as well (ie don't treat boys like defective girls). It's a fascinating read, I picked it up at borders yesterday before going to work, and I read it all through my shift and got home and finished the last fifty pages. One of a very few nonfiction books I have essentially read in just one go. :p Very highly recommended to everyone.

I'm mailing my copy to my mom (who teaches first grade) today.

[locke]

terry Pratchett's newest book, Nation is astonishing and wonderful and I"m only 79 pages in.

I actually went to borders on friday intending to buy this, and upon discovering I could not find it in the store found myself somehow holding about five or six very interesting other books. I swear they jumped off the shelves at me, as books are wont to do, from time to time.

One was just a cover though, and didn't have any flavor, another was too calorific, but the third was just right (see above, The Trouble with Boys) and so by the time I'd tracked down an assistant who guided me to the children's section where the Pratchett book had been cleverly hidden from both of us in a large display of said book. But by the time Nation had been successfully retrieved from it's sequestering in the wrong part of the store I discovered the other book had permanently attached itself to my hand and would not let go until I reached the cashier. This semi-permanent sticking ability of books is quite an annoying predatory impulse for them to have evolved. Oh well.

Anyway. Nation. Amazing book, here are two parts I felt I immediately had to share with pweb:

There was a map of the stars at the back of the atlas. For her next birthday she'd asked for a telescope. Her mother had been alive then, and had suggested a pony, but her father had laughed and bought her a beautiful telescope, saying: "Of course she should watch the stars! Any girl who cannot identify the constellation of Orion just isn't paying attention!" And when she started asking him complicated questions, he took her along to lectures at the Royal Society, where it turned out that a nine-year-ld girl who had blond hair and knew what the precession of the equinoxes was could ask hugely bearded famous scientists anything she liked. Who'd want a pony when you could have the whole universe? It was far more interesting and you didn't have to muck it out once a week.

It was a game. He loved it when she assembled her facts and pinned him down with a cast-iron argument. He believed in rational thinking and scientific inquiry, which was why he never won an argument with his mother, who believed in people doing what she told them, and believed it with a rock-hard certainty that dismissed all opposition.

[locke]

Finished Nation, it is outstanding, one of pratchett's two or three best.


I hate bittersweet truthful endings that don't give you the happy swell of cathartic emotion that a proper unreality can manage.


goes off to be sad somewhere.

[locke]

I read Smiles To Go a few days ago and I got more teary-eyed than I thought I should/could have from that book towards the end. Good read. There was a brilliant paragraph where Will's mentioning things that he's afraid of (everything) while standing at the top of a hill and I was nodding in agreement with most of the stuff he said, to the point I must have looked like a bobblehead.



I am now reading Running with the Demon by Terry Brooks. I made a deal with my mom in October of 2006 that if she read EG (after 9 years of me telling her to do so!), I would read this. Only took me two years to get to it.

forgot to mention this, but I'm so glad someone else has read and loved Smiles to Go!

[Rei]

When I'm not reading for class, I'm alternating between The Queen of Air and Darkness in The Once and Future King (one day I'll get through the first four books which I own, and maybe track down the fifth, even) and Till We Have Faces, by C. S. Lewis. So far they're both a lot of fun, but I kind of prefer the latter for the sheer beauty of the writing and mastery of story telling.

[locke]

I finished my monthish long reread of The Fifth Elephant last night!

funny how this used to be my least favorite Discworld book (first Watch book I read) and now I think it's one of the stronger ones, not a great one, but pretty darn good, bottom half of the watch books though.

[Mich]

Who was it that used to have the Dresden signature? locke? Or just someone who hasn't posted in a long time?

Anyway, only because of that signature did I recognize the name when my friend told me to watch it, and I did. And found it dry and unlikable. Then, three months later, a different friend lent me the first of the books.

Now that... that is a good read. I love noir homage, and there's nothing like ending almost every chapter with your main character spouting off a one-liner as he blacks out. Am now on third book.

[locke]

Dresden?

[UnnDunn]

Neal Stephenson - Anathem

(oh, and Phil Hellmuth's Hold'em Poker book )

[Jayelle]

Who was it that used to have the Dresden signature? locke? Or just someone who hasn't posted in a long time?
.

I wanna say Seiryu.

[Luet]

I just started Poland by James Michener. It's always a larger than usual time commitment to read a Michener book but usually well worth it. I have read Space, Centennial, The Source and the non-historical Fires of Spring.

[neo-dragon]

I'm currently reading "Watchmen", but I feel like such a bandwagon jumper because in spite of all the praise I might never have gotten around to reading it if the trailer for the upcoming film wasn't so awesome.

[Mich]

I'm currently reading "Watchmen", but I feel like suck a bandwagon jumper because in spite of all the praise I might never have gotten around to reading it if the trailer for the upcoming film wasn't so awesome.

That's what caused me to finally get around to it. Go bandwagon jumpers!

[UnnDunn]

I listened to the first episode of Audible.com's METAtropolis series, In the Forests of the Night by Jay Lake, read by Michael Hogan.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it sucked. Hard.

Thankfully it was free.

[neo-dragon]

I'm currently reading "Watchmen", but I feel like such a bandwagon jumper because in spite of all the praise I might never have gotten around to reading it if the trailer for the upcoming film wasn't so awesome.

That's what caused me to finally get around to it. Go bandwagon jumpers!

As a matter of fact, I read somewhere that sales of the graphic novel have increased ten-fold since the trailer debuted.

[zeroguy]

I read the third volume of Bone today. Eh... I dunno; it didn't seem like anything too special. For the people who think this is so great; is there anything in particular I should be reading that's good? Do I need to start from the beginning? (The first two volumes weren't at the library when I checked.)

[Mich]

I read the third volume of Bone today. Eh... I dunno; it didn't seem like anything too special. For the people who think this is so great; is there anything in particular I should be reading that's good? Do I need to start from the beginning? (The first two volumes weren't at the library when I checked.)

I don't really know, you obviously don't "get it," zero. You're hopeless.

But honestly, I don't really know. I started with volume 2, thought it was interesting, got volume 1 so that I at least didn't have this random volume sitting around, and am now constantly checking for volume 8 whenever I enter a bookstore. Honestly, the storyline isn't that involving (I have to remember whatever it is whenever I find the next volume I'm looking for), and the plot is pretty basic, but there's something about the characters and the beautiful art and the comedic timing that makes it stick in my head, at least.

But I don't think anyone will judge you if you don't like it. Well, the people that matter, at least.

[Jayelle]

I think you might be better off starting from the beginning, zero. It's a fairly beginning-to-end kind of story.

Also, it probably doesn't help that you've had people say "Oh my gosh this is SOOoooo great!!!", that usually leads to disappointment. It's one of those "discover that it's great when you didn't expect it" kind of things.

[Valentine]

Does anyone else read Augusten Burroughs? I love him.
Lately, I pretty much just read business books though...work, work, work...lol

[LilBee91]

I'm currently reading Beowulf for my AP English Lit class. It's pretty good so far--we're about halfway.
I'm also reading The Road. It is amazing.

And in order to read these books, I've currently set aside Breaking Dawn midway through it. My mother (who is crazily obsessed with these Twilight books) insists I finish it before we go see the movie. I'll get around to it eventually...

Next on the list is The Brothers Karamazov.

[Valentine]

I really enjoyed the twilight series. I even read the online Edward version of Twilight. Now I'm sad b/c there's nothing else...

[Gravity Defier]

I just got Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging in (the patron who had it before was late returning it).

I'll start that soon, but first I have to finish A Knight of the Word (Terry Brooks), which is taking me a bit for two reasons: 1) I'm just a slow reader to begin with and 2) I'm stopping after every chapter because the book is making me anxious/nervous for some reason.

Also, I would like to start CotM because the urge to read that has been growing stronger for the last week and I was ignoring it.

[surditate_vero]

Eifelheim by Tom Flynn for me. It's quite dense with all of the medieval philosophy and cosmology that Flynn throws in there, but the aliens more than make up for it.

Yes, aliens. In 14th century Germany. That is all.

[locke]

Eifelheim by Tom Flynn for me. It's quite dense with all of the medieval philosophy and cosmology that Flynn throws in there, but the aliens more than make up for it.

Yes, aliens. In 14th century Germany. That is all.

it's an intense and amazing book.