What are you reading?

Just finished Writer At War by Anthony Beevor, which features the WW2 war correspondence of Vasily Grossman who probably wrote the single best Russian novel of the 20th century, Life And Fate.

Currently got War and Peace by Tolstoy on deck (bought it three years ago and still haven't read it), the Autobiography of an Unknown Indian by Nirad Chaudhuri and Baburnama, the memoirs of Emperor Babur who established the Mughal dynasty in India.

Also dipping into What It Takes: The Road To The White House by Richard Ben Cramer. It profiles some of the candidates involved in 1988 presidential election (Bush I, Dole, Dukakis, Hart, Biden and Gephardt) and takes you through 1,000 pages of the entire race.

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.

After only reading about 5 five books throughout 2007, I've started this year at breakneck speed. Just finishing Noble House by James Clavell, have read all the proceeding books in the Shogun series this year also. Read Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser (saw it mentioned on ASW and have the rest of the series arriving today). Fiction is always smooth, but I have to have a non-fiction title on the go too, so decided to re-read The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History by Philip Bobbitt and when I'm finished will read Churchills History of World War II.

Globaloney: Unraveling the Myth of Globalization by Michael Veseth.. I'm interested as to how it will turn out because I am neither a pro nor anti-globalization fanatic.

Started today on Michaelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling. Better than I expected so far.

Originally Posted by dopey

Click to expand...

An O'Hara.

Picked up some more. Good stuff.

The Painted Word - Tom Wolfe
The Courage To Be - Paul Tillich

Since I'm getting near the end of Martin Chuzzlewit (300 pages to go, but with Dickens that is near the end), I thought I'd start a bunch more novels all at once:

James Blish, They Shall Have Stars (first in the Cities in Flight quartet; classic science fiction from the 1950s)

Dorothy B. Hughes, The Blackbirder (World War II spy thriller re-published in the "Femmes Fatales: Women Write Pulp" series from The Feminist Press at The City University of New York)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night



(one of my favorite photographs of all time, BTW)

Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End (acclaimed 2007 novel about office layoffs, and undoubtedly one of the very few novels ever written in the first person singular)

The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point's Class of 1966-Rick Atkinson, just finished it this morning at 4am, then got up at 6:30 to go to school

On deck I have Gomorrah: A Personal Journey Into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System, and War and Peace.

Originally Posted by EnglishGent

Click to expand...

After only reading about 5 five books throughout 2007, I've started this year at breakneck speed. Just finishing Noble House by James Clavell, have read all the proceeding books in the Shogun series this year also. Read Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser (saw it mentioned on ASW and have the rest of the series arriving today). Fiction is always smooth, but I have to have a non-fiction title on the go too, so decided to re-read The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History by Philip Bobbitt and when I'm finished will read Churchills History of World War II.

Some good picks here - Noble House is one of my all-time faves and the Flashman books are always fun.

Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense
by Henry E. Allison

My thesis is due much too soon...

Eustace Diamonds.

Originally Posted by Manton

Click to expand...

Eustace Diamonds.

Excellent! A Trollope fan! As soon as I finish Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit, I'm taking up Can You Forgive Her? (the first novel in the six volume Palliser series of which The Eustace Diamonds is the third).

Have you read Trollope's Orley Farm? Big favorite of mine.

Originally Posted by topbroker

Click to expand...

Excellent! A Trollope fan! As soon as I finish Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit, I'm taking up Can You Forgive Her? (the first novel in the six volume Palliser series of which The Eustace Diamonds is the third).

Have you read Trollope's Orley Farm? Big favorite of mine.

No to Orley Farm. Can't say I'm really a fan, as I just started, but I like it all so far.

Working on Audacity of Hope. Next up is The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene.