What are you reading?

[Philosoph]

Originally Posted by gvibes

I've started Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternel Golden Braid roughly five times, and I don't think I ever made it further than 1/3 of the way through.

I remember that book coming to my attention years ago, but I never picked it up. Maybe I should. The title fascinates me for some morbid reason.

 

[Tangfastic]

I've recently made a conscious effort to drop the quantity of trash I read. I've just finished crime and punishment, surprisingly readable, I was expecting a bit of hard work.
I'm currently into tender is the night, which had a few mentions earlier in the thread. Fitzgerald should be SF's house author, though Gatsby may be a bit close to the bone perhaps?

 

[topbroker]

Originally Posted by Tangfastic

I'm currently into tender is the night, which had a few mentions earlier in the thread. Fitzgerald should be SF's house author, though Gatsby may be a bit close to the bone perhaps?

Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.

"I've got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall."

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher"”shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, and monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.

"They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. "It makes me sad because I've never seen such"”such beautiful shirts before."

The Great Gatsby, Chapter Five

 

[GQgeek]

Small Stakes Hold'Em by Sklansky. A really, really good book.

 

[IUtoSLU]

My Life in Court - Louis Nizer

 

[chas]

Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins

1/2 way through and am having trouble putting it down.

 

[Connemara]

Had some time to myself today so I thumbed through Seamus Heaney's "North". Never gets old. Up next is O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra.

 

[Connemara]

Just picked up John Banville's The Untouchable. I'm going to read (re-read in many cases) all of his novels in an effort to find a passage that struck me like no other. It basically defined the meaning of love. It was ethereal. P.S. If anyone knows the book/passage, feel free to save me all the trouble

 

[landho]

Originally Posted by GQgeek

Small Stakes Hold'Em by Sklansky. A really, really good book.

Sklansky, Malmuth, and Ed Miller, and it was Ed Miller (IIRC) was the primary contributor (per the preface).

 

[Bradford]

Now reading "The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America" by Jim Wallis.

Up next, "Red Letter Christians: A Citizens Guide to Faith and Politics" by Tony Campolo or "Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerilla War, from the American Revolution to Iraq" by William R. Polk.

 

[Hard2Fit]

Othello.

 

[wackojacko]

'Starter for Ten' by David Nicholls......classic, couldn't put it down and i laughed loads, very witty and amusing!!!

 

[Zahir]

Moby Dick. Really really good, much better than I was expecting, but a tad meandering. Sometimes I wish Melville would leave off the minutea of the 19th century whaling fleet for a chapter so I could get back to my brutal man vs. fish revenge novel.

 

[Dedalus]

Originally Posted by Zahir

Moby Dick. Really really good, much better than I was expecting, but a tad meandering. Sometimes I wish Melville would leave off the minutea of the 19th century whaling fleet for a chapter so I could get back to my brutal man vs. fish revenge novel.
Haha, everyone is reading this book. It's taking me forever to finish; I only read on my train ride and I'm also chipping away at Spinoza's Ethics. I'm on the home stretch, though. I should be done in a week. All criticisms of Melville and his distaste for editing aside, I think the superfluous whaling information aligns itself well with Ishmael. Consider that Ishmael is a schoolteacher, one that I felt at the beginning of the novel felt the need to justify anything and everything. His inferiority complex doesn't surprisingly lead him to whaling, but deep down inside, he might know that he is not so 'genuine' as other fisherman. Ishmael is a big nerd, the kind that would make long posts about the construction differences between Lobb and Greene bespoke shoes but is not actually a cobbler. That said, some parts of the book are boring as hell. Another thought I've had is that this book has a interesting merit as a possible precursor to existential literature. This book was written around the time of Kierkegaard and before Nietzche. Considering the topic's fresh nature at the time, I think the book does a rather good job in that regard.

 

[johnapril]

Originally Posted by LabelKing

One of my favorite writers is Thomas Mann. "The Magic Mountain", for me at least, is a very comforting book.

We all need our own Settembrini.

My favorite part is the discussion of how to wrap a blanket around yourself on the sunporch.