What are you reading?

[SirWilliam]

I'm now reading Black Rednecks & White Liberals by Thomas Sowell.

After Tom Wolfe's death, I planned to go back and read his works. I think I have The Bonfire of the Vanities around

That's why I reread it. He is a great author.

 

[Kaplan]

Finished The Story of Philosophy from 1998 by Bryan Magee and just bought but haven't started, these:

Walden, Henry David Thoreau goes on a picnic in 1854

The Picture of Dorian Gray, from 1891 and the only novel by Oscar Wilde

The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger from 1951, still available from the original publisher and with the original cover

Dune, Frank Herbert's sci-fi sandbox from 1965

Ubik, from 1969 and unlike a dozen or so of Philip K. Dick's stories, one that hasn't seen a movie adaptation (yet)

Eaters Of The Dead, made by Michael Crichton in 1976 on a dare that he could make the Beowulf myth entertaining

Neuromancer, William Gibson's cyberpunker from 1984, with new award winning cover design

The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, published a week ago but with it's earliest story written in 1898

All titles clickable for cover art

Now, where to begin...

 

[ter1413]

Half way finished with this.

Solid so far. Has not deeply delved into the history of the Klan, etc. It basically just gets right to the story of the first black detective in the Colorado Springs Police force and how he and his colleagues infiltrated the Klan in the late 70's.

Spike Lee's film about this is being released next month.

 

[ter1413]

I'm now reading Black Rednecks & White Liberals by Thomas Sowell.

That's why I reread it. He is a great author.

Review?

 

[suited]

I'm now reading Black Rednecks & White Liberals by Thomas Sowell.

That's why I reread it. He is a great author.

These are also great, if you haven't read them:

Currently reading The Adams-Jefferson Letters. I found some unintentional humor near the beginning in an exchange about wine. Adams was writing Jefferson in part to tell him to stop a shipment (or series of shipments) of wine to Europe because of exorbitant import fees Adams would have to cover. The frustration in having to communicate in such an inefficient way became apparent in a followup letter a month or so later that said "for mercy sake stop all of my wine."

 

[flvinny521]

Dune, Frank Herbert's sci-fi sandbox from 1965

Well, I have to vote for this, as I've read it two or three times, and currently on my second read of the fifth book in the series, Heretics of Dune.

 

[Kaplan]

Thanks - out of that bunch it may be the one I start with, though I today started on Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Read about half of it in one sitting, and so far it's the most enjoyable read out of the three dystopian novels I got recently (the other two being Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World).

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Well, I have to vote for this, as I've read it two or three times, and currently on my second read of the fifth book in the series, Heretics of Dune.

Heretics is where the series starts to improve again after the weaker Children of Dune and frankly tedious God-Emperor of Dune IMHO. Chapter House Dune is excellent and it's such a shame he was not able to continue from here. We shall not speak of the post-mortem Dune books...

I have been working my way through this year's excellent Arthur C. Clarke Awards shortlist, which is quite different from that for the more populist SF awards:

• Borne by Jeff Vandermeer - weird, urbab post-biotech apocalypse SF - recommended
• Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill - It's every robot for herself or Wall-E meets Mad Max - fun but the robots are so 'human', you don't really get any sense that humanity's extermination matters all that much
• American War by Omar El Akkad - a new civil war splits near-future USA, with complex and flawed characters and probably my vote for the win (so far).
  
• Spaceman of Bohemia by Yarolslav Kalfar - Eastern European novel that combines (post-) Communist social realism, SF and magic realism. I'm not sure if it entirely works, but it is definitely memorable.
• Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed - if you found The Handmaid's Tale too upbeat, then this is the novel for you. A brutal and abusive cult community seen through the eyes of its children. The only thing is that I'm not sure what makes it science fiction at all...
• Dreams Before the Start of Time by Anne Charnock - just starting this one...[update: upper middle-class London white folks worry about their children, just in the future, although you'd hardly know it given that almost nothing apart from family arrangements seems to have changed]

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Just re-read Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco in the wonderful Folio Society edition. My favourite kind of intellectual occult shaggy-dog story, but it's not without emotional depth and also has strong characters, which saves it from being just a very clever diversion. It's what Dan Brown dreams he could write, if he could write. However I still prefer both The Name of the Rose, and his late novel, The Prague Cemetery, which delves deeper into particular elements that crop up in Foucault's Pendulum (namely the anti-semitic conspiracy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion) and is much, much darker.

 

[Solverson]

The Art of War, by Sun Tzu

 

[dragon8]

Brotopia by Emily Chang

 

[noob in 89]

I still prefer both The Name of the Rose, and his late novel, The Prague Cemetery, which delves deeper into particular elements that crop up in Foucault's Pendulum...

Cool, I need to check out that last one. I remember trying to be a bad-ass in undergrad and reading one of his not-for-laymen books on semiotics. It came in a plain white cover with the subject printed in an unceremonious blue font, like generic toilet paper. Then, after struggling to grasp it, I read an interview where he called it outdated, as if everyone were talking about geology. Suddenly, his novels seemed more appealing...

 

[Joffrey]

Just re-read parts of The Right Stuff. Brilliant writing that never gets old.

Now, I have just started: The Strangest Family: The Private Lives of George III, Queen Charlotte and the Hanoverians by Janice Hadlow. Slow starting but part way through Chapter 1 **** has just hit the fan thanks to an unwelcome guest at a christening.

 

[Fueco]

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Just read the recent translations of Haruki Murakami's first two novellas, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball. They are both an uneven combination of what became his later trademarks of nostalgia for the late 60s / early 70s, aimless, useless guys who always land on their feet, pretty troubled suicidal girls, music references, the odd bit of surrealism and stories that go nowhere. There are some passages of really nice writing which make them worthwhile, but really they only serve to highlight the limitations and repetitiveness of so much of Murakami's work.