What are you reading?

[sensiblesue]

Went to hear Luis Urrea, the author of the last book I posted in this thread, Into the Beautiful North speak last weekend. Very articulate speaker. Impressed me enough to buy two more of his books. Am now reading The Devil's Highway, his account of the Yuma 14, Mexican workers brought across the border by an unscrupulous coyote and left to die in the desert.

Also reading The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis. Scandinavian noir fiction. Page turner. Lots of implausibilities, but keeps you reading anyway.

[Zeluvia]

I still think Heinlein's best book was Job: A Comedy of Justice.

I just finished Atwood's Oryx and Crake, After the Flood, and Maddadam. She should have stopped with Oryx and Crake, it was a damn fine book with a good ending. The other two were meh.

I did not enjoy the Ministry of Guidance invites you to Not Stay.

[dendrast]

Stranger in a Strange Land (the original uncut version) by Heinlein.

I read the "cut" version in high school about 40 years ago. I didn't recall too much about it except grok, sex and cannibalism.

I'm about 360 pages into this 500 page work, and I've spent much of that time mentally screaming "Get on with it!"

There's too much dialogue before that juicy stuff even begins, and too much talking in between brief periods of good reading. And I'm not finding Heinlein's views of the world, if they are accurately expressed here, very enlightening.

That about sums up all of his output from "Stranger" on. Prolix. The last one of his that was actually fun to read was "Glory Road". Looking back on his stuff, I find him too Libertarian, (Jubal Harshaw is ridiculous, the contortions he goes through), and too pro-gun. Not to mention sexist. I read it in High School too, about the same time. Apparently it was very popular amongst the Hippies and Acid-heads out west, but brain damage is not required before reading it.

Bradbury, great magic realism.

Vonnegut, a little too tied to the Second World War (but I can't blame him, after being a POW in Dresden during the bombings).

Asimov, great at 'nuts and bolts' SF as is Larry Niven. Although I don't care for the stuff co-authored with Jerry Pournelle, another libertarian type.

[diana]

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah.

Now reading A Wise Man's Fear, the second book of the Kingkiller Chronicles.

d

[Tars Tarkus]

The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow

[Keith&Co.]

The stall door.

Apparently, there's a rather boastful fellow living in Nantucket...

[Infinite Monkey]

"Rapture of the Nerds" by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. It's completely insane.

I've been reading sci-fi my whole life and this is the first book that's made me think, "Huh. This is way too futuristic for comfort."

[Tars Tarkus]

"The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939" by Antony Beevor. My favorite 20th century history author by far.

[bradw]

Charlatan by Pope Brock.

Non-fiction.

Story of John R. Brinkley, a man who made millions implanting goat gonads, selling sham medicines and running a million-watt radio station in Mexico.


Good read.

[Daioh]

Re-reading Raymond E. Feists book Magician and hopefully this time I will actually read the sequels to it as well (I realised that I never actually read any of the other books with the exception of the Empire Trilogy which I have re-read 3-4 times)