What Are You Reading??

Just started the 19th Wife (for our book club) and it's a "couldn't put it down" read 120 pages straight off. 

Thanks to a big going-out-of-business sale at our local Borders Books, I finally got to read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies . I laughed until I spit up!
It's done totally dead-pan, and beautifully preserves the 18th-Century aristocratic tone of the original...but with zombies.

I wish EVERY alleged "great classic of world literature" had zombies in it. Wouldn't YOU much rather read War and Peace and Zombies  or Much Ado About Zombies  or Lady Chatterley's Zombie  or Last of The Zombies  or even Harry Potter and the Zombies of Hogwarts ?

I know I would.

I just finished reading Just Kids by Patti Smith. I'm not a Pattie Smith fan, but I found her book absolutely fascinating.

Thanks to a big going-out-of-business sale at our local Borders Books, I finally got to read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies . I laughed until I spit up!
It's done totally dead-pan, and beautifully preserves the 18th-Century aristocratic tone of the original...but with zombies.

I wish EVERY alleged "great classic of world literature" had zombies in it. Wouldn't YOU much rather read War and Peace and Zombies  or Much Ado About Zombies  or Lady Chatterley's Zombie  or Last of The Zombies  or even Harry Potter and the Zombies of Hogwarts ?

I know I would.

That book was amazing! I never read any Jane Austen before, and I could hardly tell what was changed about the original. I thought it would be really cheesy and obvious when the author shoehorned the zombie parts in there. It was seamless though. The way a persons social standing is largely determined by their skills in the deadly arts seems so natural for that time and place. I was also really into World War Z when I read it a few years back. If you haven't read that I strongly recommend it. By far the best piece of zombie literature I have ever read.

So, Ha Jin's The Crazed bombed. I got 130 pages into it and decided there was absolutely nothing keeping my attention. Now I'm reading Into The Wild.

Currently reading "The Manual of Detection" by Jedidiah Berry. A surreal modern noir novel. So far, it is good. If Kafka and Raymond Chandler had a love-child, it would have been this book

What a wonderful description! Just the book I need next 

The Penguin History of Modern China - The Fall & Rise of a Great Power 1850 - 2009.
By Jonathan Fenby.

All sodding 816 pages.
But it is actually quite readable and rather interesting. Been going for quite a while now and haven't given up on it yet, just getting up to the 1980s....(But enough of that!)

Review
'His book is a miracle of thoroughness, truthfulness and readability - the perfect primer for a time when China is about to enter all our lives' Sunday Telegraph

'Jonathan Fenby's ... illuminating book [is] the first major history that looks at the country with the eyes of the 21st century rather than the 20th' - Rana Mitter, FT

'[It] reads like a novel and is never less than thoughtful and compassionate for the fate of a much-abused people ! [Fenby has] a journalist's eye for telling detail' Herald

'Taut, anecdote-studded ! a great introduction for a general audience, with vivid scene setting and character sketches' - Michel Sheridan, Sunday Times

'For an accessible, authoritative, fair and comprehensive and well written account, this would be hard to better' BBC History

'A wonderful history of modern China and a cracking good read' Chris Patten
Times

'Fenby excels at weaving the strands of his complex narrative into heroic and more often harrowing tales. There are sharp pen portraits of the heroes and (mostly) villains of the piece ... Fenby's enthusiasm is infectious'

Finished "A Thousand Splendid Suns" last week. It was interesting from a cultural standpoint, but it wasn't a great work of literature. This week I finished Dostoyevsky's "Notes from Underground." It was on my reading list.

I just picked up Rudy Rucker's "Spaceland" from the library. I had a workshop with him in grad school and decided it was about time I read one of his books.

The Penguin History of Modern China - The Fall & Rise of a Great Power 1850 - 2009.
By Jonathan Fenby.

Hmm. Wasn't too fond of it. A lot of sweeping generalisations and many unreferenced parts. One sweeping generalisation was him mentioning how one Red Guard thought Jiang Qing looked funny (thanks for the fascinating analysis), another talks about how Mao watched videos of Red Guards being violent "presumably enjoying it all".

TBF though, he does a good job of making you remember the hundreds of characters in Chinese history- like the fat warlord, the warlord with a moustache, the warlord who looks like a sunflower, etc.

Chem text book, Biol text book and math review sheets :/

Just finished my first kindle book "ta da!" The Gun seller by my idol Hugh Laurie twas quite a wheeze actually.

I'm currently reading The Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree by Tariq Ali, which is about a Muslim village in the aftermath of the fall of Granada and the Spanish Inquisition. It is definitely a more heavy read and the plot is kind of plodding but it is really interesting to read about that time period and the Muslim culture of Spain.

I just finished The Shadow of the Wind and immediately began “The Angel’s Game” both by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Mystery, murder and a secret library called the Cemetery of Lost Books, does not get much better. Have to finish this novel before reading the 18 books about pirates Gutenberg had to offer in preparation for the dreaded third term. Authors like Sabatini, Defoe, Marryat and Captain Johnson and the company of such characters as Captain Singleton, Captain Blood, Doctor Syn, Long John Silver and Captain Vanderdecker....fun, fun, fun. Can’t use smileys as this is typed on phone. Laptop is at the ICU. Piglet, I found The Gun Seller highly enjoyable too.