What Are You Reading??

Yes you can also "fold" down a corner to bookmark without ruining the book physically,make footnotes etc and the fact that the book opens where you left off is lovely too. 

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MaddAddam - Margaret Atwood


The third book in the Oryx and Crake series. Halfway through and finding it better than the second book. It might possibly live up to the first too.

I finally finished the Song of Ice and Fire books (ahem, the Game of Thrones series to non-book readers)! Finally! These books totally screwed up my yearly reading challenge because it seriously, no joke, took me from June until September to read all of them.

So now I get to feel all smug when I watch the TV series because I know what's going to happen. Sort of. GRRM needs to hurry up and finish the stupid things.

I finished, after starting and then work forced me to stop, "Paddywhacked - The Rise of the Irish Gangster in America". It's fun to read stuff like that and then watch "Boardwalk Empire"  Now, work is forcing me to read Frances Yates' "The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age"...work is sooooo hard 

Beyond Good and Evil - Nietzsche.

Damn, it's hard, but bending open my mind when I get a good straight run of concentration.
A very rewarding challenge so far, and actually quite amusing with the staunch opinions and mockery amid all deep postulating.

Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden

Set in (and before) 1919 in France and Belgium, and Northern Ontario - and the sex, my god, the sex, it comes out of nowhere, people throw off their clothes like didn't have any - but more often it's the story of two Cree who become snipers in WWI.

Injuns and the Somme are by now familiar stories, of course, but I'm finding this one fresh and compelling.

Nibbling my way through Turtledove's Worldwar series.  A bit of the way into book 2, Tilting the Balance.

I've got hardcopies of all of these downstairs, but didn't feel like digging through 50 crates of books, so I found an alternate source for a copy to read.
 

GRRM needs to hurry up and finish the stupid things.

He has a novella coming out in December.  But, the last two books?  I can only hope he makes it that far. He is not a healthy 65.

Just finished the very wonderful Tom Holt's book Doughnut (thanks to the recommendation of the even more wonderful EricTheRed) and now started Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth.

Beyond Good and Evil - Nietzsche.

Damn, it's hard, but bending open my mind when I get a good straight run of concentration.
A very rewarding challenge so far, and actually quite amusing with the staunch opinions and mockery amid all deep postulating.

I think Nietzsche is really unfairly maligned, he's actually quite positive and funny once you get the hang of his writing. Obviously it's heavy philosophy so it's not 'wahey' kind fun, but Good and Evil is a great book

I have to say that his ilk reminds me of a more coruscating Dawkins. It's far more accessible than other philosophers ('classic' wise) I've tried, but I agree that you do have to get the hang of his style. Some of his passages are so long and require every drop of my brain power, at once to process the language and then to comprehend his statements.

Anyone read the new King yet?
My kindle is bust so I have to wait.
Oh, and is anyone else really looking forward to Donna 'The Secret History' Tartt's new novel the Goldfinch, her first in about 8 years?

Donna Tartt's "Secret History" was the "It" novel of the early 1990's. They pimped/pumped the hell out of it-the young and up-and-coming authoress.

It was actually not bad.

Glad to hear she's still in the game and publishing again.

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Donna Tartt's "Secret History" was the "It" novel of the early 1990's. They pimped/pumped the hell out of it-the young and up-and-coming authoress.

It was actually not bad.

I guess they were capitalising on the stream of boom from Bret Easton Ellis' emergence, and associating her with the 'brat back' of writers whose associations were actually fairly tenuous. Oh, marketing.
The Secret History had a big affect on me, also I don't know why nobody ever talks about the stuff JK Rowling so obviously cribbed from that book, the descriptions of Dumbledore's office, and the characters of Crabbe and Goyle.