Dean Koontz - "Odd Thomas". I put off reading it even though I love Dean Koontz because I was tired of the whole "I see dead people" thing but it's really good.

Just started The Tender Bar by JR Moehringer. So far I think it's good.

Next, Michael Crichton

I just started Ringworld by Larry Niven

Ghost Towns & other quirky places in the New Jersey Pine Barrens by Barbara Solem-Stull. History plus maps & directions.

I drove through the big fire in the Pine Barrens a few years ago (along the GSP)...I forget which year.

I just finished a scintillating instruction manual for completing the individual portion of my current class...blecch!

I've spent as much time as I can in the pines over the past 35 or so years. A great place to relax or explore. If my family follows my wishes, my ashes will be spread there. :ghost:

the ending was weak. really weak. it's a damn shame, too, cos i liked it up until the last hour or so. It was like he got tired of it, and just tied everything up real quick and ended it. It felt like he could have gone on for a good deal longer with the lines that were developing....and then......climax, denouement, end.

National Geographic Vol. 178, No. 2- Auust 1990. I love reading old NG's, the articles are wild.

Suuuuuure it is. I bet you read Playboy for the articles too. :rolleyes:

It's all about the dowas (so I hear.)

waaaatch it, some of us browse at school. I'm fairly certain that if i can show that it's Nat.Geo., i can get away with it, but... at least gimme a 'heads' next time.


Re-reading (for the trillionth time) some Wilde. I've got Dorian Gray, Windermere's Fan, Salome, Ideal Husband, and Earnest in my pocket right now.

Read Cat's Cradle this morning. Very weird structure, very weird theophilosophy, very weird plot... very Vonnegut - therefore very, very, VERY good.

Sorry man. It totally is a National Geographic picture, by way of a Google image search.

Consilience by Edward O. Wilson

have just finished Skin Gods by Richard Montanari, just about to start Aloft by Chang-rae Lee. Also working my way through Stephen Kings Dark Tower series, i'm half way through the fourth book

Hi tissy:) Nice to see another brit. Funnily enough, we just lost our one leicester member (she's moving to London and is offline for a while).

Hi DanaC. How are you? Yeah, I saw the post Sundae Girl posted about moving.

Yup. Very sad not to have her around for a while :sniff: she's a top bird.

But she swore blind she'd return to the cellar one day!

So whatcha think o'them tharr Dark Tower books?

They're ok, keep reading bits of them in between other books. I been a fan King for years (who hasn't?) which the main reason i picked them up in the 1st place

Just finished "God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian" by Vonnegut.
Short but wonderful. I highly suggest it.

I'm about 50 pages into Breakfast of Champions now.

Shogun, by James Clavell =)

Sequence by Lori Andrews

I always meant to read David Brin's Uplift series, so I am.

I've only read The Postman by him. He's good.

Just finished "Wolves of the Calla" by Stephen King. One of the best Dark Tower/Gunslinger books so far.

I'm now reading Ringworld Engineers. The first book gripped me. The idea of building a ring around the sun 93 million miles in radius and have the ring itself 1 million miles wide is amazing. Will we as a species ever accomplish an engineering achievement on that scale? I hope so.

I CAN'T WAIT FOR HARRY POTTER! I WILL FINISH IT IN 1 DAY! not go to work, see friends, leave my room. Hopefully I can hold my bladder until I'm done and my sister can deliver food to my room. I'm not currently reading it, but it is MUCH anticipated.

I was looking forward to the last book too but not that much.:eyebrow:

Well, you didn't let Harry Potter engulf your literary childhood, like I did. And I don't regret it. :D

Just finished "Descent" by Jeff Long. 2nd best book I've ever read, and CREEEPY.

Re-reading For Us, The Living - Heinlein's last book.

As close to a Utopia as I can envision... maaaybe would be a little better with a little of Aldous Huxley's Island mixed in.

I'm about halfway through The Great Mortality by John Kelly. It's been alternately fascinating and utterly depressing at times.

Halfway through E.P Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class. Excellent book.

Dime Store Magic - Kelley Armstrong

(i have Industrial Magic as my next up, unless I decide to read The Criminalization of Christianity first.)

I'm re-reading the Pendragon Cycle: Taliesin, Merlin, Arthur. I'm half way thru Merlin. I read these a long time ago.....while in Jr high? looks like there are 2 new books i never read. Pendragon and Grail.

I was disappointed in Dime Store Magic, Wolf.

Reading (re-reading?) The Stand by Stephen King. It's the 'uncut' version. A bit tedious, but some good stuff to take out of it. I have found that my reading preferences have changed much since High School!

As a matter of fact, I tried re-reading that last week (or two weeks ago or something like that).

I just couldnt. I got about a hundred pages in and just... couldnt do it again. Not worth it.

Whutsa book? :D

Altered Carbon

Infinite Possibilities - Heinlein

Choke by Palahniuk. Yeah I know I'm behind the times.
How To Be good by Nick Hornby

choke- that's a good un, bb....

Animal Farm - George Orwell

dresden files- jim butler
road to dune- herbert&anderson
thud- terry pratchett

yes all at once

Ishmael - Daniel Quinn

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

Started last night, now only 1,450 pages to go! I'll keep you abreast on progress...

Thats funny; i'm about 200 pages into Anna Karenin and loving it.

Now that's much much more than your average bathroom reader there!

Last 3 books
Demian - Interesting, but i think people completely misinterpret it and like it for the wrong reason but im still not sure where the author intended either.
Old man's war - good sci-fi
River of Gods by Ian McDonald -excellent sci-fi

currently reading:
The Fall - i dont know, im half way through and so far all he does is go on and on about how mutch a fraud he feels he is for helping people because it makes him feel good. Its really exaggerated. I hope something interesting/useful comes up. Some good prose through.
Infidel - interesting autobiography
What we believe but cannot prove. - short get you thinking essays, very good

Beyond the Sea of Ice - William Sarabande

Men At Work - George Will

My Ishmael - Daniel Quinn

I'm impressed with your staying power...

Currently reading about 5 - my flat is such a mess I keep losing the ones I've started.

The Dark Tower by King, except it's cheating - I have been looking for The Song of Susannah for a couple of months in the charity shop and decided to skip it for the time being. I've got a large, colour illustrated copy of The Dark Tower and I can't guarantee I'll find it again easily. I told myself I'd hold it in reserve until I found Susannah - I lasted a day.

In my bag - so least likely to get lost - is Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. Took me a little while to get into it, but in hindsight reading it in the pub during a Liverpool vs AC Milan game might have been a reason.

Just finished 6 Graham Masterson books (2 x omnibus). Not that impressed, but I bought them for braindead entertainment and they surprised me with some nice turns of phrase.

Finished Sputnik Sweetheart by Huruki Murakami - didn't impress me that much. I think because it's so short. Some beauty in there, but the two previous books of his (Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Dance, Dance, Dance)I have read have had the edgy feel of revealing something at the edge of our lives - like if you stepped into the wrong railway carriage you would see a different world. This one seemed pedestrian in comparison. But hey, if anyone wants it send me a PM :)

I didn't have very high expectations, so I thought it was okay. Not so okay that I'm going to get the rest of her books, though.

All of his books stand alone, and you don't need to read them in order or immediately upon publication. I really recommend "Haunted."

Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey was very strange. I tried describing it to someone, and well, you just can't.

Thanks, I really like the first book so its only natural to go onto the sequel. After "My Ishmael" I don't know if I will read other books by Quinn or move onto the list of 10 or so books I have.

I tried four at once and that didn't work. I usually try to go one at a time, maybe two if one book isn't that interesting.

I do the same thing. Usually three at once. 1 literature, 1 sci-fi and one non-fiction. Usually with the literature after a chapter or 2 i feel i just have to sit and absorb what i've read. Non fiction my eyes start to glaze over after few chapters. Than i usually go finish half the fiction book! :-) lol

I typically have two going at once ... one that I carry around, and one that I leave in the special reading room with the porcelain chair.

The book in the reading room is usually one with short segments that lends itself to intermittent reading. Currently I'm reading Mars and Venus in the Workplace.

The best book so far that I had for that kind of occasional reading was The Encyclopedia of Mystic Places ... had a page or two on all kinds of cool sites, both real and fabled, like Glastonbury Tor, Stonehenge, Atlantis, the Piri Reis Map, etc.

Right now it's The Bomb, A Life by Gerard J. DeGroot. It's a look at how it "dominated the psyches of millions, becoming a touchstone of popular culture, celebrated or decried in mass political movements, films, songs, and books." That is, it's a social history of The Bomb.

He does bend over too far backward to give the Soviet Russians the benefit of any possible doubt, and such effort towards the US is not evident, but keeping this in mind allows one to gain much from the book.