Grant, if you feel like taking a short break from that, try Ezra Pound's sestina Altaforte. Sometimes both words appear in the title, parted by a colon. It'll put the hair up on the back of your neck; Bertrans de Born was a man who was right over the edge -- and no mean poet, in medieval French, himself. Then lateral over to Joe Haldeman's Saul's Death for another spooky exercise in the sestina verse form.

Just finished The Runaway Jury by John Grisham.

I'm not much into Grisham, but it was an entertaining story.

And it worked SOOOOO much better with the tobacco companies as the bad guys.

Thank you for the book recommendation... I just finished it and I really enjoyed it. I really respect her - and I never would have thought that I would have said that about a model.

DEEPSIX.
Jack Mcdevitt
sorry,ya'll It's good sci fi in my faster
than light universe.

Reading: The Women's Room--Marilyn French
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead--Stoppard (play)

Now: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Next: Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman

I'm in a book slump... I keep getting these books that have the dumbest endings.

I just finished this book called "Babes in Captivity" - a sort of Desparate Housewives type of book... and it was lame.

One World, Ready or Not. By W. Greider. Don't think I'll make the finish.

Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and The Crusades)

Everybody needs to read this.

Seriously.

Sorry, I admit that i haven't read the whole thread yet, but is anyone still reading or finished the Dark Tower series? I am in the midst of Song Of Susannah, but it is an audiobook, therefore VERY slow going. I am just hoping that the end is not a bust, i read the poem the series is based on by Robert Browning (I think), and the ending doesn't leave much to anticipate. Besides that I am reading The Jungle and Slaughterhouse Five.

I'm waiting for the last one to come out in trade paperback. I enjoyed the new additions to the series but had several eye-rolling moments in Song of Susannah. The ending is worth it, but there's a little section about 3/4ths of the way through that I just couldn't take seriously. You'll know it when you get there.

I'm reading Zodiac, the least-known work by Neal Stephenson, and I'm enjoying it very much. I think it was marketed poorly--the cover calls it an "eco-thriller," but it's totally not. Environmentalism (which is totally not my thing) is not what this book is about.

harry potter 2 is the best

I didn't like HP 2 or 3 as much as HP 1 and 4. Books 5 and 6 are at least as strong as Book 4.

Entebbe by Iddo Netanyahu (youngest brother of Yoni and Bibi)

I think one of the coolest things about Harry Potter is that the books grow with the kids they were written for. It gets more intense and in-depth as the kids that started reading the series grow old enough to understand.

I am half-way through Song Of Susannah, and they just now jumped to Jake and Callahan, frustrating because they are my favorite characters.

I have been listening to the Enders Game books. I'm on the last of the original series 'Chilren of the Mind' at present. Orson Scott Card is the friggin Man.

the plot against america / philip roth

guns, germs, and steel / jared diamond

a history of early christianity/ bart? erdman

I am currently reading three books:

"Cnut; England's Viking King" (history)
An historical novel called "The Last Kingdom"set in 9th century Britain,
by Bernard Cornwell ( who writes fabulous historical fiction if anyone likes that sort of thing. He writes around all periods, from Dark ages through to second world war)

and "An Introduction to Latin" (text book)

Am also rather enjoying "Possessing the Secret of Joy" by Alice Walker (of Colour Purple fame)

For some reason I have an annoying ( to me) habit of getting interested in several books at a time hehe
Mostly though I am reading Cnut, because I know very little about him. My knowledge of that period doesnt really stretch further back than Edward the Confessor. Next I want to find a book about Aethelred ( The Unready :P) and then I think Athelstan ( 1st King to unite all England )

It Takes a Family - Rick Santorum

Yes, really.

Autographed copy.

Perhaps you wonder if I read paper books... Well, I do, so nyah.

Kokology The game of self discovery by Tadahiko Nagao and Isamu Saito

and

Wilderness Survival Handbook by Alan Fry

I totally read that wrong the first time through.

I'm re-reading A World Lit Only By Fire. Fabulous, remarkable, readable book. Also, Travesties, by Stoppard.

It's research right? A deeper look into a fractured mind? Looking under a long unmoved rock?

Book 11 of the Whale of Time series, A knife of Dreams.

I broke the three book threshold and there's no stopping, no going back...

Hey, UT! do you think you could correct George's spelling error in the title of this thread. it's driving me crazy by now.

I think that's part of the essential charm of the thread.

Even if it does make me crazy every time I see it.

Normally I want the thread starter to ask for a fix. But yeah.

~ahhhh~.............much better.

Thanky Jimbo/UT.

[fag] I'm listening to that on my iPod during my commute. the pronunciation of all of the names has me all fucked up. I don;t know who the hell they're talking about most of the time[/fag]

[fag+geek]Yeah, I had that problem when I bought the table top role playing game.[/fag+geek]

Now I'm reading the Rising Stars comic anthology in hardback and the new Thomas Covenant book. Next on the stack is Devil in the White City.

Ooooh, the White Gold Wielder. That takes me right back. I found Thomas Covenant a very entertaining anti-hero.

I always thought that Thomas Covenant was a much more compelling and independent character in our world, and a terrible, terrible whiner every time he hit his head and ended up There.

Animosity by David Lindsey

That was kinda the point.

As for whether you enjoy reading his whining, that's another story.

No, I didn't enjoy reading his whining. I also didn't get WHY strong and independent and cranky ass Thomas magically turned into a Wimp in The Land. And yes, I read them more and once, just to be sure. Just like LOTR.

He goes to Penguins games with a jersey with his last name on it. Last time I was there I was behind him in the beer line. I almost said to him "You never saw a defense expediture you didnt' like, eh?" But, then I decided I was there for the hockey.

" Ooooh, the White Gold Wielder. That takes me right back. I found Thomas Covenant a very entertaining anti-hero."

Man, I loved that whole sequence. I read the First Chronicles when I was 12 and the second Chronicles when I was about 14. It had a huge effect on me, because my whole family read it and passed the books around. It was just before my Mum and Dad split up so it sticks in my mind as the very last "family" thing we did together. Thomas remains my favourite ever Anti hero:)

Anybody ever read Donaldon's Gap series? Awesome Space Opera on the grandest of scales:)

I just finished Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music by Blair Tindall. This book is part memoir, part indictment of the classical music industry. Tindall, an oboist who grew up in North Carolina and moved to Manhattan after graduating from the North Carolina School of the Arts' high school program, played a lot of oboe between the ages of 15 and 40, and by her own admission played very, very few jobs that she didn't obtain by sleeping with someone. By all accounts she is a good oboist, though I was amused by her constant harping on her inability to produce good reeds. I also wondered how she managed to learn anything about the oboe as her primary teacher for almost her entire life was, according to her description, useless at best. (Except for the fact that he could recommend her to play as a sub in the NY Philharmonic.)

Although I don't disagree with much of what she writes about the state of the discipline, she seems oblivious to the fact that the same circumstances apply in many fields. (If she thinks classical musicians enjoyed an artifically created boom in the 1960s and 70s, and that music schools turn out far more graduates than there will ever be jobs for, she should consider the career opportunites her own father, a history professor at the University of North Carolina, faced in the 1960s compared with those of a 30-something humanities PhD today.)

Hey TS, is the 11th book of WOT a prequel, or are they still going forward? I forced myself through the first 10, but wasn't really paying attention after 6.

I'm going to the used-book store after work. I'm all out of stuff to read.

I found the whole Earthsea series by LeGuin at a library book sale. Very cheap. Hadn't read it in 20+ years.

I'm just about finished with Wizard of Earthsea. It started off a little slow and wasn't as good as I remembered, but now it's sucking me in.

I'll pass these off to my kids when they get a little older.

Did you see the SciFi miniseries?

If not, don't.

I'm about halfway through Lipstick Jungle by Candace Bushnell. It's pretty much the same story as Sex and the City, et al, except with different women...sort of.

The prequel is called "A New Spring," and it's not called anything except "the prequel" and its title. The "eleventh book" is called "Knife of Dreams," and it is indeed the next in the series.

Bhagavad Gita

The Savage Wars Of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, Max Boot. It's about America's small wars, exclusive of the Indian Wars and other military actions inside the North American continent and around the national frontiers, starting really with the Barbary Wars beginning 1802, as it really doesn't get into the conflict-that-wasn't-quite-a-war with France of 1798-1800. Packs a lot between two covers. Persons interested in the history of the US Marines should give this one a look -- I never knew Smedley Butler had a middle name (and it sure doesn't look like he had a first name). It outlines American interventions in Central America and the Caribbean -- there was one dustup where the US Marines were fighting to defeat a coup instigated by United Fruit!

how to win friends and influence people... by some guy.

yet another series of books for yet another professional designation that geniuses like tw will scoff at.

Books for my first graduate class...I start in 2 weeks:

--Management Mistakes and Successes
--The Time Trap
--Effective Teamwork
--a management textbook published by Houghton Mifflin

Just remember, there's no "I" in "team," but there's an "M" and an "E"!

A couple months back I randomly picked up a Terry Pratchett "Discworld" novel at the local library. (I think it was "Night Watch".) I've enjoyed them a lot--they mostly have newer ones. "Going Postal" is my favorite so far.

However I attempted to read the first one of the series, "The Color of Magic," and I found it an unbearable snooze and abandoned it halfway through.

I just got done reading State of Fear by Michael Crichton.

Absolutely faaaaantastic!! I loved it.
If you are considering reading this book, I would suggest reading the appendices first. It really helps you to get an idea of where this book is coming from.
I really hope they make a movie out of it!

This is a good strategy for many books. I only learned this after the fact, sadly, for the LoTR trilogy. Interestingly, many of SonofV's books he checks out from the school library have these helpful appendicies in them. Many of them are kind of science-y, Bats, Reptiles, Sharks, Snakes, etc, and the appendix at the end is informative to me and I use it as a stealth teaching tool sometimes when we talk about the book.

The Way of A Pilgrim

It's part of a five-book series of 'spiritual classics' that I got from the One Spirit Book Club several years ago that I never got around to reading. It's supposed to be a first person account by a Russian peasant who seeks to learn the secrets of constant prayer.

The others in the series were a book of Sufi Poetry, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, The Tao Te Ching, and The Essential Kaballah. The Way of the Pilgrim is the only book of Christian Mysticism in the set.

Currently reading 'LETTERS HOME', Sylvia Plath. Have article due soon.

Holy, holy.

from FRANNY AND ZOOEY?

I read that right after Salinger's RAISE HIGH THE ROOFBEAMS, and, CATCHER IN THE RYE .

ZOOEY AND FRANNY, or something or other, very good book.

Lotsa luck, girlfriend. I sincerely hope you can e'slpain it to me. Meaning any of the Salinger books. I 'know', but I'm afraid that I don't really "know"..---ya know?

Get yourself a copy of Goldratt's 'The Goal' - it won't cost you much second-hand but it will be one of the most useful management books you read, being the entry novel to a management and business process concept that stands up to scrutiny and that really does work and deliver. I'll be surprised if you don't get hooked.

I went old school on my last audiobook purchase:

The Illiad
The Odyssey
Ben Hur

Verbal Behavior- B.F. Skinner

Nope. It's a translation of some Russian Mystic Shit.

I have never actually read any Salinger. I somehow avoided that class in high school where you have to read The Catcher in the Rye.

Yes, I can see that you are surprised.

Would it reassure you any if I told you I have at least three copies of The Turner Diaries, as well as two other books from the same author?

Yes, I am duly reassured!---Now--can you explain THE WAY OF THE PILGRIM? coz after reading FRANNY AND ZOOEY, I got that book and tried to read it and I think I may have (read it) but I didn't get much out of it. Yeah--it's Russian Mystic shit and it made Franny have a complete breakdown....so....what is the deal with that book?

Dude, are you that pissed at tw?