Have you read any good books lately?

58 responses total.

Nope.

The Josephine B Trilogy - Sandra Gulland. Fictional journal of Josephine
Bonaparte, faced on true facts.

Very interesting

I bought my wife a book for Christmas called "Marley & Me: Life and Love
with the World's Worst Dog" by John Grogan.  My wife is not much of a
reader, but she loves dogs.  She loved the book.

After she was done, I read it, too.  It's a decent read, about the
author's 13 years with his incorrigible, hyperactive 100 lb yellow lab.
 It's funny and pleasant.  It's not greatly insightful or anything, but
it moves along.

I've just started Bill Cosby's "Fatherhood".  I'm only 50-60 pages into
it.  I was reading it in bed last night, and thought I was going to have
to go outside or something because I was having trouble controlling my
mirth.  I think Cosby is the funniest man alive, and this book leaps
right into being hilarious.  I have high expectations for the rest of it.

Fatherhood is a great book! It kept me in splits. Especially the story of when
his mom told him to put his brains back in his head.

Join books. Help keep other conferences active. There are a couple of items
for recent reading. 

Perhaps we could link this item?

I am currently working my way through "The Winter War," by William Trotter,
a history of the 1939-40 Finnish-Soviet war. It sounds quite dry, but it's
actually rather amusing in most places - so far, anyway - mostly due to the
utter incompetence of the Soviet forces. You seriously wonder whether some
of the things in this book are just anti-Soviet propaganda, but it's funny
all the same.

I can't agree with Trotter's assessment of the Finnish language, though: I
think it's lovely.

Also took a sneak peak at ON THE EDGE: THE SPECTACULAR RISE AND FALL OF
COMMODORE, a birthday purchase.

Running Linux 3rd Edition.

Trolling for Trouble, by Jim Daloonik

This response has been erased.

Agora Winter 2006/7, "reading material", has been liked to books 114.
Also in the books cf are several other "what I'm reading" type items,
including a general one, which has been all for fiction, and one specifically
for nonfiction. Come and browse in books.

The SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) Grand Masters - Vol 1/2. 

I especially liked: All Cats are Gray, Serpent's Tooth, Fondly Farenheit
and well almost all of them (short stories).

  I'm currently reading an interesting book by one of my favorite
  authors, Tim Powers.  Powers' books in recent years mostly tell
  the stories of people who discover that a secret world of mystical
  forces is operating behind the scenes of the modern-day world
  they thought they knew.

  His newest one, "Three Days to Never" improbably mixes a college
  professor and his teenage daughter with secret agents, a malign
  occult organization, a strange device with unrevealed powers over
  the flow of time, and the legacies of Albert Einstein and Charlie
  Chaplin.  I think Powers is a fascinating storyteller and the
  thing I love about his books is watching the progress, as the
  book moves along, from "how is he ever going to tie all this
  together, and what the heck is the deal with [X]" to "aha!" Not
  all of his books manage to tie things up neatly at the end but
  they're still usually a pleasure to read.

  I also highly recommend his novel "Last Call", where a middle-aged
  poker player finds out that a strange card game he played in a
  dozen years ago had more significance than he ever suspected.

Re: #8. What a koinkidink! I have that edition of that book. It's dog-eared
pages usually lie abandoned (but much-loved, all the same) on my Computing
Bookshelf.

Re: #3. My mum got that book for Xmas.

resp:3 I enjoyed that book a lot. If you want to know what they did 
wrong with the dog, get Cesar's Way (also a good read). 

I am curently reading "Beka Cooper, Terrier" by Tamora Pierce.  It is an 
interesting novel about a young girl who decides to become a member of the
watch in an alternate medeviel setting.  They call the law enforcement "dogs"
and she earns the appelation of terrier because of her persistence.

The setting is well constructed, and the story line interesting even if you
do have to get past the archaic words she uses all you mots, coves, and 
gixies need to read this novel.

Also I am about to start on "Good Omens" by Pratchett and Gaiman.

 I recently re-read "Good Omens"..  I had it in a stack of paperbacks I'd
 bought from the library for $0.50 and set aside for when I ran out of 
 other books and the weekend before this last one I was too sick to go to
 the library and pick out some new reading material so I dipped into the
 paperback pile.  It didn't seem as funny as the first time I read it,
 years ago, but it's still quite entertaining.

There was talk of making it into a movie, with Terry Gilliam at the 
helm, but I think it's been pushed to the back of the shelf.  Pity. 
That's a combination (Pratchett/Gaiman/Gilliam) that would be a lot of 
fun to watch.

I'm 1/4 of the way through "My Life" by Prez Clinton.  I recently read:
"The evil that men do: FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood's journey into the minds
of sexual predators" by Stephen G. Michaud with Roy Hazelwood
and "Made in Detroit: a south of 8 Mile memoir" by Paul Clemens

Re: #20. How would Gaiman (I presume of the Neil variety) fit in?

resp:7 Sounds interesting. I'll have to see about getting it from the
library.

 re #21:  he probably wouldn't fit in with the Clinton biography,
 the Detroit memoir, or the sexual predator profiles.  Assuming
 that you meant to refer to #19, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
 wrote "Good Omens" together, relatively early in both their 
 careers.

re resp:13: I liked "The Drawing Of The Dark" pretty well but haven't
read a lot of other books by Powers.

Re: #23. Hahah, yes quite right. I must have been thinking of some other
Pratchett book, then, because (a) I thought he was sole author and (b) I have
not read any co-authored by him.

re #23
LOL

_Mountains Beyond Mountains_, by Tracy Kidder is my current read.  It's 
this month's book club choice.  It's also the 2007 Ann Arbor Reads 
selection.  The author was in town last week and gave a talk about writing 
this book and his relationship with Dr. Paul Farmer, the person behind the 
highly successful world-wide Partners in Health medical outreach program, 
and the subject of _M B M_.  It's fascinating look at a brilliant man and 
the global problem of providing health care for all.  

 re #24:  Try "The Anubis Gates" if you can find a copy.  Or, if you like
 pirates, "On Stranger Tides" is really good, too, though hard to find.

re #27
The audio version is actually in my county library queue.  It will be a
welcome 4 discs compared to the 42 discs for the Clinton book.

Re: #27. I have read Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine," about Data
General's attempt to build a competitor to Digital Equipment Corporation's
VAX, which I enjoyed immensely. Another of those "dry, factual" books which
turns out to be rather a good read. It is also (as of the published date of
the blurb on my copy) the only book about computers ever to win a Pulitzer
Prize. I would be interested to know whether MBM matches up (if you have read
both).

I got a couple of good finds from the free book room at work today. I 
havent read them yet but probably will this weekend:

_Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish 
Speaking United States_ by Hector Tobar. The blurb on the back of the 
book says "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hector Tobar takes us on 
the definitive tour of the Spanish-speaking United States -- a parallel 
USA. 40 million strong, that is transforming the American Dream, 
reinventing the American community, and redefining the experience of 
American immigrant in unprecedented and unexpected ways. Translation 
Nation rises, brilliantly, to meet one of the most profound shifts in 
American identity in the last two hundred years."

_Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American 
in Iran_ by Azadeh Moaveni. I dont have time to copy the blurb on the 
back of this one because it is longer. It looks like there will be some 
discussion about feminism in Iran though which is a subject I find 
interesting. 

Re: #30  The only other Kidder book I've read is _House_, which I remember 
enjoying quite a bit.  So I can't make that comparison, sorry.

Incendiary - by Chris Cleave

Compelling novel written as a letter to Osama bin Laden by a
working-class London housewife whose husband and son were killed by a
suicide bomber at a football game.  Really enjoyed it.

Re: #32. Oh well, it was worth a try, thanks anyhow.

"Another Bullshit night in Suck City" by Nick Flynn.  Nick is a close 
friend of my sister's who lives in upstate NY, and has published novels 
and poetry of some repute.  I got a copy of this particular book when I 
was at his and his girlfriend's house over the holidays. This is his 
memoir of the time he was volunteering as a caseworker in a homeless 
shelter in Boston and how one of the homeless guys who turned up at the 
shelter turned out to be his long lost father.  Its a true story of the 
parallells and contrasts of his life and his father's.  A wonderful 
read and my personal favorite ever title for a book.  

I had finished Wicked in the fall.  So Santa brought me The Wizard of Oz
(dusted that off over the holidays) and Son of a Witch, which I have begun.

I'm in the middle of Charles Williams' _Outlines of Romantic Theology_. It's
very good, but typical Williams, so it would be nearly impenetrable to only
casual inspection.

(Williams, born 1886, died 1945, is the third member of the "Big Three" of the
Inklings, the other two being C.S. Lewis and Tolkien.)

english first; but not only

Oh, if only we held YOU to that standard...

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