Use this item to discuss whatever you might be reading.
 
Tell us what you liked and didn't like!

297 responses total.

Picked up a copy of "Paper Lion" the other day.  This is the story of
George Plimpton time as a rookie at the 1964(?) Detroit Lions training
camp.  Lots of fun, though I'
m sure the language would be a lot bluer than it was here.

I'm reading "The Wallet of Kau Ling". Anyone else ever try that?

I'm still working on NAME OF THE ROSE, which is good if you don't mind
being made to feel like an intellectual midget.  "Hi, I'm Umberto
Eco and I know +everything+.  Here, let me show you."

  Still reading "V." by Thomas Pynchon..  I keep hitting a brick wall.
This happened to me once before, earlier in the book, and it took me a 
while to get around it.  Once I got past, though, it was smooth sailing
for about 100 pages..  If that's the case here, I should make it clear
to the finish this time.

  Also, I've borrowed my roommate's "Complete Works of Oscar Wilde"
so I can read some of his stuff that I hadn't read before.

Just finished "Pillar's of the Earth" by Ken Follet.  I thought it was
excellent.

   Started _Many Sleepless Nights_, a book about organ transplants, their
effect on people, and how society views the whole subject.  I think it
will be a very intersting book.

Just finished _The Difference Engine_ by Willam Gibson and Bruce Sterling,
it wasn't worth it, although I did love the idea and what they did at the 
end of the book.  Gibson, get back to _Neuromancer_ quality!

Just started _Wildcards_ good, but looks comic-bookish and suffers from the
1001 sequels syndrome.

NAME OF THE ROSE was excellent (MUCH better than the movie), though I
preferred FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM.

I just finished _Tehanu_. I hadn't realized Le Guin had written another
Earthsea book. Read the first three when I was seven or eight (and again 
later). I dug those out and read them again earlier this week. The last 
resembles the earlier only somewhat. A decent book, if a bit hung up
in theme and message rather than story.
Now I'm going to read _The Cuckoo's Egg_ by Cliff Stohl. Should be 
interesting :)

 re #9:  The Cuckoo's Egg is much better than I had feared before reading
it (and is, in fact, pretty good) but it has really attracted more attention
than is good for it..

I've decided to try "Ulysses" by James Joyce.  I figure after getting
through "Atlas Shrugged", this should be a piece of cake!

<keats makes that funny boat-engine noise through the lips denoting
 extreme amusement>

er, i think you're in for a surprise, hawkeye. let me give you a hint.
joyce once commented that he spent ten years writing _ulysses_, so he
thought the reader could spend at least that much time reading it.

he wasn't kidding.

  Maybe he should warm up with "Gravity's Rainbow".  So, does anyone here
actually claim to have read "Finnegan's Wake"?  I hope not..

i haven't bothered yet, but i've been through joyce's other stuff. i'm 
sure i'll get to it in the next year or two...i specialize in other
areas, so i can't really make it a priority. i'm told it's more obscure
than _ulysses_, but otherwise, much like it. except perhaps among hardcore
joyceans, i think the consensus with the literati is that _ulysses_ is
better. (obscurity is a plus when you're a specialist...)

 (have you even looked at Finnegan's Wake?  I've read parts of Ulysses 
and while I won't claim that I understand it fully at least it's readable.
In Finnegan's Wake most of the sentences don't make any sense (at least
not in English.  If you have a massive Joycean -> English concordance,
perhaps they're decipherable.)
 
  It's always been my understanding that Ulysses is supposed to be better,
too.  I haven't even read all of Dubliners, though.)

The last major thing I finished reading was also *The Name of the Rose.*
Whew! I have to admit that I did skip several pages at a time when it got
down to discussions of philosophy. But very good. Yes, better than the movie,
though now I think I'm going to rent the movie again to compare it more
closely with the book.

I wonder how much of it was Adso of Melk's writing and how much was Eco's.

Right now I'm at my in-between-books stage where I read anthologies or re-
read other things until another big project catches my eye.

STeve, let me know how _Many Sleepless Nights_ comes out.  It's an interesting
subject to me since I've known several people who have had kidney transplants
and a couple of people who have had pancreas transplants.  It is also
interesting how differnet segments of society view transplants.  My husband
used to  lecture to high schoolers about signing up to donate organs after
death and there are some people (adults too) who believe that if you have it on
the back of your license that you'll donate organs, that the E.M.T.s will not
try as hard to revive you or save you from death.  Movies like Body Parts don't
help matters either.  There are people who will believe that plot.

   (thats incredible.  Yes, I'll let you know how it comes out).

  A couple nights ago, for a quick-and-dirty read, I sat down and read
"The Killer Inside Me" by Jim Thompson.  It was pretty pulpy, but
entertaining.  I can see why he has a small cult following.

(Um, all of it was Eco's writing, I believe.)
  
_Tehanu_ was terrible.  LeGuin has gone from the original Tao philosophy
that powered the other Earthsea books to pseudofeminist maternalism.
(You know--the sexes should be equal, even though men are evil and
warlike, while women are soft and nurturing....)

Re: Finnegan's Wake.  Two hints:  1) If you open the book at the front
you're looking at the middle of the novel, and 2) It makes sense if heard,
but not read.

Hey mike!  I keep getting stuck on Gravity's Rainbow.  Which is odd because
I really DO like the writing in it.  Hmm.
I am reading "The Dharma Bums" by Jack Kerouac.  I have been enjoying
reading other things besides his "On the Road", though I will admit that
his writing style is pretty consistent so far.  It is a nice depiction
of a period of time and a mindset though.
I also finished not too long ago "The Quiet Pools" by Mike Kube-McDowell
.  He is a friend of mine who happens to be up for a HUGO award for best
novel this year for that book.  And the nice thing is I really enjoyed
it a lot.  I reccomend it.  Good read and raises some interesting
questions.
I want to get some more Milan Kundera or Josef Sckvorecky (?) to read

Let's see, whenever I'm not wasting away my life on line, I've been reading
TOO HOT TO HANDLE, Frank Close's account of the Cold Fusion story, and 
THE FAR AWAY MAN, aYellowthread Street mystery by William Marshall.
 
The Close book is entertaining but badly edited; there is a lot of 
repetition!  The most interesting tidbit in the book is an account of 
the *last* time someone discovered cold fusion, back in the 1920s...
at the time it was sought as a source for cheap helium for airships, and
Ernest Rutherford was a leader among the debunkers.
 
I have loved all the previous books in the Marshall series (this is about
#8), but this one is somewhat weak.  Marshall's formula disperses his
detectives among three problems, one of which is very grim and the other
two are pretty funny.  The funny ones wrap up about 2/3rds of the way
through the book, freeing up those detectives to provide added firepower
in what usually becomes a very violent climax.  (I don't suppose anyone
here would have read Marshall's new book, THE NEW YORK DETECTIVE, set in 
1880?)

I recently read _Xenocide_, which is the third book in Orson Scott Card's
series that began with _Ender's Game_.  It's not as good as the other two,
I think, but it was a good read, anyway.  That man can WRITE!
 
Griz

Re 24.  I'm looking forward to that one.  I very much like Ender's Game and
Speaker for the Dead.

re 25. If you're nice to me, I'll let you borrow mine...

  Is it out in paper back?

Just came out a few weeks ago in hardcover...be a year or so, I'm sure.

Yes, I spent the *gasp* $21.95 to get it in hardcover, read it, and then
gave it to my sister as her bridesmaid's gift.  I told her I had already
read it and she said she would have worried about me if I hadn't.  :)
 
Griz

One of my favorite sf authors is Octavia Butler.  If you haven't read
any of her books do yourself a favor!  I love everything I;ve read
of hers so far but I reccomend starting with her Xenogenisis series.
Dawn, Imago, and... forget the other.

Up to about page 60 in Ulysses.  Only another 600 to go...  I'm hoping the
dirty parts start soon...

I have only been defeated once by a book.  I tried to read "The Bible" once
waaaay back in grade school.  Couldn't do it.  Since then I've always finished
everything I've started - no matter how bad.  My only concern is if I'm
actually going to read it all without reading something else in the middle
of it.

I'm still reading Midnight, by Dean Koontz.  I also have another Koontz book
waiting by.  Whispers.

I've been working on the Martha Grimes mystery "The Old Silent" for a
while now.  I seem to go for weeks not picking it up, and then I read 50 
pages or so, and then start wasting time with magazines again.  I don't
know why, since I've read at least five other Grimes mysteries each in
fairly short order.

Cockoo's Egg was okay.
Kinda went in tired circle for the last half, though.

If you like Octavia Butler, pick up _Wild Seed_.  Not part of a series,
but a fairly good book.

This response has been erased.

A friend of Janice's loaned us a book-on-tape of "Seeing Voices," read by
the author, Oliver Sacks.  Sacks did not look or sound ANYTHING like I
expected.  (His appearance, I mean, based on accompanying photo.)

Anyway, the book is wonderful, and I recommend it.  Everything that Sacks has
written is extremely fascinating.  He's a neurologist who writes about people
with various deficits: in "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat," he
described people with various kinds of neurological disorders and what they
tell us about us.  "Seeing Voices" is about the deaf, and though it consists
of a combination of history and neurology, is extremely moving.

I just turned my wife on to Orson Scott Card with "The Folk of the Fringe".
Anyone else read that?

Yep.  Good book.
 
Griz

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