Here's a new thread in which you may post your latest reading pleasure...

I just picked up Foucault's "Madness and Civilization"...fascinating read. Also, I'm reading a book on Southeast Asian history and politics by Kingsbury...what fun!

What about you?

Well, aside from my biology textbook (voluntary summer schoolwork! Yay!) I'm re-reading the main storyline from the Dragonlance saga.

(Chronicles, Legends, Second Gen., Summer Flame, New Age, War of Souls).

I've finished Chronicles I and II and am almost done III.

I hate posting after jazz! I rarely read what would be deemed "intellectual" books. I read mostly to relax or "escape" so I tend to avoid books that make me think.

LadyC, non-fiction and the esoteric does make me relax!!

Actually, I have been on quite an Agatha Christie binge. She is so much fun and easy to read! I just finished The Pale Horse, Hickory Dickory Death, and the novelization of her play, The Unexpected Guest by Charles Osbourne.

The Unexpected Guest is a cracking good mystery plus the best ending since The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd.

Charlie's reading We Don't Die George Anderson's Conversations With The Other Side, and I Have Lived In The Monster (A Report From The Abyss) by Robert K. Ressler and Tom Shachtman.

I read them, too--but the last one gave me nightmares!!! Please be forewarned, this is not a book for the young or easily shocked--but a look into the mind of serial killers by a retired FBI profiler.

Jazz, did you know in all the years I have known Charlie, I never have seen him read a fiction book?? He reads on a huge variety of topics--from economics to science and everything between, but nothing fiction.

Lady C I feel so lazy after posting after anyone on these threads!!! I feel like a complete lame brain as I just read fiction as it just helps me relax totally. Jazz is a superbrain and LindaC has a totally "out there" imagination and humour.

I've just read "Fast Friends" by Jill Mansell and am starting "The White Road" by John Connelly.

Some non-fiction I do read are cookery books - not to follow recipes but to get ideas and to feel very hungry.

LindaC if you want a good ending by Agatha read "Crooked House". It's excellent. I've just seen on a website today that it is based on an Ellery Queen novel "The Tragedy of Y" which I am trying to track down now!!!

Hmm...I don't see any particular read being more intellectual than any other. Reading anything from Plato to romance novels to the food labels can be an educational experience...it's all a matter of taste! Whatever turns you on is precisely what you ought to read!

Linda...I'm a bit like your Charlie, although I do try to mix some fiction in there from time to time. After all, one can find just as much truth there as can be found in an average 'fact' book...

amberg, my sister is one of the smartest ladies around. Do you know what one of her hobbies is? She collects cookbooks. They are the only non-fiction books she ever reads. I shall certainly read "Crooked House". Thank you very much.

Come to think of it, Jazz, I do remember Charlie reading Dracula--why that one particular fiction book, I really do not know.

[ 05-10-2002, 11:22 AM: Message edited by: LindaC007 ]

At the moment I am reading "Love in a time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (there are supposed to be accents there, but I am not that in tune with my keyboard! )

So far I'm 273 pages into the 348 page book, and I must say it's fantastic. I have already missed my tram 3 times in the last 3 days because I just lose sense of all else while I'm reading it...

"Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe"... by Fannie Flagg How on earth did I miss it before.. It is hilarious.

Going through some Elizabeth Haydon and some Sara Douglass.

The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy - a boring, technical start, but now it's getting interesting......

H.G. Wells' "An Outline of History". And for about the fifth time Edward Abbey's "Hayduke Lives".

[ 05-16-2002, 12:02 AM: Message edited by: tim10001 ]

Ursula LeGuin's "The Dispossessed". I found it in Sausalito an hour before the plane.
Only problem is that the imbecile who read it before me, highlined it in yellow and put remarks in it and I confess, I read them to see what he said!
Ooops, I said he!

I also read Cecelia Holland's "The Great Maria". Now there are two women who wrote good novels.

Voyager by Diana Gabaldon, I am completely hooked on these books and trying to space them out! I have a huge list of "books to read" though which is getting longer by the day ( this thread doesn't help!) I just wish our local library was better stocked as I seem to end up buying most things.

I am reading Ramona and her Father, by Beverly Cleary. Just for a laugh.

Buffy, have you met LadyC yet? I think you two will hit it off!
She's a major fan of Galbadon.

LilSpikey, I just had this flash of "Beezus" is that the girl named "Beatrice" pronounced wrong?
I also had a flash of a black and white kind of sheepdog there too! Am I dreaming?
Well as I read just about anything you could possibly imagine as a kid, and they had to grant me special permission to read Charlotte's Web when I was eight as the spider dies or something, I guess I still recall Cleary's wonderful books.

Bruyere

No I haven't met Lady Catriona yet but have read her posts and she is obviously a lady of good taste. The only criticism I have of the Gabaldon novels is that they could do with a glossary of some of the Scottish words used as a Sassenach I cannot understand all of them!!

Yes, Beezus was Ramona's older sister in the series. There's a new Ramona book called Ramona's World, where she gets a little sister.
I'm now reading The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton. Very good book.

In an hour and a half, I’ll probably be reading “Green Eggs and Ham,” but besides that, tonight I’m going to finish Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.” Depressing.

Lanni hon, what you have to do, is what I did for my brothers and babysittees, I knew that book so well, I could recite it while thinking something entirely different, with expression! It's a fine art that serves you in good stead if you ever read to elementary kids and need to do crowd control.

"I could eat them in a box, I could eat them with a fox.." "Try them try them..." Johnny? Stop pulling her braids! "I do like them Sam I am!"

Now my one little brother is reading them ad nausea to his kids!
My kids didn't like that book that much I was saved!
They even hated Goodnight Moon! I tried reading that sucker to them because people said it was a good routine each night to make them sleep..we'd go around the room, "goodnight teddy, goodnight window.." and they'd look at me in their dignified baby looks like "who are you trying to fool momma?"

Isn't a Sassenach an Englishman in the Scot's tongue? Who've we got around here to help us? SuperFurryAnimal comes in from time to time.

I've just started a fascinating book. Really. Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. The first page was totally capitivating. It's a treatise on how fast food profoundly affects American life. Not boring in the least. I'll probably have to bring it up down in the Controversial section now!
What a pleasure to read something like that that is so well written.
Plus, though he is basically pointing out the harmful aspects, he brings up things that a person my age can relate to, the drive in experience for children in big families was the only restaurant we had...so you see the way fast food grew into such a big thing, affecting the agriculture, marketing, labor laws and environment! I was transported back to the A and W drive in with carhops on skates and those trays you put onto the side of the station wagon, fighting over a taste of coke as we didn't get it often. Sharing a milkshake with a brother.
I'm enjoying it immensely.

Recommended reading: "The Royal Physician's Visit" by Swedish author Per Olov Enquist.
It's the story of 1. Danish King Christian VII (1766-1808) who suffered from mental illness 2. his personal physician Struensee, who as an advocate of the French Enlightment uses the King's trust in him to push through some of Voltaire's and Diderot's "progressive ideas" 3. the King's English wife, Queen Caroline Mathilde, who bears Struensee a son and is much shrewder and more daring in her quest of "liberty for all" than Struensee himself. In the end they are brought down by Ove Hoeghe-Guldbergmade, the palace tutor, who represents the old wisdom that no abstract intellectual humanism ever copes well with the irrationality of "ordinary people" who often reject those who think they are working "for the people".
If I could I would also recommend this book to the leftist politicians who recently got beaten in
the French and Dutch elections. The original version of the book "Livlakarens Besok" dates back to 1999.

[ May 18, 2002, 09:47 AM: Message edited by: flem ]

It was One Fish, Two Fish, Red fish, Blue fish that my kids had to hear over and over and over again. My son is now 15 and I can still recite parts of it from memory.

I'm currently reading Darkness Decending by Harry Turtledove.

I have just finished the Liveship Traders by Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic, Mad Ship and Ship of Destiny. Good series started a touch slow, but she creates characters that you empathise with.

Hey Bruyere- I recommended "Fast Food Nation" in a thread or so back- called my top 10 books. I would conjecture yellowishly that the idios responsible for highlighting your used copy of Ursula LeGuin's book was more likely a female, it is merely due to the fact that more females read her than men.

Other books, I might recommend are "Dust" by J. Amato and "Logic and the Art of Memory" by Paolo Rossi.

Sorry, I missed the reference and couldn't have picked it up as I did at the airport like that.
It reminds me of Studs Terkels' work on work.
And wait now, The Dispossessed is from a man's standpoint, rather than the other LeGuin novels. And writing in books, excuse me, but it's like a territory marking! I personally cannot do it. I'd do a photocopy of a few pages to scrawl on, but highlight and pen comments? Come on!

Bruyere, yes Sassenach does mean English man/woman/person. What I meant was that as an English woman I don't understand all the terms used.

Right now I’m reading an awesome book by Umberto Eco. It’s called “The search for the perfect language”. Although it’s quite scientific, it is still possible to enjoy that specific style of Eco’s writing. One other book I’m reading now is “Sidhartha” by Hermann Hesse. Really good one, but I still prefer Steppenwolf.