What are you filthy heathens reading atm?

MagicMarker

Well there's one of these threads in AH & Literature and probably other fora too, so figured it might be interesting to have one in A&A. Specifically as the regulars in this forum are interesting folk and I bet I'll get some good recommendations out of this thread!

Currently I'm reading War and Peace by Tolstoy, it's good but at this stage (been at it over 3 weeks now) it's a real slog as it's not what I would call a page turner but hopefully I'll finish it up this week. I can't wait to get started on something new...

pavb2

The Bible

burstbuckle

Irvine welsh's skagboys

Just finished Atlas Shrugged, just starting Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady.

MagicMarker

pavb2 wrote: »

The Bible

Yeah, I love me a bit of fiction too.

Sulla Felix

Re-reading Ian M Banks Excession.

8mv

Recently finished I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive by Steve Earle and currently reading John The Revelator by Peter Murphy. Both highly reccommended.

Ickle Magoo

I'm reading Snuff and I'm reading The Hobbit to the kids.

Dades

Iain M Banks' The Hydrogen Sonata, and, er, a random Clive Cussler adventure I can't remember the name of.

Corkfeen

MagicMarker wrote: »

Well there's one of these threads in AH & Literature and probably other fora too, so figured it might be interesting to have one in A&A. Specifically as the regulars in this forum are interesting folk and I bet I'll get some good recommendations out of this thread!

Currently I'm reading War and Peace by Tolstoy, it's good but at this stage (been at it over 3 weeks now) it's a real slog as it's not what I would call a page turner but hopefully I'll finish it up this week. I can't wait to get started on something new...

You just wanted to say that, right?

At the moment, i'm basically reading course related books.(English and History though so suits me fine.) The book that i'm reading right now is Time's Arrow by Martin Amis, fairly normal book really although the main character lives life in a backwards direction. For example he gets younger as the novel progresses and people say 'dug' instead of 'good'. Philosophical concepts are far easier to describe to be honest. :pac:

Other particularly notable reads as of recent is Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies , I suspect that many posters around these parts will find it to be rather interesting.

Turtwig

Don't know about the filthy ones, but I'm currently reading.

The Bell Jar - Slyvia Plath.
Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer.
Game Theory : A Very Short Introduction - Ken Binmore.
Bourbons for Breakfast - Jeffrey A. Tucker.
How to Lie With Statistics - Darrell Huff.

krudler

Just finished Red Dragon, Silence Of The Lambs and Hannibal. Starting back into the Game Of Thrones/ Song of Ice and Fire (covering the pedants) series now.

Having read the thread I might just keep my low-brow nonsense to myself. :pac:

donspeekinglesh

Ben Goldacre's Bad Pharma, Tom Holland's In The Shadow Of The Sword, and the Star Trek Encyclopedia. Along with whatever is in my instapaper queue.
Will be months reading all that.

MagicMarker

MagicMarker wrote: »

Currently I'm reading War and Peace by Tolstoy, it's good but at this stage (been at it over 3 weeks now) it's a real slog as it's not what I would call a page turner but hopefully I'll finish it up this week. I can't wait to get started on something new...

The most tedium inducing book I've ever read (and I read Louise and Aylmer Maude's translation, which is supposedly one of the more enjoyable versions to read). It took me about three months to finish it, though I did leave it to rest for weeks at a time. Still, just having read the book is satisfying in and of itself.

bluewolf wrote: »

Just finished Atlas Shrugged, just starting Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady.

I've just started James' The Turn of the Screw. Gripping so far!

I finished Thoreau's Walden for the fourth (yes, fourth) time earlier today. I could read that book one hundred times and still find something new in it — and, provided I have a long life, I intend to read it one hundred times.

legspin

Sulla Felix wrote: »

Re-reading Ian M Banks Excession.

I finally got around to re-reading Consider Phlebas recently. Made much more sense this time.
Excession is my personal favourite Culture novel.

Looking forward to the last book of the Wheel of Time in the new year.

Nodin

....as the form is foul, "Serious" reading is abandoned these days. I'm currently going over book 3 of game of thrones, because I started book 5, couldn't remember a poxy thing, read book 4, then realised none of the characters I couldn't remember appeared in it, so.....

muppeteer

Nodin wrote: »

....as the form is foul, "Serious" reading is abandoned these days. I'm currently going over book 3 of game of thrones, because I started book 5, couldn't remember a poxy thing, read book 4, then realised none of the characters I couldn't remember appeared in it, so.....

At least you have a nice excuse to re-watch the first two series from HBO. Just to catch up of course:)

Currently on The Hydrogen Sonata, myself too. Glad to see all the culture heads in the forum.

See my sig for a nice quote:)

MrPudding

Interrupted my reading of the 3rd Thursday Next book, Well of Lost Plots (I think) to read Hydrogen Sonata. Fcuk heaven, I want The Culture.

MrP

Kivaro

Just finished this today:
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
Excellent, excellent book.

You'd wonder how 'man' made it this far; we were very lucky many times during our evolution.
What surprised me most was how little we know about ourselves e.g. did we really come out of Africa, or do multi-regionalists have a point?
I believe that various hominid branches left Africa at different times.

Now for some light reading, I'm starting:
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

fitz0

My Inventions: the Autobiography of Nikola Tesla.

It's a fun read so far but what an odd, odd man.

Simultaneously, Made by Hand by Mark Frauenfelder.

MagicMarker

Hmmm, lot of love for Mr Banks, tbh I'm not a great fan of Sci-fi and I hate hate hated The Wasp Factory.

Does the Culture series need to be read in order?

[-0-]

Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens, The Jefferson Bible by Thomas Jefferson, Nostos by John Moriarty, Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays (Orwell).

I highly recommend every one of these books.

cfc1888

MagicMarker wrote: »

Yeah, I love me a bit of fiction too.

You might live to regret that. Fiction? Says who?you?

swampgas

Just finished reading:
- The Anubis Gates (Tim Power)
- 59 Seconds (Richard Wiseman)

I've also been re-reading a few others just to refresh my memory of them:
- Animal Spirits: How human psychology drives the economy (Akerlof & Shiller)
- The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell)
- Colossus: The secrets of Bletchley Park's codebreaking computers (Copeland)
- Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman! (an all time favourite of mine)

Will be looking to read Hydrogen Sonata next.

Sulla Felix

MagicMarker wrote: »

Hmmm, lot of love for Mr Banks, tbh I'm not a great fan of Sci-fi and I hate hate hated The Wasp Factory.

Does the Culture series need to be read in order?

Not really. I read them almost at random for the first few I read and then went back to the first and read the remaining chronologically.

The Wasp Factory was very very strange. I still wouldn't say that I enjoyed it...
Try the Bridge. It's a mile away from the Wasp Factory and actually my favorite of all his works that I've read, over and above the Culture even. Added bonus: It's actually Banks' own favorite too.

shanered

Quantum Mechanics : Everything that can happen does happen.

Gbear

I just finished Mortality by Hitchens. It was brilliant.
Bizarrely, it's the only of Hitchen's writings that I'd read.
I read Sam Haris' The Moral Landscape before that. It was thought provoking at the very least.

I had just started into Paul Dirac's biography, The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo, when I buggered off to the states for a month and left the bloody thing on the hall table.
I'll get back into that now. It's really good so far.

I half-read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Stephen Pinker but got a bit bogged down, as sometimes happens to me with that sort of book.
Then I re-read the A Song of Ice and Fire series so that kept me occupied for a while and before I knew it it was 3 months later and I'd put Pinker's book down for too long.
Hopefully I pick it up again because it was brilliant.

DapperGent

Dades wrote: »

Iain M Banks' The Hydrogen Sonata

Me too, bit of a return to form I think.

DapperGent

MagicMarker wrote: »

Hmmm, lot of love for Mr Banks, tbh I'm not a great fan of Sci-fi and I hate hate hated The Wasp Factory.

Does the Culture series need to be read in order?

It doesn't really need to be read in order, I would recommend starting with Use of Weapons or The Player of Games though. If you don't like either of them then you can safely leave the rest alone. My personal favorite is Excession but I wouldn't start that without a Culture book or two read already.

At it's best his scifi is just wonderful! (imo at least )

marienbad

The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton . Nothing we did'nt suspect but fascinating nonetheless.

36 Yalta Boulevard by Olen Stenhauer - 3rd book in a series set in a fictious Iron Curtain country in 1966 or so - brilliant . If you like Alan Furst or the Berlin Noir novels of Philip Kerr this should be your cup of tea.

And a number of poetry books always on the go.

As for War And Peace and those finding it tough going - I'm amazed ! Quite simply one of the greatest works of fiction I have ever read . I first read over 40 years ago and other that the fact that it was Russian and The great novel and Napoleon was in it I knew very little about it - (that level of ignorance is sadly no longer possible) so I was bewithched by every twist and turn and I still am . I reread it every 10 years or so and it still amazes . Just a tip - skip or speed read all the Tolstoyan military interludes - really not relevant and we know what happens.

8mv

Sulla Felix wrote: »

Not really. I read them almost at random for the first few I read and then went back to the first and read the remaining chronologically.

The Wasp Factory was very very strange. I still wouldn't say that I enjoyed it...
Try the Bridge. It's a mile away from the Wasp Factory and actually my favorite of all his works that I've read, over and above the Culture even. Added bonus: It's actually Banks' own favorite too.

I must get back to reading Banks at some stage. I liked his non-scifi books at first, especially Espedair St for some reason. And Complicity was comic in it's over the top violence. I later read the first few culture books and enjoyed them. What was the one where the chapters were shuffled - Use of Weapons? Long time ago now. I think I'll try him again.

Gbear

8mv wrote: »

I must get back to reading Banks at some stage. I liked his non-scifi books at first, especially Espedair St for some reason. And Complicity was comic in it's over the top violence. I later read the first few culture books and enjoyed them. What was the one where the chapters were shuffled - Use of Weapons? Long time ago now. I think I'll try him again.

With the weird names it's hard to keep track. A good few have blended together in my brain.

kylith

Trying to read The Sun Also Rises by Hemmingway. I can't really get into it to be honest, but I think that's more to do with my current schedule than the book.

I've just ordered Mark Z. Danielowski's new one, and I'm really looking forward to that

pauldla

Just finished reading The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China by Julia Lovell, and about a third of the way through A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle That Shaped the Middle East by James Barr.

Waiting to get the next book in the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian - when I get it, everything else will be put on hold, bar toilet functions and occasional naps.

legspin

MagicMarker wrote: »

Hmmm, lot of love for Mr Banks, tbh I'm not a great fan of Sci-fi and I hate hate hated The Wasp Factory.

Does the Culture series need to be read in order?

Not really, but you should probably start with The Player of Games, if for no other reason than it is by far the easiest read. The only ones that should be read in order are Consider Phlebas and Look to Windward but only because of the link between the two.

doctoremma

Have just returned from holibobs, where I finished Sheepshagger by Niall Griffiths (quite possibly the bleakest, most desolate, depression-inducing book I've ever read) and started The Marhematics Of Life by Ian Stewart (standard pop science stuff, although the geometry theory is challenging me).

magicbastarder

recently finished the hydrogen sonata; enjoyable, but not his best. read stones of aran: pilgrimage by tim robinson before that.

on the old ways by robert macfarlane at the moment.

Genghiz Cohen

Pfft, learning.... :rolleyes:

Robert Jordan - The Wheel of Time series. Book 14 is out in January so I'm heading back through the rest in preparation.
About 60% through Book 2, The Great Hunt.

Delirium

Currently reading:

And the ass saw the angel - Nick Cave
A storm of swords - George R.R. Martin
Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages - Federico Biancuzzi + Shane Warden (Author)

Recently finished:

Moonwalking with Einstein - the art and science of remembering everything - Joshua Foer
Philosophy for Life: And Other Dangerous Situations - Jules Evans
How to outwit Aristotle: and 34 other really interesting uses of philosophy - Peter Cave

Picked up the philosophy books as my interest in the subject was piqued as a result of reading various threads in this forum.

The Mad Hatter

Started something which I've been meaning to do for years: a parallel reading of The Odyssey and Ulysses. I expect it might take me a while.

Between chapters, or when I'm too tired to make sense of those, I'm re-reading old favourite Roald short stories and the like.

magicbastarder

bluewolf wrote: »

Just finished Atlas Shrugged

what did you think of it?

norrie rugger

Re-reading the Hobbit (for like the 10th time)

magicbastarder

magicbastarder wrote: »

what did you think of it?

Loved it, thought it was great.
Sure, could have done with some editing like the speech, but the ideas were fascinating and sometimes scarily accurate.

magicbastarder

it's not a book i can say i've a terrible yen to read, given its reputation.

magicbastarder

magicbastarder wrote: »

it's not a book i can say i've a terrible yen to read, given its reputation.

Duno why it has such a rep
Whatever you're into sure

GLaDOS

Re-reading Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett.

Recovered a battered copy of Watership Down in my granddad's house, anyone ever read it?

pauldla

bluewolf wrote: »

Duno why it has such a rep
Whatever you're into sure

I used to share a flat with a randroid...put me off reading her for life. Which is a shame, I suppose, one should make up ones own mind,etc.

robindch

bluewolf wrote: »

Sure, could have done with some editing like the speech, but the ideas were fascinating and sometimes scarily accurate.

Just checked the last Ayn Rand/AS thread -- I assume your copy finally arrived I did get around to reading Rand's Anthem a short while later, and wrote a short review. The painful act of reading around 150 pages of AS suggests that it's Anthem writ large and inexcusably long. I don't know how anybody, having started it, could ever want to finish it by some means other than windmilling it with great force, through the nearest window (a closed one would do). Stonekettle read Rand, and agreed.

Your patience is remarkable and I salute it!

Canis Lupus

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (fantasy). It's absolutely hooked me but it's a trilogy in progress so only 2 books at this stage. It's the first book in a while that I've had to force myself to put down.

robindch

robindch wrote: »

Just checked the last Ayn Rand/AS thread -- I assume your copy finally arrived I did get around to reading Rand's Anthem a short while later, and wrote a short review. The painful act of reading around 150 pages of AS suggests that it's Anthem writ large and inexcusably long. I don't know how anybody, having started it, could ever want to finish it by some means other than windmilling it with great force, through the nearest window (a closed one would do). Stonekettle read Rand, and agreed.

Your patience is remarkable and I salute it!

I have no idea why you found it so painful. It's typically 50s-dramatic as far as I can see, and I am a picky reader. I found it fascinating to read and wanted to know what would happen, as well as finding the ideas interesting.
Sure, the characters are a little 2d sometimes, but still able to relate to.
Overall it was also far better than Fountainhead.