What are you reading right now? What's next on your list? What did you just finish? Reviews? Recommendations?

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

Answers

Since January I have read The Last of the Mohicans, The Blithedale Romance, Moby Dick, and Uncle Tom's Cabin.

I'm writing a short reader-response essay on Uncle Tom's Cabin right now, actually. I hated the book. I hated Mohicans, too. Love love love Moby Dick and The Blithedale Romance is a far better novel than The Scarlet Letter.

Next on the list (yeah, I'm taking a class: The 19th Century Novel) is Huckleberry Finn.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

I'm remembering the face of my father. The Stephen King gunslinger series.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

Geez, I barely ever read books anymore, so sad. I think the last book I read was Teach yourself PHP in 24 hours. I got a bunch of web development books over xmas break, 2 on PHP, one on ecommerce (which sucked), and one on XML.

I also read The Rebel Girl recently, which is the autobiography of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. It's very well worth reading and you can probably order it from Left Bank or Powell's.

I have a hard enough time keeping up with my magazine subscriptions (Z, In These Times, The Progressive, Counterpunch), sadly books are not an option for me anymore.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

I just finished reading Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. It won the Pulitzer Prize or something and everybody I know loves it. It's the story of a Western family, told by the grandson as he researches his grandparents' lives and marriage.

It was good - really gave a sense of place, and kept me interested. But I admire it more than like it. It got really sad at one point and I just hated that.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

Currently reading the Company series by Kage Baker- finished In the Garden of Iden, now on Sky Coyote and feeling annoyed I haven't been able to find Mendoza in Hollywood in any of our bookstores here (we have at least six in this town).

Alternating those with feminist stuff- finished Where The Girls Are on Monday and will be moving on to Manifesta after I finish Sky Coyote.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

I AM GOING TO FINISH THE MAGUS THIS WEEKEND.

I can't believe I've been reaidng one book all month. It's not a hard read the way Faulkner with his damn nonsentences is or dense like Kierkegaard (not that I've read any of him) but I have no idea quelle the fuck is going on. Next up is either Light in August or The Golden Notebook. My exfriend Sue loves Faulkner and Light in August, I think, is her favorite, and in addition to its being what i should have read as an English major but did not, this way I get to pretend she'll have anything to do with me. The Golden Notebook is also on one of those damn lists, and whatever validity the lists have, A.S. Byatt says it's one of the best novels of all time/this century/ her personal favorites/ whatever and that's all I need to know about *that.* Of course, her love of D.H. Lawrence hasn't changed my mind about him. On the Road, In Cold Blood (because I'll need a goddamned break from all this Litteratchur), Jeannette Winterson, Penelope Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, and, one day, Barbara Kingsolver.

As for what I just finished, House of Mirth isn't very mirthful. Wharton loves those ironic titles. Ragtime is really good. I read this year's Newbery Medal and one of last year's Newbery Honors by Richard Peck; both were good but the Honor was better than the Medal and neither was Newbery calibre.

As for recommendations, The French Lieutenant's Woman and A Maggot, both by John Fowles. Another 2001 Newbery Honor, The Wanderer, and anything by Sharon Creech. Philip Pullman. The Evolution of Jane by Cathleen Schine. Elizabeth Bowen.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

The big case I was working on settled, so all of a sudden I am reading again. I'm splitting my time among a more comprehensive introduction to game theory than those I've read so far, (Games and Decisions by, R. Duncan Luce & Howard Raiffa); The City Within a City: The Romance of of Rockefeller Center, by David Loth; It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States, by Gary Marks & Seymour Martin Lipset; and Aristotle's Politics. I'm going to reward myself for all of this heaviness with Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon and Blue River by T.R. Pearson.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

So far this year, besides the Harry Potter books, I have read (and I hope the italicize works): The Shellseekers, Rosamunde Pilcher; The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath; Inconceivable, Ben Elton. Currently I'm reading Diary of Bridget Jones.

I have approximately 60 books that are on my list to read. At this moment, I cannot remember one of them.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

I just read the first two Harry Potter books (the second two are on their way... I was apprehensive about getting hardcover books at first). I re-read Miss Wyoming by Douglas Coupland. It's still not very good. And I found a copy of A Prayer for Owen Meany for $1 and struggled through the first 150 pages... then I got a little interested but I haven't finished it yet. Maybe tonight. I need to make a trip to the bookstore soon I suppose.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

I just read Anne McCaffrey's latest Pern book "The Skies of Pern" ... not as bad as the last two ... not nearly as good as anything she wrote back in the 70s.

I'm also re-reading the Anne of Green Gables books and am currently on Anne's House of Dreams.

And I stopped at the book store with a friend yesterday and finally cashed in my Borders Gift Card from when I left D and P and picked up a new book by Mercedes Lackey "Shadow of the Serpent" which is a historical fantasy set in India and England and two Sheri Tepper books.

I don't read much of anything that's not scifi or fantasy ...

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

Tom, I read the Gopnik -- it was excellent. I liked Gopnik's writing so much, in fact, that I (perhaps impulsively) subscribed online to "The New Yorker," which I haven't kept up with in a while.

For those who are unfamiliar with the book, "Paris to the Moon" is "New Yorker" writer Adam Gopnik's memoir of sorts (more like an extended, novel-length collection of essays) on the life he and his family -- at first his wife and their baby son, and then eventually, their baby daughter -- enjoyed (?) in Paris. They had lived in New York, but made the decision to go abroad, for decisions clearly explored in the book.

I'm not a huge "travelogue" fan, but this book was very, very engrossing. I read it in a single sitting...and, sadly, it's just about the only thing I HAVE read this year. (Damn satellite.)

Sei

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

The Eleanor of Acquitaine bio by Allison Weir. So far, I'm really disappointed. There doesn't seem to have been enough data for Weird to write about the Queen, so Weird wrote around her instead. The book would be more aptly titled What life was probably like in the twelfth century for a female English monarch and some stuff about the beginnings of the Plantagenet dynasty.

I still like it though.

I just finished Michael Gladwell's The Tipping Point and thoroughly enjoyed that. The articles on his website, www.gladwell.com recap a lot of it.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

Bingo on Weir, Nita. She's fun but seriously, what did she have to go on? A Katharine Hepburn movie?

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

Plum! The Shell-Seekers is the best. Pure, good, gripping, absorbing, story without pretension about being anything more or apology for not being anything more. I love that book so much. I hope you love it.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

Lisa - I did! I was so disappointed when it ended. I just wanted it to go on and on....

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

Plum, i read Bridget Jones in less than two days because it was so incredibly entertaining. I hope you're enjoying it. The sequel isn't as good, but enjoyable nonetheless.

I'm vowed and determined that i will finish The Stand before the end of the year so that i can move on. Ever since the whole "I feel inadequate about my education" trend started all across the web, i've been dying to read Moby Dick but i refuse to buy a single new book until i finish this one. I've set The Stand aside too many times and had to start over each time. Not again.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

Sherry, let me know what you think about The Stand. I stopped reading King novels because of it. You get two-thirds of the way through this gigantic book, then there's this un-foreshadowed event that changes its whole course. The last third of the book bears almost no resemblance to the first two-thirds.

I read The Stand in 1989. The next King I read was his "On Writing," over this Christmas weekend. I laughed so hard when I got to his discussion of writing The Stand. Essentially, he says he wrote a few hundred pages, suffered writer's block for several months, then figured out this great device to move the plot forward. After that, finishing the book was cake, he says. Well, of course, the plot device that he's so proud of is exactly the thing that ruined the book for me!

I have a hard time not linking the "plot device" to the heavy substance abuse King admits he was doing at the time.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001

I am about half way through the first volume of Harry Potter, and today I bought the second and fourth volumes (they were out of the third). I love 'em!! :)

And as for the Stand - I loved the book. I devour it at least every six months, but I'm a big Stephen King fan.

-- Anonymous, March 10, 2001

Tom, I'm with you 100% on The Stand. The first part of the book was a pretty decent retelling of an old story, but the second part just came out of nowhere and got progressively more stupid. I think that was the last King novel I managed to finish, until I slogged my way through The Green Mile last year.

But I've ranted about King before, so I'll leave him alone.

I'm really disappointed to hear that the Weir biography of Eleanor of Acquitaine isn't good. I usually love Weir's books, and I've preordered the paperback version of this one. Of course, few of her books are truly biographies; they're usually pretty broad in scope. Even her Elizabeth book, which I think is her only real biography, told as much about the people around Elizabeth as it did about her.

So if you consider the Eleanor book as more of a history than a biography, how does it stand up? Worth the reading?

-- Anonymous, March 11, 2001

I just finished (well, minus the chapters on Hobbes, Locke, Mill and Hegel because I don't yet have that kind of attention span) _Great Books_ by David Denby. It's the story of his journey back to a Humanities year-long course at Columbia University, the same course he took as a freshman in 1961. Along the way, he ponders the campus debate over Dead White Male literature, etc.

Realizing that I last read these books in high school, and some not at all, I've got The Oresteia lined up (Agamemnon done); I'm about halfway through Lysistrata, although it's a really modern translation in which some of the characters speak like Okies. Then, I'll need to decide whether to read the Lattimore translation of the Iliad I currently own, or go back for the Fagles.

-- Anonymous, March 11, 2001

Just finished the Eggers book, before that was Midwives. Latter was good fun reading and I immediately loaned it to a friend. Former was spotty. Sometimes I loved it, sometimes I wanted to smack Eggers, hard. Wouldn't recommend it automatically. Too much self referential ironic self referencing which became uncute fairly fast. But still mighty tasty in places.

Now I'm embarking on Anna Karenina which I've never before read. So far, 200 pages in, happy as a clam.

Jill

-- Anonymous, March 11, 2001

Gabby: I bought the two-volume Fagel translations tonight. I only had the Penguin prose translations of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and they are deadly ... tiny print, and dull, dull, dull.

I also picked up a tiny volume of Sappho, because Sars told me to. I'm starting to think I'll just let her run my life from now on.

-- Anonymous, March 11, 2001

Tom, I want to know what you think of the game theory, the Rockefeller Center, and especially the socialism book, since all those are the kind of book I like to read.

Me: First volume of Daniel Boorstin's history of America, finding it superficial and unscholarly, with almost more information in the bibliography at the end than in the text, but it is a quick read. Also 30,000 Mornings, novel about New York by an American, with a supposedly Finnish protagonist (many details are unbelievable), which I think has only been released in England so far.

-- Anonymous, March 12, 2001

Beth, Weir is always readable. The problem is how much to trust her research. When you read Margaret George's *novel* about Mary Queen of Scots, you know it's a novel; when you read Antonia Fraser's bio of her, you know it's an historical biography and she cites her sources. Weir is in the middle (she must be working Mary, since she was a Charismatic Woeful Character of the Tudor Family) of that range. I read the Eleanor book as a historical novel and enjoyed it, but I don't consider it rigorous as a scholarly work and if I resent the bok it's only no one should use it as a secondary or even tertiary source.

I finished The Magus this weekend, as vowed; it took me until Sunday evening. And then I started On the Road.

-- Anonymous, March 12, 2001

I don't think Weir is going to do a Mary novel; she already covered her time period in the Children of Henry VIII and Elizabeth books.

But if this Weir is worse than Antonia Fraser, I'll probably skip it. I think Fraser is just terrible. I couldn't finish either the Mary Queen of Scots biography or the one about Henry's wives.

-- Anonymous, March 12, 2001

I bought Weir's Princes in the Tower for myself for Christmas. I thoroughly enjoyed it. So much so, in fact, that I was driven to find out more about the Wars of the Roses. So I bought Antonia Fraser's book on that. Mistake. A lot of pretty pictures and almost no information that I didn't know already.

I am reading Girl with a Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier. It's a fictional account of the girl who inspired one of Vermeer's most celebrated paintings. It is wonderful.

Girl in Hyacinth Blue, by Susan Vreeland, follows a supposed Vermeer painting backward through the centuries. It is also an excellent read.

What's next? I think The Magician's Assistant, by Ann Patchett.

-- Anonymous, March 12, 2001

I just managed to drag myself through a series of books I wanted to throw across the room. Went to the library, checked out ten books, hated every single one of them. What were the odds?

Today I'm heading back to the library to dump the sunsuvbitches off, and pick up an armful of the books in Jessie's series, "Books You Probably Won't Want To Throw Across The Room."

Also, I just finished rereading all of the Little House books, because I had dug them up to lend them to a friend, and they looked so very tempting. They are as fascinating now as they were when I was 6. Though I still love the ones with Almanzo best.

-- Anonymous, March 12, 2001

Ever want to hear what The Aeneid sounds like, in the original?

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~classics/poetry_and_prose/poetry.html

Or the sound of the Illiad (which was, after all, *sung* for a long time before it was ever written down)?

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~classics/poetry_and_prose/homer/homer.html

-- Anonymous, March 12, 2001

Anyone read Thirty Nothing by Lisa Jewell? It was recommended to me as a light and funny read. It's sitting on my nightstand waiting.

-- Anonymous, March 12, 2001

Laura, if you enjoyed reading about the princes in the tower you should check out Josephine Tey's mystery, Daughter of Time. It's totally fiction, about a detective who is injured and thus stuck in a hospital bed. To amuse himself he starts researching the murder of the princes. She used only factual info in the research though, and her character comes up with a very different story as to what happened to the princes. It's a quick read, I enjoyed it a lot.

I have been keeping track of what I read this year, just to see where I end up going. Right now I'm in the middle of Tamsim by Peter Beagle, a ghost/fantasy that is quite good. Just finished Belles on Their Toes by Frank Gilbreath which is the sequel to Cheaper by the Dozen, an old favorite. Both good 1920's family memoir. Lots of laughs. Also going slowly through Country of My Skull, about the truth commission in South Africa (I think it's only available in the UK). That one is pretty brutal (and graphic). So I wander away from it for something light quite a bit. Next up is Hitler's Pope by John Cornwell. I'm Catholic enough to really be interested by that one!

How do you italicize your book titles?

Colleen

-- Anonymous, March 12, 2001

Wow, Colleen, you're the first person EVER I've heard admit that they read -- much less LIKED -- "Cheaper By the Dozen." I came across that book in middle school, completely by chance...and still think about it when I shower. ("Shoulders, then armpits, then--")

Sei

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

I read the Cheaper By The Dozen books too - wasn't that the family where they were industrial efficiency experts in real life? - but I can't remember any of the details, since I read so many rather similar nutty-family books as a kid. Shirley Jackson, My Sister Eileen, Skinner & Kimbrough, Eleanor Estes, the Killileas ...

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

The Daughter of Time is one of my all-time favorite books. I just read it again as an antidote to Weir's conclusions.

Cheaper by the Dozen? I'll admit to reading and liking it, too.

(To italicize, just use

coding.)

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

Yep, I read and liked Cheaper By The Dozen. Several times, in fact.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

I finally read the first three Harry Potter books. I have the fourth but put it aside to read later. I loved the first three so much that I'm actually sad about only having one left. It was nice to read 1,2 and 3 in a row with no waiting.

I am Legend: I was finally able to find a copy of it. Short story. Enjoyed it. Swan Song: It's not working for me. Put it aside. Biography of Peter the Great: just started. Highly recommended by my brother. He keeps asking for it back. I'm also rereading the entire Dune series. Haven't read it since Chapterhouse Dune was published. I want to reread all of them so I can then read the two new books by Herbert's son.

Waiting to be read: Roses are Red, Dreamcatcher, Chronicle of the Pharoahs, Antarctica, Lost Souls, Never Cry Wolf and about 20 others that I can't remember the titles. Some I bought over 2 years ago but they keep getting pushed down to the bottom.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes are super! Lord I loved them, about the time I loved Patrick Dennis's Auntie Mame. The same sort of peurile schlocky humor. But I knew Cheaper for years before I found Belle, and I *knew* there was something goofy about the later stories because they never mentioned the second daughter. I nearly cried when I found Belles and that daughter--Anne? not Anne. Not Martha, not Ernestine, not Lil, not Jane. Mary? Mary--had died. There's a later book, Time Enough for Happiness, that goes into a little more detail about that child's death because of Frank Sr.'s death--the older children ask Lillian please don't pretend Father never existed, the way you do Mary. Apparently the subject was so painful for the parents that the child's name was Never Spoken Again or something.

It does mean that they never had all 12 children alive at once, and that's what broke my heart.

So does anyone else remember Auntie Mame, and I mean the book not the movie(s)? I reread that a couple of years ago and I was so surprised at the jokes my 11-year-old vocabulary denied me--even though I thought at the time it was the funniest thing I'd ever read: the town that the bigots live in, Mountebank Connecticut, the literary agent Linsey Woolsey, and a lot of others I've since forgotten.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

Lisa: I always wondered about Mary in Cheaper By the Dozen but I never could find the other books in the series (that's New Orleans-area libraries for you). Now I'm probably going to have to go find all the books. Ack! More needless spending on children's lit.

I'm not reading much of anything right now because, as I mentioned on another thread, it messes up my writing style. Once in awhile I can't resist and end up rereading something like (most recently) Rebecca. I also have a copy of Sesame Street Unpaved by my computer but that's mostly for reference purposes.

I've got a huge stack of books waiting to be read. At the top of the list is a book someone lent me, so that makes it a priority -- Bridget Jones' Diary. Everyone recommends it but the back cover is very off-putting, it makes me think it's going to be One Of Those Single Girl Novels That Must Appeal To My Demographic. Ew.

The waiting list includes three Harry Potter books (the ones in paperback), an autobiography of Evelyn Keyes that I picked up for a dollar, a lesser-known James M. Cain book with a title I can't recall, The Glass Key, and All About All About Eve, which I got for Christmas and haven't read yet. That isn't even counting the dozen or so unread books in my bookcase that I really should make myself read at some point, since I own them and all.

Oh, and I've been going through Noel Streatfeild but since most of the books are out of print in the U.S. it's taking me awhile.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

The Magus was my third Fowles. I really liked The French Lieutenant's Woman and A Maggot up until the ending. Fowles' s use of the language, the nuances of the same language folks of different class and education would use, was brilliant. What *was* the deal with the ending anyway? I won't read any more Fowles until next year, though. Only The Magus was on my List of What to Read in 2001. I want to read all of him.

Jette, thanks for fixing the italics. I tried to with one backlash I but obviously that didn't work.

-- Anonymous, March 15, 2001

um, I'm still getting through "the Other Great Depression", written in a loose essay form by everyone's favorite neurotic comic, Richard Lewis. Really a fascinating read. For me, at least. Next up should be "Dream Brother", a bio on Jeff and Tim Buckley, and the untimely deaths of both singers.

-- Anonymous, March 15, 2001

I doubt I could name all the books that I've read since January- way to many

In the past month, I've read

Elizabeth Berg- Pull of the Moon, Talk before Sleep, Range of Motion, Until the Real thing comes along, What we keep
RJ Pinerio- Shutdown and Breakthrough
Maeve Binchy- Return Journey
Ken Follett- Code to Zero
Rosamunde Pilcher- Winter Solistice
John Grisham- The Brethern
Patricia Folley- Saving Graces
Michael Crichton- Timeline

I also reread all of the Harry Potter books

I would think I've probably missed another 4-5 books. On average, I read 3-4 novels a week.

I have a bunch from the library waiting to be read including Waiting by Ha Jin and Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Genius- Eggers

Rather embarassing list cause its all the "hot authors" of the moment. Normally I wouldn't have such but I've been travelling a lot, and airport bookstores don't have a lot of choice

-- Anonymous, March 15, 2001

Wow! So many Cheaper by the Dozen fans! I have never found anyone who knows about them (or the movie). I was very surprised reading that little footnote in Belles about Mary. It almost seemed like an afterthought that they even mentioned that she was dead. Thanks so much for explaining that one Lisa. (Although I shouldn't be surprised that you knew about it. You are my reading hero, you know! ha) I'll have to hunt down the others as well. I had no idea they were out there.

I hope you have some luck with "Everybody was so Young" Lizzie. I made it about halfway through and although it was interesting, it just didn't seem to hold my attention as well as the Hemingway biographies by Michael Reynolds did. After awhile it seemed like the author was just namedropping constantly. The names are impressive (Hemingways, Firzgeralds, Picassos etc.) but still, something didn't click for me. Now that I have read Beth's 1/3 rule, I feel much better about putting it aside. And, I'm not going to keep it on the shelf in effort to look smart either! Although it was tempting....

I just finished "The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin because i'm trying to make my way through the Newbury winners eventually. After reading the Club Dumas recently though I've realized that I know nothing about the Three Musketeers and really need to get to that one. I think I had to read it in high school, but I honestly can't remember anything other than the bits from the Disney movie (yes, I'm ashamed.)

Also finished Peter Beagle's Tamsin and realized how much English history I don't know.

How did I get all the way through graduate school???

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

i'm currently in the middle of three - because, like beth, there's always a different book for a different situation. a game of thrones, which is an amazing fantasy novel (first in a trilogy) by a guy named george r.r. martin, is the first - my sometimes significant other, who's a huge fantasy buff and tried to beat me when i admitted to not having finished the lord of the rings, loaned it to me and i'm loving it. this one fits in my purse.

number two is whit stillman's last days of disco, which i haven't liked as much as the movie but am determined to finish. this one before bed.

and three is a gentle madness, which is a 500 page book about books. it was a birthday gift from my best friend, the only person i know in real life who reads and has read as much as i do and have. i can't come up with the author's name off the top of my head, but it's a lovely book and perfect for people who like to read - you can pick it up and put it down and it doesn't lose anything (like, say, plot) in the time in between. and this one to pick up cute boys in coffee shops.

-- Anonymous, March 19, 2001

I finished off On the Road last week, which has some beautiful passages, and started Tender Is the Night this weekend. Talk about literary allusions: did I know that the title is from "Ode to a Nightingale"? No I did not. It's going to be like Elizabeth Bowen's Death of the Heart, I fear, in which a young girl's capacity for love is permanently thwarted. This no-children's-lit-for-a-year policy is killing me--I want some happy happy happy. So I kind of reread Jackaroo this weekend, which if not happy happy happy is at least hopeful.

-- Anonymous, March 19, 2001

I have Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver started, but it's not engaging enough so far that I am rushing to get back to it. However, I am plowing through "The Outlander" by Diana Gabaldon right now. I never read this type of book-- it's a historical romance novel. (cringes and blushes) But really-if it wasn't such an amazingly good escapist read, I would never admit to having read it. I work in a library, and one of my very cerebral not-the-romance-novel-type co- worker told me I *had* to read it. I'm loving it. It's the first in a series, but from what I've heard the rest aren't nearly as good.

-- Anonymous, March 19, 2001

The last book that I read was The Unbearable Lightness Of Being by Milan Kundera. That book disappointed me, though I found some of Kundera's ideas thought-provoking and insightful. Today I read Kafka's short story The Metamorphosis. I thought it was awfully sad...though beautifully written.

Next up is Crime and Punishment and then Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, or perhaps I'll get back to Proust's Swann's Way, which I have been meaning to finish for several months, now. In any case, Dostoevsky's novel is presently calling my name. I couldn't make it through Notes From The Underground, the only book of his I have attempted to read so far, but I thought he deserved another chance as for some reason I want to like Dostoevsky very badly, and Crime and Punishment appears promising.

-- Anonymous, March 20, 2001

Great Expectations.

-- Anonymous, March 21, 2001