Currently Reading...

[Lucky]

It would be nice if those here who like to read, and have the time to do so, would keep the rest of us informed on what they are reading. I like to travel and read, so much so that I get a kick out of traveling and reading vicariously.

I also understand that what interests me may not interest you, and vice versa. But it is fun to share stories, and what you read can give me some ideas as well.

I just finished Brad Thor's Black List. Some might see Thor as a flag waver, think his novels have too much testosterone, or simply don't enjoy such good guy/bad guy stories. But his are well-written, and Black List informative on how the government is subverting our right to privacy.See the Politics Forum, where Lookin links to an article about a huge NSA data center being built in Utah that will allow the government to spy on us better than ever. That data center is the heart of Thor's novel when a secret shadow government of very powerful people take it over.

Don't like that? Well, I am now reading Mr. Lucky, by James Swain. In the summertime, my library allows checkouts of older novels for six weeks, so I picked up several to read in spare moments. Mr. Lucky is about a guy who becomes exceptionally lucky after jumping from his Vegas hotel during a fire. he survives and goes on to win just about every game he plays. Former cop Tony Valentine is hired by Vegas casino owners to see where Mr. Lucky gets his wins. Surely he is cheating?

My sister wrote to the entire family about her love for the non-fiction title Unbroken, which has over 2500 five-star reviews on Amazon. It tells the true story of an Olympic runner who goes to war in the Pacific in the 1940s. We get to know him, his buddies and flight mates, and then his plane crashes and a three year attempt to survive begins. I am only 100 pages into it, but the loss of life in the Pacific front is no more easy to understand than that in the European front. We just sent boys out to die in badly made planes; many flew over the Pacific and were never heard from again. So far, it's a tough read.

So here is your chance to educate us on what we really should be reading, or just on what you like to read. I hope to hear from other readers, but one never knows!

[TotallyOz]

I have just started 50 Shades of Grey and really like it so far. Of course, I know I'll enjoy it as I normally like books that are a little sexy.

I ordered some of Gore Vidal's books but not have not started them yet. It will probably be over the holidays before I have time to read them.

[Lucky]

Oz, thanks for joining in. I see that you are, so far, the only one. I wonder how many guys are reluctant to say what they are reading lest they be jumped on for their reading tastes?

I like reading and do so to please myself. If I am not highbrow enough, tough! I am sure having a good time.

[AdamSmith]

Now reading, in parallel:

Flannery, Brad Gooch's recent biography of Flannery O'Connor, the brilliant and alarming and iconoclastic (believing Catholic, infusing her fiction with it, yet Southern) writer. Asked why Southerners wrote about the grotesque so much, she replied, "Because we're the only ones who can still recognize it."

Right, MsGuy?

Riveting read, if you grok her work.

The Strangest Man: A Biography of Paul Dirac, by one Graham Farmelo. Life of the indeed strange, possibly autistic, physicist savant who figured out how the electron truly behaves. Or, rather, a set of impossible-to-solve equations that would, were they soluble, describe how it behaves. In reading some parts of it, I drift into the fleeting illusion that I grasp some vague notion of what quantum electrodynamics really is. Then I put down the book, go have supper, and realize I have not the least idea what I just thought I had almost understood.

As I love books like that, having a high old time with this one. Johnny Von Neumann, Einstein and other acquaintances color the story too.

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the magisterial biography by Martin J. Sherwood and Kai Bird of the father of the bomb. I have read and re-read it so obsessively already that I could likely give a Samuel Clemens-like recitation evening behind a public lectern without once referring to the printed text. Utterly compelling.

Joins a long list of books about the science, personalities, and politics of all things nuclear that are on my shelf of essentials. Among many: Richard Rhodes's The Making of the Atomic Bomb. McGeorge Bundy's Danger and Survival: Decisions about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years. General Leslie Groves's memoir Now It Can Be Told -- military director of the Manhattan Project, who selected Oppie as Scientific Director, and who single-handedly, more or less, commandeered the budget and drove through the contracting and construction that built the national atomic bomb production complex -- an enterprise on the same economic scale by the end of the war as the U.S. automotive industry at that time.

You will note the wide diversity and absence of mania in my choices.

[AdamSmith]

Forgot to mention my ur-text:

http://books.google.com/books/about/Introductory_Lectures_on_Psychoanalysis.html?id=Sfz0l6WSqFgC

[Guest hitoallusa]

I am reading about the history of China. China always amazes me and Chinese are very interesting. When I read I always look up the references. History is always fun because you can re-interpret in many ways.

[AdamSmith]

I am reading about the history of China. China always amazes me and Chinese are very interesting. When I read I always look up the references. History is always fun because you can re-interpret in many ways.

Titles and authors, please!

Else how can one be an intellectual stalker?

[AdamSmith]

the national atomic bomb production complex -- an enterprise on the same economic scale by the end of the war as the U.S. automotive industry at that time.

Absence of any response to notions such as these affirms Lucky's suspicions.

[Lucky]

Some people seem to run when books come up. It goes back to their grade school teacher trying to force them to read things they did not enjoy...I think!

In my family, we rushed to the library each week, came home with a stack of books, then wolfed them down and went back for more. I still do that.

[Guest epigonos]

I am one of those crazies who don’t read fiction. I also usually have two to four books going at one time. I am currently reading the following:

The Golden Empire: Spain, Charles V, and the Creation of America by Hugh Thomas

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War by Stephen R. Platt

The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life by Bettany Hughes

Deception: The Untold Story of East-West Espionage Today by Edward Lucas

As I look at my bookshelf of books waiting to be read I realize I am losing the battle to keep caught up.

[Guest CharliePS]

I spent last week staying in the country with a friend who has no tv or computer, so he has lots of time to read, and his small cottage is piled high with the books he has read recently. While looking through them, I picked up The Swerve by Stephen Goldblatt, an account of the rediscovery of the Roman philosopher Lucretius's De rerum natura in a German monastery in the early 15th century, and its impact on the Renaissance and beyond. The "swerve" refers to the moment when the medieval world turned unexpectedly into the modern world. I am still reading it, but I can already say it is one of the best books I have read this year.

[Guest EXPAT]

I'm currently reading "11/22/63" by Stephen King. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11/22/63

I love this author but I'm in particular loving this book because it involves time travel which is one of my favorite story lines in books and movies.

[Guest zipperzone]

I'm currently reading "11/22/63" by Stephen King. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11/22/63

I love this author but I'm in particular loving this book because it involves time travel which is one of my favorite story lines in books and movies.

I can seldom finish a Stephen King book - he is a great yarn teller but eventually they all turn into something that is just too farfetched for me. One exception was Misery - that I finished, but flinched a great deal.

[Lucky]

Then you would like 11/22/63, because, in my opinion, the first half is the best part of the novel.

[Guest Luv2play]

In the last month I have read Smart Aleck, (the life of Alexander Woolcott), by Howard Teichmann, The Ciano Diaries 1939 -1943, by Count Ciano (Mussolini's son-in-law), Red Cross and Berlin Embassy (1915 - 1926), by Vicountess d'Abernon, and The Fatal Lover, Mata Hari by Julie Wheelwright. Currently reading Moviola a Novel by Garson Kanin. A real mishmash this summer I will admit.

[Guest NCBored]

King is probably my favorite living author, and a wonderful storyteller - but sometimes his books are almost overwhelmingly long! I finished Under the Dome last month - probably almost a year after I started it.

Currently I'm reading The Fall, by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan - the second book in a trilogy about vampires and world domination! It's actually not a very well-written book, but the story & characters are enought to hold my interest.. Once I finish the trology, I have 2 King books awaiting me - 11/22/63 and The Wind Through the Keyhole.

Sadly, I read much less than I did pre-internet.

[Guest EXPAT]

It's taking me much longer than usual to get through a book these days with all of the personal issues with my health and the couple of deaths in my family. I've had a hard time concentrating. But I hope to get it finished soon.

[Guest gcursor]

My tastes are decidedly more eclectic but this is what I'm currently reading.

BRAIN CANDY - Garth Sundem (it's brain science facts for the ADD people. I love it! the entries are short and fast)

WEIRD CALIFORNIA - Mark Sceurman and Mark Moran - I always like the WEIRD series. Usually I'll read an article or two from the book then I'll look the place up online to check out more information ....I learn more about the different places that way.

GRAMMAR OF THE EDIT - Roy Thompson and Christopher J bowen - This is a book I wanted to read to supplement my college studies. Its all about video editing and how to tell a solid story using various techniques. its one of the better books detailing this

[AdamSmith]

This rather extraordinarily good profile of one's particular idol, Harold Bloom, reminds me I must get hold of his latest summa, The Anatomy of Influence:

http://www.nytimes.c...?pagewanted=all

[lookin]

In the last month I have read Smart Aleck, (the life of Alexander Woolcott), by Howard Teichmann, The Ciano Diaries 1939 -1943, by Count Ciano (Mussolini's son-in-law), Red Cross and Berlin Embassy (1915 - 1926), by Vicountess d'Abernon, and The Fatal Lover, Mata Hari by Julie Wheelwright. Currently reading Moviola a Novel by Garson Kanin. A real mishmash this summer I will admit.

Just picked up Smart Aleck today. Thanks. I'll read the Vicountess' book too if I stumble across it.

My latest book was an old one on computer history. I like reading about the early computers, the ones that used vacuum tubes and were strung together with baling wire. I can understand those. They lost me when they started putting everything inside a little black chip with legs.

[AdamSmith]

a little black chip with legs.

Why, thank you!

[Guest CharliePS]

I have just finished reading City Boy by Edmund White. It is a memoir of his life in New York between 1962 and 1982, the years when he was just beginning to make his name as a writer, and I found it fascinating because he and I are almost exact contemporaries, and were there during the same period. We lived in the same neighborhoods, went to the same bars, baths, restaurants, clubs, cruised the same streets, shared similar tastes, sensibilities and philosophies, and undoubtedly slept with some of the same people. We probably crossed paths a number of times without being aware of it, though I did not socialize with the famed intellectuals and artists who formed his inner social circle (his compulsive name-dropping gets a bit tiresome); we did have one friend in common, a fact I only learned from reading the book. Reading his memories of the place and time brought my own back vividly.

I noticed in an interview with John Irving in the NYT Book Review that he named White's new novel Jack Holmes and his Friend as one of the two best books he has read this year, so I think that will be added to my list of books to read.

[Guest gcursor]

I have finished a great Dr. Who book entitled DEAD OF WINTER by the author James Goss.

Next up is a book called THE STUDIO by Gregory Dunne. Although it was written around 1967, it is a required text to read in many film classes today. Essentially the author was granted "carte blanche" access to Twentieth Century Fox at the time which was and is unheard of. He spent that time exploring all the power struggles, meetings, productions and everything else that was going on at the time. Although the material inside is somewhat dated, you must understand that today's goings on would be even more absurd than what is depicted in the book.

Anyway the book looks to be a great one to read.

[Guest hitoallusa]

Thanks Gcursor!

[AdamSmith]

Just re-picked up a tome I had previously started, then had gotten disrupted in midstream by divorce and related life interruptances: The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom. Endlessly fascinating. I love that whole generation of genius physicist mystics -- Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Fermi; and then the irrepressible Feynman, et al.

(Irrelevant digression on Fermi! Actually not so much a mystic, he built that first chain-reacting pile in the underground rackets court at U. of Chicago from 8am-noon every day, then went home for lunch and a civilized siesta til 4pm when they reconvened and continued stacking uranium and graphite till 8pm. Then on the final day, when they winched out the control rods, he called out from his slide rule in advance what the neutron counter would be about to say, inerrantly -- thus they called Fermi 'the Pope' because he was not only Italian but in matters nuclear he was infallible.)

...ANYWAY I have here veered off onto recalling this quote because of being reminded of it by another book, namely American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Actually I think I've raved about it here before. But now re-reading it for the nth time. Just beyond compare.