What are you reading? (April 2008)
 

Finishing up one of the greatest non-fiction trilogies ever:

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Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

Periodically perusing:

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The Pipe Book: A Guide to Nearly Every Pipe Created by Alfred Dunhill

Just finished:

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Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller

Bathroom reading (still):

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Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition

Currently Reading

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Got Garton's Ravenous and Acevedo's Nymphos of Rocky Flats in the ole "to read" list.

How is this? I read the first chapter and was pretty turned off by his somewhat amateurish writing style. The story does interest me though and I want to know if it get's better.

I'm reading Abercombie's The Blade Itself and I have Brook's World War Z on deck.

Now reading:

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Once I get thru it, I'll give ya a report.

Thanks.

Nothing for fun right now, though I just finished re-reading Frederic Pohl's The Day the Martians Came.

For work, I'm reading:

Hemingway's In Our Time
Various pieces of literary criticism on Dante's Inferno
Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences (edited collection of essays)
Chaucer's House of Fame

Finished:

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Just finished The Tipping Point, just started The Greatest Game Ever Played.

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and
The Best of Damon Knight

Finished Matthew Reilly's Contest. Interesting premise, but I didn't care for his writing style -- his "tada!" emphasis in italics every page got annoying.

Up next:

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Terry Brooks and his IMO comeback novels Armageddon' Children and Elves of Cintra.

I've loved Terry's novels over the years, but honestly the last couple of Shannara series (Voyage and High Druid) were average at best. The series he wrote in the 90s I did love was the Word and Void which showed he could be a compelling writer without having to rely on Tolkien themes. This new trilogy which should be completed this September merges the Word and Void into the beginning of the world of Shannara and is amazingly good.

His writing style has kept the tone of what worked so well in the Word and Void series and blended it in with the themes so familiar with the Shannara series. I had kind of hoped he would leave Shannara alone as it has never returned to the quality of the first trilogy and the Heritage series, but I'm glad he decided to return to it one more time in this way as Word and Void were really some of his best novels.

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Great Book! Blue Like Jazz is one of my favorites.

I'm currently reading

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Halfway through and liking it:

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Just finished:
Women: Images and Realities: A Multicultural Anthology edited by Kesselman, McNair, and Schniedewind

Still working on: The Decameron and El Paraiso en la Otra Esquina

Just finished Black Cross by Greg Iles. Great, great book.

Recently finished Liar's Poker. Last night I read:

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Life Sucks

It's really good. Basically imagines vampires as being enslaved to those who "turned" them. In this case, the protagonist works as a love-smitten convenience store clerk who falls in love with a human goth. His boss is Eastern European (an "original" vampire from Transylvania).

How is this? The Times ripped it apart.

So far I really like it.

Then again I wasn't too happy with "Spook", so this new subject matter is direct and automatically funny.

Yeah, I'm enjoying it a lot. I have his Searching for God Knows What and considered reading it next, but I think I'll take a short break from Miller and read Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis after I finish BLJ

Speaking of Blue Like Jazz, a companion book was recently released: Jazz Notes