What are you reading?

[Ritterskoop]

I am somehow reading three books at one time, which is not my thing.

Beyond Revenge: The evolution of the forgiveness instinct, Micheal E. McCullough
This one is very dense and I can't read much at a time.

Bright Lights, Dark Shadows: The real story of ABBA, Carl Magnus Palm (updated recently)
Well, just because.

Just found out Frida was from Norway (Norwegian mom, German soldier dad). Her mom died before she turned two and she was raised by her grandmother, who moved them to Sweden to get away from the hometown folk who did not like that her dad was the enemy.

Student Engagement Techniques: A handbook for college faculty, Elizabeth F. Barkley
We have a gathering four times this semester to discuss this, for part-timers only. I like that parts 2 and 3 (and chunks of part 1) are examples or stories of things that have worked for some people and we can try them or not. There is no one rule they are preaching.

[Bob78164]

At the moment, The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi. --Bob

[Vandal]

Just started:



Just finished:



Coming up next:

[Spock]

I read way too many books at one time. However, I am avidly looking forward to the January 21(Ebook) and January 25 (hardcopy) release of the new bio of Frederick Russell Burnham-"The Splendid Savage. However, as of yesterday-they had the potential release dates listed-they are not there today-Hope it doesn't get moved back.

This is shaping up to be the best Isandlwana week ever.

http://www.amazon.com/Splendid-Savage-R ... g=UTF8&me=

1)Library Book-"The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection"-#12 (or so) in the Ladies Detective series.
-------------------
2)My own-rereading "Scouting on Two Continents"-in prep for the January release of "The Splendid Savage"-Burnham's new biography

3) Just started "Napa"-on the valley.

4) Louis L'amours collections of short stories-Middle of book 1-out of seven or 8 books. I tend to carry this one around with me-I can't be seen publicly with the "Ladies' Detective" books (LOL)

5) Slowly reading "The Wild Heart of Africa" about the iconic wilderness area in Tanzania
------------------------------------------
Ebooks-I tend to read 3 at a time-alternating chapters
6)"The Boom"-best book on the Fracking Revolution I have yet read-Not a cheerleader or a polemic against-just started it-may be somewhat out of date with the collapse in oil prices.

7) "Red Stag" -a French mystery thingie

"Sportsmen's Library"-100 books for the sportsmen

Plus one or two other laying around the place that I started and set aside for awhile-usually because they are too similar to something else I am reading at the time.

[Catfish]

Kindle:
My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

Audio:
The Chimes, Charles Dickens

e-mail:
Middlemarch, George Eliot

[Vandal]

There are some serious readers in this group.

[Appa23]

Just started:



Just finished:



Coming up next:

I am interested in your thoughts on the Innocent Man, after you finish. I had great professional interest in the book, based on my previous career.

[Spock]

The Spocklette is my reader of the 3 and, right now, she seems to be leaning in a Sci-fi direction. She just read "The Martian" after seeing the movie. She is now on her first Heinlein-"Tunnel in the Sky."

We did Ender's Game together a couple of years ago.

I think she would like the first Formic War books (3 at this point). She read some of Bean's story but that failed to hold her interest after the first one. obviously, Ender's continuations take a special level of commitment.

[Ritterskoop]

Tunnel in the Sky is a great standalone Heinlein!

I would vote for Glory Road and Friday also as standalones, depending on her age/ability to ponder some adult relationship stuff.

I always recommend The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as the starting point for my college students. It has characters who reappear in later books but it can also stand alone.

[danielh41]

I've been reading quite a few Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners lately, so I wound up reading John Updike's four Rabbit novels (since the last two of them won that award). I guess I wasn't completely satisfied with Rabbit at Rest, so I found a copy of his 2000 novella Rabbit Remembered. I'm almost finished with it now. After that, I have March by Geraldine Brooks sitting on top of the bookcase.

[mellytu74]

Kind of reading Lonely Planet's Guide to Southern Italy, La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind and Living La Dolce Vita

Re-reading Walter Lord's The Good Years (e-book)

Karen Abbott's bio of Gypsy Rose Lee, American Rose

Want to tackle the Roosevelt - Taft book but haven't had the time.

[MarkBarrett]

There are some serious readers in this group.

I can represent the other side.

[Catfish]

I have March by Geraldine Brooks sitting on top of the bookcase.

I loved this book.

[SportsFan68]

Just finished The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant for book club. Consensus was that The Red Tent was better, but I haven't read it so couldn't contribute to that part of the discussion.

Next up for book club, The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman.

Next up (maybe) based on a local recommendation, Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. This came with absolute assurance from the recommending person that I would not recognize President Roosevelt as a Republican. We'll see. I may have to turn it back in to the library before I read it. As noted elsewhere, we're getting busy with caucuses and so on, not enough hours in the day for everything.

[mrkelley23]

I, too, am reading multiple books at once, which is very unusual for me in the middle of a school year. But there are reasons:

For school (my doctoral class, that is...)



For going to sleep



And for fun:

[Vandal]

I, too, am reading multiple books at once, which is very unusual for me in the middle of a school year. But there are reasons:

For school (my doctoral class, that is...)



For going to sleep



And for fun:

Two out of three ain't bad.

[Spock]

Just finished The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant for book club. Consensus was that The Red Tent was better, but I haven't read it so couldn't contribute to that part of the discussion.

Next up for book club, The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman.

Next up (maybe) based on a local recommendation, Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. This came with absolute assurance from the recommending person that I would not recognize President Roosevelt as a Republican. We'll see. I may have to turn it back in to the library before I read it. As noted elsewhere, we're getting busy with caucuses and so on, not enough hours in the day for everything.

Somebody here-DanielH(I think) strongly recommended the Morris's trilogy on Roosevelt-I have had it on my list since-but haven't got there yet.

In 2015, I read 2 books that I probably never would have read without the Bored. "I, Claudius" took several months, but I blasted through "Claudius the God" in a few days.

This multiple book thingie is a sickness with me. Ran to town on business, went to the library just to look (yeah, right)-came out with Stephen King's "11/22/63."

[SportsFan68]

Just finished The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant for book club. Consensus was that The Red Tent was better, but I haven't read it so couldn't contribute to that part of the discussion.

Next up for book club, The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman.

Next up (maybe) based on a local recommendation, Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. This came with absolute assurance from the recommending person that I would not recognize President Roosevelt as a Republican. We'll see. I may have to turn it back in to the library before I read it. As noted elsewhere, we're getting busy with caucuses and so on, not enough hours in the day for everything.

Somebody here-DanielH(I think) strongly recommended the Morris's trilogy on Roosevelt-I have had it on my list since-but haven't got there yet.

In 2015, I read 2 books that I probably never would have read without the Bored. "I, Claudius" took several months, but I blasted through "Claudius the God" in a few days.

This multiple book thingie is a sickness with me. Ran to town on business, went to the library just to look (yeah, right)-came out with Stephen King's "11/22/63."

A recommendation from a Rockies fan -- good enough for me.

I've decided to take the book back. Theodore Rex is the second in the trilogy, and I've decided to read them in order. That's the only one the library has, probably because it's about his Presidency and used as a reference for high school students and interested scholars.

[Ritterskoop]

I enjoyed the premise of 11/22/63 and would have liked it even better if it had been maybe a hundred pages shorter (and I like long books).

Maybe a little less time spent on Oswald's family and neighbors would have suited me better - I liked all of the other secondary stories (well, except one that was on the scary side, but it was so well told I could manage).

[MarleysGh0st]

I just finished 1635: The Papal Stakes, by Eric Flint and Charles E. Gannon. In my car, I'm listening to the audiobook, The Taming of the Queen, by Philippa Gregory.

I enjoyed the premise of 11/22/63 and would have liked it even better if it had been maybe a hundred pages shorter (and I like long books).

Maybe a little less time spent on Oswald's family and neighbors would have suited me better - I liked all of the other secondary stories (well, except one that was on the scary side, but it was so well told I could manage).

I like alternate history/time travel stories (e.g. Flint's 1632 series), so I listened to the 11/22/63 audiobook, last year. Ultimately, I was unsatisfied with the elements that King added to make it into a horror book.

Spoiler

And that time portal, wherever it came from, had to have had the worst guardian (or "watcher") ever!

[gsabc]

"Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction" by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner - fascinating book. The Feds got volunteers to predict various world event over several years. While many people did well, others were well beyond random in successful predictions and are called superforecasters. The book reviews what characteristics they share and don't share and states, in essence, that one can learn to be a good if not superforecaster.

Listening to "Killing Floor" by Lee Child. The story isn't too bad, if redundant at times and predictable at others, but the reader is what makes it work. Very much sounds like a narrator of the hard-boiled detective genre.

Need to stop the library runs and settle down to read my purchases on my Kindle app. Between the collections, e.g., everything Mark Twain published, and the individual books, e.g., John Scalzi's Old Man War series, an Erma Bombeck collection, a backlog of SF magazines, I just might complete them all if I retired now and spent all my waking hours reading. Not sure I'd make that bet, though.

[jaybee]

Just finished "Tango" by Jim Hartsell. A much different and more introspective & realistic read for me compared to my more common action/adventure fare. Thanks to Amason and Kindle, it's been easy to step outside my usual 'box' of literature and experiment a bit. "Tango' is a $2 or $3 book that left me wishing it was longer or will have a follow-up written someday.

Moved on to "Seawolf" a WWII sub story. Most interesting in that it was first published in 1946 and is full of the typical language references of the period.

I can't get into the reading-multiple-books-at-the-same-time thing but thanks to my Kindle I am never without a book to read. I've had many trips to the 3 am Amazon store to find a new novel.

[Spock]

Just finished "Tango" by Jim Hartsell. A much different and more introspective & realistic read for me compared to my more common action/adventure fare. Thanks to Amason and Kindle, it's been easy to step outside my usual 'box' of literature and experiment a bit. "Tango' is a $2 or $3 book that left me wishing it was longer or will have a follow-up written someday.

Moved on to "Seawolf" a WWII sub story. Most interesting in that it was first published in 1946 and is full of the typical language references of the period.

I can't get into the reading-multiple-books-at-the-same-time thing but thanks to my Kindle I am never without a book to read. I've had many trips to the 3 am Amazon store to find a new novel.

Curse you-now I have to add Seawolf to my list.(LOL)

The best part of reading multiple books (for me) is that while I may go for a long while without finishing books -all the sudden 4 (or so) get done on the same day.

Last year, I was laughing at two of my choices and I can guarantee that nobody has ever read those 2 books in combination at the same time-very few would have read either of them.
1)"Eye of the Firestorm" by General de Vries. I bought this in Johannesburg. De Vries had a long career in the South African army and helped with the transition from Apartheid. The book touches on that, but the main focus is on the war in Angola/Namibia in the 1970's and 1980's. It was a long book and took a long time, but I may reread parts of it at some point.
http://www.amazon.com/Eye-Firestorm-Nam ... +Firestorm

2)"Witness: A Hunkpapha Historian's Strong Heart Song of the Lakota"-This long book is split into 2 parts: The writer's autobiography and a series of monographs on several Lakota chiefs from the buffalo days. Oddly enough, I set the book aside after her autobiography and haven't got to the (more interesting) parts on the chiefs.
http://www.amazon.com/Witness-Hunkpapha ... he+Lakotas

[Spock]

http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Divers-Adv ... 023&sr=8-1

Jaybee, have you read "Shadow Divers"? With what appear to be your tastes, I encourage you to look at it.

[jaybee]

Looks interesting. I'll put that down as the next read.