What books are you diving into these days?

Anne of Green Gables and Lucky Boy by Shanti Sekaren – a Mexican immigrant’s powerful story.

As I wait for Lisa See’s newest, The Island Of Sea Women, (tomorrow, I hope!) I am rereading Larry Niven’s Ringworld series, solid sci-fi.

A pile of manuals for a certification, I know boring. When I have time I’d like to finish cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson.

This is a question that should be asked regularly. I’m always curious to know what people are reading and I’ve gotten good ideas of what to read from threads like this.

Currently in nonfiction I’m reading The Rape of Europa, about artworks that were suppressed, lost, and looted during World War II. The book is from 1995; there was a documentary made of it in 2007 that got some attention. I haven’t seen the movie, but I will see it after I finish the book.

On the fiction front, I’m reading John Irving’s The Cider House Rules. This is the first work of Irving I’ve read, I’m about half through, and liking it a lot so far.

Next I’ll probably read Rabbit is Rich or The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino, both recently added to my to-read shelf :)

Ouch, my head hurts :Greg Louganis

Crossover Fanfiction.

Started reading Ulysses by Joyce but it might take years before I finish it.

I switch reading from one book to another to one comic book to another not knowing which one would be completed first. Hard habit to break for me.

I’m also reading Gaiman’s Norse Mythology and just purchased Lee Israel’s “Can You Forgive Me?” after seeing the film adaptation.

I’ve just finished The Chequer Board by Nevil Shute and Words at the Threshold by Lisa Smartt (and just before those, Michelle Obama’s book, Bill Browder’s Red Notice, and a reread of Gaiman & Pratchett’s Good Omens). Still working on Clements’s A Brief History of Japan, which isn’t all that brief, although compared with about 1200 years of Japanese history, I suppose it is.

Up next for my fast-track (daily) read: either Ready Player One or Three Cups of Tea or maybe one more book on North Korea, depending on my mood when I head to bed tonight.

There are a few others that I dip into on my slow track, including a reread of the complete works of H.P. Lovecraft and a recent translation of the Bhagavad-Gita.

I’m also intermittently rereading the entire Nero Wolfe series, a comfort read if ever there was one.

Damn, @Jeruba, now I need to reread all of Neville Shute. Starting with Trustee From The Toolroom.

The Chequer Board is good but in a huge way a difficult read for 21st-century sensibilities. I loved Trustee from the Toolroom and A Town Like Alice and On the Beach and more. I don’t know of any contemporary writer who is his equal for a certain kind of storytelling.

Nevil

I agree that he is difficult for modern readers, the style is very different. But I have always loved his brand of storytelling, from the story map of Trustee to the mystical in some of his Australian stories, to the double linear narrative of Alice, I have always used him as a nice trip home in my reading. Familiar, but I find a little something new every time.

Thanks for the reminder. :-)

Oh, his style doesn’t bother me at all. It’s his casual use of the n-word, even as he is depicting characters who reject the unapologetic racism of their time and place. I understand that when we read older works we are visiting their period and culture, and supposedly not judging them by ours, but some elements still pose a significant obstacle.

I often wonder what things in our present-day films and fiction will make readers cringe fifty or a hundred years from now, wondering why we didn’t know any better.

I’m interested in The Wall by John Lanchester.
Will be my next read.

Moby Dick.
Already 10 chapters in. Only 125 to go.

At page 33 of 190 of Philosophy, Theology and Helgel’s Berlin Philosophy of Religion by Philip M. Merklinger (my first philosophy prof in University.
He died last year )

I started Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now” but I have switched for the moment to P G Wodehouse and his Jeeves stories.

Well, I surprised myself by picking up Peyton Place instead. It recently arrived on my bookshelf by way of one of the neighborhood’s Little Free Library book drops.

When I leave off a book, I don’t always take one, hoping to shrink my own library a little at a time, but I did pick this one up—a 1999 reissue from Northeastern University Press, no less—just out of curiosity. I was far too young for it when it came out in 1956, and I never saw the TV series or the movie; so now, more than 60 years later, I’m going to find out why it created such a sensation back then.

@Jeruba Have several of those around my hood. I found one on a mountain bike trail in the middle of the woods a couple years back.

I love the Little Free Libraries