Currently Reading (Take 2)

[Plum]

The Magician King, despite how much The Magicians ended up pissing me off.

[Dollypop]

Mike Piazza's autobiography, LONG SHOT. Enjoying it.

[AC126748]

I just finished Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan and I'm currently reading Bellow's Humboldt's Gift

[Kad]

Currently reading Candide.

[GlindatheGood22]

Geek Love. I've made several attempts at getting into it but this time I am determined.

[Mister Matt]

The Magician King, despite how much The Magicians ended up pissing me off.

I actually liked Magician King better.

(And now I want to go back to Florence and Venice!)

Have you read The Monster of Florence?

I recently powered through a bunch of stuff...

All four Tana French novels:
In the Woods
The Likeness
Faithful Place
Broken Harbor

I liked all of them, but Likeness was by far my favorite.

We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
After all the discussion here about the novel, I decided to read it and couldn't put it down. Kind of glad I saw the film first as I would have been much more disappointed in it if I read the novel first. Particularly with the characterization of the mother, which seemed wildly different. An excellent read, though my only quibble was that with the first person narrative, the mother's voice seemed articulate to the point of distraction at times. Yes, she's a writer (of travel books), but her word choices almost seemed evocative of another period, like Jane Austen or Oscar Wilde.

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
Predictable, but hugely entertaining. An absolute MUST for anyone with an affinity for video game history and classic 80s video games.

Redshirts - John Scalzi
Hilarious and inventive fun for anyone with even the most pedestrian knowledge of Star Trek.

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
A friend recommended it to me because it is being made into a film with Harrison Ford. Very intriguing and for a sci-fi adventure novel with a child protagonist, much more mature than I thought it would be. I'm curious to read more in the series.

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
One of my favorite films and just now getting around to reading the novel. The dialogue is not only exquisite, but often hilarious.

[suestorm]

I just read GONE GIRL. what an incredible ride! lots of twists and turns, you just never know where its going.

Highly recommended.

[javero]

COMPILERS by Aho, Lam, Sethi, and Ullman while tele-working from home this week on yet another deadline. I'd rather watch paint dry but it's required reading for my current project.

[Wynbish]

I'm currently reading Poison Study, will read The Ocean at the End of the Lane next, then Forever, Interrupted.

I am chomping at the bit to read Night Film.

[IAMWHATIAM]

I'm currently reading (and very much enjoying) Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple.

[CJ N2N]

I'm currently reading Lolita by Nabakov and Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. I really need to start The Things They Carried which is for my English class...

[BroadwayGuy12]

Just finished Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, and now I'm reading If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This by Robin Black.

[Roscoe]

VON: The Life and Films of Erich von Stroheim by Richard Koszarski.

One of the great directors in American movies gets a stripped down biography -- very good on dates places and facts but rather light on insight into Von Stroheim. Fascinating reading nonetheless.

[Brian07663NJ]

Recently finished:
Crocodile on the Sandbank
by Elizabeth Peters

Currently half way into:
Story of O
by Pauline Réage

[suestorm]

Before GONE GIRL, i read Spellbound by Beauty. About Hitchcocks obsession with his Blonde leading ladies... Grace Kelly, Tippi Hendren, Kim Novak, Ingrid Bergman... kinda sad what a perv he was. fascinating though, i dont think he could get away with that behaviour now

[Reginald Tresilian]

Finally went back to finish Alan Hollinghurst's "The Stranger's Child." I'm not sure why I put it down almost a year ago.

Also started Rezla Aslan's "Zealot."

[Wynbish]

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

That's another one, too, I need to add to my list.

[artscallion]

Homer & Langley by E L Doctorow, author of Ragtime.
This is a fictionalized telling of the true story of the Collyer brothers.

This the male equivalent of Grey Gardens. Two wealthy brothers live in a four story mansion on Park Ave in NYC. One is blind and the other crazy as a result of wartime chemical exposure. The crazy brother collects newspapers, machines, etc. Even has a car moved into their living room. They spend their lives there until they die. NYC fire dept has to break through the roof of the home to retrieve the bodies as the stairwells and lower rooms were so blocked with "stuff".

The story is told from the point of view of the blind brother interestingly enough.

[IMG]

[henrikegerman]

After finishing "Zealot," I decided to finally read The Bible (King James Version) cover to cover.

Jesus Christ, how the hell did I never know that Abraham and Sarah were half brother and sister, or that Lot's daughters got him drunk and both raped their father in his sleep! They didn't teach us that in Sunday school.

[Wynbish]

And then there's also David's kids...

[Mister Matt]

Reading Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (as opposed to Jill McCorkle's novel with the same title published a week earlier). It's a compelling read and I feel there is a sense of purpose its structure, but I still haven't figured out the "why" yet. Regardless, it is an engrossing novel.

[javero]

'Also started Rezla Aslan's "Zealot."'

I'm going to get around to reading it as well as soon as I can put some work-related stuff behind me.

[henrikegerman]

I really enjoyed "Zealot". It deserves to be popular apart from the boost it got from Aslan's interview on the Legitimization of Idiocy Network. I was especially intrigued by his account of the conflict between James, Jesus's brother and the leader of the Jerusalem Church which held Jesus to be a traditional, messianic savior (not divine) and remained a form of Judaism and Paul, the great evangelist who preached mostly to the Gentiles and advocated Christ's divinity. This part of Aslan's scholarship has the stuff of real drama. I think it would make a great play.

[javero]

henrikegerman,

Correct me if my history of Christendom has grown rusty but isn't James attributed with establishing the orthodox Christianity of the East (Byzantium) as well while Paul is regarded as church father of the East (Holy Roman Church)? I agree that the fault line you note would make for a great play. When I have some free time, I'm going to read up on the what led to the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome.

[Jay Lerner-Z]

^ What better way to spend a Saturday night? :)

I'm currently reading The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri.

Being prone to pretension, I sometimes find myself slogging through literary fiction I have no business reading, but this is both very readable and quite moving, so yay.