***What Are You Reading? (part: the first)

It's a new year for new reads! What book are you diving into now?

For my part, I'm going to be starting with My Father's Secret War.

I usually have several books going at once, currently I'm reading: What Lot's Wife Saw by Greek author and playwright Ionna Bourazopoulou, a more or less post apocalypse science fiction; They Dragged Them Through the Streets by Hillary Plum, a contemporary fiction; and once in a while I read a few more pages in Color:A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay.

I'm in the middle of two books - Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, and Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You, a short story collection by Alice Munro.

I am finishing up my comfort read of the holiday season, Devil's Brood by Sharon Kay Penman. Then it's back to finishing up two heavier books - The Roots of Heaven and a nonfiction book about American Reconstruction post Civil War.

I'm reading The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World by Greg Grandin. It's nonfiction about the slave revolt that inspired Herman Melville's Benito Cereno.

A lazy day today so I finished my first book of the year, The Last Of The Vostyachs, and started Without Anchovies (short stories from Malaysia) and Alif The Unseen.

I am reading Thomas More: A biography

I am starting William, an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton as part of the Virago WWI theme. I will follow that with Mr Britling Sees it Through by H G Wells, also for the WWI theme. I still have Agatha Christie's Murder at the Vicarage to finish, but I will save that for jury duty on Tuesday.

I am starting three books: The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan, The Road through the Wall by Shirley Jackson, and Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky.

Of the already opened books, the ones that seem active going into the new year are Should We Eat Meat? and Heir to the Glimmering World. I have one more book to go in my little Faust project, Dr. Faustus. I think that I won't let my disappointment in Goethe's Faust keep me from it; Mann will have to earn disrepute on his own.

Robert

I took advantage of the last day of vacation to finish my first read of 2014, Khrushchev of the Ukraine. It's looking like my next will probably be Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue.

I started the year with David Baldacci's The Forgotten. Around 400 pages in, the book proves to be a real page-turner. I will be starting The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe today. But that's going to be a year-long project, I think.

I am listening to the audiobook of Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus. Reading another WW1 detective novel A Fearsome Doubt (Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery) and poking at quiet a few nonfiction books on various subjects without really being able to get into any of them right now.

I have also been reading two collections of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates - Faithless: Tales of Transgression and High Lonesome: New and Selected Stories 1966-2006 - since April 2013 and sometime in 2009, respectively. These books are pretty chunky (400+ and 650+ pages respectively), and I tend to only be able to read JCO short stories in small doses before they all start to blend together, so I need to take significant breaks. I imagine it will take me at least two more years to finish these.

In non-fiction I'm just starting The China Study, which is about diet and nutrition, in fiction I'm just starting Slammerkin, by Emma Donoghue, and on audio book I'm listening to The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright.

Two books made it through the New Year half-read: Anniversary Day - the 8th novel (not counting the short stories and novellas) in the Retrieval Artist series and Forster's The Life of Charles Dickens. The Forster book is probably not going to b finished for weeks (and maybe months) - I am slowly making my way through it.

I am midway through Out of Place: A Memoir, after putting it aside for a bit, and hope to soon finish Sakhalin Island.

I finished The Good Lord Bird just before midnight last night. Right now I'm reading The Headmaster's Wife (reviewing it for Book Browse) and Astray by Emma Donoghue.

15>Joyce, how are you liking Slammerkin? That's the first book I ever read by ED.

>18 Cariola: Did you enjoy Good Lord Bird? I read it last year for ER and it was one of my top reads for the year! :)

I've just finished Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters by Bill Tancer. Interesting subject, but the book was only okay. And then I immediately leapt into Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl. I am enjoying it greatly so far, in large part thanks to my embarrassing levels of identification with the protagonist.

I'm reading a few books; Sorry by Gail Jones, Schneewittchen Muss Sterben by Nele Neuhaus (for my resolution to read more in German this year and, yes, they will mainly be crime novels) and Springtime for Germany by Ben Donald, which seems to be an attempt at the whimsical travel narrative, although he's not doing so well thus far.

I've been sidetracked with Marisha Pessl's Night Film, which has really got me hooked.

#21 Did you read Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics and, if so, what did you think of it. It irritated me enough that I haven't looked at Night Film!

This thread just added too many books to my to-read list...

Right now I'm into the new Discworld, Raising Steam, and Games Without Rules by Tamim Ansary, which is about the history of Afghanistan.

19> I wrote a long review of The Good Lord Bird that explains some of the issues I had with the book, and why I expected to like a lot more than I did.

21> I loved Sorry when I read it a few years ago. Glad to hear the Pessl is a good one. I really hated her first novel (I'm with you on that, rebeccanyc).

I'm reading the part-memoir/part-science history and surprisingly substantive My Age of Anxiety and an issue of the Bellevue Literary Review.

I'm listening to audio of The Last of the Doughboys, excellent short bios of the last living (now all deceased) US veterans of WWI.

>24 Cariola: Huh. I have to say I completely disagree with your take on it (also, he tried to tell Brown over & over at first that he was a boy, but Brown had assumed he was a girl right off and stuck with it and gave him the dress, not the other way around). Oh well.

I finished my first book and am thinking I'll start on On the Road tomorrow.

26> I do remember Brown giving him the dress intended for his daughter, but I thought Henry already was wearing a bonnet or something that gave the impression that he was a girl. But I may be wrong there. I had no problem at all with the gender switching part of the story, just several other issues, which probably boil down to a matter of personal taste (as I said, I'm not a Twain fan) and personal expectations, since a lot of people (including the National Book Award judges) have loved the novel.

i read my first book of the year, The Road through the Wall, by Shirley Jackson on New Year's Day, but didn't have a chance to post a review on my thread until now. It's her first book, and not up to the standards of her later work, but interesting nonetheless.

Finished The Headmaster's Wife last night--not my cup of tea, but I owed Book Browse a review. I just started Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat, which I'm sure will be much better.

Rebecca, I haven't read Special Topics in Calamity Physics, although I have a copy. I wonder how close to the front of the storage unit that box is? I might be able to dig it out when we return to SC for a few weeks this summer.

24> Just FYI, your touchstone isn't to The Good Lord Bird...

I finished and reviewed La Celestina yesterday, and will now concentrate on Facundo, which is for last quarter's Reading Globally theme.

31> Thanks--correction made!

#30 I don't recommend it though, Kay, so maybe you don't have to hunt for it! On the other hand, maybe you'll like it.

Today I will start The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. Really looking forward to it.

Slowly making my way through Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch...It took her 10 years to write this thing, might take me a month to read it.

I'm reading The Civil War: The Second Year Told By Those Who Lived It and Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes To War.

>10 rebeccanyc: I just finished The War That Ended Peace. I will be interested to see how you like it.

Wildbill, will reviews be forthcoming? I'm looking forward to your review of the Civil War book. I am fascinated by histories of individuals who lived through historical events.

#37 I am reading it at home, Bill, so it will be slow going. (I do most of my reading on the subway.)

I will probably be able to finish my son's favorite YA book Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath either tonight or tomorrow morning. The other book I'm reading The True History of Chocolate is probably going to take a while longer.

>37 wildbill: I will be keeping an eye out for your review on that Civil War book!

Just finished The Roots of Heaven. Interesting but pushed me a bit outside my comfort zone. I think in a good way . . .

#25 MJ - intrigued by your comment on My Age of Anxiety.

As for my reading, I'm finally nearing the end of Religion and the Decline of Magic. I've started Nehemiah, and taking notes. And I have a 2004 issue if The Langdon Review (actually it's the first issue of this magazine )

Mixing audio books, but not on purpose. I won't list any till I finally settle on one.

I have just started attacking The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe and am currently reading The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, the only novel Poe has written.

I finished and commented on my thread about William, an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton. I have added Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons and Wings of Fire by Charles Todd to my next up list.

Oh I love Cold Comfort Farm; hope you do too, Colleen.

Yes, yes, Cold Comfort Farm is wonderful and wicked funny!

I started a new audiobook, Philomena by Martin Sixsmith. I haven't seen the movie with Judi Dench yet but hope to soon.

I recommend the movie highly.

Robert

I'm currently alternating between The Coen Brothers by Ronald Bergan and Night Flight by Saint-Exupery. Back to work tomorrow (boo...) so I'll start getting into A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel on audiobook soon for the commute.

Due to the earlier-than-expected arrival of a batch of library books, I will now be reading Longbourn, Jo Baker's retelling of Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of the servants, followed by the Joanna Trollope rewrite of Sense & Sensibility, which I am actually approaching with some dread, having read so many scathing reviews thereof.

49> I need to get back to Longbourn. I have it on audio, and I wasn't really enjoying it. The first half hour or so seemed like nothing more than a list of chores with details. I was looking forward to it and was quite disappointed, but I do want to give it another try.

Wrapped up all the books I had left from 2013, including (finally) Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, and am now on to Bleak House by Charles Dickens.

Nearly done with The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon. I got the audio edition as an early reviewer.

>52 mabith: Oh, I received that one too. I haven't had a chance to listen.

>52 mabith: -53 I received that one as a Christmas gift but haven't gotten around to it yet. I love the No. 1 Ladies Detective series. :)

>53 NanaCC:, 54, Just finished it. It follows in the usual line, though perhaps with less emphasis on the main investigation than is sometimes present (or less of a mystery, at least).

>52 mabith: I just love the Title..

Reading Blowback - the 9th novel (not counting the novellas) in the Retrieval Artist series... Too bad that it is the last one for now - it was a great month (or so) in reading the series...

Started a re-read of My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. So far it's better than I remembered and has me thinking (and taking notes on Jewish terms I don't recognize).

I am reading The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, which according to the sticker on the front cover won the Man Booker prize in 2006. It is a book club choice.

I finished Two Parties, One Tux and A Very Short Film About the Grapes of Wrath & am still plugging away (slowly but surely) at The True History of Chocolate and am fighting the gravitational pull towards Elton John: Love Is The Cure.

I finished On the Road this evening and will now be starting Capote's In Cold Blood.

I am stalled on Autobiography of a Corpse but enchanted by Showdown and slowly working on The War That Ended Peace.

Listening to One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson, again, after having had to return it to the library half way through.

I just read two short works by Akira Yoshimura: La jeune fille suppliciée sur une étagère and Le sourire des pierres. When I'm back in the states and on a computer I'll be able to create my thread and write a few notes about the two very interesting stories.

Reading Philippe Grimbert's Secret, listening to The Glass Room - some overlap in themes (WWII), which is coincidental.

I've just finished The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival by Stanley N. Alpert, about the author's experience being held by kidnappers for 26 hours. And I'm now about to start H.M.S. Surprise, book three in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, which I am making my way through slowly but surely.

I was going to pick up Matter by Iain M. Banks until I realised it might be smarter to start with one of the earlier Culture novels. As a result, I've veered in a completely different direction and am reading Mendelssohn is on the roof by Jiri Weil.

I finished Claire of the Sea Light last night and started Fools, a collection of stories by Joan Silber.

I finished Life Blood and started The Apothecary's Daughter -- darn my compulsive free ebook hoarding...

Started Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman earlier today... the plan to read an hour and then stop did not work very well... :)

I thought I would have started Bloodlands by now, but I've been side-tracked with Five Days at Memorial since my father asked my opinion on it. I'm also reading The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler which was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, so I expect it to improve.

I'm reading The Family Tree by Margo Glantz. It's the story of her family, beginning in a tiny village in early 20th century Ukraine and at the moment is in the heart of the mid-century artistic/intellectual circles in Mexico.

I am in the middle of Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, and last night I started World War Z by Max Brooks, which is definitely outside of my comfort zone. So far, so good though!

72. I loved The Family Tree! You're the only other person I know who's ever heard of it.

>74 rebeccanyc:, As you are the only other person I know who's ever heard of it! I was lucky enough to get to review Glantz's The Wake for Belletrista a few years ago. It's a brilliant book and I made sure to look for her other work. I wish more of her stuff was available in translation.

In the spirit of unstructured reading, I've put aside the other books I'm already reading and instead am starting Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos.

#75 Ooh, I never thought to look for another book by Glantz; I was specifically interested in the "Jewish family in a place you might not think of" aspect of The Family Tree. Just ran over to Amazon to add it to my wish list, and since they only had one copy left I had to buy it and add a couple more books to get free shipping!

>77 rebeccanyc: and since they only had one copy left I had to buy it and add a couple more books to get free shipping!

You know - it would have been cheaper to pay for the shipping. But then it is books so that argument is invalid. :)

Of course it would have been cheaper, but I keep items on my Amazon wish list just so that I can add them to my cart when I need free shipping. It irks me to pay for shipping!

Don't move to a country with no Amazon presence (although BD now is covering most of these so things are a lot better) :)

>77 rebeccanyc:, I hope you like as much as I did! This is the review I wrote: http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue5/anth_12.php

#81 I thought I read most of the reviews in Belletrista, but apparently I didn't . . .

#80 I order from BD too, but my preferred book buying method is in bookstores, which we are fortunate to still have in NYC. I try to order only books I'm relatively confident I won't find in a local store.

>80 AnnieMod: But BD is terribly unreliable and getting worse by the day, and Amazon itself (since it neglects to draw attention to its ownership of BD) does do free shipping out of the country, since it's pretty much the same price to send things anywhere in Europe (varies by country but once you are sending out of the country it doesn't matter to which one); we've ordered a handful from AmazonDE. Actually their price is lower for free shipping than the US, though I'm not sure if they upped theirs when the US did, haven't been on there for a bit.

Regardless, like Rebecca I always would buy more books for the free shipping too. Not "impulse" buys but things I had on my wishlist. Why throw away that money for nothing when I can pay a little more and get something else I want?

> 82
Used to live in Bulgaria. English bookstores were not easily found-able. Price from Amazon was 4.99 per book + 4.99 per package ($ on .com, EU on .de and pounds on .co.uk). BD was a life-changer when it started.

>83 .Monkey.:
Never had issues with BD - either in Europe or in US - the last few arrived a few days ago as expected.
And I have Prime so... I just buy way too many books :)

My next read is Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It's a long time since I read any Burroughs, but I am determined not to be put off by any political incorrectness. The novel was first published in book form in 1914.

Starting on Native Son this afternoon.

85 - From my fuzzy memory the first one isn't so bad with that (though my memory is awful and I have a feeling I'm blocking out the section of his dealings with an African tribe). I found it generally riotously entertaining/amusing though, especially him learning to read completely on his own...

I finished Homage to Barcelona by Colm Tóibín last night, which I reviewed earlier today. I'll start 1914: A Novel by Jean Echenoz shortly.

Just starting Little Men, the book which my father says ruined him for school (because no 1950s upper Ohio river valley public school could be anything close to Plumfield).

Started The Good Earth last night. Didn't want to put it down after reading the intro and chapter one. I can't remember if I've ever read Pearl S. Buck -- maybe in high school senior English.

90 - So glad to see enjoyment of Buck! I've really loved everything I've read by her, but I think sometimes The Good Earth is assigned in school before pupils can appreciate/enjoy it so they decide they just don't like Buck.

I finished and reviewed the delightful Showdown by Jorge Amado, and will definitely be reading more by this author.

Massie had made somewhat of a mess with the later part of his Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman - but not bad enough to make not like the book. Review in the work page and in my thread if someone is interested :)

And I am off to The Drowned World.

I'm still in the middle of Native Son, but it's so heavy I'm thinking of picking up something fun in the midst of it. I'm thinking I'll go for Rosemary's Baby, hahaha.

I finished and reviewed 1914, the new novella by Jean Echenoz, yesterday, and today I'll read How I Became Hettie Jones, the memoir by the former Hettie Cohen. She married LeRoi Jones, who later changed his name to Amiri Baraka, the poet, playwright and political activist who died two days ago, and this book describes her early upbringing and her life with Jones in the East Village of NYC in the 1950s, in the company of famed and up and coming writers and musicians such as Allen Ginsburg, James Baldwin, Thelonious Monk, and Billie Holiday.

Just starting Operation Mincemeat and Breaking the Maya Code.

I should probably stay away from this thread, as it just tempts me to even more books! I have The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went To War and The Goldfinch in my immediate To Read pile and am considering getting The War That Ended Peace. How are people getting on with those three?

I started reading The Sleepwalkers within a month after finishing The Guns Of August but put it down as I felt I needed to put some space between them. I recommend The Proud Tower for background as well. By the time this year is out I expect to have large maps charting troop movements covering all surfaces. One really does need an old atlas for this. I have an atlas from the 1930s which is useful for looking up places that no longer exist or have changed their names, as well as tracking the roots of new or re-emerging countries. I shall have to burrow about in second hand shops and see if I can find a pre-1914 school atlas.

I am reading The food of the Gods and how it came to earth by H G Wells.

I finished my first book - My Name is Asher Lev, a re-read for a book club. Now focusing on Nehemiah. Current audio book is One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson. I should finish it tomorrow or Monday.

Finished Ballard's The Drowned World. Starting Epitaph for a Spy by Eric Ambler. I loved his style in The Mask of Dimitrios last year so expect to like this one as well...

I finished Fools by Joan Silber and decided to start her novel The Size of the World.

I have finished and reviewed Sakhalin Island by Anton Chekhov and am mid-way through L'Africain (The African) by J.M.G. Le Clezio. I am also very slowly working my way through the anthology Women Writing Africa: Volume 1: The Southern Region, although it's unlikely I will finish it any time soon.

>97 Oandthegang:
The Goldfinch is progressing slowly, since Life intervened for a bit. I will say the story began to "pick up" about 25% of the way through. I'm reading the Kindle version...no page numbers

I finished and reviewed Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga by D. O. Fagunwa, a fascinating tale and the first novel to be written in Yoruban.

Finished reading La promesse de l'ombre (The Third Lady), a police book (can't think of the English word for this genre right now) on the plane and also started and finished Thomas Mann's La mort a Venise (Death in Venice). A productive plane ride!

Flipped audio books. I finished One Summer: America, 1927 (recommended...if you like Bill Bryson, highly recommended. This is one of his best, especially in terms of the writing). Now listening to The History of Science by Peter Whitfield, narrated by the author. I had listened to the first disk while the Bryson was returned and rechecked out from the library. It's very brief, and yet super well done. Also finished Nehemiah and moved on to Tobit.

I have History of Science but something made me put it aside without starting. I'll be curious to see what your end impression is.

Finished The Histories of Herodotus and enjoyed it just as much as when I first read it 40 years ago. Will post a review tomorrow.

So far this year have read Tumbleweeds by Leila Meacham and The Light between Oceans, and am about halfway through City of Women. Good choices for me, so far!

I'm now reading Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past by Giles Tremlett, and Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami.

I just started A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain. The outset sounds promising.

After a bit of a downer, I'm enjoying a lighter mystery, Pelagia and the White Bulldog. It's a translation from Russian by the same author who does the Erast Fandorin series. This 1st of 3 takes place at the end of the 19th century, with a clumsy-but-clever nun sent to investigate the death of a very special bulldog (at least that's as far as I've gotten so far).

I love the Pelagia novels :)

I've started Mrs Harter by E M Delafield. I do love an English novel that pokes fun at the absurdities of the English rural upper middle/lower upper classes! It's had me sniggering out loud on the London Underground!

>113 AnnieMod: - very glad to hear! I've only read the 1st Erast Fandorin, and the Pelagia series sounded fun.

>114 charbutton: - oooh, that sounds good. And I've just seen some of the Provincial Lady books. I'll have to keep an eye out.

I'm reading The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin and (more slowly, as for some reason I haven't really got into it) Tim Winton's Shallows. And I'm still listening to Americanah.

I'm reading The fall by Albert Camus.

And I am listening to some blues this week; "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" from Skip James as well as some of his 1931 recordings.

I'm reading The Literary Book of Economics by Michael Watts. Each chapter gives a brief overview of economic concepts and has literary selections to provide examples. For example, the chapter on opportunity cost has Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" as its example. The books intended audience is economics teachers who want to find good examples to use in class and English teachers who want to find ways to bring economics into their class. This is perfect for me because I am an economics teacher, and a very good friend of mine, who teaches English, and I have decided to create an integrated course at our high school next year.

>115 ljbwell: Akunin as a whole is fun. There is actually a huge number of Russian authors that write very good mysteries and crime stories... but unfortunately most of them are not translated into English. Happy reading!

I finished one audio book set in Dublin, Ireland, The Forgotten Waltz, and have downloaded a second, Broken Harbor, by Tana French. I've haven't read anything by her yet.

>120 Nickelini: I have listened to all of the Tana French books. They are really good. Broken Harbor is the fourth, but they can all stand alone.

>118 fuzzy_patters: The Literary Book of Economics sounds terrific.

I finished and reviewed Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink, which lived up to all Merrikay and Daryl said about it and more. I'm going to finish the lackluster The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler next, which was shortlisted for the Giller for reasons unclear to me. Then I'll jump into Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder.

I'm just starting Masters of Sex, about William Masters and Virginia Johnson. Still working on Breaking the Maya Code as well.

Finishing Patriot Of Persia after a longish gap, and listening to Bleak House (very well read by Sean Barrett).

Started Red Mars tonight. It is my first time reading Robinson.

Currently reading Justine ou les infortunes de la vertu and 14-18 : retrouver la guerre. Two deeply disturbing books, for different reasons. Will post about them on my thread.

I'm reading Some Chinese Ghosts by Lafcadio Hearn. The stories are based upon ancient Chinese legends. I will put up a review when I am finished.

I am reading The Vampyre by John Polidori

Finished Epitaph for a Spy last night - review in the work and in my thread if someone is interested (and it was hilarious in a lot of places - highly recommended).

Starting First Love by Ivan Turgenev this evening - last time I read it I was ~15 and it was in Russian; now it is almost 2 decades later and in English (and in the meantime, I am making some headway through fiction magazines and journals).

I am reading Billy Joel: The Life and Times of An Angry Young Man and dipping in and out of The True History of Chocolate (still).

I'm reading All the Pretty Horses so I can finally try to get some real McCarthy discussion going in Monthly Author Reads. Seems like a slow month, I'm guessing everyone is busy with their new year goals and so he's getting pushed aside a bit. Also got started on Dubliners but have only read a few pages so far.

I am reading Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley. I read it in college, and I think again soon after I graduated, and it had a huge impact on me at the time, but I honestly don't remember any of it anymore, so it's like a first-time read.

flipping audio books. I finished The History of Science by Peter Whitfield and moved on to The Grandeur That Was Rome: Roman Art and Archaeology, which is lectures by Jennifer Tobin. Also finished Tobit (which was great fun for a biblical book) and started Judith (which has insanely convoluted historical inaccuracies).

134> I need to re-start on Judith myself...

I'm still reading and enjoying Bleak House and am also starting a nonfiction book that has to do with life in the Victorian Era, The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton. I'm really liking both of these, but they are both long and life is getting in the way of reading at the moment so I'm not making much progress. Frustrating at the start of the new reading year!

I've just finished Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer, which some may remember as the inspiration for the short-lived TV show of the same name. I'm now reading Bill Bryson's At Home, which promises to be chock-full of wonderful random knowledge.

Continuing with audio of The Last of the Doughboys, but was caught at the end of the CDs I’d imported into my iPod so I switched to Billy Crystal’s Still Foolin' 'Em.

Also reading All Quiet on the Western Front and The Great Influenza. And dipping in and out of Machine of Death (anthology of short sci-fi stories about a machine that reveals how you’ll die).

Just starting The Outsiders, and finishing up Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, which was really interesting.

>137 bragan:, Betty, I read At Home a few years ago. I hope you enjoy it! It is indeed chock-full of wonderful randomness.

>140 fannyprice:: I haven't read very much of it yet, but I'm already enjoying it enough to feel resentful about having to put it down to go to work. :)

Reading a book again 20 years later is a weird experience...
Finished First Love (review in the work and in my thread).

Next - Oxford in 2060s and London in 1940-1945 with All Clear by Connie Willis

Finished The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives and have started Une si longue lettre by Mariama Ba (So Long a Letter). Partly because I've been meaning to read it for ages, and also because I wanted another take on polygamy to contrast with Baba Segi.

I dumped The Grandeur That Was Rome: Roman Art and Archaeology after three lectures (90 minutes). For the moment I have replaced it with an Audio book version of Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild by Lee Sandlin, narrator Jeff McCarthy. The long introduction and prologue were promising...

Also finished Judith. Next will be Ester, but I will wait a few weeks before I start.

Having finished the beautiful Une si longue lettre, I've moved on to Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih (thanks to Lisa/labfs39 for giving me the push I needed!)

I finally finished and reviewed Autobiography of a Corpse, a collection of stories by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, which I found imaginative and thought-provoking, but too cold and abstract to really engage me.

I'm about halfway through The Hare with Amber Eyes, which I'm really enjoying. The format is working well.

I've finished and reviewed Mrs Harter by E. M. Delafield. Next up: Black Women Writers At Work edited by Claudia Tate. It's series of interviews with women about their writing, including Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison.

I'm in a reading lull, with a few books halfway read that aren't good enough to excite me, but aren't bad enough to be abandoned. So I've picked up Megan Abbott's Dare Me, because I need a sure thing.

>142 AnnieMod: - I'll be really interested to see how All Clear is. Doomsday Book and To say nothing of the dog are two favorites.

I'm just starting The Finkler Question. Recent acquisition and turns out it's gotten terrible reviews. I mean, consistently horrible. My logic is get it out of the way and work my way up to the ones on the TBR stack I think will be better. Plus, the bar is set so low, who knows...

>150 ljbwell: - It is the second part of Blackout - Willis got a little carried away so the planned book ended up as 2 books :) Have ~70 pages to go so some time tomorrow, there should be a review.

>150 ljbwell: I wrote one of those negative reviews. But, despite my dislike, it wasn't a slog. Mainly, I found the humor to be heavy-handed and unfunny, and the women in the book were paper-thin, not-quite-human caricatures. But better than Philip Roth, which isn't saying a lot.

>152 RidgewayGirl: :) I guess we will need to agree to disagree on both of these statements. If you meant All Clear, that is.

No! All Clear and Willis's other books in that series are fantastic! I was referring to The Finkler Problem.

Ah, okey :) I was scratching my head over here wondering what's going on... :)

I am reading Dr Copernicus by John Banville. It is an historical novel

#150, 152 I wrote one of those bad reviews of The Finkler Question too. Not only did I think the "humor" wasn't funny, as Kay did, but I found the characters almost uniformly unappealing, and the depictions of the characters, especially the Jewish ones, seemed sadly stereotypical, if not bordering on the anti-Semitic. (Yes, I know Jacobson is Jewish.)

Wow this thread has some great books in it. And is hard to keep up with!

I've just started my own personal build up to this summer's football World Cup in Brazil - reading Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life by Alex Bellos. It's a lovely looking book - well illustrated with both sections of colour plates and black & white images within the body of text, and replete with maps and useful appendices. I've actually been saving this one up for about now ever since I bought it in a charity shop a couple of years back.

When the circus gets to town in a few months, I'm gonna be very well briefed on my futebol Brasileira!

>152 RidgewayGirl:, 157 - Oy? Well, we'll see how it goes. I made the mistake of - for some odd reason - looking at amazon, where out of 285 reviews, 137 gave it 1 star. I'm looking at the rest of the stack of new TBRs as something to look forward to.

>152 RidgewayGirl: - I read some earlier Roths last year which I thought were excellent: Zuckerman Unbound and Indignation. Naturally it's horses for courses, but I think that he's acquired an undeserved negative reputation in recent years based on perhaps writing some well-below par works in his dotage... (Then again, I don't know if you're referring to particular works that might have been earlier ones of his as well...)

Can't vouch for Howard Jacobson's books at all as I've not yet read any, though I have Kalooki Nights TBR.

I didn't think The Finkler Question was a great book, but I would give it more than one star myself. Actually, looking back at my LT rating, I gave it 4 stars, which in retrospect seems a bit much. It's not the kind of book that stays with you, but it did touch me at the time. I don't remember it as funny but the sadness was alleviated by a touch of irony I guess.

I thought The Finkler question was very good, a worthy winner of a literary prize. From my knowledge of Jewish family life it was both witty and amusing.

Paul, I gave Roth, as befitting one of the icons of American writing, three shots. I read about the same self-involved guy each time, with an objectification of women that was awe-inspiring and which got worse over time. In American Pastoral, which I saw as the best of the bunch, the women were all impediments to the Swede's progress. In The Human Stain, the women were either horrific harridans out to ruin the protagonist or sex fulfillment fantasies. I mean, really, a woman who refuses to learn to read as a political act, but loves to give the aged misogynist blow jobs?

But, yes, he is an important American writer of a certain time. But I love Cheever and Updike, so I don't think I'm just reacting to the writing of that time.

Alison, The Human Stain does sound awful I'll agree - I've not read that one, and doubt that I ever will. American Pastoral I did read, but actually didn't like that one too much (2.5 stars)! It looks like, and this is reflected in my own experience of his other books such as Goodbye, Columbus or The Great American Novel, that there's a real mix in quality in his works.

148> Any chance that book has an interview with Andrea Levy? I'm looking for material for my seminar.

I like a lot of Roth, especially American Pastoral, although his treatment of women can be infuriating, but some of his work is just terrible and The Human Stain definitely falls in that category (for its racial politics as well as its misogyny).

Done with All Clear (highly recommended - review in my thread and in the work) and off to Frederick Forsyth's The Kill List.

Having finished the excellent Season of Migration to the North, which I'm going to need a bit of time to digest, and needing a complete change but wanting to stay in Africa, I've moved on to Natacha Appanah's first novel, Les rochers de Poudre d'Or.

I was mixed on The Finkler Question. I found it disturbing but intelligently so and I still think about it. The depiction of woman and Jews is very negative without saying so. But it's the main character's* perspective and it's not accidental. This is all supposed to be done in a funny manner, but I didn't laugh.

*forgot his name.

As for what I'm reading, I read the first few pages of A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz today and plan to read this next. I also read a juvenile book my daughter recommended, Guinea Dog by Patrick Jennings.

Still making rather slow progress on Dubliners and working on Divas, Dames & Daredevils: Lost Heroines of Golden Age Comics, which is pretty good.

Have started Enon by Paul Harding. It's a sad, but beautiful book, not morose or depressing, and I'm loving it. I loved Tinkers also, but I think his prose is more straightforward, less thickly lyrical, in this.

I'm reading Julia Child's My Life in France and enjoying it immensely. I feel like she's sitting next to me telling amusing stories of her life.

I am reading On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres by Nicholas Copernicus

I am listening to "The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote" by Hidden Hand who are a doom, stoner metal band
also listening to Brahms Violin concerto with Ann-Sophie Mutter and Mendelsohn's violin concerto with Nigel Kennedy.

#172, Chris, I loved My Life in France!

I finished another Denise Mina a few days ago, and I'm coming down the home stretch with The War That Ended Peace. I am trying to finish it, and another book I started, The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye by Friday, as we are going away on Saturday and I'd like to take completely new books with me. I also started Wole Soyinka's On Africa, but I'm not far enough along to finish that, and I think I'll wait to pick it up again after we get back.

I'm halfway through Fledgling and loving it, though it's not the type of book I'd normally pick up (science fiction + vampires). I've also just started Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

>176 mabith: I enjoyed Fledgling some years ago. She gives the whole vampire thing a thoughtful twist.

176 > I read Fledgling in 2006 and STILL think about it. Hmm, maybe I'll re-read it this year.

#174 Bas - Is it readable? (Have you spun your desk chair yet just to sense the relative motion effect...if your desk chair spins?)

Finally finished Religion and the Decline of Magic. Abandoned the 2004 issue if The Langdon Review and replaced with Granta 125 - that would be the most recent Granta I could find in Barnes & Noble recently. I'm venturing into current.

Side note on The Langdon Review, publish by Tartleton State University (which I had never heard of). It didn't bother me that it was Christian, as this was a side theme and, without exception, pleasantly, even elegantly, discussed. It did bother me that the contributions weren't all literary. I read 140 pages and by then it had dissolved into "reviews" that felt like advertisements and that were written by authors who left me with the impression they felt they had better things to do then write this article for this obscure magazine and just wanted to get it done and out of the way. Anyway, I won't try any other issues.

Does Copernicus offer any convincing evidence?

Robert

I started the audiobook of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks today; My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel and You Remind Me of Me, a novel by Dan Chaon (who I just discovered at the end of 2013 and am now obsessed with) came available through the e-library for me. I also really want to start Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, so that the WWI read doesn't become just another good intention for me.

Fanny- interested to hear your thoughts on the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks--I was much more critical than most LTers.

I'm pretty excited to have just downloaded the audio book of Wave, by Sonali Deraniyagala, which has been widely acclaimed. I used to have so many problems finding audiobooks--I'd eventually find something great, but it would take forever. But now I'm using a new program that my public library connects to called OneClick and I seem to be able to find things there quickly and have almost no problems downloading them quickly. Yay!

#149 - I'm just starting Dare Me too, as a change of pace from Bleak House, which I'm about half way through. It's blistering so far!

Started on Ragtime last night. Still slowly plodding through Dubliners.

Finished Frederick Forsyth's The Kill List last night. Next is The Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo Jose Cela

184> Oh, I loved Ragtime when I read it years ago. Been wanting to reread it for a long time.

>186 Cariola: I've been hearing good things. :)

I'm starting The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz, which is a much argued about book (in terms of whether it's all true, the combination of several true stories, or largely false/co-opted).

Finished reading Kobo Abe's The Kangaroo Notebook which I'm still processing in my brain.

I am reading Four Morality Plays these are 16th century plays (or interludes as they were called) pre-dating Shakespeare by some way.

Hoping to finish The True History of Chocolate soon & will sink my teeth into my new vampire book Emotional Vampires: Dealing with People Who Drain You Dry which is not about typical vampires, but people with personality disorders.

I just put Emotional Vampires on my wishlist prompted by your mentioning it.

Thanks,

Robert

I'm reading The New Dead, an anthology of zombie stories, which is proving to be astonishingly good. Next up is The Wet Nurse's Tale by Erica Eisdorfer, which has been sitting there on its shelf calling to me for weeks. I have no idea why it's doing that, but who am I to resist?

Mr. Durick,
Simply put, the author says "People with psychoses and neuroses drive themselves crazy; people with personality disorders drive everyone else crazy." I haven't made it any farther than that yet.

Continuing with my African theme, I'm now reading The Hairdresser of Harare by Tendai Huchu, an odd mixture of fluff and social commentary on the Zimbabwe of the last ten years or so.

Still listening to Americanah, and yesterday I revived my Bleak House audiobook, which I've been listening to for, ahem, over a year...

I finished Things As They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams last night and reviewed it this morning. The next book I finish will probably be Symzonia by Adam Seaborn.

Finished The Family of Pascual Duarte -- review in the work and my thread.
Next: Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut

Finished the frustrating The Hairdresser of Harare and have decided to take a little break from Africa (I'll be back, though). Last night I started The Marrying of Chani Kaufman.

I've finished The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye and The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan

I finished World War Z the other day, and have moved on to Richard Wagamese's Indian Horse.

I finally found the time to sit and finish Cold Comfort Farm, which I commented about on my thread. Last night I started Mr. Britling Sees It Through by H. G. Wells which I think I am really going to enjoy, based upon the first couple of chapters.

About to get started on Mr Chartwell.

I finished the entertaining My Life in France by Julia Child, and am now starting Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries.

In between things I have to read for classes I'm teaching, I've been reading a semi-fluffy historical novel, Isabella, Braveheart of France.

Sometimes you just need that.

I've been reading a semi-fluffy historical novel, Isabella, Braveheart of France.

Sometimes you just need that.

Yes, sometimes you do. Enjoy!

I finished three books this week (the silver lining to being sick at home), Billy Joel: The Life and Times of an Angry Young Man; The True History of Chocolate; and Emotional Vampires: Dealing with People Who Drain You Dry and have made a real start into Love Is The Cure by Elton John.

Done with The Finkler Question and Mr Chartwell (for the latter I finally sussed out how to do the spoiler alerts I've seen popping up in other threads!), and have just started One Night in Winter.