What Books Are You Guys Reading?

[strategy 4]

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[Southern Buddhist 1]

How much new stuff on Amelia can they come up with? Geez, I like bios too, but that's just mind numbing. You need to go back to work, lol.

True, true. Really only three bios; then two books she wrote, including the notes from her last flight, which her husband published after her death, and the rest are various theories about what happened. [Of course, the most realistic is that she simply ran out of gas, ditched in the ocean, and sank before rescue.]Actually, it's astonishing how many books one historical figure can inspire. I've only scratched the surface of the Amelia bibliography, judging from the references in the backs of the books I'm reading. And approximately fifty books a year have been published on Adolf Hitler since 1945. I own a bunch of those, too. Both are for writing ideas of mine -- I want to mess around with a screenplay about Amelia, and I have a theory about Hitler. A history professory mentioned in passing that Hitler's (quack of a) doctor injected him daily with a blend of over 20 various drugs, megadoses of vitamins, etc. I immediately asked how that affected his mental state, and my professor and I got into a long discussion about how that issue has never been adequately explored, and now that medicine has gotten more into the mind-body connection, now would be a great time to look into it. It wasn't widely known in the 1940s that megadoses of vitamin C just get pissed out, but A accumulates in the liver. It eventually kills you, but before it does, it drives you mad. Most doctors agree now that Hitler had early-onset Parkinson's disease, but that's a visual diagnosis based on his tremors and left-side weakness. It's also a fact that some drugs or vitamin toxicities can mimic Parkinson's symptoms. I have a feeling there's a blockbuster (for historians, at least) history book waiting to be written about how those injections might have altered Hitler's behavior and affected his mind. Not that it excuses him for being an evil bastard, because it doesn't, of course. But it's an incredibly interesting idea to me. [His medical records did survive the war. There are always doubts about their total veracity, because the doctor might not have written everything down, and because the records were property of the KGB for decades and might have been altered, but they survived and have been authenticated.]I do need to go back to work, but if I could afford it, I would just write books all the time, and get a grad degree or two for fun.I don't have too many more good digital pictures of my adorable little Peanut. You really can't beat a two-week-old kitten for cute. I wish we had a picture of her being bottle-fed, but she was so tiny and helpless we were afraid that the flash and click of the camera would scare her off the bottle. But that was beyond precious. She sucked so hard at the bottle that with each suck, both tiny ears would go back. And when she was sleepy, I could offer her my pinky and she would suck on it as she fell asleep. Just head-exploding cuteness.By the way, what "autism room"? My husband works with autistic kids, and has Asperger's Syndrome himself. He's got pooping down, and so do his charges, but I'm always interested in useful autism books.

[Piddle Duck 0]

Good Omens is probably THE worst Gaiman so if you've just discovered him be stoked. American Gods is good, the sequel Ananzi Boys is better, imo. Stardust is an awesome fairytale and Neverwhere will be an absolutely great read if you dug the angels in Good Omens (which were all Gaiman)

I enjoyed Good Omens, it was one of the few books that made me alugh out loud from time to time.I am really enjoying American Gods. 80 pages to go and bummed I won't be able to finish it today. I think this will be the year of Gaiman for me. Now I am curious about Neverwhere because the best part of good Omens were between Azriphale and Crowley.

[pokerinc 0]

I enjoyed Good Omens, it was one of the few books that made me alugh out loud from time to time.I am really enjoying American Gods. 80 pages to go and bummed I won't be able to finish it today. I think this will be the year of Gaiman for me. Now I am curious about Neverwhere because the best part of good Omens were between Azriphale and Crowley.

Yeah, I don't mean Good Omens sucked, it just wasn't on par w/ other Gaiman books, mainly b/c half of it was written by someone else. There's pacing and shift issues that come w/ that. Neverwhere is bad ass, and yeah, it'll be right up your alley since the angels were by far the best thing in Good Omens, and the two...can't remember, anyway the partners in Neverwhere are great. And Anansi Boys was super enjoyable. Also, if you want some sacriligious (s/p bleh) fun, "Gospel According to Biff" by Christopher Moore.

[Piddle Duck 0]

Yeah, I don't mean Good Omens sucked, it just wasn't on par w/ other Gaiman books, mainly b/c half of it was written by someone else. There's pacing and shift issues that come w/ that. Neverwhere is bad ass, and yeah, it'll be right up your alley since the angels were by far the best thing in Good Omens, and the two...can't remember, anyway the partners in Neverwhere are great. And Anansi Boys was super enjoyable. Also, if you want some sacriligious (s/p bleh) fun, "Gospel According to Biff" by Christopher Moore.

So interestingly enough when I got him last Thursday my wife handed me a copy of Neverwhere. She knew I was enjoying his books and saw it when she was at Barnes and Noble and thought I would enjoy it. Just finished reading it about 2 minutes ago and I have to say that this was a great book. This is not really my genre but I loved this book. Loved it.

[runthemover 39]

great book, read Me Talk Pretty One Day, awesome. Well all of his books are and if you ever get a chance to see him read live, do it, awesome and freaking hilarious.

will do. thanks. the only thing I DIDN'T like about Holidays on Ice was his fictional stuff so I guess I'll like this one. I'm sure I can just find the audio version of him reading it somewhere.

[PMJackson21 0]

Finished the book I was reading in Kauai (The Black Company Chronicles by Glen Cook, pretty good in comparison to most fantasy from the 80's) early so I had nothing to read, but saw The Road in the condo we were staying in. Based off what I read in this thread I decided to read it and a few hours later I was looking forward to the movie. Only drawback was how short it was.

[checkymcfold 0]

morris berman's dark ages america is probably the best contemporary social commentary i've read since 1984, albeit in an entirely different genre.at the risk of sounding overly nerdy, i fell in love on like page 5 when he proved himself to be the only person i've ever read that properly understood the implications of popper's notion of falsifiability in scientific inquiry. generally speaking, the way he negotiates the common dischord between theory and practical application with respect to philosophy and economics is really ****ing good. he might end up being the first author to whom i write an actual letter of praise.

[Theraflu 1,035]

he might end up being the first author to whom i write an actual letter of praise.

You mean, aside from Matt Christopher.

[Southern Buddhist 1]

I've written fan letters to a couple of authors -- Bart D. Ehrman for his his textbook The New Testament, although I did temper it with a couple of criticisms, and A. Roger Ekirch for At Day's Close: A History of Night in Times Past, which is an excellent history about what people did after dark in Europe from about the early Renaissance to the invention of gaslights.

[checkymcfold 0]

You mean, aside from Matt Christopher.

i had to google it, but well played. a slam dunk, even.SB, do tell, what DID the people of europe do before gaslights? (more seriously, those are the kinds of things my gf is into--should i recommend them?)

[Southern Buddhist 1]

SB, do tell, what DID the people of europe do before gaslights? (more seriously, those are the kinds of things my gf is into--should i recommend them?)

Oh, that's a fantastic book -- by all means get a copy. It traces the first purpose-built beds and bedrooms to the late Renaissance / early modern period (did you know that it was Shakespeare who coined the word "bedroom"? I mean, who'd have thought it would have taken so long to think up that word?), but more importantly traces behavior throughout the night.The author freely admits that nearly everyone assumes that all anyone did after dark was sleep and ****, but in fact, it was a time that had its own etiquette and social norms. Blaming darkness allowed social inferiors to perhaps bump roughly into a superior, even knocking them down, without recrimination, and allowed superiors to go slumming for drinks or prostitution or even just lower-class friendships that they couldn't admit to during the day. Beer brewing was considered an after-dark activity, and there were special prayers to utter during different periods of the night. Women's sewing circles often concealed more forbidden activities like dating between young people, affairs, women drinking and smoking, political organizing, etc., and were always done after dark.Most interesting is that when we depended solely on fire for our illumination, the author argues very convincingly that all of humanity had a different sleep pattern. We would go to sleep around between ten and midnight, sleep for four hours, wake up for an hour or two, then go back to sleep for a second REM cycle between four and six am and finally get up between eight and ten am. For something that virtually nobody knows anything about anymore, he provides an astonishing amount of evidence that this was a universal pattern. He recounts diaries talking about "first sleep" and "second sleep," lists the prayers that were meant to be uttered "upon waking after first sleep," quotes writers about arriving at a village at two in the morning and all the people making their way to the ale house for a glass of beer and a chat before going back home and back to sleep, etc. He even offers evidence that in Africa, where electrical light can be hundreds of miles away, this pattern still prevails, since at least a couple of tribes have terms that mean "first" and "second" sleep and have ritual periods of dream interpretation where you can go talk to the local shaman after your first sleep and have him interpret your dreams for you at two in the morning or so.Really fascinating stuff. By the way, it was a midwife's traditional advice that a married couple should go to bed and sleep first, then only have sex upon waking from first sleep, during the nighttime period of wakefulness, if they wanted to conceive (and if they didn't want more kids, they should avoid sex during that period). Studies today now confirm that fertility is higher in the wee hours of the morning than it is late at night.The advent of gaslights also allowed the advent of beat-walking cops, and the looser social rules of nighttime gradually disappeared into the same social order as daytime, and gradually we used artificial light to compress all our waking time into one long period and all our sleeping time into one uninterrupted period, generally of two REM cycles one after the other. But, also interestingly, the author notes that we may have become evolutionarily adapted to artificial light, because a fair number of people now report waking up after one REM cycle for a couple of hours. In fact, this can be one main reason people go to doctors complaining of sleep problems. Sleep specialists are beginning to look at history and believe that in fact we're just reverting to the rhythm our bodies had established for millennia.

[Randy Reed 0]

Finished the book I was reading in Kauai (The Black Company Chronicles by Glen Cook, pretty good in comparison to most fantasy from the 80's) early so I had nothing to read, but saw The Road in the condo we were staying in. Based off what I read in this thread I decided to read it and a few hours later I was looking forward to the movie. Only drawback was how short it was.

Still reading Deadhouse Gates but it's slow going only because I haven't had alot of time lately.On audio I finally got a digital player so that I can just download audio directly from the library. I drive 2 hours a day so this is how I pass the time and it's sooo convenient not running back and forth to the library. It's ridiculous how much sites like audible charge for books that are free downloads.I listened to 2 of the newer Patricia Cornwell books, (non-Scarpetta) and they were okay but not that great, almost like short stories wihout enough happening.On a library recomendation I went with a suggestion of theres, Greg Iles, called 24 hours and it was pretty good, enough so that I got another that I'm listenting to now but the name escapes me.The wifey just got a bunch of books cheap from somewhere that will take up my reading time for a while. A book written by an actual Geisha, biography of Rose Kennedy, andThree Cups of tea.

[RonBurgundy 0]

sick of nature and under the devil's the thumb by david gessner--great contemporary non-fiction writerthe plague- albert camus--just wow.collected works of emerson- ralph waldo emerson--yeah i know you read nature and self-reliance in 9th grade but seriously, pick this shit up and tell me it doesn't speak to you more than everpicked up/am reading notes from underground, the myth of sysyphus (camus again), waist-high in the world (nancy mairs), essay collections from montaigne and h.l. mencken, and loads of pragmatists (james, dewey, peirce) and jewish philosophers (buber, levinas, rosenzweig) for classes

[WageSlave 0]

read anansi boys in one sitting. i was hoping i would get a few evenings out of it but i couldnt put it down. back to the bookstore i guess.

[Piddle Duck 0]

read anansi boys in one sitting. i was hoping i would get a few evenings out of it but i couldnt put it down. back to the bookstore i guess.

I just bought that yesterday.

[eYank 0]

For those Yankees or baseball fans, I read "The Last Night of the Yankees Dynasty" by Buster Olney and I'm now reading the Joe Torre book. I really liked the last night, very good book about the dynasty teams.

[Southern Buddhist 1]

collected works of emerson- ralph waldo emerson--yeah i know you read nature and self-reliance in 9th grade but seriously, pick this shit up and tell me it doesn't speak to you more than ever

No. Thoreau, yes. But Emerson less so. I still like him, but read him and Thoreau back-to-back about a year ago and Thoreau blew him out of the water.Don't know what's next for me. I have my Hitler idea and easily fifty books on WWII, mostly about him specifically, but I've also been deeply into a Shakespeare idea of mine (regarding how to stage Hamlet) lately.Most likely, though, it will be whatever I have to read for the next term paper I'm paid to write. I've done the French Revolution and Australian business practices and culture; I think _Othello_ is actually up next week. I don't mind getting paid to learn and write, but it does get in the way of the reading and writing I'd like to do for personal interest.

[Randy Reed 0]

How Starbucks saved my life.Great book.Three Cups of TeaVery aaaaasome book

[Graydon 0]

Anybody else read anything by David Sedaris??? I think he's pretty funny.

[myenemy 0]

Just finished Flashman. Its kind of a goofy story about a ne'er do well, coward, scumbag, who always seems to get lucky and get the glory, set in the 1830's towards the end of the British occupation of Afghanistan, plus it is fairly historically accurate. Its a series. Id read more. Anything else good?

[LG's Touch 0]

I finally got around to reading On The Road. Almost finished it, totally loving it.

[hblask 1]

I'm currently reading "The Great Gatsby", which somehow managed to elude me my whole life.I love Fitzgerald's use of language, just beautiful.

[GeneralGeeWhiz 0]

First time reading this...

[Piddle Duck 0]

I finally got around to reading On The Road. Almost finished it, totally loving it.

I really enjoyed that book. Starting the Grapes of Wrath today. Never read it, seemed like a good time to do so.