What book is everyone reading at the moment?

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Lise Meitner – en levnadsteckning (Lise Meitner – a biography) by Bengt Forkman. A decent biography that focuses on the scientific work of Meitner. The author himself is a physicist.
 
Just finished ' Ricky' a biog of Ricky Tomlinson who is well known in the UK as the father in the Royle family . He certainly has had an interesting life from a poor background to TV fame via Jail for being a flying picket .
 
Author! Author! by David Lodge. It's about Henry James and his five-year attempt to be a playwright. Lodge uses innumerable historical people as characters, speaking his lines and furthering the story in his own way, without doing damage (at least not damage I can spot) to historical accuracy.

It's slow and not Lodge-like at all. I'm afraid I picked it up from a remainder table. Damn shame. But I look forward to his next title.
 
Mephisto said:
I currently reading Shakespeare's plays (I'm on the Twelfth Night). I'm planning on reading Macbeth next. I read that there was a connection between Guy Fawkes co-conspirators and Shakespeare and heard that he wrote Macbeth to placate King John. Either way, it'll be a good read, it always is. :)
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It was James I/VI, not King John, who predated Shakespeare by a number of centuries (although Shakespeare did write a history play about him, just not a very good one by most people's estimation). The second witches scene, with the witches showing Macbeth that Banquo's descendants would become great kings, was a reference to the fact that Banquo was considered to be a progenitor of the line of Scottish kings that culminated in James VI, who became James I of England. This was clearly an attempt to curry favour with the king.

I had not heard about a link between Shakespeare and the Gunpowder plot, although I had heard of a book that claimed Shakespeare was a secret Catholic. Is that what you are referring to? In any event, I'd like to hear some more details about the Shakespeare/Fawkes connection.
 
Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods" about his hike up the Appalachian Trail Brilliant. Also John Scalzi's "Last Colony".
 
'Are You Morbid?' by Thomas Gabriel Fischer. Celtic Frost frontman writes the story of the band's breakthrough album, 'Into the Pandemonium'. It's a great read, and a brilliant and refreshingly honest insight into life in a metal band.
 
The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach, by Prof. Peter Schickele

Just about the best (and only) work concerning the last---and least---of Johann Sebastian Bach's many children, dealing with his life, his travels, and (unfortunately) his 'music'.

A must for anyone familiar with Bach's many works, and for fans of Monty Python-style humour.
 
I'm about a tenth of the way through Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, in the original French (but don't look too impressed--I'm French-Canadian). It's a hell of a book, but very challenging. It requires you to take your time, savour it, and pay attention. But it's totallly worth the effort.
 
Re-reading A Piece Of Blue Sky by Jon Atack - A scathing expose' of L. Ron Hubbard and the "church" of Scientology by an ex-member. Well written and documented... you truly get the picture of what a sadistic nut Hubbard was.
 
Having just finished The Gunpowder Plot by Antonia Fraser, I carried on my non-fiction reading and launched into Pointing from the Grave by Samantha Weinberg.

For those of you interested in the connection between Shakespeare and Guido Fawkes, it is likely that William frequented the same tavern, The Mermaid. There is also a loose family relationship as Shakespeare's daughter Judith was connected by marriage to Sir Edward Bushell, a first cousin of the Wintours, key figures in the plot.

I am willing to pass the book on if anybody is interested.
 
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Have you ever read the Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster, by any chance?

Jim

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A short list

All my Carl Sagan books, Brian Greene's Elegant Universe and a few others were not available at the time of the photo.:)


bookjrf.jpg
 
jmercer said:
God Is Not Great, currently. :)
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Spidey13 said:
Are you saying he was great previously? :confused:

:D
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That's the best I've seen since a poster on talk.origins didn't make some sort of delineation between the title of the book he'd just read and his reaction to it. This created the illusion that he had just finished a book called

Defeating Darwinism by opening minds and jumping up and down and screaming for about an hour.

As for me, I'm reading Manly Wade Wellman's John the Balladeer (the collection of Silver John short stories), and trying without much success to pick one project from either A Gathering of Lace, Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls, or Shawls & Scarves: The Best of Knitter's Magazine.
 
Just finished Spider Robinson's Callahan's Key. Meh. Too self-consciously cult.

Started Sagan's Broca's Brain. Looking forward to comparing it with Dawkins' Unweaving the Rainbow, as I get the impression that they deal with a similar topic: the beauty and poetry of science.
 
The Callahan's Place stories went down the drain, for me, when Spider decided saving individual people wasn't exciting enough -- he had to have his characters save the world.

And honestly, I really could have lived without the scene where Jake's fourteen-month-old supergenius daughter reacts to a compliment with "Why, Uncle Nicky, what a sweet thing to say! I'm going to start f***ing when I'm sixteen, would you like to take a number? I can fit you into the single digits if you hurry."
 
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