What book is everyone reading at the moment?

[Francesca R]

The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte. Just getting started on it. Harsh from about page 2, and getting heavier.

I read this as a school English Lit text and bought it much later and still like it. There was a BBC TV dramatisation several years ago too which was good.

I am reading "God Is not Great" by Christopher Hitchens.

 

[Bikewer]

I found The Blank Slate to be excellent. Highly recommended.

Currently reading K. J. Parker's Devices and Desires. A fantasy of sorts, he puts together a feudal society with a technologically-advanced people living in their midst. Not to the level of steam, but highly organized machining, smelting, and so forth driven by water wheel.
A chief engineer is sentenced to death for the crime of making a device "outside of specifications", and escapes with his secrets of weapon design and technology.
So far, it's quite good.

 

[Drewbot]

Headhunting in the Solomon Islands: Around the Coral Sea by Caroline Mytinger

Not what you think, it's about a pair of female portrait artists, who travel to the Solomon islands to paint the natives in 1930's

 

[Finnegan]

This seems to be a nice place for a first post.

I'm currently:

Studying Das Kapital - After picking it up and thinking "Gawd, this is long" I saw the feared words 'Vol 1'.

Reading Amin Maalouf's excellent novel Samarkand.

Giggling through PG Wodehouse's countless fictives.

 

[James Fox]

Currently reading “The Terror” by Dan Simmons and “Theodore Rex” by Edmund Morris
Just finished “The Baroque Cycle” (three mega novels) by Neal Stevenson which I’d highly recommend.

 

[Lensky1917]

I am currently reading "Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life" by Jon Lee Anderson and "Comrades!" by Robert Service.

 

[dglas]

I have decided to reread "Outlines of Pyrrhonism" by Sextus Empiricus.
Partially because of something someone said in a thread, but partly because it's a good idea to retrace old ground sometimes.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

OK, read the Golden Compass after seeing interest in it in this thread. Thanks, guys, I loved it. Can't wait to read the next two books.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Headhunting in the Solomon Islands: Around the Coral Sea by Caroline Mytinger

Not what you think, it's about a pair of female portrait artists, who travel to the Solomon islands to paint the natives in 1930's

I've read a couple travel novels from the 30s, absolutely fascinating.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

"Why Darwin Matters" by Dr Michael Shermer


Not that I need to be told why he matters, but I'm trying to get a fairly chewable introduction to Darwin.

 

[Polar Bear]

'Who Killed Daniel Pearl?' by Bernard-Henri Levy. Uneven but interesting.

 

[mrbaracuda]

Why has no one told me Orwell's "1984" is darn boring? Even though I'm only half way through it hasn't impressed me and I can't understand certain groups or movements pointing to it all the time. Unless you live in the UK today maybe.

For some reason I only found the first chapter very enjoyable so far - might just be because of my affection to propaganda, heh.


Anyway, I will start "Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: Study in Statecraft" by Condi & Philip Zelikow soon.

Other than that I still haven't finished the 3rd book of the Diablo series called "The Sin War: Veiled Prophet". For some reason I keep postponing it, because then it would be over.

 

[Damien Evans]

A history of Australia by Professor Manning Clarke.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union by Martin McCauley.

 

[boojum]

The Fellowship: Gilbert, Bacon, Harvey, Wren, Newton and the Story of a Scientific Revolution by John Gribbin. It's a history of the Royal Society.

 

[The Whether Man]

The Origins of the Universe . . . For Dummies, by Stephen Pincock and Mark Frary. I must admit to a little surprise that the For Dummies series has something so technical, but it is proving to be quite an interesting read, and fairly digestible.

 

[Damien Evans]

The Last Human: A Guide To 22 Species Of Extinct Humans

I've only just started, but it looks quite promising.

 

[Serenity's Light]

Oliver Sacks: Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain.

I saw that book in my local bookstore, but haven't gotten around to picking it up yet. I definitely want to read it though. Have you read his "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat"? That one is definitely interesting.

OK, read the Golden Compass after seeing interest in it in this thread. Thanks, guys, I loved it. Can't wait to read the next two books.

The latter two books are quite good too, although I know some people who felt that the third book didn't quite live up to the other two. I liked all three, although I would agree that the third is the weakest one. Iorek is awesome.

Currently reading "Peony in Love" by Lisa See. Not as educational as my last read (Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate"), although it does give some interesting insights into the customs and culture of ancient China. (Besides, we can't read educational stuff all the time, right?)

 

[HawaiiBigSis]

Currently reading "Peony in Love" by Lisa See. Not as educational as my last read (Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate"), although it does give some interesting insights into the customs and culture of ancient China. (Besides, we can't read educational stuff all the time, right?)

I haven't read that one yet, but I have read a couple others of hers. I've enjoyed them, and Peony is on my list.

My current reading material is Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, by Isabel Fonseca.

 

[boojum]

I just finished Fleeing Fundamentalism: A Minister's Wife Examines Faith by Carlene Cross. An interesting, but depressing, "inside look" at the private lives of (at least some) fundamentalists.

Now I've started Against the Faith: Essays on Deists, Skeptics, and Atheists by Jim Herrick. It's interesting evidence of how deeply the current "atheist attack on God belief" is rooted in the Enlightenment.