What book is everyone reading at the moment?

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I am currently rereading A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin. This is the first book in a fantasy series, which is only half done. The setting is a medieval like world where seasons may last more than a year.
Now winter is coming, bringing with it a lot of trouble.

Martin tells the story using multiple viewpoints and manage to bring all his character to life. The series if definitely for adults, and contains violence, as befitting medieval life. Moreover, unlike typical fantasy, your favourite character might not make it out alive.
 
The Dragons of Babel by Michael Swanwick. A sort-of sequel to The Iron Dragon's Daughter.
Clever idea; Faerie is real, but has kept technological pace with the human world. Dragons are now high-tech jet-powered stealth bombers, intelligent but needing a pilot.

Faerie is not a nice place....
 
Dubliners. I've read somebody's theory that Joyce went progressively crazier over his career. Supposedly you can trace his madness starting with the latter part of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man through Ulysses to Finnegan's Wake. Well, maybe; be damned if I'll waste my time on Wake. But Dubliners is very, very good.
 
I just finished reading a portion of the book "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist" by Norman Geisler. It's a very good book. It is a serious scholarly book but it has a couple funny lines in there.

One line describes evolution as "Goo to You by way of the Zoo".

It also gives a quote, "When I was in grade school they told me a frog turning into a prince was a fairy tale. But when I got to the university they taught me it was a fact."
 
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Winter's Heart by Robert Jordan, ninth in the series. It's moving along at a better clip than when I first read it, but perhaps that's because I've been reading the entire series, and not waiting two to three years between installments. I'm a little fearful of the tenth book, since that's the one where Jordan changed his style and attempted to tell everything in a single day from multiple perspectives. George R.R. Martin he ain't.
 
How the Dead Live by Will Self.

Not quite as laugh out loud funny as I was led to believe (or maybe I haven't reached any of those sections yet) but extremely enjoyable nonetheless.
 
I just started "We Need to Talk About Kevin" by Lionel Shriver. I'd never heard of it until it was selected for a book club I just joined.
 
Just starting Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

and Re-reading Writing With Precision By Jefferson D Bates.
 
CptColumbo said:
I'm not reading another Turtledove series until I know it's ended.
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"Days of Infamy" was followed up by "The End of the Beginning"

SPOILER WARNINGS

Since the latter ends with the liberation of Hawaii, I imagine WWII in that timeline would pretty much follow the same course as it did in ours. So I would think as alternative history, that series has ended.

I've recently finished his "In at the Death" in which the alternative WWII ends in 1944 (after nuclear exchanges) with the defeat and occupation of the Confederacy and Britain suing for peace with the German Empire.

I suspect it is going to continue with a Cold War confrontation between the US and Germany, with Japan and Russia being latecomers to the nuclear club.
 
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FM21.105 said:
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up by John Allen Paulos. My father loves the "A Mathematician" 'series' that Paulos does, and picked up this book from him as well. I took it off him while I was at his house, and I've been through about 80 pages in 1 day.
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It's a great book--
Check out his talk from Beyond Belief 2: http://thesciencenetwork.org/BeyondBelief2/watch/
 
I'm not onto book ten of The Wheel of Time: Crossroads of Twilight. This is the volume that I've been dreading, as Jordan changes his style and everything takes place in a single day. We'll see if the memory remains true to how much I disliked this particular novel. So far, while I've been somewhat exasperated at times with Jordan, on the whole I've really enjoyed the series this time through.
 
Just finished the Carl Sagan classic The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark and starting my next title which is The Physics of Superheroes.
 
I'm reading Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America by James Turner. He argues that prior to the establishment of (what he calls) the "analytic-technical" mind, "true" atheism was very rare. To him, prior to Darwin's weakening (not to say destruction) of the argument from design, people were almost all forced to stop short of atheism at agnosticism or Deism.
 
Prey - Crichton - About nanotechnology and artificial organisms

Israel Through My Lens - Rubinger The famous Israeli photographer

And just finishing - Awakening The Buddha Within - Lama Surya Das
 
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boojum said:
I'm reading Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America by James Turner. He argues that prior to the establishment of (what he calls) the "analytic-technical" mind, "true" atheism was very rare. To him, prior to Darwin's weakening (not to say destruction) of the argument from design, people were almost all forced to stop short of atheism at agnosticism or Deism.
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It's interesting to me how Darwin is being linked to so many other different kinds of thought; whether for good or ill.
 
I just started "Foreskin's Lament" by Shalom Auslander, a memoir abut growing up in an ultra-orthodox Jewish family and community in suburban New York State and his journey to de-conversion. Very powerful stuff, just from the first 20 or so pages. I was raised nominally Jewish so the fear of God wasn't pounded into me as it apparently was in Auslander's family -- my own escape from religion was much easier. His descriptions about how orthodox Jews relate to and imagine God are searing.
http://www.amazon.com/Foreskins-Lam...bs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209417162&sr=8-1

I'm very glad to be an atheist free from the terror, shame and paranoia that he suffered through and apparently is still recuperating from.
 
I just started reading, The Gunsmith. It's a crime novel written by the actor that plays House on television. It is absolutely hilarious! I am NOT a fan of the TV show House, but dammit, this is a good book!
 
Imrational said:
I just started reading, The Gunsmith. It's a crime novel written by the actor that plays House on television. It is absolutely hilarious! I am NOT a fan of the TV show House, but dammit, this is a good book!
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Hugh Laurie is the actor. The Gun Seller is the book. :D

Out of curiosity, why don't you like the show? It's not the end-all be-all of programming, but I find it quite fun to watch.
 
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