**What Are You Reading Now? -- October 2012

Share what you're reading, reviewing and so on.

I am hoping to find a few quiet hours to read Silence by Shusaku Endo today and reviewed Steinbeck'sIn Dubious Battle yesterday.

I am speed reading To Serve God and Wal-Mart because it's not what I expected, and just starting China: a Novel, by Alan Wall, which has nothing to do with the Asian nation, but I think--based on the cover-- might have to do with dishes in England. Not sure yet--so far it's been about jazz music.

Reading a bit here and there of several books:

1 & 2 Kings and related stuff - trying to get started on this.
God Knows by Joseph Heller - sometimes I just can't seem to read this...
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin - Instead, I'm very involved in this. Lincoln is inspiring.
The Cartoon History of the Universe II by Larry Gonick - for when I'm distracted or tired, or just can't take anything else in
Poetry : October-November 1987 (75th Anniversary) - I was doing good for 100 pages, then kind of stopped. Should finish this month, though.

Starting the month with these books in progress:

Juliette by de Sade, which has been in progress since last year
Turbulence by Jia Pingwa for Reading Globally
Doctor Copernicus by John Banville
Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson to finish the trilogy
and Villette by Charlotte Brontë on the Kindle

And looking forward to starting The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco as soon as I finish at least one of the above

I finished up September with Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork, and am starting October with a bit of science fictional adventure in The Heart of Valor by Tanya Huff.

I am supposed to finish Madame Bovary for discussion Wednesday night; I don't have much hope. I seem to be reading more reliably John Hodgman's That Is All. I also have started and feel I haven't abandoned The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics and The Rise and Fall of Communism.

Robert

this month I hope to find the time to finish American Creation by Joesph Ellis, and finish the various history of geology books I have going. The only fiction I'm reading is Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata.

Last night I started The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie for Banned Books Week.

I started reading Robert Wright's The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, nothing to get too excited about so far in the introductory chapters. Also reading Nelson Algren's A Walk on the Wild Side whose images of destitution in the streets of New Orleans during the Depression are strikingly and increasingly familiar since the present crisis began some time back.

Yesterday I started the wonderful graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman, and read about two thirds of it. I knew what would happen if I brought it to work with me today (...) so I left it at home...and I know what I'll be doing the minute I get through the front door this evening.

I'm also very much enjoying The Word Tree by Teolinda Gersao.

I am still reading God's Eyes A-Twinkle, a short story collection by T.F. Powys. It is taking a bit longer than expected, mostly because I find reading one short story after another a bit disorienting.

I am also reading the Graham Parkes-translation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche. I am going through it slowly, making notes and reading sections out-loud. It seems the kind of book that repays diligence. Do I embrace everything that "Zarathustra" says? No, but I doubt Nietzsche would want me to. (Nietzsche's differentiating between himself and Zarathustra is telling, as is Nietzsche's dislike of imitators and followers).

Also reading Allegorical Imagery by Rosemond Tuve, and John Keats: The Major Works.

I'm reading Joseph Boyden's Giller prize winning book, Through Black Spruce and dipping now and again into District and Circle by Seamus Heaney and My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, an anthology of modern fairy tales.

I'd like to begin Blindness by Jose Saramago soon.

#12 Dewald - Goodness...Which is your light reading?

I am starting The Vivisector by Patrick White. Does anybody else have this in their sights for a group read?

I finished Silence by Shusaku Endo and started Tortilla Flats for the Steinbeckathon; will start The Vivisector soon.

#15 - Uh oh, it's October already, isn't it? I'll probably be late starting it, but I'll try to catch up.

I’ll read Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction for banned books week. I already began the week with a book burning -- in the 1970s, in Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, when Jeanette Winterson’s pentecostal mother finds J’s stash of literature hidden in layers under her mattress and throws it all out the window then lights it on fire.

>14 dchaikin: Dan, I hope to start reading The Vivisector soon (i.e. when the South African truck-drivers stop their strike), so that might be light reading ;-)

Patrick White - Light reading? I Suppose its all relative

>13 RidgewayGirl: I bought District and Circle last month, and I'll probably read it next week.

>15 baswood: My copy of The Vivisector is close by, and I plan to start reading it this weekend.

#19/20 - Dewald has gone nuts...(this is an expression of mild jealousy)

Bas et al - Can't join Vivisector, brain is not aligned that way right now, and I don't have the book (although I think it's on Kindle, so that's not really a good excuse)

I started a book just released this week by author active on LT, The Druid's Son by G. R. Grove. Grove is holding an author chat that will begin on Monday. After the chat I will run a group read, probably over in the Hobnob with Authors group. So, I will try to promote that a bit, with my first experiment....to follow... If anyone is offended by this here and lets me know, I will erase this post and keep any comments restricted to my own thread.

G. R. Grove (lt name gwernin) has done wonder stuff with the Storyteller series, including remarkably extensive historical and geographical (and even geologic) details. The novels are historical fiction from the darkest of the dark ages in post-Roman Wales. If you are interested, you can check out reviews on LT, including my ancient one for her first book, Storyteller. I believe all her Storyteller books are available through Smashwords here

Hey Dan, your post has reminded me I really should start reading the storyteller series. All the reviews on LT have been enticing, but I have failed to hunt a copy and start reading the series. Is The Druid's Son apart of the ongoing series or is it a stand alone novel? It says it is apart of the Storyteller Series 3.2 on the book page, just curious. I'll follow along with the group read regardless.

#24 Stretch - The Druid's Son can be read apart. It takes place several hundred years before Storyteller, and is expected to be the beginning of a different trilogy. Storyteller is part of the Young Gwernin Trilogy which needs to be read in order.

I'm enjoying Blindness by Jose Saramago tremendously. He doesn't waste any time in getting down to things. I've just begun Jon McGregor's This Isn't the Sort of Thing that Happens to Someone Like You, a collection of short stories. I like McGregor's beautiful, beautiful writing. I'm also reading Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden, which is set near James Bay in Ontario, and I'm wandering slowly through District and Circle by Seamus Heaney.

I just finished The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and am about 1/4 through The Stand (it's really long!!!). I've also started Villette by Charlotte Bronte.

I just finished and reviewed the terrifically entertaining 18th century tale of The Monk by Matthew Lewis, which I bought after reading a review of it here in Club Read (although I can't remember who by).

Dan, I am recovered, I hope...

I've finished God's Eyes A-Twinkle by T.F. Powys, but I'm struggle with a review. All the stories are quite different, with some stronger and others weaker, that it feels like I'm not really getting to the heart of the matter. Also, there's a preface to the collection by Charles Prentice that says what I want to say, but much better. Oh, well.

I've started reading The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies, which is excellent. I would have started reading Patrick White, but the strike continues, so I don't have access to books that aren't from the shops.

I've just finished The Cult of Personality Testing by Annie Murphy Paul, about the history of personality tests and how they're used in ways that really aren't scientifically justified, and have started in on my most recent ER win, a short story collection called Better Living Through Plastic Explosives by Zsuzsi Gartner, which so far is odd, but pretty good.

I have dropped out of the Steinbeckathon, although I hope to get back in and finish more books by Steinbeck this year.

Currently, I am reading Uncommon danger by Eric Ambler and The dean's December by Saul Bellow.

I have finished and reviewed Beauty and Sadness by the 1968 Nobel Laureate, Yasunari Kawabata.

I have started Patrick White's The Vivisector for the group read and am also dipping into Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Other Stories.

Following up on post #23, G. R. Grove's author chat just began today. I encourage anyone interested to stop by...over here.

A few going: Yiddishkeit as an ongoing bit here and there; Three Men in a Boat is an online-only read through Gutenberg - (just finished To Say Nothing of the Dog and *really* wanted to read this!), so only when I have the combination of computer and reading mood; and my nightstand/take it around with me is Blue Lightning, the 4th in Ann Cleeves's Shetland Quartet, which seems appropriate for the shifting weather and shorter days.

I've finished and reviewed The Book of Not, Tsitsi Dangarembga's sequel to Nervous Conditions and a powerful look at the psychological trauma of racism and colonialism.

And I've also finished and reviewed the chilling and important The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.

This week I read a classic Japanese mystery, Tokyo Express, (Points and Lines in English) by Seicho Matsumoto.

I just finished Midnight at the Well of Souls by Jack L. Chalker, as part of my continuing (if somewhat sporadic) attempt to read all the old SF paperbacks I've had on the TBR Pile forever. I enjoyed it a lot more than it probably deserved. I've now started Man in the Woods by Scott Spencer. A chapter and a half in, I'm still not entirely sure what it's about, but I'm finding it quite compelling. Next up, I think, is John Lithgow's autobiography Drama: An Actor's Education.

I'm reading 100 Diagrams That Changed the World for early reveiwers which is very good so far despite the micro font that the book designer used. Trying to decide between Reinventing Bach and Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore after that.

#27 I read the uncut version of The Stand last month and enjoyed it quite a bit, despite its length.

I recently finished A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algen, a portrait of Depression-era New Orleans. Now reading The Edge of the Storm by Agustin Yañez about life in a monastic village in pre-Revolution Mexico. Also dipping in and out of Life: An Unauthorized Biography by Richard Foley. Enjoying it, though his digressions and sometimes flowery writing can be a bit irritating.

I recently finished Soucouyant: a Novel of Forgetting, by David Chariandy. Set in the Scarborough Bluffs area of Toronto, it is the story of a second generation Trinidadian son and his mother who has dementia. It's a beautiful, but sad, novel full of symbolism and layers. I read it as part of a bookclub for SFU English majors. The first session was with a prof of World Literature, and the next meeting will be with the author, who is a prof at SFU.

Soucouyant was nominated for the Giller prize, the Commonwealth prize, the IMPAC Dublin Literary award, and many others.

I just finished The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco and will now focus on The Vivisector by Patrick White.

Election season seems the time to pull Primary Colors from deep in my TBRs. A roman a clef about Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, it’s still fun because so many of the “characters” and themes are still current.

> 13

Ms. Ridgeway, I am glad you are enjoying Saramago. I recently read Cain, and though the agrammatical writing style was hard to get used to I rather enjoyed it. Though the book seemed like a very nuanced look at perennial themes in Christian thought, in subsequent interviews Saramago actually seemed to be like an anti-religious ideologue.

I recently finished Jesuit on the Roof of the World, a look at eighteenth-century Jesuit Ippolito Desideri and his mission in Tibet. Desideri left little legacy as a missionary (Tibetan political turmoil and competition from other religious orders forced him about 5-6 years), but his account of Tibet published after returning home is considered by many the foundation of Tibetology. This account has recently been translated and I am hoping to get to it amongst all the school reading I must do.

I have not read much over the last few months, but currently, when I am reading, I'm reading Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos (downstairs) and A Place of Execution by Val McDermid (upstairs).

I'm also in the middle of cutting my fiction collection in half, which has been going okay but requires lots and lots of boxes.

Oh, avaland, is it emotionally wrenching? There's a possibility that we'll be decamping for a few years in Germany, and the thought of packing only a suitable number of books is terrifying.

Blindness was excellent, lilbrattyteen, and I'll have to read more of Saramago. He prefers commas to periods.

I'm almost finished with My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, and plan to begin An Unfinished Season by Ward Just.

I've read The Druid's Son, which I'll lead in a group read starting Monday here. Otherwise, my reading continues to scatter. Add to post #4 that I'm also reading A Mind at Time by Mel Levine on child psychology, and Who Were the Celts?, a pleasantly mindless non-linear history by Kevin Duffy.

I've finished and reviewed the cold, disturbing, and mystifying The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima.

I'm reading An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. I've also started reading War and Peace for the third or fourth time. I keep starting it and then stopping and picking it up several months later. One of these days, I'm going to actually finish it.

I'm now reading Ape House by Sara Gruen. Next up is my most recent ER win, 100 Diagrams That Changed the World.

Just finished The Procedure by Harry Mulisch about two attempts at creation of a human (or something close to it). I've just started The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach, this time about a real-life experiment, and a very disturbing one.

>50 bragan:: Actually, I take it back. I think I'm gonna slip The Diary of a Dr Who Addict by Paul Magrs in before the ER book.

I'm reading Eileen Chang's Love in a Fallen City.

I read last week The Sailor who fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima and have finally posted my thoughts on my Club Read thread.

I'm reading The Virgin Cure, by Ami McKay, for my book club next week. So far it seems to be pretty standard historical fiction.

I'm now reading L'amant (The Lover) by Marguerite Duras.

I've finished and reviewed La Reve/The Dream by Emile Zola, a look into a girl's struggles with love and religion.

And now I've finished and reviewed a collection of essays about how people write and think about the United States, The Story of America: Essays on Origins by one of my favorite writers, Jill Lepore, as well as The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers by Henry James, which I found creepy but a little on the unpleasant side.

I've finished reading The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies, which was immensely entertaining and intelligent.

Starting with The Vivisector, the reviews of which I have been studiously avoiding...

I've started Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion by Janet Reitman, which should be very interesting.

>60 bragan: OH! That should be interesting. Can't wait to see your thoughts on that one!

I finished The Vivisector this morning and will probably read Forgotten Tales by Edgar Alan Poe, a tiny book (89 pages) my son found in the "teen" section of the library.

>61 avidmom:: I've read the first chapter, and so far my reaction is pretty much, "Wow, L. Ron Hubbard was actually a very interesting and colorful character. Also, a great big fat liar." :)

I've finished Doctor Copernicus by John Banville, and I'll soon be starting The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell.

> 60

How (un?) biased does the book seem? Is it a journalistic expose or an academic study?

>64 JDHomrighausen:: Somewhere in-between, I think. The author is a journalist, not an academic, but the tone isn't quite that of an expose. So far -- I'm four and a half chapters in now -- it seems like a reasonably thorough popular-level history of Scientology as a movement, with a lot of input from various people who were involved. It does take a very even, non-sensationalistic tone and doesn't read like the author has an axe to grind or an agenda to push. The picture she's painting does include a lot of stuff that's bizarre, or dodgy, or somewhat disturbing, and it's certainly possible there's some author bias behind that, but I suspect it's mostly due to Scientology actually involving some bizarre, dodgy, and somewhat disturbing stuff.

Only 25 pages in, but LIFE AFTER DEATH is terrific

I'm reading Night Dancer by Chika Unigwe (Belgian-Nigerian author), this is her second book after On Black Sisters' Street.

I'm currently reading Mr Peanut by Adam Ross and The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood, as well as slowly progressing through Baudolino by Umberto Eco.

The November thread is up: http://www.librarything.com/topic/144145

I started it a bit early since, instead of books, I will be thinking about how to deal with juvenile sugar-rushes tonight.

j#68 - Alison - This past weekend I worked at a charity book sale, and we had about 900 copies of Mr. Peanut. I had never heard of it, or the author, and now here you are reading it. Funny how life does that. Anyway, I'm interested to hear your comments about it.

Last night I read the editor's introduction, the author's introduction (written by her future husband), and the first chapter of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (as she later became known). I will be reading on in it, but I have a new telephone that frightens and mystifies me, and I will be spending time with it.

Robert

If your phone frightens you, then tonight is clearly the night to spend time with it. Hope you have a hair-raising time.

I finished Duras's L'amant (The Lover) last night and just posted a review of it today on my thread. Not sure what to read next.

Grammar help:
Should it be Duras's L'amant or is Duras' L'amant? I always forget what to do with apostrophes when the last name ends with an 's'.

#73 - According to the Chicago Manual of Style, "Duras's" is correct. You always add the 's' for proper names. It is omitted, however, after common nouns ending in sibilants such as "for goodness' sake."

That seems to be what I remembered from school but with all the poor grammar and spelling on the internet now, it's becoming easy to get confused. Thank you. I will fix my original post then.