Whatcha readin'?

[Lee G]

I finished The Devil's Dream, which was good, not great. Its finer qualities kind of snuck up on me, which is always nice. I then read Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris by Christopher Kemp, which was fairly fascinating in spots but really could have used a good editor.

Now I'm on to Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution: A History. Been wanting to read it for years, ever since I read some Carlyle in a class. This oughta take me a while.

[binR Bishop]

Just finished Cloud Atlas. Can't decide whether the author is a genius for being able to weave 6 different genres together in one book, or whether he just had pieces of 6 books lying around that he couldn't finish so he decided to stick them together.

[spinetingler]

Just Kids, the Patti Smith memoir. Good stuff. Sometimes overblown and self-consciously poetic, in that Patti Smith way, but mostly likable and down to earth. It has this nicely wide-eyed evocation of bohemian New York in the late '60s and early '70s, which makes all the name-dropping seem magical instead of irritating. And her candor and affection about Mapplethorpe and their relationship -- as it evolved from lovers to friends and back and forth several times -- holds it all together. It's a portrait of a deep, abiding friendship as much as it is of an era.

Liked that a lot.

[spinetingler]

A Larry Bird auto-bio that's not "Drive" - "Bird Watching" [the post-playing days]
Pat Benatar - "Between a Heart and a Rock Place"
anthology - "Rip It Up - The Black Experience in Rock n Roll"
Wen Ho Lee - "My Country Versus Me"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee

Dr. Wen Ho Lee (Chinese: 李文和; pinyin: Lǐ Wénhé; born December 21, 1939) is a Taiwan-born American scientist who worked for the University of California at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He created simulations of nuclear explosions for the purposes of scientific inquiry, as well as for improving the safety and reliability of the US nuclear arsenal. A federal grand jury indicted him of stealing secrets about U.S. nuclear arsenal for the People's Republic of China (PRC) in December 1999.[1] After federal investigators were unable to prove these initial accusations, the government conducted a separate investigation and was ultimately only able to charge Lee with improper handling of restricted data, one of the original 59 indictment counts, to which he pleaded guilty as part of a plea settlement. In June 2006, Lee received $1.6 million from the federal government and five media organizations as part of a settlement of a civil suit he had filed against them for leaking his name to the press before any formal charges had been filed against him.[2] Federal judge James A. Parker eventually apologized to Lee for denying him bail and putting him in solitary confinement, and excoriated the government for misconduct and misrepresentations to the court.[3]

[Scott Barker]

Most recent work of fiction was Mark Helprin's "In Sunlight and in Shadow." He writes wonderful sentences.

[Scott]

Just Kids, the Patti Smith memoir. Good stuff. Sometimes overblown and self-consciously poetic, in that Patti Smith way, but mostly likable and down to earth. It has this nicely wide-eyed evocation of bohemian New York in the late '60s and early '70s, which makes all the name-dropping seem magical instead of irritating. And her candor and affection about Mapplethorpe and their relationship -- as it evolved from lovers to friends and back and forth several times -- holds it all together. It's a portrait of a deep, abiding friendship as much as it is of an era.

On my to read list, I find Patti just so wonderful to read, I'm happy it's good.

[Bird Goddess Redux]

The Kristen Lavransdatter trilogy. It's a total of 1000 pages and I just can't finish the last few hundred pages.

[Apeville]

Audiobook- The History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson

Perfect for ear reading.

[jfm]

Two short things:

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson. Wanted to read this because I liked Jesus' Son so much. It's a novella about a guy living in a cabin in Idaho during the first half of the 20th century. On one hand not much happens, on the other hand there are a bunch of great, funny, tragic vignettes, and on the fringes of the story you can sense the world changing around him. Plus a few unexpected bursts of, not quite magic realism, more like dreams or visions. A really good book, and it took all of about 2 hours to read.

The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen. Another novella, or maybe just a longish short story with chapters. I read "The White People" years ago and loved it, so I wanted to read more Machen. This has a lot of the same Weird-Fiction elements as "The White People," though it ends up being a somewhat more conventional story. Lots of fun, and easy to see why he was a big influence on Lovecraft and the whole next generation of Weird writers.

[JMG]

I got the Game of Thrones series for Christmas so I gues its up next.