I’m on the second book of the USA trilogy by John Dos Passos.

What are those?

I’ve been feeling despondant lately, so for me, A Prayer for Owen Meany again.

Wait, WHAT??!?

Oh,
Banana by Dan Koeppel.

By self-imposed rule, I have to beat Dragon Quest IV before I can play Muramasa.

And I can barely do that because I have to do a load of writing for my grad school applications. This would have been a lot simpler if only I wasn’t trying to get into a writing program. Writing.

So I’ve sectioned off no time for reading. When I’m at home and too tired or aggravated to write, I’m either on here, watching sports, or playing Dragon Quest IV. The rest of the time, I’m probably in Vallejo.

I just finished The Last Fighting Tommy by Harry Patch it was an interesting autobiographical book.

Aside from that, mostly boring stuff on communication disorders.

I’m halfway trough several books at the moment. My reading and comprehension skills have been dulled by blogs and tweets. And drugs. I’m thinking of switching back to Suess and working my way up, see where my actual reading level is. Maybe it’s “Sweet Valley High” and not Kafka as i would like to think.

Also, I liked Night Watch. But not because it’s well written / translated.

I was in a bad reading slump when a co-worker gave me Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre. At first I had a really hard time with the narrator’s voice but eventually I got sucked in to the point where I stayed up really late the other night to finish it.

Now I’m reading Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer.

I just finished David Cross’ book, “I Drink For A Reason.” This is a very funny book and judging by most of the comments I read here, I think a lot of you would like it also.

Ad fail

The internet.

Consider the Lobster

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the Whitehouse

and smatterings of PKD.

“A Story of Love, Survival, and Trust in the Wilds of Wyoming” by Shreve Stockton.

A story of a woman who ditches her life in SF to return to NY city on a Vespa who falls in love with Wyoming, and moves there and raises a coyote and has a relationship with a man who hunts them for ranchers for a living.

The title comes from her daily emailing of coyote photos to friends and family that blossomed into a small business and then a popular blog.

I’m reading Maxim because that’s what they replaced my EGM subscription with after EGM got the ax. I want EGM back. :(

I’m too stupid.

I just bit my tongue!

I recently watched The Namesake and loved it so I’m going through Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories starting with Interpreter of Maladies.

First-timer going to Memphis for a 2-week work boondoggle training program.

my GRE study book :(

uh . . . articles on panel data.

One was about son preference in India. That was interesting.

Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life

It is DENSE. Not something to flip through while listening to the World Series.

Also just checked out some Madeleine L’Engle I haven’t read. And I’m reading A Nation of Farmers by Sharon Astyk.

I’m glad you asked when I happened to be reading Faulkner, so I can look smug and intellectual.

On the other hand, last night I read a chapter or two of A Good-Natured Riot: The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry, so that probably balances things out.

I unsuccessfully tried to find some good science fiction. I’m not a big SF/Fantasy guy

I would really suggest any/everything by Robert Charles Wilson. I had the chance to meet him through his wife (who is on the Neil Young list where I also hang out) when he was in SJ for some big SF award show a few years back.

His newest is Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America and is on deck for me.

Others I’d recommend: Spin, Axis, and The Chronoliths.

Right now I’m in the middle of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier (meh), Seven (a collection of James A. MacDonald’s short stories), and some book about the history of classical guitars.

by Douglas Coupland

  for those interested in technology and humanity

Go pick up Old Man’s War. I forget who it was by, but it was good.

Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are classics.

Halfway through It Feels So Good When I Stop by Joe Pernice. (It should be a quick read, but I read as fast as Bengie Molina runs to first.) Good novel.

I think George Nelson’s How to See is next on my list, and I feel like reading a biography of Lou Gehrig to get me though the winter, so if anyone can recommend one, I’d be much obliged.

I’m not sure why, but I have a feeling that oldjacket has read this one….. whaddya say oj?

i finished “The Physics of Superheroes” by James Kakalios..it was a little over my head, but for comic book/ scifi/ fantasy nuts like me it was really interesting

Just finished A Confederacy of Dunces.

Usually do my reading on Muni but just recently got an iPod Touch so been catching up on tv shows via BitTorrent. Now only 1 episode behind on Dexter and am now starting Sons of Anarchy Season 1.

Has anyone read Chuck Klosterman? I’ve been enjoying his appearances on Bill Simmons’ podcasts, he wrote a really funny review of the Beatles boxed set in last month’s AV Club, and I guess he has a new book of essays out. Are his books worth the time?

I’m currently reading the complete collection of Sherlock Holmes stories. They’re each about twenty pages, so it’s pretty easy to read one each night before bed. I picked up_2666_ over the summer. Slow slow read. Good, but slow. I’ll have to get around to finishing that at some point.

but when I do, I prefer non-fiction.

I did happen to stumble across a quote from Neil Gaiman one day which lead me to a recommendation to read Neverwhere, which was excellent. That’s the last fiction book I’ve read.

I have Atlas Shrugged sitting on the bookshelf waiting patiently. Something tells me it’s going to take illness or injury for me to get around to reading it.

Most of my reading is done on the internets; tech blogs, search industry related stuff. etc.

Ooh, and Golf Digest.

Savage Night by Jim Thompson and Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris, on the excellent French director,

Its a’ight, so far.

I haven’t actually made it to the end. I read very seldomly these days, which makes me :(

On deck: Generation Kill by Evan Wright
and Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
I read non-fiction almost exclusively.

More of a comedic sci-fi genre of books pertaining to ‘disc world.’ Good times.

If you like Simmons writing style, crazy NBA stories, history, and even crazier basketball stories, then this book is for you.

sf_giants
  
Freddy Sanchez signed a two-year deal with Giants today. No specifics have been released yet. #SFgiants

• Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck.
• The Yellow Wind, David Grossman.
• In Cold Blood, Truman Capote.

Now reading A Simple Story, by S. Y. Agnon.

Nick Miller, The Nonconformists: Culture, Politics, and Nationalism in a Serbian Intellectual Circle, 1944-91
Ann Patchett, Run (ugh)

Right now I’m re-reading the collected Jules de Grandin stories (half a dozen or so books’ worth). They are sort of amusing trash, originally published in the famous “Weird Tales” magazine in the 1920s and on. Jules de Grandin is more or less a Hercule Poirot of the occult, only he is set in a small town in New Jersey (which must somehow be the occult focus of the universe, in that there were finally almost a hundred de Grandin stories).

These are of a class of science-fiction and fantasy books I call “gulity pleasures”, a term which is largegly self-explanatory.

I am surprised that the OP didn’t like either Perdido Street Station or Night Watch, two very different but good books. Oops—I see that the linked Night Watch is not the same one I was thinking of, which is the one by Terry Pratchett that is a part of his superlative “Discworld” series.

Perdido Street Station is not light-weight. It is a good but not great book, its chief blemish being that it lays on its effects with a trowel knife; but for all that, it’s a remarkable and interesting work. (Those interested in reasonably literate science-fiction and fantasy works may find this site of interest.)

From Here to Eternity. A lot chewier than the movie made me think it would be.

I always fall into the same trap of making an impressive list of books I’d like to read in a given time, and it always ends up being a marathon to finish just one or two. My tastes are all over the place, but lately I feel the need to brush up on Alabama authors. To that end, Rick Bragg’s collection of personal stories from mill workers, The Most They Ever Had.

And I do plan on dropping a few baseball titles in there. David Halberstam’s The Teammates, for instance, looked really good when I flipped through it back over the summer.

“A Case of Need” Creighton
“Baseball Between The Numbers” The Baseball Prospectus team of experts

I’m not very impressed with the ws umpiring so far, although the Howard “catch” was a very difficult call. This crew was supposed to be picked for reliability after the umpiring in the Championship Series was so crappy.

I figure if I’m going to spend my time reading, I might as well get something out of it.

Recently finished Born To Run. Phenomenal read, makes you want to never wear shoes again. Actually, that’s not to far from the truth for me.

Currently finishing The Wages of Wins. Freakenomics meets Moneyball.

Waiting for Simmons’ basketball book to arrive via Amazon. Probably going to keep this one in the guest bathroom for sporadic reading.

Starting Into the Wild asap. What the hell took me so long to read this book?

Maybe we can start a book club if people are interested?

This WOULD come up the one day I’m not here. Bastards!

Currently, I’m reading Green Mars, the second of the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. It’s about terraforming and colonizing Mars. Just this book is over 700 pages, so it’s a bit of a slow-go, but interesting.

Previously, I read Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie and City of God by E.L. Doctorow. Both were somewhat challenging reads, but worth it.

Next are fairly short books by two of my all-time favorite writers – Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin and The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood.

Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. I’m reading it with a group of high school students. Just started, but it’s fucking intense.

ZOMG it’s so good.

I have pre-ordered Grisham’s new book Ford County: Stories which i should have within the next week or so. Also, I have pre-ordered Sickels’ book for 2010, but I believe it is out in February?

For Sci-Fi, I’m going to assume you’ve already read Ender’s Game. I go back and reread that every few years, and recommend it heartily to anyone. Anyone at all. There’s two lines of sequels. One line is the books that Orson Scott Card wrote shortly after EG (Xenocide, Speaker for the Dead, maybe a third one). They are psuedophilosophical claptrap and best avoided. The other he just wrapped up (I assume): Ender’s Shadow (a retelling of the original book from a minor character’s perspective), Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow of the Giant. These are awesome ruminations on near-future world politics.
 I recommend at the very least the original and its retelling.
Obviously, you also won’t go wrong with Ray Bradbury or Neil Gaiman.

For Fantasy, I just finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell an intimidatingly large but very fast read about the resurrection of magic in England during the Napoleonic Wars. A rollicking good time.
Also recommended: Fritz Lieber’s Lahnkmar series of short stories for some straight-up sword-and-sorcery, Davy by Edgar Pangborn, a very sensitive and touching book about iron-age civilizations in the US centuries after a nuclear apocalypse, and King Solomon’s Mines, Allan Quartemain and She by H. Rider Haggard. Not the most (ahem) culturally sensitive stuff nowadays, but some kick-ass adventure. AQ was the original Indiana Jones.

For baseball, you must check out Ron Luciano. He was a flamboyant AL umpire from 1968-1980 who wrote five books: The Umpire Strikes Back, Strike Two, The Fall of the Roman Umpire, Remembrance of Swings Past and Baseball Lite. All are filled with hilarious behind-the-scenes stories of baseball in the sixties and seventies, both his own and others.

Other:
Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart; sort of a Confederacy of Dunces (itself very highly encouraged) set in post-Soviet central Asia.
Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow, an epic poem(!) in free verse(!) about werewolves in modern-day Los Angeles.
If Chins Could Kill, the autobiography of Bruce Campbell.
Live From New York, the oral history of SNL.
A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, by James Shapiro
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers, which is just that.
The Princess Bride, by William Goldman; only the greatest book ever. Even better than the movie (yeah, I said it).
And finally
P.G. Wodehouse FTMFW!

You said you’ve read very little science fiction, but what have you read and enjoyed? Maybe I could recommend something more up your alley than Perdido Street Station (which I enjoyed, but which is pretty weird).

Also, I super-highly recommend Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem. Not the happiest book in the world, but a phenomenal read about growing up in Brooklyn in the 70s and 80s.

Just picked up “The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg by Nicholas Dawidoff”.

Good fantasy reads:
- The Curse of Chalion, by Louis McMaster Bujold
- Through Wolf’s Eyes, by Jane Lindskold
- The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

Good sci-fi reads:
- The Lost Fleet, by Jack Campbell
- Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
- Dune by Frank Herbert

Annals of the Former World
by John McPhee

The Book of Basketball
by Bill Simmons

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer
by Jonathan L. Howard

But if you somehow managed to get through life without reading it, you really need to pick up Catch-22.

I’ve been on a Graham Greene kick. In the last couple months I’ve read The Quiet American, The Power and The Glory, and The End of The Affair. All great. I plan on picking up The Heart of the Matter next. He really does a masterful job of bridging the gap between clarity and profundity. The story moves along at a brisk pace, and every so often a line floors you.

I’ve got a couple going. Fire From Heaven, by Mary Renault, rests upon my night stand; Thunder Gods, by James Lee Burke, is in my car’s CD player (beautiful trash, as read by Will Patton); my bathroom has a copy of Alan’s War, Emmanuel Guibert, waiting on the sink adjacent to the WC.

Just finished a silly but entertaining SciFi novel called Old Man’s War, written by John Scalzi. Read that in one and one half days. Of late, I’ve had to sit in a hospital with nothing to do, and reading frothy SciFi is a good way to pass the time. TV isn’t an option.

Lost in the Funhouse – Barth

I stopped reading for a while because I tried to read Beckett’s Molloy, Malone Dies, and the Unnamable. It drove me crazy. Has anyone ever been able to finish these? I got halfway through Malone Dies and said to myself “I could have finished 5 books in the time it took me to digest what he’s saying”