(no subject)

[rushthatspeaks]

I was going to do a recent books post, and then I realized I have no idea what I've been reading, because that is the sort of week it's been. I must have been reading something, but damn if I can remember.

What have you been reading?

Comments

This week, it's been:

[larryhammer]

Tebukuro o kai ni by Niimi Nankichi (I'm on the page a day plan)

Kokinshuu trans. Rodd (a little goes a long way)

Anathema by Neal Stephenson (goes a long way)

plus a bunch of random manga scanlations.

---L.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Louisa May Alcott, Work

Leafing through a huge stack of recently acquired books (I'm hopeless), largely on the history of material culture in England: houses, cookery. Still Cloud-building.

Nine

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Still Cloud-building

Hooray!

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Much appreciated.

Nine

[navrins]

Social Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman.

And textbooks and other readings for classes I'm taking.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

A slender book of Siegfried Sassoon's poetry--I'm a Wilfred Owen fangirl, so when I saw the thing in the used bookstore going for $1, of course I snapped it up.

Otherwise, Legend of the Five Rings official fiction, which I personally recommend you avoid--the linguistics errors alone would drive you screaming away.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India.

Before that, Swedish murder mysteries, from which I am banned until the new year because I have been Really Awfully Gloomy.

[ckd]

Current re-read: Shards of Honor as an ebook on the iPhone, as the start of a Vorkosigan Saga re-read.

Current new read: Red Phoenix (Larry Bond), one of those late-80s technothriller bricks (North Korea invades South Korea) as a reasonably mindless book to read before falling asleep.

[ryenna.livejournal.com]

I'm reading a ton of picture books, but they're not that interesting. However! I will take this opportunity to recommend The Last Resort, which is awesome, and full of literary references.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Taleb's The Black Swan, in which he says that people wildly underestimate the likelihood and impact of big weird events.

Devitts Unleashed-- pleasant enough urban fantasy.

[zdenka]

-a bunch of Yuletide background reading, which frequently includes stretches of wanting to strangle Background Reading Author (as opposed to Canon Author, who is awesome)
-re-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
-have obtained Tolkien's The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, but I haven't yet managed to get farther than the Introduction

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I am a little embarrassed by this, but I just finished Best New Paranormal Romance. It was not bad, though I still can't stand Catherine Asaro's stuff -- at least no sparkly unicorns appeared in this one. Several stories were quite good (Claudia O'Keefe, Delia Sherman, Heather Shaw, Sandra McDonald), and a couple I'd read before and liked (Bear's "Follow Me Light" and Hand's "Calypso in Berlin").

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, for the first time. A very strange book indeed.
Paradise Lost, not for the first time. Even stranger.
Diana Wynne Jones, Enchanted Glass (in an ARC). Only half-way through, but for my money it's her best since The Merlin Conspiracy. I prefer standalones.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Oh, excellent!

Nine

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I've just finished Hilary McKay's Indigo's Star (wonderful) and Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (ggod, though I don't see why people talk about it as something exceptional). Currently reading When it Changed SF anthology, and waiting for durham_rambler to finish the second Larsson book (so I must have liked it really, mustn't I?).

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

I don't see why people talk about it as something exceptional

Two reasons: Lisbeth Salander.

The Girl Who Played with Fire is even better.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I couldn't tell you most of the titles without moderately serious inquiry, but I do remember authors.
I read a couple of V.I. Warshawski mysteries. The titles tend to blur. I started the series this fall, and I'm finding it a deeply comforting counterweight to libertarian adventure stories.
Titles of the Brother Cadfael mysteries don't blur, but it's more significant that I read three of the early ones than which ones they were.
I also reread a couple of the Aubrey and Maturin books after "The Reverse of the Medal," when it feels like they're sailing on and on from one anecdote to another.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I couldn't tell you most of the titles without moderately serious inquiry, but I do remember authors.

Er, yes. I do know that Warshawski, Cadfael, Aubrey, and Maturin, are not authors. None of them. You probably knew that too.

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

I read "Microcosmic God" by Theodore Sturgeon last night. The science...it burns...

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Brust. Last week I also read Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes and Curtain Up and Nora Roberts Bed of Roses but this week, all Brust all the time.

[khava.livejournal.com]

I have been reading my students' draft papers. I don't recommend it.

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

Book amnesia is why I do the "50 Books" posts. :)

What I'm currently reading:

Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day - Hertzberg & Francois
Young Men and Fire - Maclean
Boneshaker - Priest
Ariel - Boyett
The Strength of Her Regard - Powers

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I've been reading Karin Lowachee's space opera trilogy, which is less a trilogy than three independent novels with different protagonists whose storylines occasionally intersect. I just finished Katherine Beutner's first novel, Alcestis, in which the heroine from Greek myth known for sacrificing her life for her husband's becomes Persephone's lover in the land of the dead. I've wanted something like a Mary Renault novel focused on women, and specifically on female relationships including erotic and romantic ones, for years and years, and this almost fits the bill.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

I've been rereading instead of reading recently.

I recently finished rereading Cherryh's Foreigner books.

I then flipped through Issola and Dzur -- I didn't want to get sucked into even just skimming, let alone rereading.

I am now rereading Shards of Honor.

[eredien]

I'm reading:

- Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #24 - "Dusking" was excellent. There were also some other great stories in there, including a little flash fiction ("The Magician's Umbrella") that was pretty sweet and adorable.
- Carrie's Story: An Erotic S/M Novel - book group novel. Didn't like it except for hot lesbian sex scenes, disrecommended
- Cookbooks and recipies of all kinds.
- "The Magic of Go" (really, I am rereading the introduction to this for the fifth time because I keep falling asleep as I am reading it, but I feel like I should at least make a token effort to understand the history and structure of the go-playing world).
- A lot of webcomics, specifically "Wondermark" and "Housepets!"
- I am also doing research for two stories.

[tiamat360.livejournal.com]

I haven't had much time, but with the holidays coming up (and a trip out to CA planned), I picked up a compilation of Sherlock Holmes stories. I only read the Adventures, when I was in middle school or so, and I really want to reread them and more of the series.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

I'm reading Civilization: A New History of the Western World (2006) by Roger Osborne. A brilliant overview, lucid, thorough, nonideological, revelatory; the writing is both graceful and concise.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

I just finished Kit Whitfield's In Great Waters. Alternate history England with mermaids. Only that makes it sound fluffy, and it's very much not. Not quite as compelling as her first book, but also didn't throw me into a depressive funk, so I didn't mind too much. (Still grim.)

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Romances. Also, the Crimean War, aka It's All About the Cholera.

[wherdragon.livejournal.com]

The Magic of Recluse by L.E. Modesitt

My sister handed it to me at Thanksgiving and said "I liked this, maybe you will too!", and why yes, yes I did.