Public Burning by Robert Coover.

A nice long book that would keep you busy on your long flight

I'm about a third done with Richard Powers' 'Prisoner's Dilemma' and so far it seems like a really cool book. The guy has a really interesting way with words that I am enjoying quite a lot. In some ways it reminds me of Chris Ware's 'Jimmy Corrigan,' one of my favorite graphic novels. That may be a bit oversimplified though, since I think the connection between the two is simply that they both concern old men reflecting back on visits to the World's Fair.

Also read a few pages of China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, and will start it next. Starts off with a bang though, and almost has the feel of William Burroughs writing sci-fi.

I just finished up a few mystery novels by Agatha Christie. Now, I am either going to read Dune, The Alchemist or The Grapes of Wrath.

You read the one you want, but I think it's chapter three of The Grapes of Wrath; it's about two pages, and it's about a tortoise trying to cross a highway. If that two pages grabs you, read it first. Otherwise, read it last.

I'm about to finish up Deception Point by Dan Brown, so I bought a bunch of new books for the many plane rides I'll be taking this summer. These books include:

1) 1984 by George Orwell:
I've been wanting to read this one for a long time now. But now it's on my school's summer reading list so I have no excuse.

2)Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk:
This will actually be the first book I've read by this guy, but I've heard some great things about the author, and loved Fight Club the movie...

3)Life of Pi by Yann Martel:
I've heard some really great things about this one too. And it looks really interesting.

4) 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez:
With all the good things I've been hearing about this, especially here on the forums (a la Mark f!) I had to check it out.

5)The Gunslinger by Stephen King:
This is the first book of his "Dark Tower" fantasy series. I never read much King but a friend of mine reccommended the series a lot, and it looked like it could be cool.

6)Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger:
Catcher in the Rye is one of my all time favorites, so I had to try out some other works of Salinger.

I still haven't chosen the order in which I'm gonna read these, so I'd love any comments on what are people's favorites, or the order in which I should read them. Thanks.

Aside from chemistry and astronomy textbooks I'm reading the new Richard Dawkins (Selfish Gene, Blind Watchmaker), An Ancestor's Tale. It's supposedly modeled after the Canterbury Tales, and though I've never read the Canterbury Tales I don't think there's much resemblence. It's just a straightforward journey tracing our evolutionary path backwards through time, telling a different biological lesson at each stop. I'm about 200 pages into it, which is only about a third of the way. It's pretty good, though I liked some of his other books better.

I finished up my Ayn Rand phase about a month ago (after taking about 40 pages worth of notes) and decided to go with some books I'd heard were really "out there".

Will@epicquest.com by Tom Grimes - in which a spaced-out college student embarks on a quest to save the world from Information Sickness... all of it recorded on his blog. The book is subtitled (A Medicated Memoir)

Automated Alice by Jeff Noon - the back reads:

In the last years of his life, Lewis Carroll wrote a third Alice book. This mysterious work has only recently been discovered. Now, at last, the world can read about Automated Alice and her fabulous adventures in the future.

That's not quite true. "Automated Alice" was, in reality, written by Zenith O'Clock, the writer of wrongs. In the book, he propels Alice through time, tumbling from the Victorian age to the 90s.

Oh dear, that's not at all right. This trequel to "Alice and Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" was actually written by Jeff Noon, who invented Zenith O'Clock...but never mind. What Alice encounters in the automated future is mostly accidental too...a series of misadventures even weirder than your dreams.


back from Wonderland, I've moved on to more conventional titles. Currently, I'm midway through Kafka's The Trial (yes, it is amazing that I've never read it before).

I'm about to start Demian. Anyone read that? Its Hermann Hesse novel. Supposed to be damn good.

Demian is very good. It's also nice and short, a good pick for the summer. After you read that though, don't be surprised if you end up reading all the rest of his books. Almost everything Hesse wrote is great.

I'm currently reading the last book of the His Dark Materials trilogy (The Amber Spyglass).

It's a fairly big book, and I've really only just started, but I'm wondering what my next reading project will be. I don't think I'll be reading another fantasy book for another few years.

I actually just finished reading through "Black Hawk Down" I love the movie and I bought it myself and I was talking with a friend of mine about a month ago and he mentioned that he read the book and liked it much better. I agree, I thought the book was very good, it was well written and very informative. There were alot of people and events that were actually left out or blended together in the movie, I liked the factual reporting that that author did in this book.

I did not really keep to my plan for reading. Instead, in the past week, I read the Alchemist, Peril at End House, A Wrinkle in Time for the second time, and various science fiction short stories. I am currently around 100 pages in to 1984.

I just finished 1984 last night. Wow, what a disturbing book. It kept me up for hours and hours afterwards thinking about it. I guess I shouldnt have expected a happy ending. Very well done and portrayed, anyways. Anyone have any comments on the book?

Im now moving on to Life of Pi.

Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me by Marlon Brando with Robert Lindsey.

quote:

Originally posted by E.M.:
I just finished 1984 last night. Wow, what a disturbing book. It kept me up for hours and hours afterwards thinking about it. I guess I shouldnt have expected a happy ending. Very well done and portrayed, anyways. Anyone have any comments on the book?

Im now moving on to Life of Pi.

I really liked that book when I read it about a year ago. For some reason I tend to like really dark, cynical stuff. I think the idea of governments waging neverending war in order to control its population is as relevent as ever today. The Wars on Terror, Drugs, and Communism were all similar in this respect. All took real threats, exaggerated them grotesquely, and used them to control the population and do bad things they wanted to do anyways.

I'd say more, but it's been a while since I read the book.

Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations

This is my first time reading this. I'm about a tenth of the way through. I'm enjoying it.

I'm reading Sarah by J.T. LeRoy (2000). I recently read an article about this new, very young (born in 1980) author in the LA Times, and his life story captured my imagination, so I bought the book. It's an autobiographical novel, and it's a very disturbing (but compelling!) account of his experiences growing up with a very young mother who worked as a truck-stop prostitute/whore. He aspires to be like his mother, and at the age of 12, he is cross dressing and learning how to be a truck stop whore.

I don't know if I would recommend this book to anybody (it's very dark!), but I must say that I'm intrigued, and I look forward to reading more by J.T. LeRoy. I think he's a gifted writer.

Re reading war of the worlds actually with the recent movie buzz.

I'm about halfway through Pale Fire, and so far I hate it. I hated Lolita too, but I figured I should give Nabokov another chance, especially since Pale Fire has such a cool concept. I was wrong.

You hated Lolita? I would put that in the top twenty books I have ever read. What didn't you like about it?