Whatcha reading at the moment?

[sturmgewehr]

OK I am done with The Lord of the Flies, now I have a couple of books I consider reading:

1. Le Pà¨re Goriot by Honore de Balzac, of course I will read it in my mother tongue since I can't speak neither write French.

2. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, of course I will read it in my mother tongue since I don't speak Spanish either.

3. Hasta la Vista by Petro Marko which is written in my mother language.

I haven't decided yet which one to read.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Stephen King's latest, 11/22/63

 

[Anachronous Rex]

Enders Game and Speaker for the Dead

 

[Dean]

1. I recently completed D.H. Lawrence's Women In Love. All 2000 pages or so of it. It seems to me that he had a (sometimes irritating) tendency to ramble, e..g. drag out a single plot or description for as long as he conceivably could. So that explains the frankly insane length.
   
   
2. I am currently rather entrenched in Phillip Pullman's epic of childhood fiction novels: His Dark Materials. Currently reading the second book: The Subtle Knife.

^^I could quite easily write an essay length post on the latter of the above, but I will simply say this; in my opinion, this trilogy constitutes the only books that (to me) should never be omitted from any reading of his works. While I enjoyed Pullman's later works too, these are my favourites, and the ones he is best known for.

 

[Daealis]

After I finished the latest book from Stephen Hawking, I've grabbed a copy of the biography of Steve Jobs. Haven't gone past the intro, but I'm expecting it to be an interesting read.

 

[australopithecus]

Virolution - Frank Ryan
Screenwipe - Charlie Brooker

 

[theyounghistorian77]

Currently reading: Ian Kershaw "Making friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry and the Roots of Appeasement", Eric Johnson's "The Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans" and also his "What we Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany"

Also i plan to take on Mitchell Heismann's 1905 page long "Suicide note" in full which if you remember was dropped in these forums a few months ago.

 

[Laurens]

Bad Science - Ben Goldacre

 

[Dean]

MY READING LIST FOR THE NEXT FEW MONTHS:

• 1. The three-in-one edition of The Lord Of The Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
  2. Rogue States, by Noam Chomsky
  3. Steven Pinker's influential work on psychology, The Blank Slate
  4.Conversations on Consciousness and Consciousness: An Introduction by Sue Blackmore
  5. Lawrence M. Krauss's latest published work, A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing
  6. I plan on re-reading 1984, and will also read The Road To Wigam Pier in due course
  7. The 1896<i></i> book: The Island Of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells
  8. Finally, "The Artilect War: A Bitter Controversy Surrounding Whether Or Not We Should Build God-Like, Massively Intelligent Machines"

^ All of which are either ordered or will be soon. I also hope to read C. S. Bair's book, Money For Nothing, e.g. the first of his Dark Elf Ninja trilogy based on the video-game "Halycyon", albeit it's proving difficult to get. I think I will delve a little deeper into some philosophical and historical works, possibly some more Chomsky, Hobesbawm, and others, though I'm not looking into that much yet.

 

[Prolescum]

Road Sign Hank by Bryan Lunduke
Caliban by Roger MacBride Allen
Issue #93 of The Walking Dead. Well, I'm saving it 'til the next time I have spaghetti and meatballs.

 

[australopithecus]

Nerd do Well -Simon Pegg
Tweeting the Universe - Marcus Chown & Govert Schilling
Quantum - Jim Al-Khalili

 

[Neanderthal]

The Fallacy of Fine Tuning, ->Victor Stenger
Thinking, Fast and Slow, ->Daniel Kahnemann
The Infinity Puzzle: Quantum field... ->Frank Close
Innumeracy: ..... -> John Allen Paulos
Your Inner Fish: .... -> Neil Shubin
The Beginning of Infinity: ... -> David Deutsch
A Universe From Nothing ... -> Lawrence Krauss
Who's in Chanrge? -> Michael S. Gazzaniga
Whose Word Is It?... -> Bart D. Ehrman

 

[The Felonius Pope]

Currently I am finishing Nicholas Riasonovsky's book 'A History Of Russia' and will soon be reading the autobiography

'I. Asimov'.

 

[Laurens]

Supersense - Bruce Hood

Its a really interesting book about the psychology behind superstition, I'm enjoying it for that, although I cannot help but feel that his aim is a bit all over the place with this one; at the end of one chapter he congratulates sceptics for making it this far in the book (which made me feel a bit irritated because of his assumption that a sceptic wouldn't want to read about why we're superstitious) and at the end of another chapter he (in reference to Dan Dennett) states that by the end of the book he hopes we should stop being 'Brights' or 'Supers' and become 'SuperBrights' - but hang on he already stated that this book wasn't particularly aimed at the sceptic? (I'm also weary about his encouragement to accept our tendencies toward superstition).

Other than that this book is full of insight into the psychology behind superstition and I'd recommend it for that reason.

 

[australopithecus]

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

 

[australopithecus]

Cosmos - Carl Sagan.

 

[Logic-Nanaki]

Math and Physics. that's all I get time for to read now. Not all would agree on this, but school is fun

 

[scalyblue]

I'm taking a break from my Wheel of Time re-reads (gotta be prepped for book 14 coming out in january!) and reading boneshaker by Cheri Priest.

It's so steampunk it's even printed in brown!

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

The Fabric of The Cosmos - Brian Greene

I'm really enjoying it, finding that I am understanding some concepts that seemed extremely alien to me beforehand. My only quibble is that he incessantly uses Simpsons, X-Files and Star Wars characters and scenarios to explain certain concepts - which comes across as a little bit patronizing.

Yes, it's a great follow-up to his The Elegant Universe (I skipped the middle book).

I wish I just had a small handful. Here's most of my queue:

I can relate to that - I've got a similar size bookcase of books yet to be read, if I could just concentrate. I've taken so long to read Asking The Right Questions that I've forgotten what the earlier chapters were about - I'll probably have to re-read it, along with a number of other books.

I'm comparatively boring. Just reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the third time :lol:

"Three is a magic number."

Read it when I was a teenager - along with his other books. Always worth a re-read.

I can relate to this, I'm currently part way through several books that I've put on hold for a while:

The Ancestors Tale - Dawkins (this has been on the go for months, it's a mighty long book!)
Why I Became An Atheist - John W. Loftus (the best counter Christian apologetics book I've come across, but not really one that is easy to read from cover to cover, it's more like a reference book)
Bad Science - Ben Goldacre
The Origin of Life - Paul Davies
Lost Christianities - Bart D. Ehrman

I've got Dawkins' book as a ebook, which I've yet to read - along with "Unweaving" and "Climbing".

I have the first edition of Bad Science - fortunately, the missing chapter is available online free-of-charge.

Paul Davies' books are always worth a read - his Are We Alone? was interesting, if a bit depressing.

I've got Bart Ehrman's God's Problem and Jesus Interrupted.

I can't really read anything nowadays because I have depression and it is fucking up my concentration, I'm pretty sure lacking concentration is also manifesting in my posts.

I understand how you feel - my concentration seems to have dissipated over the past couple of years whilst looking after Mum (Alzheimer's) - quite possible due to a certain amount of depression over it all.

Currently reading Bad Science (by Ben Goldacre) on Kindle and Lucifer's Hammer (by Larry Niven) as an actual book.

Bad Science is entertaining and a real eye-opener even for someone who thought the world of pseudoscience had nothing shocking left to offer.

Lucifer's Hammer is about a comet strike on Earth. It's a bit dated-it was written (I think) before they even knew about the Chixulub impact and the environmental damage that caused. But it nevertheless portrays a grim look at the aftermath of such an event, how civilisation basically collapses and how much damage the tidal waves cause in the event of a sea impact. It's unrealistic in that it isn't as extreme as we now know an impact would be. Other than that, I have to say I don't connect with the characters very well but it's still fairly entertaining.

Niven and Pournelle did a similar book together called Footfall - involving an alien race using an asteroid as a weapon to conquer Earth.

Their best book - for me - was The Mote In God's Eye: the seminal work on first contact.

Seeing all the things they predicted - PDAs, the internet, etc - is amazing, given it was written in the mid seventies...!

Now reading Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. I'm only on the prologue now, but already I get the feeling this is going to be an interesting book.

Always been meaning to read Diamond's books - must get round to them...

1984 - No idea why it's taken me this long to get around to reading it, but better late than never.

The oldies are the best - Wells, Verne, etc.

And Virolution was an eye-opener.

And any of Sagan's books are worth reading.

@Dean

The Blank Slate was fascinating - try his later works too.

I'm looking forward to Krauss' book coming out as a paperback. I'd like to read his Atom book as well.

@Neanderthal

Neil Shubin's book was good.

I hear Kahnemann's one is good too - particularly the first half.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Laurens]

I've almost finished 'The Demon-Haunted World' by Carl Sagan. It's fucking brilliant - that's all I can say.