Oh hay, what books are you gals/guys reading?

I just finished The Audacity of Hope & The Omnivore's Dilemma. Now it's on to On Food & Cooking.

see latest post in recent purchases thread

Getting involved in a book club has recently motivated me to read more novels. The latest book I read was The Sisters Brothers which actually got me interested into looking at more Westerns. The next one on my list is The Book Thief.

Other books I read recently:
American Gods (this was the book I recommended reading for the group)
Ireland (well, part of it)

Books I'll be reading in the near future:
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Dubliners

I'll need a new recommendation for when 2013 rolls around.

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-International-Relations-Theories-Approaches/dp/0199285438

Or rather, I should start reading it at some point. Bluh.

I just finished Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand. It was weird. Good, but weird.

I recently finished the Hunger Games books, so I started re-reading the Harry Potter series. My friend wants me to start on the Dark Tower books while I await the next George R. R. Martin book, but I keep putting it off because I hated the first one so much. We'll see...

Now reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Was recommended to me by a female colleague who's very much into reading... Apparently we've very different tastes. I should have gotten the hint when she said she couldn't get through the first story of a Harlan Ellison short story collection I've lent her earlier. Also almost finished reading The Tunnels of Cu Chi: A harrowing account of America's "Tunnel Rats" in the underground battlefields of Vietnam by Tom Mangold & John Penycate. That one's actually interesting.

The first one is rather different from the other six. However, if you really hated the first one that much, I have difficulty seeing you enjoying the others. I liked the second one the most overall, and while I enjoyed 1 more than, say, Wizard and Glass, it is probably on the lower end if I had to pick one, just because it's more of a character study book and Roland suffers enough of boring Protagonist Syndrome to make for a good character study.

Got a few on the go on my Kindle. I'm a few pages into Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and I can tell this is going to be a tough read, but I'll give it a go because one his essays literally changed my life.

Ah, yes, and also the Sandman comics.

On the to-buy list:

NON-FICTION:

Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy.
Ogilvy on Advertising by David Oglivy.
The Greatest Direct Mail Sales Letters of All Time: Why They Succeed. How They're Created. How You Can Create Great Sales Letters, Too by Richard S. Hodgson

FICTION:

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.
Embassytown by China Mieville.
Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled by Harlan Ellison.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (I've read the book off the screen a few years back, want to re-read it in paperback).

He told me to at least try to get through the second book and if I didn't like it after that, then I should stop. It's been awhile since I read the first book, so maybe I would like it now!

I'm in the third part of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, called The System of the World. The trilogy is set across the 1600s and 1700s. Of course it is fiction, but the setting is historical, and so it makes for an interesting read in multiple regards. Each third of the Cycle is about 900 pages, and it is in the same universe as the 900ish page Cryptonomicon. So much good reading.

Oooh, I've been meaning to check those out. Now that you mention it, I might just as well get Quicksilver instead of Snow Crash. Not to diminish the latter book's awesomeness, but unfortunately I live in a world where $ and time to spend on books is limited.

Here's an idea: the ideal version of heaven? A library. With the full-immersion option. Hmm.

Tonight, in our DID YOU KNOW? featurette we have a very special guest, Neal Stephenson!

DID YOU KNOW that his Kickstarter project for a video game with realistic sword fighting techniques had been successfully funded on Kickstarter? Yay!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang

THE POETICS OF SPACE

Star Wars EU: Legacy Of The Force - Fate Of The Jedi, Book 4 ("Backlash")

**** yeah, Neil Gaiman.