What are you reading right now?

[StPaulHusker]

Not currently reading - read it last year. But, wanted to pass it along. I thought it was an incredible book (it's written by a Holocaust survivor and is about how his experience helped him develop his theory on the meaning of one's life).

I read it in a few days - it's a fairly quick read.

Read this a couple of months ago. It's one I feel a person should have on their shelf and go back and re-read every once in a while to get some perspective of their life.

 

[The Dude]

Only 4 chapters in but it's been awesome so far. Not a long book, definitely worth a look.

 

[NUance]

^^ Just finished "Your Bible and You" by Arthur Maxwell.

v v Started reading "How the Irish Saved Civilization" by Thomas Cahill

 

[GSG]

I started reading this series last month. I'm almost finished with the 2nd book. I guess they are technically "teen fiction" but I'm not so sure about that. Basically the story is told through journals from a 12 year old boy in 1888. His parents died in a house fire and he was taken in by his father's employer, a doctor of monstrumology (yes, study of monsters). They are fast reads so far. Lots of really gory details throughout, but I am enjoying them. This guy also wrote the '5th Wave' series.

 

[NUance]

Last four books I read:

The Complete Biblical Library: Genesis volume. Bible commentary (in English) with original text in Hebrew provided for reference.

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"Stoned, Naked, and Looking in My Neighbor's Window", compiled by Gabriel Jeffrey. It's a book of hundreds of on-line confessions about all sorts of crap. For example:

847385072

Today, while drinking at happy hour at an undisclosed chain restaurant, a disgruntled psychotic patron threw a bar stool at the bartender. In the shuffle he lost his prescription barbiturates. I stole them and just swallowed one. I hope he didn't need those pills to stop him from killing someone.

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"The Picture Bible." It's the comic book version of the bible. Not half bad, actually. It only takes a week or two to read, instead of the four or five months it takes me to read the whole bible.

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"The Little Book of Answers" by Doug Lennox.

It provides the origins of hundreds of words and sayings. For example:

Why when someone dies do we say "he bought the farm"?

During the second World War, airmen introduced the term "he bought the farm" after a pilot was shot down. The expression caught on with all the armed service and meant that if you gave your life for your country, your impoverished family would receive insurance money for your death, which would help pay off the morgage on the family farm. Death for your country meant you were "buying the farm" for your parents.

 

[huKSer]

Re reading Asimiov's Foundation series

 

[B.B. Hemingway]

Nuance,

What did you think of "How the Irish Saved Civilization"?

 

[NUance]

Nuance,

What did you think of "How the Irish Saved Civilization"?

It was okay, not great. But okay. There was a great discussion of St. Patrick in the book. But there wasn't much else that I found interesting. It was a fairly short book though, so it was worth the time spent reading it.

 

[NUance]

"Under the Banner of Heaven," by Jon Krakauer. Pretty good read. I liked his book "Into the Wild" also. I might read some of his other stuff as well.

"The Fear Index," by Robert Harris. A little bit farfetched. Like Terminator meets Liar's Poker.

 

[knapplc]

I decided to read JRR Tolkien again. I used to read LOTR every January, but it got so I could quote pages of it at a time and it began to become a chore. I stopped many years ago, but decided to re-read the whole thing this year.

I started nine or ten days ago with the Silmarillion. It's still as dark and depressing as it always seemed, but it's going much quicker for some reason. I'm reading about 30 minutes a night and I'm already halfway done. I'll pause when I get to the parts better fleshed-out in Unfinished Tales and Lost Tales I & II. There's some really good stuff in all three compilations.

 

[ColoNoCoHusker]

A couple I bought when they were first published:

Rereading this one:



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrique%27s_Journey

Reading this for the first time; amazing the similarities to 80 years ago...

https://books.google.com/books/about/Decade_of_Betrayal.html?id=f0ftCgAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&hl=en

 

[Mierin]

Been meaning to read this book for a long time. Now I finally have the motivation. If you've read it, don't spoil the ending for me. If I were to guess how it ends, I'd say probably with a semicolon.

It's a choose your own adventure book.

 

[The Big Nebrowski]

Richard Wright, "The Outsider". IMO, his best novel, over "Native Son", and, "Black Boy". It's big time novel on the level of any great author, and Wright, in the anthologies of American literature, is grossly underrated and I would suspect that is because he was black.

Wright, growing up in the Jim Crow South--had an incredibly hard life from start to finish. He endured constant semi-starvation up thru his 20s. He did enjoy a brief run of noteriety and some financial rewards, but still died rather broken in his early 50s.

 

[B.B. Hemingway]

Read it through a few times as a kid. Came across it the other day at a bookstore, and grabbed it. Look forward to knocking it out again one of these evenings.

 

[Enhance]

Started reading this after a tweet knapplc posted in the P&R forums.

As a white male, born in the late 80s, in a middle class neighborhood, racism and segregation seemed like a problem of yesteryear that wasn't an issue anymore. Naturally, as I got older, I learned a lot more about how this isn't the case, and this book is a real eye opener. It helps put into perspective how hard it has been, even in the 21st century, to undo centuries of racism.