What are you reading now - and then

I know - another arty-farty thread. But hey we've had movies and music and stuff so why not let us know what your choice of reading is? What papers do you read - if any? What is the book you are presently reading? What type of books do you like and why? And what book perhaps most changed your life or had the greatest impact on you?

I'll kick-off by saying I'm presently reading Orlando Figes' history of the Crimean War "Crimea" and this morning spent an hour reading the Guardian, The Independent and the Telegraph.

i am reading all of the horus heresy novels from the black library and just got my Grey Knights omnibus book .. i mostly read warhammer 40k stuff these days ...

I'm almost finished with the third book from "A Song of Ice and Fire" (The HBO series Game of Thrones got me into it). It's a great series, although frustrating. The protagonists' family cannot catch a break, for every good thing that happens to them, a dozen horrible things go against them.

I don't read papers much except USA Today from time to time. I do read a lot of magazines, mostly car related (Car and Driver, Road & Track, Motortrend) and have recently started reading some gun mags to get some more info on my new hobby.

As far as a book changing my life.....I would have to go for The DaVinci Code, simply because before I read that book I hadn't read a book for several years and it really got me interested in them again. Since then (around 2005-2006), I've read hundreds of books!

"Andrew Jackson - American Lion" by Jon Meacham

Recently finished The Heptameron by Margueritte de Navarre and now on the Decameron by Boccaccio.

My reading is inconsistent - sometimes dozens of books in a few months and then nothing for months. Stacked beside my bed are Nostromo by Joseph Conrad, The Red and The Black by Stendahl, and 1434 by Gavin Menzies which continues his theory that the Chinese influenced the burst in European navigation that resulted in the colonization of the 'New World', the european Renaissance period, etc.

Currently reading "Squadie" by Steven McLaughlin.
Passed the CIC at 31 = Respect!

I'm impressed that The Da Vinci Code made you want to read again - and that you've since read hundreds of books. That's brilliant. Have to admit it was a compelling read - so much so i was reading it one day walking down the street and went straight into a lamp post.

My most recent fiction was a book called "Alma Cogan" by Gordon Burn (about a british singer from the 1950s).

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Originally Posted by Anubis1779

As far as a book changing my life.....I would have to go for The DaVinci Code, simply because before I read that book I hadn't read a book for several years and it really got me interested in them again. Since then (around 2005-2006), I've read hundreds of books!

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Given that you liked the DaVinci Code, I'd like to recommend Umberto Eco's book Foucault's Pendulum which is one of my all-time favourite books. Conspiracies, the Catholic Church, the Templars, the Merovingians, satanic cults.............it's in there!

Foucoult's Pendulum is brilliant. Gotta read it again. Friend of mine even made a trek to that french village where all the secrets are supposed to be.

For the last several days, I've mainly been reading the posts on here, most of which are highly entertaining. Later today I'll probably be reading a novel by Stephen Coonts who wrote Flight of the Intruder which subsequently became a movie starring Brad Johnson. I've been reading a lot of erotic fiction lately, mainly at Literotica.

I will read the Sunday edition of my local paper as well as the daily news digest on Yahoo, if I'm feeling pretty good on a given day, but my real passion is reading about history, particularly of the industrial culture.

I mostly read words and sentences... Occasionally a paragraph.

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Originally Posted by Prospero

Foucoult's Pendulum is brilliant. Gotta read it again. Friend of mine even made a trek to that french village where all the secrets are supposed to be.

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If I recall that's Renne le Chateau?

I've read it three - i think the only book I've ever read three times. The Name of the Rose and Baudolino are also fantastic. As someone who is very into history and culture, his writing fulfills my need for titillation and knowledge at the same time - LOL!

Yep - Name of the Rose i liked but couldn't get on with Baudalino. Yes it was Rennes le Chateau. TI went there once also - just passing through. Had a strange atmosphere.

Eco wrote a factual book about medieval ideas - useful background to The Name of The Rose and has written lots of other great books of essays. Also two wonderful illustrated art books - On Beauty and On Ugliness. Very fitting for this place!

Loved Name of the Rose, but, sorry to admit, I never got all the way through Foucault's Pendulum.

Currently reading Galore by Michael Crummey. It spans three or four generations of Newfoundlanders (known to themselves as livyers). It's got some very strong women characters and is peppered with Newfoundland's own special brand of magical realism. It's a good read. Hope to finish it this weekend.

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Originally Posted by Anubis1779

I'm almost finished with the third book from "A Song of Ice and Fire" (The HBO series Game of Thrones got me into it). It's a great series, although frustrating. The protagonists' family cannot catch a break, for every good thing that happens to them, a dozen horrible things go against them.

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Dude I am just past halfway through the exact same book, thats pretty funny. I got into it for the same reason even. That show on HBO was awesome and that led me to the books. I bought the 4th one already so I can start right up after I finish this one.

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Originally Posted by Nashvegas

Dude I am just past halfway through the exact same book, thats pretty funny. I got into it for the same reason even. That show on HBO was awesome and that led me to the books. I bought the 4th one already so I can start right up after I finish this one.

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I just bought the box set of the first 4 and the 5th one got here last week. Based on my friend who has read them all, he needs to hurry up and finish the last two.....

I am already sad that I have to wait for the last 2 books. If you look at when they were written, it's something like 4-5 years between each edition so far too. I almost got the boxed set when I was like 3/4 done the first book, but I didn't want to wait for it to get here, and walmart had each book for 33% off so I just got them there. I can't wait for season 2 of the show too.

Every day I 'read' the Guardian, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, the New York Times, and BBC News -and check them on a regular basis if I am free during the day -but by 'read' I mean selectively. The advantage of the internet versions is that I don't have to pay for the hard copy of something of which I only have an interest in a half, if that -I don't buy a Sunday paper precisely because I would throw away more than two-thirds of it.

Nostromo is one of the finest novels in English; I used to read it every summer but haven't read it in recent years, but I did go back to Under Western Eyes, one of my favourites; and read The Shadow-Line when a tv series loosely based on it was broadcast earlier this year on the BBC. Currently reading White Mule by William Carlos Williams.

I should put in a good word for the late WG Sebald, who was killed in a road accident a few years ago. He taught translation studies at the Universty of East Anglia, and wrote four novels which deal with the experience of being German in the 20th century -The Emigrants, Vertigo, The Rings of Saturn, and Austerlitz. He has a special way of interposing real documents (photos, bills from hotels and cafes) with his narrative, some of which seems to be drawn from his own life (his portrait is on the cover of Austerlitz) so that there are times when its hard to know what is real and what is fiction.

I'm reading a book been out a few years... "The Ethical Slut - A guide to infinite sexual possibilities" By Easton and Liszt... Living an interesting single life, Andy Warhol's quote "Sex is messy..." often rings true. My attempts at grown up conscientious interpersonal life has at times blown up in my face.... ouch, and "messy"! Trying to figure my place, boundaries, transparencies, and being good to those I allow close... while letting them be good to me. Time will tell...

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Originally Posted by Prospero

Foucoult's Pendulum is brilliant. Gotta read it again. Friend of mine even made a trek to that french village where all the secrets are supposed to be.

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I'd also echo that, and The Name of the Rose was in its own way every bit as brilliant.

I take The Guardian on a daily basis - as an annual subscriber it saves 33% - and The Observer on Sundays. I also subscribe to BBC History Magazine and Acoustic, a UK specialist guitar mag to keep me up to date with new acoustic guitars, amps, accessories etc.

I tend to have several books on the go at any one time. Right now I'm re-reading A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor, just for the pleasure of the prose, plus John Keegan's military history of The American Civil War, Hart and Steel's Passchendaele and for fiction, the current Booker winner, The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson.

Influential books would include almost anything by Dickens, and for inspiration, always poetry - Burns, Hughes, TS Eliot, Yeats, Hardy, Whitman, Heaney, Larkin - the list goes on for ever. In the factual sphere it would have to be E F Schumacher's Small is Beautiful, published in the 70s and imo pretty much the ur-text for the green and environmentally aware world we now live in.

As of now I am been reading texnologiya vlasti by abduraxman avtorxanov and re-reading pillars of salt by fadia faqir

I have John Keegan's The Illustrated Face of Battle - a great read!

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Originally Posted by runningdownthatdream

I have John Keegan's The Illustrated Face of Battle - a great read!

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:iagree: It certainly is. He is without peer imo as a military historian with a gift for explaining tactics for the layman.

And i read Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts and Between The Woods and the water a few years ago. Wonderful writing. Wonder if the trilogy will ever be completed since he is now dead (a manuscript on his computer or in his desk hopefully!)

His other travel books are also great

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Originally Posted by robertlouis

:iagree: It certainly is. He is without peer imo as a military historian with a gift for explaining tactics for the layman.

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Even better than Liddell Hart!?!?

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Originally Posted by Prospero

And i read Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts and Between The Woods and the water a few years ago. Wonderful writing. Wonder if the trilogy will ever be completed since he is now dead (a manuscript on his computer or in his desk hopefully!)

His other travel books are also great

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His powers of description are wonderful, and the evocation of a world about to vanish forever (the books are about a walk he made as a young man all the way from England to Istanbul in the 1930s) is somehow very moving.

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Originally Posted by runningdownthatdream

Even better than Liddell Hart!?!?

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Now that's a tough one, but I think that I prefer the liveliness of Keegan to Hart's strictly accurate but rather dry accounts.

Maybe we should take our discussion about the relative merits of military historians offline and into PMs before we bore everyone else rigid! :)

Naaahhhh.... it's all good. Keep it in the open.

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Originally Posted by Prospero

I know - another arty-farty thread. But hey we've had movies and music and stuff so why not let us know what your choice of reading is? What papers do you read - if any? What is the book you are presently reading? What type of books do you like and why? And what book perhaps most changed your life or had the greatest impact on you?

I'll kick-off by saying I'm presently reading Orlando Figes' history of the Crimean War "Crimea" and this morning spent an hour reading the Guardian, The Independent and the Telegraph.

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im reading this thread like everyone else lol what r ya new?

Well I am done with the Crimea and am now reading two 9/11 associated books.
"The 9/11 Wars" by Jason Burke - quite possibly the best "from the ground' look at the overall impacts internationally of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath. Burke is a reporter for the Observer and Guardian in London (if you have a Kindle you can sample the opening chapters on that). It sits comfortably alongside "The Looming Tower" by Laurence Wright, a majestic study of the birth and rise of al-Queda.

And also a fiction about the creation of a memorial to the 9/11 victims "The Submission" by Amy Waldman.

Just finished The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima. I probably missed all the nuances but it was an enjoyable read and something that would have been even better read under a palm tree on a tropical beach. Back to Gavin Menzies!

I've just finished reading The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. One of it's main themes is sexual idenity so I'd be interested to hear from other HA members what they thought of the book.

Conundrum by Jan Morris - a wonderful exploration of transexuality by a brilliant writer. Ill post an extract later.

Daniel Yergin: The Quest....

Is it as good as his earlier book, "The Prize" Stavros?

art of war is a book everybody should read. Read the cover so far

Zen Enlightenment: Origins and Meaning
by Heinrich Dumoulin

Just discovered a copy of "Last Exit to Brooklyn" in my library and will start it tonight.

Trainspotting.
Great film, irritating to get through, book.

Just finished "Reamde" by Neal Stephenson....