What are you reading?

[Kinsao]

I think this thread disappeared with the Serious Discussions, so I thought it would be nice to have one again.

Admittedly, for some years I haven't had so much time to read, and would only read in the bath! But recently I thought I want to make more effort to educate myself, and do some more reading!

Apart from the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary, which I am always reading ... at the moment I am reading 'Evolving the Mind: On the nature of matter and the origin of consciousness', by A. G. Cairns-Smith. It's really interesting!

After that I've got something on philosophy and a book on Art Nouveau lined up, but after that I really wanna get the latest book of Murakami short stories.

 

[Mycernius]

I thought something similar was in Chit-chat? Oh well, no harm in another one. Can always merge them if the other one is found.
Currently I have just finished reading Phantom by Terry Goodkind and started Out By Natsuo Kirino. My work book is The History of God by Karen Armstrong. There are a few more that I just dip into on occassion, plus the various Japanese language books I have. I have always read more than one book at anytime. Each one to suit the mood I'm in.

 

[JimmySeal]

How did you read in the bath Didn't your books get soggy? I've seen books with plastic pages for reading in the bath, but they're a rarity.

Right now, I'm reading Ring by Koji Suzuki and Shouting Out Love at the Center of the World by Kyoichi Katayama in Japanese, and A Son of the Circus by John Irving in English.

I ordered Kokoro by Natsume Soseki and the first half of Norwegian Wood by Murakami last night, and I'm looking forward to reading them. I've never read anything by either author before.

 

[leonmarino]

Right now, I'm reading Ring by Koji Suzuki and Shouting Out Love at the Center of the World by Kyoichi Katayama in Japanese, and A Son of the Circus by John Irving in English.

I saw the TV drama version of "Shouting Out etc.".. Pretty good! I hope the book is just as good! Or even better!

I just finished reading ﾂ「窶ｹﾃ?ﾅ?tﾅｽ窶ｺﾂ」ﾂ（窶堋ｫ窶堙ｱ窶堋ｩ窶堋ｭ窶堋ｶﾂ） by Yukio Misima.. Man what a great book!! Very hard to put down if you know what I mean.. Before that I read ﾂ「窶ｰﾂｼ窶禿岩?堙個債絶?昶?卍」ﾂ（窶堋ｩ窶堙溪?堙ｱ窶堙娯?堋ｱ窶堋ｭ窶堙坂?堋ｭﾂ） also by Y. Misima.. Great stuff. Oh, I read the Dutch translations by the way, as my Japanese is not that good..

I start reading "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang, starts off really interesting I must say. I going on holiday tomorrow though and I'm thinking of buying a book at the airport, as this one is a bit too big for carrying comfort.. Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Mycernius]

I start reading "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang, starts off really interesting I must say. I going on holiday tomorrow though and I'm thinking of buying a book at the airport, as this one is a bit too big for carrying comfort.. Anyone have any suggestions?

I found that a very good book, I really enjoyed it. Try reading her book on Mao. That makes very interesting reading

 

[Kinsao]

I don't know how people can read more than one book at a time! (Unless one is for work, of course.) ☝ ... *sigh* Obviously I'm just not a natural multi-tasker in any sense.

I've never read anything by Soseki either and I want to.

@ Jimmy: That's easy; I have made a frame out of wire, for holding my book suspended above the bathwater, and I can view it through a periscope. The page-turning element of the device is pre-set by a timer according to the intellectual level/difficulty of the book (length of words etc...), which can occasionally cause a problem but which generally works pretty well.

 

[Ma Cherie]

I should really start reading books by Japanese authors that isn't manga. ☝ Anyways, I've been reading a book entitled The Red Carpet by Lavanya Sankaran, which is a short story book. I don't know why, but I'm kind of obessed with South Asian novels at the moment.
I've been reading alot of books lately.

 

[JimmySeal]

I saw the TV drama version of "Shouting Out etc.".. Pretty good! I hope the book is just as good! Or even better!

I caught the tail end of a video adaptation of it when they showed it at the school where I teach. I don't know if it was the TV version or some other. It was in the auditorium and the sound wasn't very good so I couldn't make out a single word.
I have mixed feelings about this book. It's kind of interesting, but I don't like the main character very much.

You must really like Y. Mishima. What does he write about?

 

[JimmySeal]

@ Jimmy: That's easy; I have made a frame out of wire, for holding my book suspended above the bathwater, and I can view it through a periscope.
The page-turning element of the device is pre-set by a timer according to the intellectual level/difficulty of the book (length of words etc...), which can occasionally cause a problem but which generally works pretty well.

Careful. I'm very gullible.

 

[leonmarino]

I have mixed feelings about this book. It's kind of interesting, but I don't like the main character very much.

Funny you mention that.. I hate the main character!! He's a total d*ck.. I thought the drama as a whole was pretty good though, and the main actress is a cutey. There's also a movie version I heard.

You must really like Y. Mishima. What does he write about?

Mishima is a weird guy.. A friend of mine recommended ﾂ「窶ｰﾂｼ窶禿岩?堙個債絶?昶?卍」 to me saying: "man, this guy is weird", and he was right. It's a semi-autobiography, about his childhood and early adolescence.. I have no clue how to describe it, but it's a twisted story about his homosexuality, fascination for torture and death, his will to die to name but a few topics. What really fascinates me is his writing style; his ability to describe events is amazing. He uses a lot of words, that result in a imaginitive pool of emotions and reality.. Great stuff.

ﾂ「窶ｹﾃ?ﾅ?tﾅｽ窶ｺﾂ」 is based on a true story.. It's really great but I don't want to spoil anything on this one! If you decide to read it, don't read the back cover of the book to see what it is about. It's best read if you know nothing about it.

 

[misa.j]

I don't know how people can read more than one book at a time!

Neither do I! Although this happpens to me sometimes; I start reading one book, stop, start reading another one, finish the second book first and go back to the original.

I just finished reading "Into The Wild" by Jon Krakauer, which was about what happened to a young man who lived on the land of Alaska and lost his life. It was very spooky.

Now, I can go back to Aldous Huxley's "Island".

 

[Ma Cherie]

Neither do I! Although this happpens to me sometimes; I start reading one book, stop, start reading another one, finish the second book first and go back to the original.
I just finished reading "Into The Wild" by Jon Krakauer, which was about what happened to a young man who lived on the land of Alaska and lost his life. It was very spooky.
Now, I can go back to Aldous Huxley's "Island".

I think alot of people do this. I know I do! I guess this happens when people try to read several books at once. I could be reading a book, but then decide to read another one. Or try to read them at the same time, like for an hour I would the first book, then for another hour I would read a second book. From what I discovered, this probably isn't a very good idea.

 

[Clawn]

Many of the books I read come from some bins outside our hospital. A local bookstore has an arrangement with the hospital and donates around 70 or so used/worn/out of date books a week.

On to the books I'm reading at the moment:

"Fail-Safe" by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler - a suspenseful book written during Cold War times that describes an inevitable, nuclear disaster.

"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand - this book was recommended to me by a good friend and I have yet to seriously dive into it.

"Sensei" by David Charney - a historically inaccurate novel about a boy's travel to manhood in Feudal Japan. This is my second time reading it, and I recommend it to anyone who likes stories of fate, love, adventure, and earth-shattering secrets.

 

[Mike Cash]

Currently reading 志摩半島殺人事件 by 内田康夫.

 

[Mamoru-kun]

The Black Tower, from Stefen King

 

[ghettocities]

I bought a book on Amazon that I really really want to read but the sellers always use slower than media mail shipping for some reason (most likely to save more money,) and it takes like 20 days to go over a few states in America. I hope I'll still be interested in reading it by the time it arrives.


Josh

 

[Flashjeff]

Well, beyond the latest and greatest manga, American superhero comics and Sports Illustrated, I haven't had time for actual books. A pity, I used to be a reading fool when I was in the Navy and underway on ships when I had nothing but time on my hands for reading.

 

[Timey]

Night - Elie Wiesel
One Soul, Many Lives - Roy Stemman

 

[El P8s]

Hey I have just finished readin "Naokos smile" by Haruki Murakami and now have just started to read on the one hand Karl Marx "Das Kapital" and on the other George Orwell 1984 but I must admit I am not so much reading both of them because I enjoy it very much but more because next year will be the year where I have to qualify myself for my "A-levels" an my major subjects are english,politik and economics and chemistry (ok chemistry doesn't quite fit in^^).So I am trying to educate myself a little.=)
It might sound odd hearing this from someone ,who's half german but I really enjoyed reading "Vaterland" by Robert Harris ,I just love the whole "what if?" scenario thing.

 

[gaijinalways]

The Black Tower series rocks, great reading and a change from King's usual horror stuff.

I just finished 'The Last Templar' (kind of like a British version of the Da Vinci Code), which was of interest to me as well as I just visited Avignon, one of the places mentioned in the Templar power struggle between the Pope, the King of France, and others.

I also want to buy and finish reading 'The Game Player', a book ( I finished the first 75 pages or so in the bookstore, but I prefer to pick up a used copy if I can since it was oroginally published in 1988) by Ian M. Bank (some of you might be familiar with his famous gothic horror classic 'The Wasp Factory') . The game player is actually part of an older sci-fi series that Bank wrote and is still planning to extend, with his next one coming out in 2008. I had read one of his murder mysteries earlier, 'The Crow Road' a few years ago, found it quite compelling, very interesting look at Scottish society and culture.

 

[xerxes99]

I'm currently reading "The curious incident of the dog in the night", and "Isaac's storm", and rereading "the Professor and the madman".

 

[Kinsao]

Art Nouveau - Alistair Duncan.

 

[Flashjeff]

Well, despite what I previously wrote, I have managed to find time to read an honest to gosh book, something that truly appeals to me: MEG, by Steve Alten who happens to have been born and still lives in the Philadelphia area, which fills me with pride.

But I digress. Meg is short for Carcharodon Megalodon, the prehistoric ancestor of the great white shark, checking in at 70 feet long, 60,000 pounds and can swallow a T-Rex whole (which one did in the prologue), making it the apex predator of all time. When a Meg, female and pregnant emerges from the Mariana Trench in the present day and proceeds to wreak havoc from the Philippines to the California coast, it's up to a former Navy deep-sea submersible pilot to find the monster and stop her rampage.

As someone who loves a good monster story, MEG is a darn good read. By the by, a big screen version of the book is slated for release in 2008.

 

[xerxes99]

MEG! I really enjoyed that one.

 

[Mycernius]

I'm in resurrection mode and I thought this would be a good one to bring back.
Currently reading Grotesque By Natsuo Kirino, she is one damn good author, Re-reading The Elder Gods by David and Leigh Eddings because I have just bought the latest of the series and I have forgotten the start. Just finished Valis by Philip K. Dick. Not the easiest book to read, mind you it was about his breakdown on 1974 put into fiction.