What are you reading now?

[Sweetpea1]

The Deathly Hallows (rereading it.)

[Gizmola]

The Child in Time by Ian McEwan

[StarrieEyedKat]

A Tree Grow In Brooklyn and the Little House set.

[Glass Cowcatcher]

Iron Council! That's the only Mieville book I had trouble with - I love his stuff and I went to a book signing and he was great, a lovely bloke :) He signed a copy of "The City and the City" for me which may be my favourite book of all time. The problem is with me, not the book. I just found it tough going. Have you tried his short stories? They are amazing *Mieville fangirl*

He's a Swappie too (member of the Socialist Workers' Party).

I'm rereading Steven Poole's "Unspeak", a lot of Pratchett (just finished "Snuff", not impressed, but he has his troubles, innit) and a shitload of IRA, Angry Brigade and other communiques.

Wow JFC, that's so cool that you've actually met him. :D I've found him very influential in my own writing.

I adore authors who are good at creating a whole world out of their ass, and he's probably one of the best around right now.

His writing style is not without flaws though. I don't think he's very good at beginnings. He reminds me a lot of Stephen King, through his career: he seems to want to over-describe everything, but now he's learning to be more succinct.

Feel free to PM me if you want to get even more squeely Mieville fangirl with me :)

[Deleted07]

I won a copy of a book called "The Forsaken" by Lisa Stasse. But haven't started it yet, must get off the darn interwebs and get and read!!!

This was excellent incase anyone else wanted to give it a go!

I also just finished another one similar called "Slated" by Teri Terry. Really enthralling!

[Loveday]

As usual, I have several books going at the mo. 'Maine,' by J Courtney Sullivan, 'The Lavender Lover's Handbook,' and 'Chronicles of Fairacre' by Miss Read. The last is actually Miss Read's first three novels in one omnibus edition. English author, wrote about village life after WWII, with a real eye for characterisation and detail, and a sense of humour that often leaves me giggling uncontrollably. It's partly her fault I'm such an Anglophile. While reading about Maeve Binchy's death the other day, I found out that Miss Read had died as well, back in April. She was 98, had lived a good long life, but I was heartbroken. :cry: To console myself, I've started reading her books again, for the thousandth time.

[terranova]

Just finished reading "Niceville" by Carsten Stroud. Would be my thriller/horror/crime book of the year.

[Imora]

I am reading Escape From Camp 14 - the story of Shin Dong-hyuk's life and escape from a North Korean prison camp. It is a story everybody should know about and raises so many questions about how this can still be happening. :( :x

I am spending a relaxing day in today and I am going to wimp out and find something lighter to cheer me up.

[LilMissMetaphor]

I just finished Annabel by Kathleen Winter.

In 1968, into the devastating, spare atmosphere of the remote coastal town of Labrador, Canada, a child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor fully girl, but both at once. Only three people are privy to the secret—the baby’s parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and a trusted neighbor and midwife, Thomasina. Though Treadway makes the difficult decision to raise the child as a boy named Wayne, the women continue to quietly nurture the boy’s female side. And as Wayne grows into adulthood within the hyper-masculine hunting society of his father, his shadow-self, a girl he thinks of as “Annabel,†is never entirely extinguished.

[gimlet]

I just finished Gone Girl, which is amazing. A great book for book clubs, I thought. If you like books with unreliable narrators, this is the book for you.

I also started the second Deborah Harkness book, and I really, really, want to slap Diana into next week. Or since she's a time stepper, WWII Siberia or someplace.

[JesusFightClub]

As usual, I have several books going at the mo. 'Maine,' by J Courtney Sullivan, 'The Lavender Lover's Handbook,' and 'Chronicles of Fairacre' by Miss Read. The last is actually Miss Read's first three novels in one omnibus edition. English author, wrote about village life after WWII, with a real eye for characterisation and detail, and a sense of humour that often leaves me giggling uncontrollably. It's partly her fault I'm such an Anglophile. While reading about Maeve Binchy's death the other day, I found out that Miss Read had died as well, back in April. She was 98, had lived a good long life, but I was heartbroken. :cry: To console myself, I've started reading her books again, for the thousandth time.

Oh! My mum likes these! I remember having political difficulties but not why? I do remember they were very sweet. Perhaps I made a mistake?

I are currently reading the Morning Star pretty much exclusively:

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/

Different tendency to mine and I get in trouble from the comrades but I like it :lol:

[AtroposHeart]

Dune Messiah by Frank Hebert

[Maude]

Finishing up The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, after which I'll be starting The Wise Woman by Philippa Gregory. I'm reading through her Tudor and The Cousins' War series in chronological order.

[OddlyAmused]

I'm currently working my way through The God Delusion, Fevre Dream (by George R.R. Martin), and Life of Pi.

[Gil]

Currently reading Show Dog, Alex & Me and Eating Animals.

[phereby]

I just finished The Warmth of Other Suns, about the decade-long migration of millions of African-Americans from the American south to the north, midwest, and west. Highly recommended.

[fakepigtails73]

I'm currently reading: "Raven: The True Story of Jim Jones and the People's Temple" by Tim Reiterman.

Spellbinding. The best book on the Guyana clusterfuck that I've read so far (I've read 5 up to now). It's written by a journalist who was wounded while Jones' goons shot Congressman Leo Ryan ( a true American hero, imho, RIP) and others in cold blood, in November 1978 on a jungle airstrip. An hour later, while Reiterman and those injured lay in fear that the gunmen would return, at Jonestown the gruesome suicide-murder started. 913 dead, of those 350 children.

Mass suicide? Maybe for some, the zealot believers and the members of Jones' inner circle...But the children there couldn't decide to kill themselves, so I say that they were mass murdered. Many people over there had lost all hope, knowing that they had no way to go back to the US. No more families: either their families were with them at Jonestown or if their family members weren't part of the Temple they had no more contacts with them; no more $$ and possessions in California: gently or roughly coerced to sell their property and possessions they had to give 100% of the sale to the Temple before going to Guyana. No passports: it was taken from them as soon as they set foot in Jonestown. They were prisoners of a camp! If one was caught trying to escape by a guard he or she was beaten in front of everyone and then either stuffed in a coffin-like box for days or drugged with Thorazine to become a virtual vegetable in a special unit. A lot of PT members were seniors...

Tragedy... :cry:

There are many tapes available online of their meetings in Guyana. Crazy stuff.

[AtroposHeart]

Escape from camp 14 by Brian Harbeen.

About a man who was born and raised in a North Korean prisoner camp and escaped to the wast

[Deleted01]

Sherlock Holmes

Stolen Innocence (about a girl who was FLDS, another sect which fascinates me.)

The Favored Child by Phillipa Gregory

[keen23]

Tankborn by Karen Sandler- it's a YA sci-fi. People have had to abandon Earth and have colonized a new planet. There are three classes of "people" now- Trueborns- wealthy land owners who paid for the initial colonization, Lowborns- the working class who still have rights and control their own destiny, and GENs- not fully human who have some type of animal DNA mixed in with their human DNA, they are bred in tanks, and not born from another person/GEN, hence the title Tankborn. GENs are essentially slaves. They are assigned at age 15 to a task that they have been specially bred for- working on an assembly line, taking care of babies, etc.

The weakest part of this book is the lack of world building. You are essentially thrown into this new planet without any real reason as to how or why people came to live there 400 year ago. It's the first book in what has been planned as a trilogy.

[lilwriter85]

The God of Small Things-Arundhati Roy

[dawbs]

_The Red Tent_ by Anita Diamant

It's an enjoyable read, but I'm not sure I'm loving its 'theme' or message or what not.

(although most of the complaints in reviews are because it's 'lewd' or doesn't show enough respect to the Bible's male characters and not enough spiritual 'insight' :roll: )

[sippin0nsunshine]

Bloodlines by Richelle Mead :) I'm not usually a vampire book reader but I read part of this at the book store and just had to buy it. I'm getting the sequel (The Golden Lily) this week.

[tabitha2]

Various Discworld novels at one time,namely Men at Arms and Fifth Elephant...love me some Pratchett :)

[wtfrenchtoast]

I'm reading Prude by Carol Platt Liebau and trying not to throw it across the room. She's really big on the idea that we should go back to the times of shaming and ostracizing teen girls for having sex.