Just this morning finished The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa.

Set in Angola, narrated by a gecko lizard, but not as gimmicky as you might think. Liked it a lot: links relationships, politics and philosophy in a light but thoughtful way.

I just finished Thomas Wright's History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art. I've also started on José Donoso's novel The Garden Next Door, but have made little headway into it yet.

As usual, I'm reading several books at once:

Fiction:
Ship of Magic, the first book of Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy.
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
Life A User's Manual by George Perec

Non-fiction:
David Herman's Story Logic
John Deely's Basics of Semiotics 5th edition

I'm reading the Collected Stories of Flannery O'Conner. Yeah, they are pretty awesome.

I just finished Caleb Carr's "The Alienist," which I liked a lot, and before that, the first book in the "Sister Fevrisse" series of medieval mysteries by Margaret Frazer, called "The Novice's Tale." This morning I started Un Lun Dun by China Mieville, and I'm also reading "The Culture Clash: A Revolutionary New Way to Understanding the Relationship Between Humans and Domestic Dogs," which has been recommended by biscotti over at mefi.

These are at the top of my to-read stack, in no particular order:

Catherynne Valente, In the Night Garden

Elizabeth Hand, Generation Loss

Felix Gilman, Thunderer

Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

R.A. MacAvoy, Lens Of The World

Richard Morgan, The Steel Remains

Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates

Robert McCammon, Boys Life

Andrew Taylor, Bleeding Heart Square

Jon Fasman, The Geographer's Libary

Michael Flynn, Eifelhem

Just finished reading The Paradox Of Choice which was really, really interesting. On my daily commute I'm reading Selling Usability - User Experience Infiltration Tactics and at home I've got The Wisdom Of Crowds on the go.

I'm reading a historical novel about a robber baron family in Pittsburgh called Valley of Decision by Marcia Davenport. The cool thing about it for me is that the fictional family lives one street over and two blocks down from my house and that my house was brand new when the novel starts (1870) so it gives me an idea of what the lives of the original owner's of my house were like. The owners of my house were quite a few steps down the ladder from the owners of the steel mill in the book but before cars everyone from different economic levels lived within walking distance of each other.

From what I've read, Davenport was a decent historian and the novel is pretty accurate. Sadly, the block of Western avenue that the family lives on has transformed in the 20th century from rows of stately Victorian mansions to a row of blank concrete warehouses. There's a very melodramatic movie version of the first part of the book staring Greer Garson and Gregory Peck.

I tend to have a few books going at a time - and take for ever to get through them. Right now I'm reading Gus Russo's the Outfit about the history of Chicago's crime underworld and a collection of short stories by Anton Chekhov. I don't read much fiction, but I'm a big fan of the few Chekhov short stories I've read, so I'm really enjoying this collection.

Lost In The Meritocracy by Walter Kirn

I started reading Jane Eyre at 1 a.m. Hard to believe: I've never read this before!

On my bedstand:

Helen Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets

Don Delillo, Falling Man

Bill Bryson, Neighter Here nor There

Stephen Pinker, The Stuff of Thought

and a passel of write-your-own-wedding-ceremony guides. Most have been useless for our purposes.

I just finished re-reading Catcher in the Rye for the first time in years. I love it even more than I remembered, and I finally saw more of the subtext and implied plotline, which had previously been opaque to me.

Uhhh, books directly in front of me that I could be considered reading:

Templar, Arizona: The Great Outdoors.

The Man Who Was Thursday

Shatterday


a big pile of comics and reference material.

Ted Conover's Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes. It's a nice, interesting light read, which is great since I'm on a beach holiday right now.

And actually, just like gaspode, I also brought the collected stories of Flannery O'Conner down with me, but I haven't started it yet. Maybe this afternoon.

Right now? MetaChat.

I'm reading the Scott Pilgrim series (just finished 3) and I'm trying to catch up on my New Yorkers.

Right now? Eideteker's comment in this thread.

Metachat. Oh, is that not what you meant?

I am only reading short fiction this year, so:

Neil Gaiman - Fragile Things
Mary Gaitskill - bad behavior
The Pocket Book of Ghost Stories (a 1947 paperback of classics)
O. Henry
Franz Kafka
Anton Chekhov
Edgar Allan Poe

The last 4 are Barnes & Noble Press compilations.

I also have Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" on my cell phone.

I'm currently reading Kushiel's Justice, which is quite fun, even if I can't quite get immersed in it except at bedtime.

(I also have a tendency to read lots of the random articles I scan at work. And the books.)

Oh and I just finished William Gibson's Spook Country which was kind of "meh". I loved Pattern Recognition but this one just sort of took a long time to go nowhere.

I just finished When Nietsche Wept, by Irving Yalom, which I liked. The writing style does seem a bit more "case study" than "novel," even though it's fiction, but it's kind of a neat idea and I feel like I have a better grasp of existential therapy now, which is a plus.

I'm in the middle of Oxygen by Andrew Miller, which I'm enjoying, I think, though it's a bit of a downer so far.

I'm almost always in the middle of a few books, but, lately, I've mostly been reading Columbine.

I also read several book and periodicals at once.
I am finishing The Inheritance of Loss, which is good, but not necessarily Man Booker good.
I am also reading Truman, in order to place a more balanced perspective on my opinion of the man. I am in a long-standing argument with a friend about whether or not Truman could have been tried as a war criminal. This book, evidently, "will set me straight".
Summer reading will include Chris Adrian's The Children's Hospital, because I fall among the few who actually liked Gob's Grief, although I didn't understand it. (I would link to it, but link keeps failing)
Further summer reading includes A Magnificent Catastrophe, the Tumultuous Election of 1800, because we just finished the John Adam's miniseries, and I am eager to read more about the period.
I love threads like this, I love all of you bookworm metchatters.

I've started my 'mystery book' that a bunny recently sent me. It's really good.

I also just bought the new Barbara Vine in paperback. For those who don't know her, she's really Ruth Rendell, who writes the Inspector Wexford series. But her Vine books are much darker and more interesting. As books were 3 for 2 in Waterstone's, I also bought some chick lit and the second novel by Julian Fellowes. I enjoyed his first immensely.

Unfriendly Fire and I Do, But I Don't.

I reread all my books since I forget what's in them after a few years. Just finished "The Concubine's Children," and am delving into my books on the history of Irish Travellers in America. There are also some books that are so amazing that I read them over and over again anyway. That would be "Mozart in the Jungle" at the moment. Still ongoing with "Gotham, a history of New York City to 1898"; tend to only read that one on airline flights. For bedtime reading, I started "The Way we Never Were," a history of the 1950s, but got distracted with "Roll, Jordan Roll," a history of American slavery. Yes, I do finish things, it just takes a few years.

I've been rereading Ibuse Masuji's Black Rain as part of an approach to Fukasaku Kinji's five-part film series, The Yakuza Papers, of which I've seen (twice) the first episode, Battles Without Honor & Humanity (1973). That's a stretch -- actually, I have book size issues.

When I'm at home, I usually read the big books on my list, currently Joan Didion's We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order To Live, George Orwell's essays, and the oft-praised Giacomo Casanova memoir.

When I step out, I like to take a book along, and it's nicest if it fits in a jacket pocket. My regular jacket has big inside pockets so I can really carry a variety -- currently my fine-weather subway reading is Nelson Algren's Never Come Morning, a slice-of-lowlife yarn about Polish palookas, pimps, and pros, long banned in Chicago public libraries by pressure from the Polish diocese (see section "Algren and Chicago Polonia" in this Wikipedia article on Algren). A frequent quick grab re-reader that's a perfect pocket fit is Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, 180 pages of desperate flight.

I own a raincoat for weather like we've had in previous weeks (it's drop-dead gorgeous out right now) and though the pockets are just as big as in my regular jacket, the pocket mouths are smaller and angled so only small paperbacks will fit. That's where the real inspiration to start Black Rain arose; I had my raincoat on, I was looking at the bookshelf, and it was the right size, even though I was apprehensive about immersing myself in such awfulness.

I actually left it in my pocket on that first rainy day, not really in the mood to read once I got on the train. But the grey weather stretched into the next day, just long enough for me to start, and now I'm glad I did. Some of it's pretty awful. Okay, most of it is. But it's beautiful, too, and the ordinariness of the people involved, especially against the backdrop of so many other ordinary individuals badly hurt and killed, is immensely touching and painful and beautiful all in one.

I think it would be hard to read Ibuse and not emerge at least more sensitive.

Hugh Janus stoled my snark.

Indiana Jones and the White Witch. It's a fun piece of fluff. There's a whole series of books based on the movies with several authors involved.

I eavesdropped on occhiblu and recently read The Shelter of Each Other. I love this book (and the author's philosophy) so much. It reconfirms the importance of family. I enjoyed Mary Pipher so much that I just finished Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World. Pipher's writing is warm and down to earth. Seeking Peace got a little long-winded at times but I didn't mind. I could identify with some of Pipher's problems. I loved hearing about her family life, her struggles and successes. I just started The Lonely American.

I'm also reading a book by Cal Ripken on how to be a good, reasonable, and positive parent of kids that play sports. It's better than I imagined it would be.

Next on my list is Crossing to Safety. I ordered it last week. It should be here any day now.

i just put down When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris, which i took time to bite chunks out of because i've read so many of the pieces in the New Yorker, but rather than talk about what books i am reading, i wanna talked about a book out of the last batch of books i got a chance to read: An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. i found it delightful and was so happy to be reading it, not that it's some wildly upbeat book, i just like how it was done. Even the author's name amuses me, Brock Clarke. It's like a fake name with Venture Brothers overtones.

I'm reading The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu. I'm also reading Peter F. Hamilton's The Dreaming Void, Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff( a mystery novel checked out of the library), volume four of the collected Hellboy comics, and I just finished The Elfish Gene by Mark Barrowcliffe (a humorous memoir of being a D&D dork in 70s England).

I had to ...stop reading David Sedaris and Augustin Burroughs when I came across THREE short stories of theirs that are virtually identical. I guess all gay Manhattanites are literary in the same way. That and I hate Mr. Burroughs and would gladly punch him. I honestly thought Dry was a brutal satire ala American Psycho until informed otherwise. Sedaris, not so much, but he still irks me cause he's always on the border of being good and then rushes out into being cheap. His animal fables are better, less sentimental.

So now I've finished Shatterday and moved onto to re-reading Dictionary Of the Khazars cause it's one of my favorite books ever.

The Great Influenza, John M. Barry.

A very disturbing yet informative book.

Just finished Oscar Wao. Other things on the pile are mostly short stories.

Marteen Joost: The Sex Lives of Cannibals