MetaChat - MeCha Book Thread : What are you reading at the moment?

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12 April 2011

MeCha Book Thread : What are you reading at the moment? →[More:]
I just finished "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake", which I loved. What an interesting, unusual story, sad and poignant and beautifully written.

I've just started re-reading Final Demand by Deborah Moggach, which I read when it first came out. I've forgotten most of the story, so it's like a whole new book. It's a perfect on-the-train read, undemanding, short chapters, great for my decompression time on the journey home.

What's on your Kindle or nightstand at the moment?

post by: Senyar at: 14:31 | 37 comments

Infinite Jest. I'm finally getting around to it.

posted by gaspode 12 April | 14:35

Consider Phlebas, by Iain M. Banks. I've started in on the Culture novels, yup.

posted by Eideteker 12 April | 14:36

I'm rereading Asimov's Foundation series.

posted by pjern 12 April | 14:41

"The Sweet Releif of Missing Children", which I only mention because of the smilarity in title structure to "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake."

This must be the latest thing in book naming.

It's just ok, the book.

posted by rainbaby 12 April | 14:44

The Adjective Emotion of Adjective Noun.

The Engaging Paranoia of Druggy Tennis. (Infinite Jest?)

posted by rainbaby 12 April | 14:55

Starfish.

"Peter Watts's first novel explores the last mysterious place on earth--the floor of a deep sea rift. Channer Vent is a zone of freezing darkness that belongs to shellfish the size of boulders and crimson worms three meters long. It's the temporary home of the maintenance crew of a geothermal energy plant--a crew made up of the damaged and dysfunctional flotsam of an overpopulated near-future earth."

And Biting The Wax Tadpole: Confessions of a Language Fanatic.

posted by Specklet 12 April | 15:00

The Book of Lies, by Mary Horlock (some last name like that). It's an ARC (well, an e-galley). I HATE IT. It started strong but has progressively gotten both more boring and more annoying.

Loved Lemon Cake, Sweet Relief is waiting on my Kindle, but I may read Deathless next. I have like 8 books waiting on my Kindle thanks to birthday gift cards, so we'll see.

posted by leesh 12 April | 15:04

I just started The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Also in the middle of Quicksilver, but keep getting bogged down in the details. I start a lot more than I finish.

posted by wens 12 April | 15:34

Just finished Another Place at the Table and Three Little Words. I need something light pronto! Hoping I'll get "Bossypants" at the library soon; I still have awhile to wait on the list.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 12 April | 15:39

Finishing up "Fall of Giants" by Ken Follett; starting up "Chronicles of Avonlea" by L.M. Montgomery; eying up "Ferran" by Colman Andrews.

posted by punchtothehead 12 April | 15:39

The library has just now emailed to say that the novel High Bonnet by Idwal Jones is waiting for me.

posted by JanetLand 12 April | 15:40

Oh, thanks for the reminder, TPS; I wanted to request that.

posted by punchtothehead 12 April | 15:40

Light Years by James Salter, after the Metafilter thread about him. Exactly my sort of thing. I've been working a lot from home lately and one of my little luxuries has been sitting out on the porch with this book and tea and toast and orange marmalade.

posted by peacheater 12 April | 15:53

I haven't read any fiction in ages, usually if I am reading it is a horticulture book and usually then in bits and pieces.

posted by weretable and the undead chairs 12 April | 16:22

I recently put down Stone Upon Stone. I just could not stay with it, for whatever reason.

Returned to Master and Commander. I started in the middle of this series, and have been reading it both directions, as I find the books used. It is interesting to read stuff that is supposed to be introductory, but instead, the way I am doing it, I am thinking "oh that explains a lot." It's fun.

posted by danf 12 April | 16:45

Just finished "New Model Army" by Adam Roberts, not bad near-future war/SF novel. Currently on classic 1947 post-apocalypse novel Earth Abides by George R. Stewart.

posted by TheophileEscargot 12 April | 17:02

I just finished my purse book (The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s -- it was an excellent wide-ranging history of that decade. I learned a lot.) and have a pile of new library books. But what I'm actually reading right now is one of the 3 Rex Stout Nero Wolfe books I haven't read yet, The Red Box.

Not only did I get a rare on-street free parking space right outside the bookstore (on a Saturday!), it had just come in, it's the original paperback, and she promised to keep an eye out for the white whale (the one I haven't read that I refuse to play $20 for - plus shipping)

posted by julen 12 April | 17:26

I'm currently reading something that's way too embarrassing to mention, but next up is My Lady Scandalous - The Amazing Life and Outrageous Times of Grace Dalrymple Elliot, Royal Courtesan (love long involved titles like that). Bought it for a buck at the last library book sale. I'd actually been meaning to read it while it was still available at the library, but lo and behold, there it t'was!

Weretable - non-fiction is fine to list! My mum gave me The Gardener's Home Companion a couple years ago and I've been reading it in bits 'n' pieces.

I've been wanting to read the Aubrey–Maturin series since watching Master and Commander. One of these days I shall!

posted by deborah 12 April | 17:32

Re-reading Kushiel's Chosen and Arrows of the Queen.

Current ACA book currently being read is: Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives.

posted by sperose 12 April | 18:01

Just finished "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" by Lisa See.

Can't get the link to stop!

posted by redvixen 12 April | 18:23

I'm reading Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I like books about food, and this was $4 in hardback at the last bookfair at the hospital. It is OK. Maybe like OK+.

posted by jeoc 12 April | 18:37

Reading in the traditional book sense: Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, for upcoming MeTa book club discussion right here on Mecha, in 2 weeks. It is great.

Reading in the sense of listening every chance I get, Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin. Gripping. Cannot wait for the HBO dramatization.

posted by bearwife 12 April | 19:08

Zorro by Isabel Allende. I'm really enjoying it so far.

I am thinking about picking up Game of Thrones and re-reading it so I can follow the series better. I am so excited about it starting next week!

posted by Sil 12 April | 19:31

Yeah, I might re-read Game of Thrones (for what? the 5th time?) too. Of course then I will have to listen to my husband repeatedly saying "Bran - he's just a regular guy" and thinking he's hilarious. Sigh. Husband has rocked the Dad joke since well before he was an actual dad.

posted by gaspode 12 April | 19:41

Getting Even: The Limits of Forgiveness by Jeffrie Murphy

posted by jason's_planet 12 April | 21:02

Just finished all four of the Seanan McGuire October Daye books; loved them. Yeah, they're not great literature but they're fast, gripping and pretty well written. Now I'm reading Changes, the newest (to me) Jim Butcher Harry Dresden book. My tastes are clear, hee. Before the McGuire stuff I read Sarah Monette's Melusine series, or, rather, I read the last three of them - The Virtu, The Mirador and Corambis - and not the first. Dark stuff, kind of a slog, although she's a very very good writer.

I tried to read Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn and Daniel Suarez' Daemon and hated both so much I couldn't finish them. I wish there was a word for prose that makes you think of a cart with square wooden wheels: clunk, here is a sentence. Clunk, clunk, here is another sentence. It is expository. Clunk, this sentence is dialogue. It is unrelated to anything any actual person would ever say. Clunk! That is an action sentence. Gah.

I tried to read Game of Thrones years ago and don't remember liking it much. Given the recent New Yorker article and all the press, I was thinking I might try again.

posted by mygothlaundry 12 April | 21:12

Sweet Valley Confidential.

I'm not ashamed.

posted by rhapsodie 12 April | 21:45

mygothlaundry, I LOVE the October Daye books!! The author also writes a zombie series under the name Mira Grant, but I'm less into zombies.

posted by leesh 12 April | 22:13

Annie Proulx's Bird Cloud

posted by tortillathehun 12 April | 22:32

Just finished Simon Reynolds' collection of post-punk interviews, Totally Wired. Most of these interviews were the basis for Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984, which is one of the best music books I've read in a while. Currently I'm about a third of the way through Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s - which at times gets a bit too insider-baseball, but still quite fun.

posted by Slack-a-gogo 12 April | 22:48

Stupid boring school stuff and formula sheets.

But a month from now, I'll be done with this semester and about to depart for vacation and I'll have books with me. Real. Fucking. Fiction. Books!

So let's do this thread again then, please?

posted by ufez 12 April | 23:26

wens, I love The Magicians!

redvixen, did you like Snow Flower and the Secret Fan? A friend just recommended that one to me, but I haven't picked it up yet.

I just started reading How To Spot a Dangerous Man, which is a self-help book I'm reading to see if there's helpful information for my clients who have been sexually assaulted, but mostly I'm finding it annoying due to the author's insistence that if you do not think any particular man in your life is dangerous then it's because you're not being truthful, and yet insists that there are non-dangerous men around. I think she's kind of playing to her audience, in the sense that a women likely to buy a book called "How To Spot a Dangerous Man" probably has a history of dating dangerous men and therefore is statistically more likely to currently be involved with a dangerous man and unaware of that fact, but... still. Annoying.

posted by occhiblu 13 April | 00:40

Oh, and I just finished The House on Fortune Street, which was filled with rather disagreeable characters with questionable morals and which gave me really horrendously unpleasant dreams when read late at night.

posted by occhiblu 13 April | 00:42

Sweet Valley Confidential

!!! Jealous!!!

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 13 April | 09:19

Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton.

Once I'm done with that, I'll probably try to find a copy of Silmarillion.

posted by Comic Sans-culotte 13 April | 12:01

Anathema.

posted by Splunge 14 April | 08:18

I've been on a John Ringo and Eric Flint run the last six months or so. I just finished the Posleen series, and I'm starting up the nannite/power war series. Mostly it's books I can get cheap or free on Baen's Webscription site.

posted by lysdexic 14 April | 16:19

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