3/4's through Clive Cussler "Spartain Gold"
Should be done in a few days.
Next up CLive Cussler "Plague Ship"

Cussler or Jack Higgens.
Cant pick a favorite out of the two, have about 90% of Cusslers work, and 100% of Higgens

Saw Dave Mustains Bio in HMV yesterday, flipped through it, will probably buy the book,
Not like Dane who I'm sure invited Mr.Mustaine over for a personal reading LMAO


**Not a dig Dane, just misplaced humor, as yyou seem to know most of the music scene in Hollywood . Mustain is actually a great musical influence on me, love the guys work. .

clive cussler is great, but I could never get into any of his books other than the dirk pitt series.

The newer stuff with `The Fargos`kinda takes off where Dirk and whats her name from DC left off. Chick who was the senator or congress woman he was banging

I hereby retract my "**** you." That wasn't an insult, btw. If I've insulted you, you'll know it. Or maybe it'll be very subtle, then someone else would notice it. Either way, someone will know.

If you get a chance to do some AA reading of choice, I suggest Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed.

good stuff? I'll have to check it out.

Souls of Black Folk is a seminal text for this discussion and would provide a really helpful foundation for these texts.

Double-consciousness...

Exodus - Leon Uris

On the AA front, I'm very partial to Nella Larsen's Quicksand, as well as her more known book, Passing.

Also, if you're feeling like something more challenging, Jean Toomer's Cane is pretty damn incredible.

Let's see who the bibliophiles are. Rep to anyone who read more books than I have so far this year: 15

I've read around 100.

I've had a down year and probably read about that same amount. Of course, a bunch of those were YA schlock, sk they don't really count lime the, likely, substantive stuff you've read.

:spock:

I could have sworn I called you a supercilious ****.

Wow. I think the most I read one year was something like 35-40.

Impressive that you can game as hardcore as you do and still read a lot.

"Books" are for rude mechanicals.

I've likely read upwards of 50 this year. But I couldn't give a precise approximation.

Around 35, not counting textbooks.

My Student Amazon Prime has really paid off this year.

pft, i just finished the malazan book of the fallen series (or what's out yet) that's 10 right there. I'd probably wager I've read at least 30 this year.

Now I'm kind of curious, i'll have to try to figure out what I've read this year.

Unfortunately, I've taught 10 courses in this calendar year alone. All my reading time has been taken up by grading student papers, course prep, and reading the assignments from the lit classes I teach.

I feel like a reerun.

Currently on page95 of a 449 page book. Broke my record for most read in a year.

I recommend The Crisis of Islam (Holy War and Unholy Terror), by Bernard Lewis. Nonfiction. Very concise read. Informative.

Also enjoyed The Road to Cana, by Anne Rice. Follow on to Out of Egypt. Not for everyone. Fictional account of the life of Jesus (Yes, I know several Planeteers think all accounts of Jesus are fictional...save your posts.)

w00t w00t, all this for $11, god damn I a cheap, and ****ed in the head to boot!

http://i52.tinypic.com/23v1guv.jpg

http://i55.tinypic.com/167uniu.jpg

This is a goddamn coffee table book full of delicious photographs. "Picture History"

http://i53.tinypic.com/cqgyc.jpg

http://img2.imagesbn.com/images/68220000/68220718.JPG

Artificial Insemination for Dummies Vol IV

It's not that impressive. I don't do much but eat, sleep, game, read and work.

I do count audiobooks as 'reading', and this year they made the great majority of my reading list (about 70-30 audio versus paper).

Want to do more print in 2011. And less video games.

If I'd get off my computer more, I'd probably read 200 books a year (in print).

Halfway through "the Pacific" this book is good. I recieved "With the Old Breed" from my fiance for xmas. I am pretty pumped about reading it.

Just finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman. First book I've read of his, decent entertainment.

Also took in Joe Abercrombie's stand-alone novel Best Served Cold. Enjoyed it, and genuinely laughed out loud a couple times at the dark humor of it (which made me feel a bit more twisted than normal). I feel like he explored the same concepts he did in the First Law Trilogy without taking them all that much further though.

American Gods was decent, although I couldnt shake that "almost, but not quite great" feeling with it.

The Abercrombie book sounds like something I've been in the mood to read lately.

I picked up Tokyo Vice yesterday. So far it's a pretty cool True Crime book. Author is from Missouri and was a crime beat writer for a Japanese newspaper. He apparently got wrapped up in some info that the Yakuza didn't like. And you know how much they don't like stuff like that!

Christmas presents!
Quotidiana - Essays by Patrick Madden
Neck Deep and Other Predicaments by Ander Monson
Vanishing Point: Not A Memoir by Ander Monson
Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting
Elegies for the Brokenhearted by Christie Hodgen

how to dress like gumby's ho/Reaper16

Who sent that to you, Stevie? :D We're not Facebook friends as far as I know. Seems like a very strange post to bring that out, unless you find literature offensive or something.

I ain't no bitch like Billay, though. I don't care that this was posted, mostly because I clearly have no biceps to be proud of.

Pretty much. I enjoyed the premise more than the execution.

Just bought myself 'Thieves Like Us' by Edward Anderson, for my Kindle.

Finished Black Hole by Charles Burns last night. Kind of weird, but impressive in it's own way.

Just finished The Athena Project by Brad Thor - basically a team of special ops bitches that go around the world kicking ass.

Just started the Hunger Games.

I'm making another attempt to slog through Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. I picked it up about a year ago, and while the idea of the monomyth grabs my imagination, the book itself clearly did not; I couldn't make it more than a couple of pages on my initial effort.

(It's better than Tylenol PM if any of you ever have problems sleeping.)

But I've managed to make it through Chapter 1 this time around, and I'm going to keep soldiering on.

The best bok ever written about the Marines in WW2
:thumb::thumb:

I'm about half way through "The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy" by Bill Carter. So far it's pretty good. A good look into the whole Conan/Leno Tonight Show fiasco.

Just finished Street Player My Chicago Story by Danny Serephine pretty good inside information on the Group Chicago

Went to half price books today. Nice haul.

http://www.rehabdesign.co.uk/talk/wp...wars-cover.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg

http://espn.go.com/i/page2/photos/050727juicing.jpg

Neil Peart's new book hits the stands in May!!

Just finished "The Games that changed the Game" By Ron Jaworski.

Excellent. :clap:

much to the detriment of the items on my 'to do' list, I'm immersed in "dead or alive" by tom clancy (and other unnamed author; or at least, I don't remember the co-author's name)

great stuff.

Neuromancer.

Into the Storm by Taylor Anderson

http://www.amazon.com/Into-Storm-Des...6106275&sr=8-3

I'm actually reading the second book now, Maelstrom. Very strange concept, but great books.

Just began reading the book "The Greatest Generation" by Tom Brokaw. I was turned to it by another planateer recently....My curiousity was piqued because I have always felt that the generation of world war II was the last great generation of Americans....

for what it's worth (and not to turn this thread into one of those threads), e-readers freaking rock.

Finished "War" by Sebastian Junger - author follows one platoon of paratroopers over the course of a 15 month deployment (2007-08) to the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan; hard to put down. Sometimes you might have to. Excellent read.

Started "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nasim Nicholas Taleb.

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Imp.../dp/1400063515

If you are into science fiction, this is a must:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...YL._SL500_.jpg

Some of the best characterizations since "To Kill a Mockingbird":
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__yA9G6mLej...nedy-toole.jpg

The last time I was in the slammer, they had a ton of these, and they were awesome:
http://www.theexecutionermackbolan.c...er_boo-330.jpg

Nobody, and I mean, nobody, kicks more ass than Mack Bolan.

"Unbroken" by Lauren Hillenbrand, who also authored the bestseller "Seabiscuit: An American Legend". Captivating! (no pun intended)

Reading Keith Richards biography right now.

Very interesting book. Nice details about growing up in Post WW2 England-rough stuff!

I just finished reading all 3 Hunger Games books in less than a week. I enjoyed them very much.

I just started The Book Thief (about 40 pages in) and I'm just not into it.

currently reading I Am Legend

Three weeks later....I'm still at the beginning of Chapter 2. LMAO

I've gotten into a Gene Wolfe kick. Read Pirate Freedom (which I really, really liked - I could swear somebody told me it sucked) and re-read The Knight, and I've just started re-reading The Wizard. Also been reading The Best of Gene Wolfe, which is a collection of stories from throughout his career.

Gene Wolfe rocks. I read the Latro books every few years. Always find something new.

If you get onto a cyberpunk binge (and there really is some excellent stuff out there), I highly recommend this anthology.
http://www.amazon.com/Rewired-Post-C.../dp/1892391538

Also check out China Mieville sometime if you haven't already (if you're in the mood for fantasy/scifi authors with serious literary chops.).

I'm teaching Freshman Comp II right now (which is the literature semester), so we're reading good stuff. Doing a tour of the Jim Crow South right now: Faulkner, O'Conner, Ellison and about to move into more modern stuff. I've been starting every morning off reading a good short story. I think I'm finally developing an authentic fondness for Faulkner. "Barn Burning" just kicked my ass this morning.

I'm teaching a Brit Lit survey this semester. Right now we're going breakneck through the Romantic period

Burns to Blake, to Wordsworth. Monday is Coleridge...

I have to teach Brit. Lit for my 11th grade English Curriculum. It's not my bag. I'd be all for some modern and contemporary (which isn't part of the curriculum... we're doing beowulf and chaucer)... but that old shit just doesn't do it for high school students (or me for that matter). I've always had a soft spot for Blake, though. He's just such a weird genius bastard.

Just finished The Passage by Justin Cronin. It was interesting at first, but once it got to the Colony, it really hit a brick wall. I liked the concept of the colony, but the characters were extremely stale and I really didn't care about any of them.

Overall, a boring read that I kept reading and thinking "It's got to get better", but it never did.

Oh man. I disagree entirely. I started that book, and I didn't put it down for 2 days until I was finished. My only complaint is that it's such an obviously contrived series and movie script.

From where I'm sitting, going breakneck through the Romantic period is the way to go. So that you can take some sweet time with the kick-ass Victorian period.

There is a lot of redundancy in the period, that's for sure. More than anything, the important part is just to talk about the philosophical shift in what type of literature they were trying to create.

That said, I always appreciate something more after I teach it.

Later this semester I'm going to start throwing some crazier shit at them. We'll read Things Fall Apart, and The Wasp Factory, which is one of my five favorite novels.

I could have chosen a section from Ulysses, but I'd sooner overseed my backyard with cultivars from the Alomar genus.

Faulkner is like Joyce, to me. I really like their short stories but I'm not wild about their novels.
I love O'Connor. I have a book of almost all her short stories that I got for like .25 at a used book store.

O'Connor has been blowing my mind for the last couple of years (I've taught at least two of her stories each year as of late). I discover something new each time, and she never ceases to make me laugh my ass off, scare the shit out of me, and make me deeply ponder the nature of humanity.

The point in Revelation where Mary Grace launches herself across the waiting room to dig her hands into Mrs. Turpin's neck had me spitting out my coffee the morning I read it. So perfect.

Right now I'm only really "reading" Mayflower by Philbrick for a writing class... so far it's well worth it.

It's funny, because I almost wrote that one of the characters she uses in a few of her stories, that I find funny, is the angry fat acne-faced kid. She will say their face is purple with acne.
And she always writes "oncet". I get a kick out of that for some reason.

Flannery O'Connor is the bestest. I have her complete short stories, and it blows me away.

I'm not the biggest Faulkner fan, but I have to say that I love his novel Absalom, Absalom! It gives a sort of mythic account of the American South.

THAT SAID, while I love that novel from Faulkner, it does little that Willa Cather's A Lost Lady doesn't already do in a much-shorter, more comprehensible manner. Cather is severely underrated, I feel.

I couldn't stand Faulkner's ridiculously complex language and syntax. I'm starting to enjoy it more, though. Still not sure I'll be picking up the Sound and the Fury for a pleasure read (already read it twice for school), but I'm enjoying him in small doses.

In researching him, the thought struck me that one of the reasons lit geeks like him so much is his Tokien-esque nerdcreation of a county, complete with maps and charts and family trees showing how stories interlap, in effect creating a sort of Southern Mythos.

My only Cather is My Antonia and I liked it.

"Coming, Aphrodite" by Cather is a good short story.

I am on George Shuman, Sherry Moore series.
Good so far, on book 2 of 4.

If you like thrillers, Steve Hamilton Lock Artist was awesome :thumb:

I'm reading Joseph Stiglitzs "Freefall", who's a fav of the lefty Keynesian crowd. It's his explanation of what happened leading up to and precipitating the meltdown of the financial markets back in the Fall of '08, among quite a few other topics.

Just as an aside, I found this brutal quote from Hemingway on Faulkner:

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”

I sort of agree with his sentiment. The thing that frustrates me about Faulkner and Joyce is they show they can write something enjoyable to read with their short stories. You wish they'd give you that in a novel. When you read That Evening Sun by Faulkner or Clay by Joyce, you're like "this is fantastic stuff." Clay is one of my favorite short stories. When Maria leaves out the Balfe verse, I see her as such a real person. In just a short story he makes you feel like you almost know her and everything about her.
Then you try The Bear or Ulysses, and it's like a job. I don't want to work so hard. I understand people say it's a different kind of reward to read Faulkner and Joyce's more ambitious stuff, and that those two are trying to elevate language to a different plane. I just think there's plenty of other fiction I can read, with much less frustration. A calculus textbook is difficult to write, I'm sure. And if you got through all the lessons in a calculus book I'm sure you'd feel a certain reward. It doesn't mean I want to read it.

I'd like to read some of Flannery O'Connor, being that she is probably the most prolific American Catholic writer of the 20th century. What are the few essential short stories of hers I should start with?

A Good Man is Hard to Find
Revelation
Good Country People

Most of those can be found full text online.