What book are you reading?

[RGC_man]

I'm reading The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, where a successful young man returns home to lead a simpler life, much to the horror of those stuck on the dark brooding heath. One of my all time favourite books.

Just finished Life of Pi by Yann Martel, a strange of story of what happens when a young Indian boy is stranded on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. Definitely worth buying if you like something more contemporary.

What books would you recommend?

[DocInChina]

I read a few James Patterson books a while back and a few months ago I bought a few more. I became addicted and have since read almost all his published works. Now that I am all pattersoned out I bought 4 books today that appear to be murder mysteries. After I read them I will post my review.

Footnote: The DaVinci Code was great.


Doc

[chip anderson]

Spandau Phoenix by Greg Iles. Also recommend Black Cross by same author.

[Pete Hanlin]

The Codex by Douglas Preston... I've also recently read Thunderhead and Still Life with Crows- which he co-authored with Lincoln Child (two thumbs up).

Neal Stephenson is also a nice change of pace (if you have a LOT of time to kill- because he does tend to get verbose). Cryptonomicon is the best I've seen from him.

William Gibson's Pattern Recognition is a bit odd- but very interesting!

Anyway, this is from someone who has worked through all of Clancy, Brown, Patterson, and the likes (traveling gives one a lot of time to read).

If you are looking for something business oriented, I would highly recommend "Selling the Invisible," "The 48 Laws of Power," or "SPIN Selling" (the latter isn't how to "spin" things as in a political sense, but how to conduct a sale using situation, problem, implication, and need-payoff questions- great stuff).

[Monkeysee]

Footnote: The DaVinci Code was great.

I'll second that! Just read it two weeks ago, couldn't put it down, and I'm looking forward to reading "Angels and Demons".
I've just started "Don Quixote", chapter one---it's gonna take awhile. Not quite finished e.e. cummings "The enormous room"-about his life during World War 2-he was jailed for being a supposed spy in France. It's a little hard to get into.

"The Optical Formulas Tutorial" is what I've been reading at lunch and during breaks at work-highly recommend it!:D

[rinselberg]

BOTTOM half of the seventh, Brock's boy had made it through another inning unscratched, one! two! three! Twenty-one down and just six outs to go! and Henry's heart was racing, he was sweating with relief and tension all at once, unable to sit, unable to think, in there, with them! Oh yes, boys, it was on! He was sure of it! More than just another ball game now: history! And Damon Rutherford was making it ...

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc.: J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (Available in paperback.)

I loved this novel. I read it many years ago. It's a marvelous surrealist tome of literary art. Perfect for summer reading. Here's part of a review on Amazon.com :

The basic story of Coover's book is quite simple. Henry Waugh creates an intricate single-player baseball game that's played with dice. He plays entire seasons with his eight-team league; he keeps detailed statistics for every player and every game; he creates backstories and personalities for his players; he develops an administrative body for his league and imagines political debates among the players; and he acts as an official historian of the league, writing volumes of stories about the game and its players. When something shocking and unexpected occurs within the game, Henry gradually loses the ability to distinguish between reality and imagined events within the game. In the end, he is more or less consumed by his game.

As the synopsis above no doubt suggests, this story begs to be read as an allegory. One might read it as an allegory of God's relation to His creation. Henry, like God, is a ...



... creator who appears to have complete control over his creation, and yet, like God, his creation comes to take on a life of its own. When terrible things occur, he desperately wants to step in and set things right, but he also wants the game to retain its integrity. So Henry is like God in that he remains outside his creation even though it seems he could sometimes intervene to set things right. (Indeed, some of the game's players are said to have some sense of a higher power controlling their destiny.) One might also read Henry's relation to his game as an allegory of man's attempt to make sense of his world through art, religion, science, philosophy, etc. All that's really going on is the random event of rolling the dice, as, in some sense, all that's really going on in the universe is certain random physical events. And yet Henry imagines an entire alternate reality to make sense of the random events of his game. His player backgrounds and psychologies, his historical interpretations of the game, his imaginings of crowds and stadiums--all of this is intended to give the random throws of the dice some meaning, some significance to him. (This reading is also suggested by our one look at Henry at work in his job as an accountant. Rather than merely crunch the numbers, he reads a story of the operation of a business off his accounting books. He makes sense of the numbers by seeing them as evidence of something beyond themselves.) Finally, one might interpret Henry's relation to his game as an allegory of the artist's relation to his works.

These allegorical readings notwithstanding, it's also possible to read this book as a simple and moving story of one isolated man who gradually loses touch with reality. While Henry seems a decent enough chap, he has no family, only one friend (and not an especially close one), no real love interest, and no interests outside of his game. From what we learn in the novel, it seems his entire life consists in (occasionally) going to work at his mind-numbing job, stopping at the local bar to drown his sorrows, and sitting at his kitchen table playing his game. Since Henry's life is thoroughly dull and uneventful from the outside, the book focuses on what's going on in his mind. The focus of the book is his isolation and his attempts to create something important and lasting and to be a part of something larger than himself. The opportunity to create something important is what the game appears to provide him, and so it's not all that surprising that he ends up losing himself in his game.

This, of course, suggests that Henry can be understood as an example of the way in which alienated individuals can get lost in solitary pursuits that are made available to them by modern life. Because he lacks an community of people with which to identify, Henry ends up getting lost in his game in much the same way that others can get lost in books, television, the internet, etc. All of these things appear to provide their user with a connection to a world beyond himself, and yet total immersion in them brings you no closer to other people than you'd be without them.

I'd give this book 4.5 stars if I could; that seems a more accurate assessment. The reader should note that this isn't really a baseball book. It's more about the trappings of baseball--the statistics, the history, the players, the rites--than it is about the game itself. So this isn't a book for someone looking for a presentation of dramatic athletic feats; instead, it's a book for the baseball fan whose appreciation of the game is intellectual rather than visceral.

[ziggy]

A great English writer. If you like a good who done it. I just started "The Hornets nest" by former U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter seems good so far,,,I'll let you guys know.

[Lee Prewitt]

I am recently going through Clive Cussler novels. The movie Sahara is based on his novels. Very fun light adventure reading. Always a mysterious science base story. Reminds you of a Saturday serial. Larger than life character, dering do, good guys always win. Not for the intellectual but great fun and escapism. :)

[Jedi]

I finished the DaVinci Code a couple of weeks ago. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it and do recommend it as a read, but I don't think it warrants all the hype surrounding it. I wasn't attached to the characters and I think the "romance" was unnecessary.

The author I keep coming back to is a fantasy author, R.A. Salvatore. I started reading his books when i was playing Dungeons and Dragons as a teen. While they are set in the D&D world of the Forgotten Realms, many aspects of everyday society are explored, most notably, racism and stereotypes. Salvatore does an excellent job of connecting the reader emotionally with the characters and paints a vivil detailed picture without being overly detailed, a little easier on the eyes than Tolkien can sometimes be. Start with the Dark Elf trilogy and you'll be hooked.

[Steve Machol]

I'm currently reading 'Collapse' by Jared Diamond (author of the Pulizter winning 'Guns, Germs and Steel'.)

Another well-written and well-reasoned analysis of the reasons why some societies fail (Easter Island, Norse Greenland, Maya) and some succeed (Iceland, Japan) in the face of human caused ecological damage.

[Spexvet]

Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton. Techy science fiction with great character development and multiple plot lines. True escapism.

[coda]

I'm currently reading 'Collapse' by Jared Diamond (author of the Pulizter winning 'Guns, Germs and Steel'.)

Another well-written and well-reasoned analysis of the reasons why some societies fail (Easter Island, Norse Greenland, Maya) and some succeed (Iceland, Japan) in the face of human caused ecological damage.

I'm reading Collapse right now as well and I guess I'm less impressed. The writing feels overly verbose and the whole thing is a bit of a slog at the moment, perhaps I'll either get used to it or it'll get better (or I guess it'll start collecting dust on the bed side table).

[Jason Carruthers]

Currently reading "The Sales Advantage"

[Steve Machol]

I'm reading Collapse right now as well and I guess I'm less impressed.

Well, it's not as engrossing as Guns, Germs and Steel was, but I like this kind of stuff. ;)

[hcjilson]

Half way through To The Last Man by Jeff Shaara. A factual historical novel on the first world war as seen through the eyes of John Pershing, Manfred Von Richthofen, and two other historical figures. Great read!