What are you reading?

[SierraLea]

I started reading Playing with Fire. A very sweary, sexy book that, if it doesn't prove its worth in the next twenty pages, I'm tossing out the car window on my way home.

[the_wolfs_howl]

Reread The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, an autobiographical novel about her experiences with depression, attempted suicide, admittance to an insane asylum, and return to society. Plath really had a gift with words (which makes sense, since she was a poet). Before, I'd actually listened to the audiobook because all copies in the library were checked out, so I got to hear the beautiful words spoken with the smooth voice of Maggie Gyllenhaal ^_^ But it was good to read it for myself, because when I listen to a book I find it all too easy to get caught up in the sounds of the words rather than the plot, especially when the words are as beautiful as this book. I remember some of the sexual elements of the book were rather shocking to me when I encountered them before; now they seem tamer than I remembered them, but I still wish they weren't included...or that Plath herself had made different choices in her life, I guess. But all in all, this is a beautiful, at times whimsical, read that really gives a great perspective on depression.

[yukoxholic]

Reading Delirium by Lauren Oliver and listening to the audiobook Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater.

[Kaori]

Finished off a couple of books today that I'd started a little while ago:

True Vine: Meditations for a Month on John 15:1-16 by Andrew Murray. Like other things Murray has written, this book mostly centers around complete surrender of the self and reliance on Christ. Someone inclined to be critical of this book could point out its repetitiousness, as Murray often repeats himself and circles back to the same ideas—much like Jesus does—making the structure come across as more Eastern than Western. I'm not inclined to complain, however, as I found the concepts that Murray expounds to be worth repeated, slow reflection. It's a book that's good in the sense that it is good thing if the reader can put these concepts into practice.

Within and Without (dramatic poem from The Complete Poetical Works of George MacDonald, vol. 1): I thought at first that maybe this was going to be the story of Saint Julian—apparently there are several of these, though I don't know anything about any of them—but apparently not. The poem starts out digging into the thoughts and prayer life of a monk, Julian, as he struggles earnestly with seeking God in prayer and not being able to sense his presence, which is all well and good and which I personally found quite riveting. I was rather shocked, however when he ran away from his monastery (breaking his monastic oaths), killed a man in order to rescue the woman he was in love with, got married, and had a child. Then in the middle of the poem the story became one of those obnoxious dramas where all the characters' problems (misunderstandings) would be totally solved if only they talked to each other normally and told each other what they were thinking. However, the view into Julian's prayer life, which is what drew me into the story in the first place, never totally ceases; although I didn't find the rest of the story as fascinating as its beginning, there are still some admirable things about the sense of childlike trust that Julian learns to have in God, and the ending is beautiful, all the more so for its moments of sadness.

[Jingo Jaden]

Deadwood by Pete Dexter

This is one of the few times I pity the phillistines who've yet to read this amazing piece of litterature.

[Lynna]

I'm reading A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin and LOVING it.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

idk how I haven't commented on this yet but GoT is like my favoritest book ever and you should share more now that the very nice thread we had was deleted

[the_wolfs_howl]

Hiroshima by John Hersey - An interesting collection of first-hand accounts of survivors of the Hiroshima bombing. It didn't really go in-depth into the personal thoughts and feelings, but was a good overview of the sort of things survivors had to go through. I liked Black Rain better, though.

The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi - A very sad story of a domineering man with too many concubines, and the dynamics of the women of the household living together even when they know that they've all had intimate relations with him. The problem is that this is set in the Meiji era, so they're all virtually powerless to protect themselves.

Deep River by Shusaku Endo - This is a really intriguing interwoven story of several different people who are all searching for something spiritual, and they all end up going on a tourist trip to India on their search. There isn't really much of a conclusion to any of the distinct stories, but it was more about the journey anyway.

Teaching Cross-Culturally - What it says on the tin. I didn't really find this book very helpful; it outlined the issues teachers might face when teaching in a cross-cultural setting, but didn't really go into any kind of detail about how to actually, practically, address those issues.

[rocklobster]

Starting the grand finale of Harry Potter on Sunday.

[Sheenar]

Hind’s Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard: Pretty much this entire book strongly evoked that sweet sense of longing that C.S. Lewis calls “joy.” Extremely emotional read for me. The story isn’t necessarily universal—the specific sins and faults that Much-Afraid struggles with are not going to be the same sins and faults that everyone struggles with, and there will be many that other people struggle with that do not appear in the book. But still there are some amazing lessons in the book, particularly the song of the waterfalls and streams that rejoice in always seeking lower places and pouring themselves out in love.

One of my favorites!

Still reading When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty. Am a little over halfway through (I've struggled with reading in recent months --I get distracted easily). Very good book --I highly recommend it. Really gives a hard look at the topic of suffering. The chapters titled "The Suffering God", "The Best Answer We Have", and "Making Sense of Suffering" especially hit home. I have gleaned lots from this book so far. Will be sharing on the new blog when I finish.

[Xeno]

Borrowed Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow from my uncle. I'm a pretty big Maddow fan to begin with and my uncle found the book to be very interesting, so it should turn out to be a good read.

[SierraLea]

Started Samurai Kids, White Crane, a story about a samurai in training who only has one leg. I'm really enjoying it.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

Partials by Dan Wells - Yep Dan Wells is pretty good stuff. Even if the important character deaths list was way smaller than I expected it to be, it was really refreshingly nice that the grimdark tone of the book matched the actual situation. A lot of the times YA stuff likes to try and show how dark and gritty it is but it's relatively tame in comparison to both a lot of fictional grimdark worlds and contemporary and historical settings. The setting was probably the highlight and it was super refreshing how interesting the whole thing was. The characters felt kind of, hmmm, thin? They all had a couple distinctive personality points but they felt more like templates for me to impress expectations into rather than fully-realized characters, but I think this is a YA thing? I'm actually going to read some other YA mostly for the purpose of trying to figure out how exactly that works. But uh, really good book, can't wait to read the sequel.

The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson - Sanderson is quickly working his way up my list of favorite authors (which is admittedly not that big because I haven't been doing nearly as much reading as I used to until now) because he's just so good at everything. Mistborn was a lot of espionage and subterfuge and there's a bit of that in this but I was really surprised to see it shift gears into a political fantasy. What was even more surprising is that the book didn't feel all that different from Mistborn. Sanderson's pacing is still boss and he actually nailed the climax this time; I think this was what he tried to pull off in Elantris but I think it worked considerably better, possibly because the climax is twice as long, and possibly because it's been setting itself up for the climax instead of the jarring tonal shift. Another highlight was some excellent displays of how really freaking cool Allomancy is. Duralmin added a veeeeeeery interesting new dimension to fights and seeing Vin either take on a Mistborn or a team of Mistings was really interesting and cool. I've got a couple things on my plate that are more immediate but this summer I'd really like to tackle the other two novels.

The Hollow City by Dan Wells - I picked this up partly because it was short and I needed some filler between WoA and waiting for I Don't Want To Kill You to show up and partly because I wanted to see what adults were like when they were Wells' primary characters. And uh it wasn't very helpful for that because the only character that really matters is the main one and because of the whole schizophrenia thing I don't think it is indicative of how Wells would write a book for adults about adults. Oh well. The whole thing was actually really creepy and interesting for the first two thirds, at which point there are some twists that make everything way less interesting. Oh well. Fine if you want more of Wells' stuff and you've already done Cleaver and Partials, but not a good starting place for his writing.

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordian - It was okay. Some of it was kind of fun. Some of it was really dumb. It was also really short and I have been informed that it gets better so I'll probably at least check out the second book. Yep.

[SierraLea]

Started Stoneheart. So far, pretty good and a very interesting setup. I can't wait to see what the rest of the trilogy is like!

[GeneD]

I'm reading the Baccano light novels again. Started with The Slash ~Cloudy to rainy~ since that's where I left off last time, but that put me in the mood for the anime, which in turn put me in the mood to read the novels covering those events. So I re-read The Rolling Bootlegs and am now halfway through with The Grand Punk Railroad: Local Episode. I love picking out the differences from the anime and, even though I've seen that, I still need to pay proper attention to keep track of where everyone is running around on the train. I think I should map it out sometime.

Spoiler for the novels and the anime: SPOILER: Highlight text to read: This is just speculation, but I get the impression that "the woman in fatigues" (Rachel from the information brokers) is set up as a misdirect for the identity for the Rail Tracer and/or the identity of Claire Stanfield. <-Possible reason why he has a girl's name. She gets noticed by two different sets of characters in the beginning and is said to have a really intense air about her, then she disappears when the shooting starts and hasn't reappeared since.

There's also "the man in grey" who I don't recognise from the anime. He might be a misdirect for "Maiza's alchemist friend", who we know is on the train, but whose identity hasn't been revealed yet.

Oh and there's an extra named (Jack) member of Jacuzzi's gang. I also like that his friends/gang-members John and Fang get a bit more "screen-time" and there are a few fun interactions that didn't make it into the anime.

So far we're seeing things mostly from Jaccuzi's and Miria and Isaac's POV and it's much more chronological than the anime although not completely so.

[ClaecElric4God]

The Inheritance Series. Just finished Eragon, now I'm working on Eldest. Am I the only one who didn't know that Christopher Paolini wrote Eragon when he was 15, and was homeschooled his whole life? That is so cool to me.

[SierraLea]

I would like that series better if it wasn't ripped off of otherstories like the Skywalker tales.

[GeneD]

The Grand Punk Railroad: Express Episode.

Spoiler's probably okay if you've seen the anime SPOILER: Highlight text to read: I'm happy to see Claire commenting on his name and in-universe characters mistaking him for a woman before they meet him. I don't think it was ever really discussed in the anime and, well, with a character named Jacuzzi Splot, it's not all that clear if it's supposed to be unusual. It's even stated that he was named after his grandfather who was born in a time when Claire was also common as a boy's name.

Confirmed that Rachel was being set up as Claire in the previous novel. Some characters suspected this themselves.

I still don't know who the "man in grey" is.

This novel is focusing on Czes, Rachel and Claire's POV so far. I'm only about a quarter of the way in though.

[Mullet Death]

The Hobbit, in anticipation of the next movie. I will never stop loving the works of Tolkien. Except Silmarillion. Could never finish it.

[the_wolfs_howl]

Finished The Return of the King, and decided to read the Appendices this time (usually I don't bother). Ah, such a good book.

I'm now reading a book called How to Read Literature Like a Professor, without a whole lot of hope that it will be useful since I'm planning on becoming a high school teacher rather than a college professor, but we'll see.

I've also started reading The Book of Mormon, because one of my closest friends is LDS and I'd like to understand her point of view better.

[LastLfan]

Adam richman's book America the Edible(more on the side) and about to start 1984

[Lilac#18]

Currently reading Angel Eyes by Shannon Dittemore. It kinda starts slow, but I think it's worth the read.

[Jingo Jaden]

Now reading the Divine Comedy, as illustrated by Gustave Dore.

[SierraLea]

Up to my ears in Silvertongue.

[mysngoeshere56]

"Triangles" by Ellen Hopkins. Almost skipped this one because it was written for an audience that typically doesn't enjoy my kind of books, but decided to try it because I liked her other books.

[rocklobster]

Look Me in the Eye It's the memoir of an Aspie.

[GeneD]

Baccano light novels: I finished re-reading Drugs and the Dominos and am skipping The Children of Bottle, which I've already read.

Now reading The Slash ~Bloody to Fair~ : pick your favourite monster/mafia/murderer. Narita makes it hard to choose.

[Furen]

Lunatic by Ted Dekker
and all the books in the lost book series before that.

Also, not a what I am, but what I want is to read The Screwtape Letters by C.S.Lewis

[mysngoeshere56]

"The Vampire Lestat" by Anne Rice.

[SierraLea]

I finished Silvertongue. There was so much in that ending that they didn't need and sort of dropped out of the blue. I would have liked it better if George and Edie had become a different kind of couple.