Books, Movies, Music & Entertainment - What are you reading right now?

I did an exhaustive search for the “What are you Reading” thread and it was no where to be found, so I am starting a new one and if the old one is still around please move this to the bottom, as it was one of my favourite threads.

Lately I have read a few travel related books, mostly in preparation for a cycling tour I have planed.
But I have also read:

Leonard Cohen’s Stranger Music –Selected Poems and Songs
Not sure what I can say about L. Cohen - you either love him or hate him.

Soldier of the Spirit – The Life of Charles De Foucauld by Michel Carrouges. This was an interesting read: first because it looks at the incredible life of a Christian hermit and second, it covers the early years of exploration and French occupation of North Africa. Foucauld was an orphaned French aristocrat who after serving as an officer in North Africa quite to explore Morocco. Dressed as a rabbi, he spent a year 1883-84 visiting cities never seen by a European. After Morocco, he returned to France and became a devout Christian and eventually joining a Trappist monastery in Syria. He felt the Trappist order were not hard-core enough and left the to end up living as an impoverished hermit on the property of the Poor Clares in Nazareth. After leaving the holy land, he became a priest and set up the Fraternity of Beni Abbes in Algeria, near the border with Morocco. After about five years of working with the slaves and ex-slaves, he moved on to set up a new order working with the Tuaregs and the Herratins in Tamanrasset, an oasis located in the Hoggar region in the centre of the Sahara. During his time in the Hoggar he learned the local Tuareg dialect, wrote a French- Tuareg dictionary, a dictionary of nouns and a translated Tuareg poetry. Around the start of World War l, he was murdered by a marauding band of Tuareg warriors from Tripoli. After his death, the order of the little brothers and little sisters were established based on his ideas. He was made a saint in 1988.

I am now re-reading The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy by C.B. Macpherson.

The Bhagavad Gita, translated by Eknath Easwaran. One of the Hindu scriptures. It's an interesting religious view.

An IKEA catalog...

:p

With the moving process, I've suddenly found I have absolutely no furniture! So I'm taking all my time off from pretty much everything to find out what I need to buy so that I can finally move into my new place- all my stuff is there, but it's all over the floor in piles, and I'm staying at my parents until I get it all figured out!

I'm also reading the Sears catalog, the Room and Board catalog, and the Bloomingdale's catalog. :-/

Koffee

P.S. Gordon, don't worry- that thread was lost in the crash when we lost all our Lounge threads. Someone had to start it for us again.

Koffee

Half way through "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" Then I have "Jitterbug Pefume" up next. Guess I am doing a 60's/70's thing right now. Gotta love Marvin though robots with inferiority complexes :D

Half way through "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" Then I have "Jitterbug Pefume" up next. Guess I am doing a 60's/70's thing right now.

wow, what a coincidence. "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" was the last book i read (last week) and "Jitterbug Pefume" my ex-girlfriend gave me over 2 years ago and i first read it about 6 months ago. (oh, both books were great!)

i am currently reading "About a Boy" by Nick Hornsby.

i'm used to trading books with friends, but as i'm in Germany it's a little different. i try to read in German to improve my German (i read "High Fidelity" also by Nick Hornsby in German a few months ago and had no trouble but then tried "Golf Generation" by a german author and got bogged down --- it's sad, but i think translations are easier than original German texts) but i have to keep the books a little easier. trading English paperbacks is not so easy so i have actually been buying them - and i only get the really popular ones (unless i want to pay higher prices from Amazon)

i would like to read "Fahrenheit 451" as i never have, but need to find a copy. plus there are a ton of classics i want to read... "Sun Also Rises" by Hemmingway is on my list (read "Farewell to Arms" last year and For Whom the Bell Tolls 10 years ago + a few others)

i'm also interesting in reading some philosophy... Nietsche, Kant and others (read some in college but i paid less attention than i would have liked to) ---- can anyone recommend a good place to start?

I'm currently reading Every Second Counts. I picked it up over the weekend at Costco for $13.95. I'm also in the middle of Tom Clancy's Red Rabbit.

Currently reading The Wailing Wind by Hillerman
have Every Second Counts next up.
I've been meaning to reread All Tomorrows Parties
by Gibson and Gravities Rainbow by Pynchon.
Been picking up and reading TheCount of Monte Christo
which is my favourite Dumas book.
Gordon P have you read Beautiful Losers by Cohen? good book, depressing and strange tho. I loved it.

Marty

Just as an aside- Every Second Counts is on sale at Barnes and Noble for 40% off- I'm not sure if you have to be a member to get the discount, but if anyone's looking for it, it may do you some good to get online at their website and see what they're talking about.

Koffee

I finished Every Second Counts last night on the plane. Excellent book and very much up to date since it also covers up to and a little after the 2003 TdF.

On bieng and nothingness.. .for the 3rd time.

Inside Cisco IOS Software Architecture
A Right To Be Hostile (the new Boondocks collection)

Finished Every Second Counts last week... was a little disappointed by the repeated sequences (several chapters near the beginning read like they were lifted straight from It's Not About the Bike) but overall it was pretty good.

I am reading 50 Years of Schwinn Built Bicycles: The story of the Bicycle and its Contributions to Our Way of Life published by Arnold, Schwinn and Co.of Chicago in celebration of their half-century anniversary. I picked the book up at an estate auction recently. I wanted it most as a collectible, not as literature. I just finished reading a rather sad chapter that described all of the technology developed by the early bicycle industry that was incorporated into the automobile. Even America's premiere (at the time) bicycle manufacturer seemed to think that the bicycle had been relegated to toy status by the "superior" technology of the automobile.

My personal library contains school textbooks, math texts, the Bible, Unfinished Tales by Tolkien(read some yesterday), running books, and others, which I look at from time to time

Jacob

This week:
"Masters of Doom" by David Kushner
-The story of id software, the makers of "Doom" and "Quake".

"Darwins Dangerous Idea"

Magazines: Sail, Smithsonian, and Bicycling mag. I can't stand "Bicycling", got a free sub. - terrible magazine.

I can't wait to get ahold of "Quicksilver" by Neal Stephenson

I am also an Edward Abbey fan.

Half way through "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" Then I have "Jitterbug Pefume" up next. Guess I am doing a 60's/70's thing right now. Gotta love Marvin though robots with inferiority complexes :D

Jitterbug Perfume is one of the best books from Tom Robbins, though all of his are worth reading.

Jitterbug Perfume is one of the best books from Tom Robbins, though all of his are worth reading.

My Favorite of his so far is "Another Roaside Attraction" I am still working on Hitchhiker I think I'll be able to start Jitterbug in a couple of weeks.

Jitterbug is great... my wife turned me onto him!!

Currently I am reading Fat Man On A Bicycle by Tom Vernon... fantastic book about bicycle touring and France!!

I am one of those annoying people that reads several books at once. There is a big stack next to my reading chair and I simply pick up whatever I am in the mood for and read a chapter or two.

Here is an inventory of the current stack:

An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afganistan by Jason Elliot
Word on the Street: debunking the myth of a "pure" standard english by John McWhorter
A Long Line of Dead Men by Lawrence Block (fiction)
Enough Rope by Lawrence Block
In The Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick

'Time Hoppers' by Robert Silverberg.

Half way through "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" Then I have "Jitterbug Pefume" up next. Guess I am doing a 60's/70's thing right now. Gotta love Marvin though robots with inferiority complexes :D

I believe Marvin was Thom Yorke's inspiration for Radiohead's song, Paranoid Android. Love the Hitchhikers books.

I'm currently reading In The Hand of Dante by Nick Tosches. Excellent writing, but some very graphic sex and violence. I'm having to look up words I've never seen before. You gotta keep learning.

Just finished Bob Roll's Bobke II. H-i-larious. Good way to kill a couple of hours.

The Passionate War - a like 1200 page history of the Spanish Civil War.

I'm also waiting to get my copy of Bobke II back from a certain Junior member so I can read it again.

Can't get enough of that wacky Bob Roll. Chris Carmichael can't hold piss compared to Bobke's training plan.

I've put down Hitchhiker for a minute a freind just lent me Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them)

1/2 way through Michael Crichton's Timeline.
So far-So good.
As usual, I should have waited until AFTER I saw the movie to read it. Now I'm sure the movie won't live up. They rarely do.

1/2 way through Michael Crichton's Timeline.
So far-So good.
As usual, I should have waited until AFTER I saw the movie to read it. Now I'm sure the movie won't live up. They rarely do.

Nononono. Always read the book before watching the movie.

Better yet - Skip the movie altogether.

The Monk by Matthew Lewis, read it and you will talk funny
Just finished The Devil in the White City

Well Stephan King of course!

The Dark Tower 5 Wolves of the Calla.

All Hail the King! :beer:

Just finished "Lone Cyclist" by Anne Mustoe. Much more enjoyable than her first book as it deals more with the practicalities and feelings of cycle touring and less on the history of the areas she passed through.

Trying to get a copy of "The Song of Phaid the Gambler" by Mick Farren, a scifi book I read in the 80's now out of print.

Half way through "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" Then I have "Jitterbug Pefume" up next. Guess I am doing a 60's/70's thing right now. Gotta love Marvin though robots with inferiority complexes :D

Try the Dirk Gentley books by the same author .

also the Gorky Park trilogy plus one by Martin Cruz Smith

also ANYTHING by Allen Dean Foster .


re Marvin : " I seem to be lying at the bottom of a deep dark hole , now what does that remind me of ? , ah yes , life "

1/2 way through Michael Crichton's Timeline.
So far-So good.
As usual, I should have waited until AFTER I saw the movie to read it. Now I'm sure the movie won't live up. They rarely do.


Great book. Heard the movie sucked so I avoided it. Right now light reading. Chicken Soup for the Travelers Soul.

"Krakatoa" by Simon Winchester. Very interesting book about the explosion of this volcano in south Asia off Sumatra and Java in August of 1883. Makes Mt. St. Helen look like a cap-gun by comparison.

I've just started "April 1865". Civil War history about not just the battles and generals but about what it meant for the country, focusing on the events of one crucial month in 1865.

I just finished "Candy and Me- a Love Story", a book about one woman's lifelong obsession with sugar, told as a memoir of her teenage and early adult years. Makes my own sweet tooth seem almost normal in comparison. :D

Anyone out there read the great Russian Authors? I can't seem to get enough of thier insights into life, and thier portrayal of everyday living, from hard to priviledged conditions.

War and Peace was my favorite, I sat on it for about 5 years before having the nerve to read it, and that was only after I had been indoctrinated by Anna Karenina, a much more manageable title to start out with Tolstoy.

Right now I am reading Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, a little tough going at the start but really grabbed me about 1/3 of the way in.

Try reading Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, Gogol's Dead Souls, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment or Notes from the Underground, The Brothers Karamazov.

How the Irish Saved Civilization. Well written and extremely interesting.

Donna Tartt's The Little Friend, very good so far. Her first novel, The Secret History, is one of my favorites.

The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt.

Interesting story of a single mother, Sibylla, who comes from a long line of frustrated talents, and her son Ludo, who just happens to be a genius. Sibylla is obsessed with the film The Seventh Samurai, and makes it a running backdrop to Ludo's childhood.

It's been bloody hard to get into (this is the fifth time I've started reading it!) but after the first 100 pages or so it's turning into a really good read.

A little over 1/2 though mossflower (the 2nd book in Brian Jacques series "a tale of Redwall") Its a really good book and so are the other umm....12 or so books :p I plan to read all of them before the hoildays end! :D

I've already read Fathers and SOns, and Crime and Punishment, both excellent. Gogol is a new name to me so I'll have to look into that. I have a copy of Brothers Karamazov sitting on my shelf ready to read. I usually go to the paperback exchange or hit the church bazaars during the holidays and stock up. For less than $5 I can bring home 7-10 novels that last me 6 months, then take them back and trade them in if I choose to. Sure the selection of new writing is low, but the classics are never hard to come by.

Just finished "Tao: The Watercourse Way" by Alan M Watts. Very good read, opens up some interesting ideas.

Currently reading: "Lost in the Funhouse" a biography of Andy Kaufman.

Just finished Population 485 by Mike Perry. At one point, rather unrelated to the larger story he's telling at the time, he's on his way to go cycling with Mike Magnuson (author of Lumox and some excellent contributions to Bicycling).

Reading now: Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis, and still plugging away at Zinn's A People's History of the United States, which is superb.

Just started [I]Angels and Demons.

I just finished Plunkitt Of Tammany Hall. A book of practical Politics.Opinions are those of George washington Plunkitt. He was born in 1842 in central Park (The land it was built on pre park)and rose to Prominence in the Tammany Hall Political Machine in New York City.

I liked the Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzinhetsin. I hope I spelled that last name right. A similiar book was coming out of the ice .It was about an American who grew up in the Soviet union and then imprisoned because of Soviet paranoia. I forget the author.

Jack Dawes by Ken Follet

I liked the Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzinhetsin. I hope I spelled that last name right. A similiar book was coming out of the ice .It was about an American who grew up in the Soviet union and then imprisoned because of Soviet paranoia. I forget the author.

James, have you read "One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich"? Also by Solzhenitsin. Very powerful.

For myself, I'm reading "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen.

Any one here ever read anything by Sherman Alexie? Great stuff.

Just picking up "Dude, Where's my Country" by Michael Moore that I recieved as a Christmas gift. ANyone else get any good books as gifts for the holidays?

Right now I am reading Black Elk Speaks (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0803261705/qid=1075400018/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-6788145-6369407). This is more or less an autobiography of Black Elk, a leader among the Sioux Indians, born in the last part of the 19th Century. The tale is simply told in his own words in 1932 as an old man. His gift for understatement is only equaled by Sir Edmund Hillary (who also published a great autobiography). He would have been a great man among any people, but it is especially interesting to hear his story and his view of that portion of Sioux history because it is told from a point-of-view that is hardly heard from in history books.

A great read, highly recommended.

Dan