What are you reading right now?

[Gordon P]

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.

[Gus Riley]

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

[Guest]

An IKEA catalog...



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

[Guest]

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

[ngateguy]

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

[nathank]

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?

[khuon]

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.

[lotek]

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

[Guest]

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

[khuon]

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.

[SD Fixed]

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

[alexs]

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.

[RegularGuy]

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.

[jacob]

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

[TeleJohn]

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.

[Prosody]

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

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

[ngateguy]

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.

[Istanbul_Tea]

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!!

[cycletourist]

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

[Allister]

'Time Hoppers' by Robert Silverberg.

[bumblebee]

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

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.

[Schiek]

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

[superchivo]

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.

[ngateguy]

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

[ChipRGW]

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.