About 1/2 way through: The Assassin's Gate by George Packer
Next up: Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty by Bradley Martin, which explains my avatar 100%

Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe

Robert Caro - The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

The man is a treasure, this was his first book and it won a Pulitzer. I am only reading it so that I don't go crazy waiting for the end of his epic biography of Lyndon B. Johnson which should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand modern American politics.

Word. I bought Botany of Desire in South Station before a train trip and loved it. Granted, I lived on a farm the month before.

I havent gotten a chance to start omnivores dilema.

I Say Me for a Parable: The Oral Autobiography of Mance Lipscomb, Texas Bluesman

I plan to read more of his stuff. Though, I am taking a break from reading about food. I am going to tackle a few history books on my queue.

hmm interesting, i felt the same way after reading the catcher in the rye too! i've never read moby dick, but i'm pretty sure i could find it at goodwill or something. so far i'm enjoying brave new world. it's not as preachy as i thought it might be. it must have been pretty freaky reading when it was first published.
have you ever read who has seen the wind?

Conrad's The Secret Agent, incredible.

Cien Anos de Soledad (again) by Garcia Marquez

Backwards and Forwards by David Ball

STUPID AMOUNTS OF SHAKESPEARE

"moby dick" seems to be the pinnacle of long, uninteresting, dull books among people i know. i had an english professor last semester who said "melville is probably the most boring author you will ever read." i felt like "catcher in the rye" was just a bunch of angsty teenage bull****; i just wanted to scream at holden to shut up, stop being a *****, and grow up. i never went into "brave new world" thinking it would be "preachy," i went in with mostly an open mind, assuming, if anything, that it would be an orwellian rip-off, but i loved it.
no, i haven't, but i'll definitely add it to the list of books i plan on reading over this summer.

how does that compare to 100 years of solitude?

Endgame Vol.1 by Derrick Jensen

for some reason i can't finish this book, i've been at it for months on and off.

if you are willing to put in the effort Moby dick is a very good book. i have a few pages of quotes i took from that book in a notebook somewhere. really cool

i've "put in the effort" on moby dick; thrice. once more coming up this semester to. it's just very dull, not much happens (or happens over a very extended period of time), and ishmael is one of the most unreliable narrators in a book i have ever read.

oh, yeah...i've also been reading:

devil in the white city: about chicago's world's fair exposition and a serial killer who found his victims there.

french revolutions: a dude traverses old tour de france routes by himself for fun and has adventures up the ass.

the famine ships: heartwrenching for all the irish out there...about the coffin ships on which irish crossed the atlantic in conditions only a notch above slave ships, and the famine which wiped out a million people in ireland and sent 2 million abroad, only about half of which arrived in the new world alive. hence the famine ships are better known as "coffin ships".

a social history of the bicycle: just started, but freakin' cool. covers topics as wide as early religious acceptance and condemnation of the bicycle, and its part in early womens' liberation movements.

the essential calvin and hobbes: only the greatest comic ever.

history's a good subject. let me know about good ones. i don't like dry books about dates and numbers...history is a very human thing, and any book that can effectively communicate that is so good in my eyes...

***** Pow Wow by Eric Paul.

****ty Spanish literature from the 12-17th centuries. Exams suck. Góngora sucks even more.

Hahaha. That book (and Arab on Radar in general) might be partly responsible for ending a relationship of mine.

i might learn spanish to fluency just so that I can read Cien Anos de Soledad as Marquez wrote it instead of how somebody translated it. i am wary of translations, because i've read some books in different translations and had completely different experiences. society of the spectacle comes readily to mind...

anyway, i recently read The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai, which is a moving novel set against the trauma of postcolonial India. I also recently read Perfume, which is the story of an unusual young man in 19th century France, who has an unparalleled sense of smell, and, naturally, uses it for evil. Well done but not fabulous writing; great story. I want to see the movie.

Pickpockets Tale by Timothy Gilfoyle. All sorts of crazy good. I picked it up for my dad since I knew he liked Gotham, and wound up reading it myself.

Its about an orphan who grew up in New York City around 1880. They discern as much as they can about the time from his letters and stories. If you like criminal justice history, it's fantastic.

--Aaron

journey to the end of the night, dark star safari, the world's most dangerous places, introductory russian and italian a self-teaching guide

colouring books

i'm reading it right now too. It is incredible... Conrad was surely tempted by and wary of anarchism; he does such a great job identifying different strains. And his characters' emotional depth is really amazing.

Also reading Tony Hiss Experience of Place.

Not worth it IMHO. (Haven't read the English translation or the Hungarian for that matter but I'm not exactly fond of the original.)
Now, if you say you want to read some Vargas Llosa, Borges and Horacio Quiroga... that'd be so worth it. All are available in English but that's not the same thing as you say. English Borges translations aren't exactly top notch IMHO so that's a good reason alone. (Pretty crazy that he of all people would suffer this fate.)