What Are You Reading Now?

[Brian]

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
after 20 pages, i like it.

[BoylenOver]

The End of Alice

I'm 50 (or so) pages in. It's really messed-up stuff so far.

Well-written, and deeply unsettling. It delves into the criminal psyche while making you consider how different it is from the "normal" psyche. And the use of imperfect narrator is expertly done.

[happyone]

Finished The Sliver Eagle. I enjoyed it. It is the second book of a proposed triolgy. The book follows three survivors of the Roman defeat at Currhae and there struggle to get back to Rome. It also delves into the politics of the 1st Triumphvirate and the rivalary between Ceaser and Pompey.
If you like historical fiction you probably would enjoy this.

Current reading A Dark and Bloody Ground: The Hurtgen Forest and the Roer River Dams, 1944-1945 by Edward Miller.

[Flattop]

Sound Collision!

Cold Choices by Larry Bond

This is a sequal to Bond's Dangerous Ground. In the first book, a Los Angelas class submarine conducts a reconnaissance mission in Russia's backyard and has a very unfriendly encounter with a Russian submarine. One of the characters is Jerry Mitchell, a fighter pilot who survived a crash and transfered to subs.

Mitchell returns in Cold Choices, now as a member of the crew of Seawolf, and once again is on patrol in the Barents Sea. One criticism of Dangerous Ground was that Bond took too long to get to the action, spending alot of time on the trip out to the Barents (I enjoyed that part, actually); Cold Choices gets to the action early as Seawolf encounters an unfriendly Russian sub and during close maneuvers a collision occures. The Russian sub sinks to the bottom and only Seawolf, herself badly damaged, knows where to find it.

Both books are excellent.

[happyone]

finished A Dark and Bloody Ground. It was a little dry, but if you are a WWII history buff, well worth reading. The author was a serving officer when he wrote it, and it reads like it. A lot of jargon and militaryese. His take on the battle is a little different than Charles McDonald's, who wrote the first book on the Hurtgen. Miller thought that it was probably necessary, but the generals at the time fought it for the wrong reasons. In order to take the dams you had to clear the forest. However in the beginning the US generals (Hodges and Collins) didn't see the need for the dams, so they didn't have a strategic vision for the battle and got caught up in the meat grinder. They basicly played into the German hands. Miller goes down to platoon level explaining actions of various units. Divisions were utterly used up fighting there. Some divisions suffered more than 100% casualities in their infantry battalions.

as a side note 3 of the 5 divisions that were in the way of the Germans at the start of the Battle of the Bulge were refitting after being withdrawn from the Hurtgen.

Started 15 Stars: Eisenhower, MacArthur, Marshall: Three Generals Who Saved the American Century by Stanley Weintraub. I've read some of his other stuff and he is a pretty good author.

[old_gregg]

just finished me talk pretty one day by david sedaris. it was a really obnoxious with all of the reasons why france is better than the u.s. but he is pretty funny, and has a nice casual tone of humility.

[BoylenOver]

just finished me talk pretty one day by david sedaris. it was a really obnoxious with all of the reasons why france is better than the u.s. but he is pretty funny, and has a nice casual tone of humility.

Sedaris is great. I know him more from "This American Life" and audio books than by reading his written words, and I love his voice (both the literal audial presentation and the combination of factors he uses to present his material).

His sister, Amy, is also very successful.

[old_gregg]

yeah, i'm a huge ira glass fan. i don't know, maybe i was in a particularly bad mood that day. but the story about americans in movie theaters and the one about him being a pick pocket on the subway were a bit annoying. but, the stories about his dad are hilarious.

[Fiyero]

I finished Ramona Quimby, Age 8 last month and have moved on to Beezus and Ramona. I can't put them down!

[John McClain]

Just finished The Lovely Bones - interesting book. Now I need something lighter, so I started The Brethren by John Grisham

[LA Ute]

"Animal Farm." I wanted to know if I see or find more in it now than I did as a kid. So far I am seeing and finding a lot more. Some books need to be read twice - once as a young man or woman, once in middle age or after. "Great Expectations" is a perfect example. Everyone reads it in 9th or 10th grade, but how can anyone understand those themes at that age? When I was a kid, to me Miss Havisham was a crazy old bat. As an adult married 29 years, she is tragic to me, and quite chilling.

[Clark Addison]

No, but I would like to read Thunderstruck.

After reading Devil in the White City last year, I just finished Thuderstruck. My short review is that if you enjoyed DITWC, you will also enjoy Thuderstruck, but if you didn't like DITWC, you will also not like Thunderstruck. They are similar in many ways.

Larson again ties together a historical event with a crime. This time it is Marconi's work on inventing and propegating the wireless, along with the Dr. Crippen murder case.

I thought both stories were very interesting. If you thought that there was too much architecture info in DITWC, you may think that there is too much wireless info in this one. I thought most of it was very interesting, but much like in DITWC, the murder story is more gripping. Even though I liked the historical info a lot, there were several times when I would finish a chapter on the Crippen case, and kind of think to myself "Darn it, now I need to slog through some more wireless talk". (speaking of which, DITWC was referred to me by a co-worker who wasn't interested in the world's fair part, so she only read the crime chapters).

I liked Thuderstruck quite a bit, but I would probably rate it a little below DITWC for the following reasons:

1. The whole idea of marrying a historical story with a crime story wasn't as fresh. With this being the second book, it seemed just a bit formulaic.

2. I found the Homes murder story in DITWC more interesting that the Crippen story. I had never heard of Holmes, while I was somewhat familiar with Crippen. Also, the Crippen case is mainly famous because of its association with the wireless. The case itself is not nearly as interesting or macabre as the Holmes case.

3. Likewise, I found the historical section of DITWC more interesting than in Thunderstruck. This is partially because I am from Chicago, and familiar with many of the locations and buildings. Plus, Marconi seems like kind of a jerk. I liked Crippen more than Marconi (literally).

Overall, a good read. I would recommend it.

[Fiyero]

I've been wanting to give a go at Howard Ziff's A People's History of the United States, but the library's copies are always checked out. Settled on David Copperfield.

[LA Ute]

I've been wanting to give a go at Howard Ziff's A People's History of the United States, but the library's copies are always checked out. Settled on David Copperfield.

Dickens' favorite among all his novels. I loved it. I even laughed out loud at certain points.

[myboynoah]

Just finished Silence by Shusaku Endo for the second time. I read the William Johnson translation. A very tragic story set during the Tokugawa Bakufu's very effective efforts to eradicate Christianity from Japan. I highly recommend it, especially to those that served missions in Japan.

Endo has his own views on the conflict between "his Japanese sensibility" and the Catholicism to which he converted as a child. While such conflict is natural between cultures, I don't know that I necessarily agree with that being the primariy reason for how things played out in the book and in a historical sense.