Your reading list?

[Sandra Craft]

Sounds interesting -- that's going on my reading list.

[Tank]

I am currently reading "The Bridge to Humanity: How Affect Hunger Trumps the Selfish Gene" by Walter Goldschmidt.It talks about how human culture has evolved since the time of early humans "the hominids" and how that evolution came to be through shifts in behavioral traits. The book focuses specifically on "affect hunger" (the inherited trait that makes us crave affection from others) and how that was really significant to our survival and shaping culture. The book ties in Anthropology with Biology, it is very interesting  

Interesting, thinks for posting this.

[Ildiko]

I'm almost done with
God Hates You, Hate Him Back

That looks like fun. I'll give it a go, even though one of the reviews describes it as "A very good book for someone just getting into atheism."

Dead tree books:
Just finished - Ben Goldacre's Bad Science.
About to start - Treat or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial.

On my Sony reader:
Old Josephine Tey detective stories; Inspector Montalbano; fun stuff from Project Gutenberg like Augustus Carp Esq.

Online (proofreading for Distributed Proofreaders, which provides book for Project Gutenberg):
An 1821 Italian translation of Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Chiefly notable for the fact that every time Gibbon says anything which the translator takes to be offensive to the RC church, or doctrinally incorrect, or comments on the bad behaviour of some Christian emperor, he goes off on a 3 page footnote rant. Excellently funny. 

[joeactor]

Currently reading "The Doomsday Book" (Sci-Fi - great story so far).

Next up: "God No" by Penn from Penn and Teller.

[Ildiko]

Currently reading "The Doomsday Book" (Sci-Fi - great story so far).

I loved that book! Must read it again soon.

Strong recommendation:

All other reading is on the back burner at the moment as I've got stuck into Augustus Carp, Esq. Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man. It's in the style of Diary of a Nobody, but Augustus Carp is the most loathsome creature imaginable - a pious proselytising Christian with absolutely no morals and no self-awareness. Very funny indeed and the ebook is available free here:

http://www.manybooks.net/titles/bashfordhother09augustus_carp.html

(not spam - it's a link to the download page)

[Sandra Craft]

Among the books I just finished is Kate Chopin's The Awakening, the book considered so immoral that it destroyed both her reputation and her career as a writer when it was first published in 1899.

The Awakening is a well-written story but I just couldn't work up any interest for the main character, who struck me as one of those essentially useless people -- in Edna Pontellier's case a woman who was completely unsuited to being either a wife or mother (which, lets face it, some of us aren't) but leeched off the benefits of domesticity while failing to fulfill the roles.  When she finally drowns herself in the sea, apparently because she had nothing better to do that day, the strongest reaction I can manage is "she's dead, so what?".  I know I'm probably being unfair to the story, or not understanding it at all, but I do think Willa Cather is right that this is an American Bovary, and like the original, just as unsympathetic.

However, I will recommend reading it for two reasons -- 1) it is an American classic, and 2) the writing is very good:

on the influence of bugs:  The mosquitoes made merry over her, biting her firm, round arms and nipping at her bare insteps.  The little stinging, buzzing imps succeeded in dispelling a mood which might have held her there in the darkness half a night longer.

on selecting a husband:  Her marriage to Leonce Pontellier was purely an accident, in this respect resembling many other marriages which masquerade as the decrees of Fate.   It was in the midst of her secret great passion that she met him.  He fell in love, as men are in the habit of doing, and pressed his suit with an earnestness and an ardor which left nothing to be desired.  He pleased her; his absolute devotion flattered her.  She fancied there was a sympathy of thought and taste between them, in which fancy she was mistaken.  Add to this the violent opposition of her father and her sister Margaret to her marriage with a Catholic, and we need see no further for the motives which led her to accept Monsieur Pontellier for her husband.

on husband/wife relations:  "You are too lenient, too lenient by far, Leonce," asserted the Colonel.  "Authority, coercion are what is needed.  Put your foot down good and hard, the only way to manage a wife.  Take my word for it."  The Colonel was perhaps unaware that he had coerced his own wife into her grave.  Mr. Pontellier had a vague suspicion of it which he thought it needless to mention at that late day.

[Davin]

Just finished the Game of Thrones, picked up the rest of that series.

Just finished the first two books in the Hunger Game series and started on the third.

Just got the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series.

Starting on the Dresdon Files series (about fourteen books in it now).

[Buddy]

I have been reading the Bones series by Kathy Reichs. I love both the books and the TV series. Just finished Fatal Voyage.

[Sandra Craft]

Starting on the Dresdon Files series (about fourteen books in it now).

I love the Dresden series -- wonderful brain candy.  I was sorry the TV series didn't take off.

[Squid]

Finishing up reading The Disaster Preparedness Handbook by Arthur Bradley...some good stuff in there.

[DeterminedJuliet]

I am currently reading "The Bridge to Humanity: How Affect Hunger Trumps the Selfish Gene" by Walter Goldschmidt.It talks about how human culture has evolved since the time of early humans "the hominids" and how that evolution came to be through shifts in behavioral traits. The book focuses specifically on "affect hunger" (the inherited trait that makes us crave affection from others) and how that was really significant to our survival and shaping culture. The book ties in Anthropology with Biology, it is very interesting  

Interesting, thinks for posting this.

Agreed. This sounds like just my cup of tea!

[Davin]

Starting on the Dresdon Files series (about fourteen books in it now).

I love the Dresden series -- wonderful brain candy.  I was sorry the TV series didn't take off.

Me too, it seemed like the TV series was just getting into it's rhythm too. I also like the first book so far.

[MariaEvri]

at work I am re-reading
christine by stephen king
at home I am reading
7 years in tibet by Heinrich Harrer
evolution in the everyday life by David P. Mindell
and re-reading god is not great by christopher hitchens

[Sandra Craft]

I'm still working my way thru Carl Sagan's collection of lectures, The Varieties of Scientific Experience, but it's been slow going since I've made it my bed time book and I haven't had much trouble falling asleep in awhile.  I think I'll transfer it to the bathroom and make it my tub book.

I've also just started reading The Rashomon Gate, by I. J. Parker, an amateur detective mystery set in Feudal Japan.  Despite the language between the characters often being oddly modern and American, I'm enjoying it.  The story involves a scandal in cheating on exams at an old and now failing university, as well as unpleasantness at a poetry competition.  I just eat this stuff up.

I just finished Jim Thompson's Pop. 1280 and loved it.  It's a weird and funny version of Thompson's usual grim noir writing and, altho it does bear a resemblance to his more popular The Killer Inside Me, I do think it still stands on its own.  Altho no real specifics about time and place are given, it takes place in the American South around 1920 or 1930 and the sheriff of a tiny town is the narrator.  There's plenty shocking going on in this small place and Sheriff Nick Corey is very amusing in telling us all about it, tho the story does take a chilling turn at the end as we get to know the sheriff better.  He's definitely a man with an interesting slant on things. 

Here's where the sheriff has his great vision while peering in a window where a multiple murder is about to happen:

Well, sir, it was a funny thing, a funny-terrible thing, a strange crazy thing.  Because what caught my attention wasn't what you'd have thought it would be at all.  Not Rose, scared and dazed and wonderin' what the heck had gone wrong.  Not Lennie and Myra, smilin' and spiteful and enjoyin' theirselves.  Not something that was in the room itself.  Not somethin' but nothing.  The emptiness.  The absense of things.

I'd maybe been in that house a hundred times, that one and a hundred others like it.  But this was the first time I'd seen what they really were.  Not homes, not places for people to live in, not nothin'.  Just pine-board walls locking in the emptiness.  No pictures, no books -- nothing to look at or think about.  Just the emptiness that was soakin' in on me here.

And then suddenly it wasn't here, it was everywhere, every place like this one.  And suddenly the emptiness was filled with sound and sight, with all the sad terrible things that the emptiness had brought the people to.

There were the helpless little girls, cryin' when their own daddies crawled into bed with 'em.  There were the men beating their wives, the women screamin' for mercy.  There were the kids wettin' in the beds from fear and nervousness, and their mothers dosin' 'em with red pepper for punishment.  There were the haggard faces, drained white from hookworm and blotched with scurvy.  There was the near-starvation, the never-bein'-full, the debts that always outrun the credits.  There was the how-we-gonna-eat, how-we-gonna-sleep, how-we-gonna-cover-our-poor-bare-asses thinkin'.  The kind of thinkin' that when you ain't doing nothing else but that, why you're better off dead.  Because that's the emptiness thinkin' and you're already dead inside, and all you'll do is spread the stink and the terror, the weepin' and wailin', the torture, the starvation, the shame of your deadness.  Your emptiness.

I shuddered, thinking how wonderful was our Creator to create such downright hideous things in the world, so that something like murder didn't seem at all bad by comparison.  Yea, verily, it was indeed merciful and wonderful of Him.

It's mostly merciful and wonderful for the sheriff, who doesn't have to feel so bad about all the murders he commits, never mind the ones his girlfriend Rose is about to commit on his wife Myra and her boyfriend Lennie.

[Sandra Craft]

Also finished a Dr. Laura Schlessinger book, How to Survive a Shark Attack (on land): overcoming betrayal and dealing with revenge.  Schlessinger's position is that she's 100% for revenge but only if it can be done without being criminal, immoral or fattening.  Since revenge usually involves at least one of those things, she's sadly kept from seeking it against the many people who have wronged her, but despite this unfair advantage on the part of evil, she has still managed to emerge triumphant in life, her truth proven for all to see.

The most interesting thing about this book for me is what it doesn't say.  When people tell you how they've been wronged and triumphed you're only getting one side of the story and who's to say how things might skew if the rest of the tale were available?  For instance, Bill Ballance and the nudie photos.  I'm sure nearly everyone remembers this and granted it was a crass thing to do and Ballance himself later regretted it (tho not enough to apologize to Schlessinger).

It seems to me Schlessinger had a hand in her own nudie embarrassment by cutting Ballance, the man who'd given her a start in radio as well as being a former lover, off cold as soon as he was no longer useful to her.  I remember comments surfacing from former friends and her sister (there's someone who's side of things I'd like to hear) that this was a common practice of Dr. Laura's.

And then there's the banner she flies under of conservative morality.  Nothing wrong with that, as long as you're upfront and honest about your own falls from grace with it and what you've gained from those falls.  Leave out that honesty and yes, you're headed for a comeupance and rightly so.

I think Schlessinger would agree that the best things in her life, her marriage and her son, came to her by breaking her own rules.  Her husband was a married man with three children when he and Dr. L began their affair, which turned into a 9-year co-habitation before they married.  Their son Deryk was conceived while they were still unmarried.  I have to wonder, if Schlessinger were given a chance to do it all over again, would she really do it differently?  Especially given that the son she adores on is the result of the coming together of two specific people at one specific time?

A lot of good can happen from following the rules, a lot of good can happen from breaking them.  I'd venture to say a lot of bad can happen from following and breaking the rules as well.  All I know is there are no guarantees, no insurance, so stop looking for it.  You do the best you can not to be a dick while bearing in mind that life is no end of ironic.