What did you just finish reading and what are you reading now?

Orwell's talking about The Wizard of Oz made me think, and I believe what you read says at least a little something about you. So i wanted to start a thread where we could, if we feel so inclined, to share what we have just read lately and what we are or intend to be reading now or soon.
I am doing a hobbit discussion for the next some months on the Gentle Planet so by necessity and by choice I am immersed in The Hobbit daily, as well as The Letters of Tolkien because I constantly have to look things up. But as to personal reading I just finished Agatha Christie's Poirot's Last Case, I already read it once but this time it seemed so much more painful and poignant. I started my new reading sometime yesterday and it is Charles Dicken's Tale of Two Cities. I relate to his style of writing and the way he can bring a person so very much to life that sometimes , especially like in Oliver Twist and Great Expectations it seems hard to breathe when reading of what the characters endured.

Dont realy read much these days, but i have been flicking through The Belgariad by David Eddings and i do fall a sleep with the
lotr's CD playing (again) just got to the bit where Frodo and Sam capture Gollum.



















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Well, I've just been reading The Nightcircus by Erin Morgenstern.
Any of you know about it? Because it seems to be quite successful in America; they are already planning the film adaption.

It's not about one of the usual "I love you, but I can't love you, because you are not good for me, etc. etc....." - fantasy/romance-stories (no offense ). It doesn't even seem to have a straightforward story - no golden thread, if you take my meaning - but no matter, I still loved the book!

Just one word more about it: If you love The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus you will like this book for sure


(sorry, if it seems like I'm going to advertise the book, but as a bookseller I sort of have this in my blood )

Just finished rereading H G Wells War of the Worlds and Orwell's 1984 and just started the rather odd In the Days of the Comet (another Wells).
If I'm reading a new book I give it my full individual attention but if I am rereading as in this case I can have 2 or 3 books on the go at once.

Also been listening to a superb audio version of Anthony Burgess Clockwork Orange- which I highly reccomend.



Brilliantly read.

I've recently been reading a bunch of non-fiction on 18th century maritime history, and for fun I'm re-reading "The Boat Who Wouldn't Float" by Farley Mowat, a tale of his misadventures in the Canadian Maritime Provinces. He's a wonderful storyteller, and his prose is just fun to read. And then I'm expecting to read "The King of Elfland's Daughter" because Mrs Figg recommends it. It should appear in my mailbox any day now.

wow great thread LeeLee. I read fast so its a longish list.

I just finished Tanglewreck by Jeanette Winterson. Sci Fi, fantasy, Quantum Theory, Time travel, adventure, underworld in London. this book has got the lot. I am going to read The Battle of the Sun her sequel book after.

A couple of weeks ago I read two books by one of the Who writers Ben Aaronovitch, called Moon over Soho and Rivers of London, Urban fantasy, part well researched police procedural, part Harry Potter, part gruesome murder hunt, narrated by a likeable and witty Constable who's just a bit too curious and trouble attracting for his own good. and one cold morning in Covent Garden, when he's left guarding a crime scene and a witness steps forward from St Paul's Church, a witness who is the ghost of a victorian cockney actor btw, he crosses the line between normal life, routine, and a gray future and the world of Wizardry, excitement and danger like he could never imagine.

last week I finished Black Hearts in Battersea, by joan Aiken, part of her Wolves of Willoughby Chase sequence, it is a rollocking adventure full of Hanovarian bomb plots, Dickensian villains, cockney guttersnipes, whimsical adventure fantasy and charm.

Reading two at the moment.

(Well, three really, still haven't finished the "History of Cant." It's about Georgian English attitudes. Some folk were full of cant once - many still are. Strange to say, I often think of Odo when I'm reading the book. Yes, strange. ).

"The Brain that Changes" by Norman Doidge, MD. About brain plasticity.

Also, "Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating, PM." by Don Watson. About Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating's time as Labour Prime Minister, for about five years in the early to mid 90's. I had recently read an Autobiography of Prime Minister John Howard, Keating's Liberal (Tory-equivilent in Oz) successor. Keating was an adroit politician with a taste for smart-arsedness. Not sure what the appeal is for me, actually. Howard was a typical down-to-earth Conservative.

Oh yes, and all things Forumshiran.

Semiramis wrote:(sorry, if it seems like I'm going to advertise the book, but as a bookseller I sort of have this in my blood )

You don't also 'publish' books do you?

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Also been listening to a superb audio version of Anthony Burgess Clockwork Orange- which I highly reccomend.



Brilliantly read.

Yep! But I read it a long time go. Film was interesting.. Err.. so was the Goodies version.

I have been flicking through my copy of A Naturlist Voyage Round the World by Darwin and I am lucky enough to have found myself in possession of a 4th edition copy printed in 1909 (its not worth anything but boy does it have that glorious old boook smell!). I was round a friends earlier and noticed he had a modern edition, a quick flick through was enough to notice that some of the comments about the natives had been excised from it, those which by modern standards would be considered at best casually racist, and I could see nowhere in the index or appendix which told the reader this had been altered.
I dont like that sort of thing. A piece of work should reflect the times it was written. Changing it changes history and thats too Orwellian for my liking. No one generation has the right to alter the record of the past for future genrations I dont believe.

Hey! Enough of the "Orwellian" business!

Orwell wrote:

Semiramis wrote:(sorry, if it seems like I'm going to advertise the book, but as a bookseller I sort of have this in my blood )

You don't also 'publish' books do you?

No, I don't

But I am allowed to read a good deal of them before they are available for anybody else...

I am just re-reading Madeleine L,engles series of books starting with A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A swiftly Tilting planet. this is truly life changing stuff. These are the books that got me hooked on popular science. sci fi, and time travel. amazing.

Mrs Figg wrote:I am just re-reading Madeleine L,engles series of books starting with A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A swiftly Tilting planet. this is truly life changing stuff. These are the books that got me hooked on popular science. sci fi, and time travel. amazing.

Loved A Wrinkle Time.. but read it sooooo long ago. Mrs Who, Mrs What, Mrs Howcome? I think that's the book. Didn't read the others. Good too, hey?

yep they just get better!