What Are You Reading Now? - My Quarterly Survey

10/03/11

[MplsSteve]

Hi everyone! It's time again for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" survey.

As you know, I consider Freepers to be among the most well-read of those of us on the 'Net. I like to get a feel as to what everyone is reading right now.

It can be anything - a technical journal, a NY Times best seller, a class work of fiction, a trashy pulp novel. In short, it can be anything.

Please do not respond to this thread by posting "I'm reading this thread" - or any variation thereof. It became really unfunny a long time ago.

I'll start. I'm reading "The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the making of a secret American Empire" by Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman. It's part history, part biography and part expose of the Boswell family of Central California, a mega-farming corporation in the Central Valley. It's fascinating reading.

Well, what are YOU reading right now?

[BuckeyeTexan]

Shadow World: Resurgent Russia, The Global New Left, and Radical Islam

What will America look like at the end of the twenty-first century? Will it be a "democracy" ruled by radical, American liberals, an autocracy ruled by Russian communists, or a theocracy ruled by Islamic extremists? Robert Chandler poses this question in his brand-new book, Shadow World: Resurgent Russia, The New Global Left, and Radical Islam--and suggests some alarming answers. Everyday, American culture is being undermined by communism, socialism, and radical Islam through seemingly benign institutions and ideologies like NGOs, the UN, liberalism, and fundamentalist sects. Sounds crazy? Not so fast. What better way to subvert America than through the institutions she relies on and the ideologies she promotes? In Shadow World, Chandler shows to devastating effect how Russian communists, leftist ideologies, and Islamic extremists are locked in a geo-political struggle for not only America, but the world.

[JeanLM]

Just finishes 1493 and skipped the earlier 1491 by reading a shortened kids version. Try “the man of numbers” by Devlin. All about another Italian Leonardo who helped change the world.

[Retired COB]

Atlas Shrugged

[The Shrew]

Currently reading David Mamet's The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture.

I just finished Mamet's book and your timely post reminded me to write Mr. Mamet thanking him for this important work.

Regards,

TS

[PzLdr]

Just finished “The End” by Ian Kershaw, the second biography of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein I’ve read in four months, and am on Volume Three of the “Game of Thrones” series.

[PrincessB]

“Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat.” by Hal Herzog.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

How To Be Perfect by Harrell. It is a intersting idea, I may try it... Not sure how my husband will react!

[Psalm 73]

Right now:
"Bonhoeffer" by Eric Metaxas
"Bondage Breaker" by Neil Anderson
Bible-in-a-Year by God

[cyclotic]

Basic Economics, Dr. Thomas Sowell.

[sportutegrl]

The New Adkins for a New You. It’s amazing how much stuff we have been told by the government about nutrition is wrong. 9-11 servings of grain? Eat low fat foods? Avoid salt? All wrong. No government should tell people what they can eat if the science isn’t settled. Take that Bloomberg.

[Nachum]

Reading: The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

[Oatka]

Now: “The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott”
Next: “The Mexican War”, “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder”.

Couldn’t finish: “The Fourth Turning”. Accurately predicted (1997) that something big would pop in 2005 but got too arcane for this reader. Predicts something REALLY BIG (on a historical scale) before 2025.

[Retired Greyhound]

After America by Steyn

The Federalist

Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays

[Wordkraft]

I am reading “The Poisoners Handbook.”

It is really a history of forensic medicine. Quite good.

Also reading a funny novel called “The Deductions” about some Florida retirees who form a Senior Citizen “boy band.”

My Nook is never far away and fully charged.

[genghis]

boomerang by michael lewis
he also wrote the big short
both are spectacular. boomerang talks about the coming sovereign debt crisis.
More places than just the u.s. are in serious trouble.

[Pan_Yan]

I’ve been wearing out my library card on audio books for my 45 minute commute. Right now I’m listening to “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell.

My recent listens have been:

Feakonomics
Outliers
Mere Christianity
Debt Free Living
Mayflower

[wildbill]

Found a new mystery series featuring a Jewish lawyer, Steve Solomon and his shiksa partner/girlfriend who practice in Miami and the Keys. A truly hilarious compound of Carl Hiassen and Grisham where the attorney is always one step ahead of the State Bar disbarment committee and the girlfriend has her doubts as well..

Some of Solomon’s Laws:

A client who lies to his lawyer is like a husband who cheats on his wife—it seldom happens just once.

Always assume your client is guilty. It saves time.

When meeting a girlfriend you dumpe, always assume she is armed.

If the facts don’t fit the law...bend the facts.

If someone whos smart, handsome and rich invites you and your girlfriend to a nudist club, chances are he’s got a giant schmeckel.

Other books I read this week: The Venetian Betrayal by Steve Berry. A thriller that proves a clever novelist can spin a readable tale about how the lost tomb of Alexander the Great hides a cure for Aids that almost starts WWIII. Don’t ask, just go with the flow.

Stone Angel by Carol O’Connell. First time I read anything by her but won’t be the last. A convoluted mystery about a small town in Louisiana full of weird and creepy characters, some of whom know about a death by stoning of a doctor 20 years before. The doctor’s revengeful daughter, a NY detective, returns to find and punish her mother’s killers. Gothic Mystery/Horror is something I don’t usually read but picked it up cheap and got hooked.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Still reading/re-reading Perry’s “Fed Up”.

Fiction: Reading through P.C. Cast’s vampire novels, currently on “Burned”. This has a high liberal bias, and isn’t written all that well, but it is passable and entertaining, and I like to read through series once I start; I read while standing in line at theme parks so I need something only mildly engaging.

Also Fiction: Butcher’s Dresden File series: currently on the newest book, “Ghost Story”. Butcher writes very well, and I listen to his books on CD. James Marsters was the reader for the first few of his books on CD, but a new guy is reading this book.

I just finished reading/listening to a rather oddly interesting book “The White Darkness” by Geraldine McCaughrean. It’s a fictional book, but within the book tells a lot of the true-life story of Lawrence Oate’s fatally doomed attempt to reach the South Pole. So I learned while I was entertained.

[DarthDoug]

The Creature from Jekyll Island

[CharlesWayneCT]

If you liked Ender’s Shadow, I think you will like the remaining books in the “Shadow” series. I read or listened on CD to all the books in the Ender’s series, both the regular and the shadow threads, and loved them all. Card is excellent at painting images and makes you think about things.

He speaks on some of the CDs, and explained how the book “Ender’s Game” wasn’t really the story he wanted to tell, it was just a good way to introduce the characters. If you read through the entire series, you’ll see where he really was getting to.

BTW, if you read the other shadow books, and like the way Card deals with the geo-political situation that evolves from winning the Formic war, I highly recommend another two-book series he wrote, called “Empire” and “Hidden Empire”, both of which deal with intrigue in our own government complete with some cool war toys and a global response to a plague.

I’m currently re-listening to the Ender series on vacation trips, because my kids haven’t heard them all yet. We just finished the existing Shadow series and have started down the Ender path with “Ender in Exile”. You have to look up a book chart to figure out exactly what order you want to read them in; I prefered categorical, but some do it chronologically. The author says either is fine. I’m looking forward to the new Shadow series book coming out next January.