What are you currently reading?

[mejor-desnudo]

wow... the Angel's game is good. This author became very famous in Spain with the previous novel (it is supossed to be a trilogy); it's called: The Shadow of the Wind. Everyone who has read it, loves it. I have used as a gift for several friends, and they enjoyed very much too. So, put it on your list!

[Jann]

wow... the Angel's game is good. This author became very famous in Spain with the previous novel (it is supossed to be a trilogy); it's called: The Shadow of the Wind. Everyone who has read it, loves it. I have used as a gift for several friends, and they enjoyed very much too. So, put it on your list!

You got my attention with these books so I ordered them through the library.  I hope they are well worth the reading.

[MrDude]

The Angel's game is a great book for sure (til page 250 at least !!)

[Pitti]

I read the time "Ghost Stories" by Dietrich Weber. It is a collection of scary stories. With texts by Goethe, Heinrich Heine, ETA Hoffmann, Edgar Allen Poe, Oscar Wilde and many more.

Besides these, I still read "naked shower prohibited - The craziest laws in the world" by Dr. Roman Leuthner.

How do people shower in Florida? Showering naked is illegal in Florida.

[mejor-desnudo]

Mr Dude, let me know what do you think about the end... the very end. I have my personal opinion... I want to know another ones.

[King Pizza]

I'm currently reading Working at Play; it's about the history of vacations in the United States.

[Leah]

For the third time now "Collapse" by Jared Diamond.  It is an annual thing just to remind myself how scared of facts and science the average politician really is.

The natural holding capicuty of the Australian continent is around 8 million people - through some sustainable actions we could double it.  We have politicians suggesting we will collapse if we don't have 50 million citizens.

Diamond evidences the collapse has already started and Australia's current economic boom - no GFC here - is only hastening our fall.

[Turtlejosh]

The Necronomicon.

So many short stories for a busy life. And gosh they are still spooky

[mejor-desnudo]

I'm reading "The General in his laberinth" by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. It's a novel, not a biography, about the last days of Simon Bolivar "the liberator" (who put together Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela). The funny thing is that, according to the book, Simon Bolivar enjoyed sleeping naked in his hammock and walking around in the tropical forest naked during the nights... he also was a naturist!

[Jen]

I've just read the Larson trilogy - couldn't put them down once I got into them - it takes a little while to get into the first one, then it's unstoppable.The second in the series is my fav. There are some pretty graphic scenes in these !!!!

I've seen the first movie - and it was excellent - which they aren't always. I'm looking forward to seeing the second soon.

Jen

[Dan]

An Atheist's Guide to Christmas

It was $1 in the Kindle Store.

[Jann]

I have just finished reading Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind.  It is a very impressive novel, absorbing and thought provoking.  Thank you for the recommendation.

The characters and settings are painted finely enough that they can readily be seen, and the sensations of touch and smell are activated by Zafón's clear descriptions of Barcelona, all of this rendered with economical and unerring brushstrokes.  It is the most engaging novel I have read in a long time, since Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

But what kind of a novel is it?  It is difficult to place this book firmly within a single genre.  At first it seemed to me analogous of an onion, an organic whole which is composed of many layers revealed one by one, but I discarded this comparison as inadequate.  More appropriate perhaps is the analogy of a length of luxurious but strange fabric, one with many threads per inch, it's silk skillfully interwoven with fine wool and broad patches of coarser stuff to give it the unmistakable reality of life.  This book is about life and death.  It is a history, a love story, a Gothic horror mystery composed of too much reality to be dismissed as mere romance.  It is a coming-of-age story and a tale of damnation and redemption.  After the three quarter mark I found myself reading it in shorter sections, unwilling to see the end, yet unable to escape the fascination of approaching nemesis.  It is inexorable, compelling and rewarding.

Zafón's character Julian Carax says "Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you."  Perhaps that is part of the reason I found the novel especially engaging.  I have read a few books about the Spanish civil war, tragedy disguised as history.  The knowledge of that history made Zafón's story seem so real to me.  The novel is set largely in the Gothic quarter of Barcelona, an area with which I have a passing acquaintance, having once spent ten days exploring its calles and plazas - a wonderful city.  I found myself walking at the side of Zafón's characters as they made their way through the city.  I could see what they saw, hear what they heard and, ultimately, feel a part of what they felt.

I strongly recommend this novel to anyone who wants to read a future classic.

I am now 242 pages into Zafón's prequel, The Angel's Game.

 

[Historybuff83]

Still trying to finish up Lamb, however reading for school has consumed this past week/weekend, so mostly been reading about environmental law and operations and supply chain management, fml lol

[mejor-desnudo]

I have just finished reading Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind.  It is a very impressive novel, absorbing and thought provoking.  Thank you for the recommendation.[/i].
 

I'm glad you like it! yes, I loved it too... specially because of the very well-described characters and also for the description of the city... even though some places like the Cemetery of Lost Books do not exist; you know them as if they were real... with some of them the reader can feel a very special empathy (I still remember Fermin... and it is a few years that I read the story). It keeps you hooked until you finish but it's not a simple book, or "cheap literature"... I think is a very well-written one. I enjoyed "The angel's game" also but a little bit less than "The Shadow of the Wind" (I won't say anything else... I don't want to spoil your reading). Enjoy it!

[Jann]

I'm glad you like it! yes, I loved it too... specially because of the very well-described characters and also for the description of the city... even though some places like the Cemetery of Lost Books do not exist; you know them as if they were real... with some of them the reader can feel a very special empathy (I still remember Fermin... and it is a few years that I read the story). It keeps you hooked until you finish but it's not a simple book, or "cheap literature"... I think is a very well-written one. I enjoyed "The angel's game" also but a little bit less than "The Shadow of the Wind" (I won't say anything else... I don't want to spoil your reading). Enjoy it!

I picture the Cemetery of Lost Books as an Escheresque and subterranean version of the Castle Without Parallel.