What are you currently reading?

[Alex]

Life of Pi at the mo. People were raving about it a few years back so I thought I might get in on the action ^^

[GolasPL]

Right now I read a travel guide about Marocco ;).

[Jann]

I've made it halfway through The Travels of ibn Battuta and have concluded that he didn't make the trip, just cobbled together a lot of things from other people's stories.  Disappointing.

[Jann]

I've made it halfway through The Travels of ibn Battuta and have concluded that he didn't make the trip, just cobbled together a lot of things from other people's stories.  Disappointing.

How did you come to that conclusion?

The way the book is written led me to that conclusion.  Have you read the book?  

It goes something like this: I left from here, then I went there, and there, and there, and there ad infinitum with little or, more often, absolutely no description of the travel or the places.  I have read a lot of ancient travelogue and none of the others have been written in this manner.  Without exception the authors go to pains to describe the places they have seen.  Battuta does not.

Then he purports to arrive in some place or other and goes on at some length about miracles he supposedly witnessed and saints he supposedly visited, or recounts stories of the same likely circulating with the sufis of his day.

When he got to Palestine his supposed itinerary there convinced me that he'd never been there in person, and had never seen an accurate map of the area.  From that point on I sort of thumbed through the rest of it reading bits here and there and concluded that he sat on his butt in Morocco plagiarizing and stitching together tales from wandering sufis or merchants.

[simonalexander2005]

Probably going to start rereading "The Truth" by Terry Pratchett soon. He's an incredible author. His books are generally humorous fantasy that have satirical takes on modern issues.

Love his books - i've just started reading the discworld series properly, after having read a few random books from it

[Jann]

Has anyone here read Gregory Maguire's Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West?  I found it a brilliant book, perhaps because I always disliked the Wizard of Oz.  If you haven't read it you should give it a look.

[Stuart]

Interesting. I've read that parts of the story of Marco Polo's travels are thought to be similarly made-up, such as his time in China.

Including the time he met a strange group of travellers with a blue box on the roof of the world?

[grapesmugg_3]

I have two books that I am reading that I haven't picked up in a few weeks.
"For Yourself" by Lonnie Barbach and "The Lives They Left Behind: suitcases from a state hospital attic" by Darby Penney and Peter Stastny
I picked the second one up at the local museum that was a state mental hospital gift store.

[jedinudist]

Just finished World without End - it was great

[biohazard]

I have just finished the first book of the dwarfs series by Markus Heitz called "the dwarfs".

[biohazard]

Now i`m going to start the second one called "the war of the dwarfs". Does someone know this series?

[Daft]

[dumdidum]

I´m currently reading the book panic from mark t. sullivan.

[Historybuff83]

Currently reading the Ravenor trilogy, by Dan Abnett

[King Pizza]

I just finished reading a book called Outliers by Malcom Gladwell.