What's on your reading menu?

[wordsworth]

I just finished reading Mukul Kesawan's Men In White, a book about cricket.
On my table currently is The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and The Last Mughul by William Darlymple.'

The Grapes of Wrath, as many may know, concerns the period following the First World War, a time when there was severe economic depression in America, brought on by draught and other such agricultural failures. Consequtively, many farmers lose their land and head towards California, which becomes 'the promised' land for all those rendered homeless and jobless. The book compassionately captures and follows the life of the Joad family, who even amidst torturous times, try to retain a semblance of humanity in thier lives.

I would love to know what some of the others here are reading presently or have lined up to read in the next month.

I do reviews of new books in Indian literature in English... those interested could visit and comment on my blog sandyi.blogspot.com

[Laindessiel]

Good day Wordsworth!

My menu:

Salome - Oscar Wilde
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott
Lord of the Flies - William Golding

These are the books piled up on my bookshelf, waiting to be read. I started reading the first chapter or The Red Badge but for some reason discontinued it. My mind was somewhere else when I started pondering over the story, can't concentrate. Same with Lord of the Flies. My goal is to finish reading those 2 books before the year ends. :)

[quasimodo1]

First on my menu is Gunter Grass' new book..."Peeling the Onion". He wrote the book called "The Tin Drum" from which was made an astounding movie which took place in the first months of WWII. The movie is a classic and has a child actor who is unbelievable. It's been quite a while since he came out with anything. The NYTimes has an excellent review. quasimodo1

[wordsworth]

thanks quasimodo1....I'll keep this book in mind.

[lalaine]

I just finished reading EVERYMAN by Philip Roth and I enjoyed reading every page. It is a story about Life.... and death. Check it out-it is a MUST READ masterpiece.

I am currently reading When the Wind Blows by James Patterson. I just can't put it down. I also love Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas- an eyeopener and a very inspiring novel.

Next in line:
Pretend You Don't See Her- Mary Higgins Clark
Under the Western Acacia- Christian Jacq
She Walks These Hills- Charyn McCrumb

Wow, I just can't wait!!!;)

[grace86]

After I finish Don Quixote, next in line are:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

[AuntShecky]

A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

The Cunning Man Robertson Davies

The Great Fire Shirley Hazzard

Ralph Kiner's autobiography: Baseball Forever

Mr. Hawthorne and Herr Goethe are gathering dust as they
patiently wait in the wings. . .
as Dorothy Parker once said, "You can't put this book down,
because if you do, you'll never pick it up again!"

[dzebra]

The Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan

[Bakiryu]

New Books:

1. Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
2. The Tales of Emily Windsnap by Liz Keessler
3. Sealed with a Diss by Lizzie Harrison
4. Eragon by Christopher Paolini
5. The Lightning thieft and the Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
6. The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw
7. Reckless Embrace by Madeline Baker

8. Point of Honour by Madeleine E. Robins
9. The Last Guardian of Everness
10. Eldest by Christopher Paolini
11. The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan
12. Emily Windsnap and The Monster from the deep by Liz Kessler
13. Lucky Stars~ Jane Heller
14. Revenge Gifts by Cindy Cruciger


And here all my new books which I will read in the next two weeks! :) :) :) :)

[Shalot]

this summer I am going to try again to read The Silmarillion and The Book of Lost Tales. I've read them both but I was bored --- I don't even think I finished. I checked them out from the library, and had to return them. Now I own the books so maybe I will get something out of them this time. Often, if I start reading something and don't get pulled in within the first two or three chapters, I don't finish, or in this case, I read through even though I am not really paying attention. But if I am intersted, I will read it as fast as I can, and more carefully. I will skip sleep just to finish a good book. These books are more of a challenge --- probably because I want more LOTR but that story ended so I am just trying to learn as much about Middle Earth as possible (and these are not Lord of the Rings at all)

Also, I am reading a book called Blink right now and a Stephen King book called Black House. And I have The Ridiculous Man, a short story because someone was talking about that in one of their posts. I pulled the text off the internet but I want to print it (guess I'll have to go to the school library to do it, but i sort of forgot my password so I can't log on to the terminals. I have an insane number of passwords to keep up with.

[Niamh]

the rest of Prisoner of Azkaban
Goblet of fire
Order of the pheonix
Half blood prince
*Deathly Hollows*(with i'll read even if i havent reread the rest)
Like the flowing river-paulo coelho
Brideshead revisited- evelyn Waugh
might reread the bitterbynde saga by Cecilia Dart thornton then.

[Pensive]

The Last Mughul

This sounds very interesting to me as I am quite interested in Mughal history, and if my language skill improves, I plan on writing a book about it. *day-dreams about that day* :p

At the moment, I am planning to read many books, but most of all HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS! :)

[Idril]

this summer I am going to try again to read The Silmarillion and The Book of Lost Tales. I've read them both but I was bored --- I don't even think I finished... These books are more of a challenge --- probably because I want more LOTR but that story ended so I am just trying to learn as much about Middle Earth as possible (and these are not Lord of the Rings at all)


Silmarillion, while never reaching the narrative style of LOTR, does get so much better if you can get through the creation stuff and the early, early years of the Vala on Middle-earth. Get to the awakening of the Elves and things should go better for you...oh wait...then you have that endless journey to Valinor that's a little tedious...ok...get the Elves to Valinor and then things get infinitely better. :p Those early Elves were much more fascinating then their later counterparts, they were proud, angry, haughty, passionate and made some monstrously bad decisions, in short, they had actual personalities then.

Lost Tales is a tough one. I went into that book thinking it was added material, new material that would increase and suppliment my knowledge of the Middle-earth mythology but you know, all it is is old versions of the Silmarillion stories. It's the first part of the HoME series and all that is is going through every scrape of JRR's old papers for any mention of those characters. You'll see the process of how The Silmarillion was written, how certain ideas were rejected and others expanded on, for example, you'll see how Beren was first conceived as a Dark Elf and then later morphed into the Man he became, how the Vala were first written almost as pentulent children, jealous and petty but with subsequent rewrites, became the calm, wise beings we know them as today. It's all quite interesting on a certain level but it's tedious reading, seriously tedious. I think you would be better served to read Unfinished Tales first. While The Silmarillion focuses mainly on the Vala/Maia and the Elves, Unfinished Tales focuses on the Men. You get a few wonderful, typically tragic stories about life on Numenor, you get a heartbreaking story about the event that caused Isildur to lose the Ring, you get an excellent history on Rohan and it's creation and relationship with Gondor and you get a very detailed list of the Kings of Numenor and Gondor and Arnor as well as an explanation how it went from the splendor of Elendil and his sons to the situation with Aragorn where the king was basically in hiding. There's also a confusing story about Galadriel and Celeborn but I generally skip over that part when I do a reread because it just hurts my head.

[applepie]

Right now I have:
The Man in the Iron Mask- Dumas
The Island of Dr. Moreau- Wells
HP Deathly Hollows when it releases
Both Othello and Hamlet
That is about it for the moment. I figure these will keep me for the next month or so.

[Alexei]

In my menu are:

1. "The Wheel of Time" series by Robert Jordan
2. "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville
3. "One Flew Over the Cucoo's Nest"

And I suppose soon there will be new titles in the list...

[andave_ya]

The Life and OPinions of Tristram SHandy
Poems of Keats, Byron, and Shelley
Don Quixote
poems and plays of W.B. Yeats

[Mortis Anarchy]

1984-George Orwell
The Savage Detectives-Roberto Bolano
Rant-Chuck Palahniuk
Harry Potter numero 7...as soon as I get it!!! WHICH WON'T BE TIL AUGUST!!!

[aabbcc]

I am in the midst of Mann's Der Erwählte (which I believe has been translated as The Holy Sinner into English; I am reading it in Croatian translation), which I am enjoying immensely.
Contemporary I am also reading (again) Paradise Lost and Pirandello's Il fu Mattia Pascal.

Other to-read books on menu for the following little while are:
U. Eco - Il pendolo di Foucault (I started it a couple of years ago, but never finished, so now I am giving it a second try)
E. Bettiza - Il fantasma di Trieste
S. Lagerlöf - Gösta Berling's saga
S. Rushdie - Satanic Verses (as with Eco, second try :))
Ch. Brontë - Jane Eyre
F. Dostoevsky - Idiot

These should, alongside random books picked from library, amuse me for the following two weeks, and then I am getting a new pile before going on a trip ;)

[suvarna nalapat]

I just finished readingMind,Brain and the quantum by Michel LOCKWOOD,susan Blackmore's conversations on consciousness,Metaphysics contemporary readings by Michel j .Loux(ed)The philosophy of education -an introduction (unwin education series)and am now on to Saamaveda and its influences on Indian classical music .

[Idril]

The Charterhouse of Parma ~ Stendhal
The Kellys and the O'Kellys: Or Landlords and Tenants ~ Anthony Trollope
A Life Under Russian Serfdom: The Memoirs of Savva Dmitrievich Purlevskii, 1800-68 ~ Boris B. Gorshkov
The Painted Bird ~ Jerzy Kosinski
Spring Torrents ~ Ivan Turgenev

[Dori]

I've been itching for some ancient history:

Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz - Currently Reading
The Histories by Herodotus - To Be Read
The Fall of the Roman Empire by Peter Heather - To Be Read
Rome and the Barbarians by Thomas Burns - To Be Read (maybe)

Also, there are a few military history narratives which I want to read, viz The Peloponnesian War (Donald Kagan), The Punic Wars (Adrian Goldsworthy), and Persian Fire (Tom Holland).

[suju]

I have some interesting books with me like,

Wicked Lovely(can't wait to read!!!)
Kite Runner
The Last Summer of you and me

I am really excited to read these books. And I just finished Twilight. I wanna read the rest of series badly!!

[Niamh]

the rest of Prisoner of Azkaban
Goblet of fire
Order of the pheonix
Half blood prince
*Deathly Hollows*(which i'll read even if i havent reread the rest)
Like the flowing river-paulo coelho
Brideshead revisited- evelyn Waugh
might reread the bitterbynde saga by Cecilia Dart thornton then.

Still have to read
Brideshead revisited (went to start it and realised i wasnt in the mood for that type of book so went for Artemis Fowl instead:p what a difference!)
Like the Flowing River- Paulo Coelho
Waiting to get hands on Voice of the Gods- Trudi Canavan
Might read some Terry Pratchett. My brother has some of the books which i've been meaning to read for years.

[Idril]

Might read some Terry Pratchett. My brother has some of the books which i've been meaning to read for years.

Terry Pratchett is a lot of fun. Have you read any of his books before?

[Niamh]

Terry Pratchett is a lot of fun. Have you read any of his books before?

No but i kept meaning to. I did see the wyrd Sisters animated movie. I love that type of humour. Mind you i also want to check out neil gaimans Stardust before the movie comes out.

[Idril]

No but i kept meaning to. I did see the wyrd Sisters animated movie. I love that type of humour. Mind you i also want to check out neil gaimans Stardust before the movie comes out.

Oh, you should really enjoy Pratchett then. I saw that animated movie as well, the Witches aren't my favorite group in Discworld but I still enjoyed it a great deal and it is very indicative of Pratchett's humour. Stardust is a good read as well. Even though Gaimen's books are more dramatic than strictly comedic, he and Pratchett have a similar sense of humour, in fact, they wrote a book together, Good Omens which I would highly recommend to anyone...but maybe you already knew that since you mentioned Gaimen and Pratchett in the same post...:blush:

[Niamh]

but maybe you already knew that since you mentioned Gaimen and Pratchett in the same post...:blush:

:lol: no need to blush Idril! I do know it but mainly because i work in a bookstore.:) I'll check "good omens" out also. thanks for the recomentdation. you've just made my list longer!:D

[Brandex]

The menu for this month (so far):

The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
1984 - George Orwell
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

What I have read last month:

Zombie - Joyce Carol Oates
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J. K. Rowling
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Rules of Attraction - Bret Easton Ellis
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

[jon1jt]

i have my pre-order for Jack Kerouac's On The Road, The Original Scroll, being released August 16. this book is likely to be a huge seller. it's as kerouac had wanted it published before Viking editor Malcolm Cowley got his hands on it.

Amazon.com's review sums it up nicely:

Editorial Reviews

Book Description
The legendary 1951 scroll draft of On the Road, published word for word as Kerouac originally composed it

Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West Twentieth Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him. Typed out as one long, single-spaced paragraph on eight long sheets of tracing paper that he later taped together to form a 120 foot scroll, this document is among the most significant, celebrated, and provocative artifacts in contemporary American literary history. It represents the first full expression of Kerouac’s revolutionary aesthetic, the identifiable point at which his thematic vision and narrative voice came together in a sustained burst of creative energy. It was also part of a wider vital experimentation in the American literary, musical, and visual arts in the post-World War II period.

It was not until more than six years later, and several new drafts, that Viking published, in 1957, the novel known to us today. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of On the Road, Viking will publish the 1951 scroll in a standard book format. The differences between the two versions are principally ones of significant detail and altered emphasis. The scroll is slightly longer and has a heightened linguistic virtuosity and a more sexually frenetic tone. It also uses the real names of Kerouac’s friends instead of the fictional names he later invented for them. The transcription of the scroll was done by Howard Cunnell who, along with Joshua Kupetz, George Mouratidis, and Penny Vlagopoulos, provides a critical introduction that explains the fascinating compositional and publication history of On the Road and anchors the text in its historical, political, and social context.

[NickAdams]

I'm having a double serving at the moment. I am officially reading Midnight's Children, but spent the last two days reading A Clockwork Orange, and I'm back to Rushdie.

Next up:
Don Quixote- Cervantes
Murphy, Watt, Mercier and Camier, Molloy (again), Malone Dies, The Unnamable, and How it is- Samuel Beckett
Invisible Man- Ralph Ellison
A Confederacy of Dunces- John K. Toole

[Lezlie]

i have a huge reading list right now....its going to take me awhile, but I WILL read them all.....found it here http://als.lib.wi.us/Collegebound.html

[aabbcc]

The books I am currently reading, or are on my desk waiting to be read:

Nietzsche, F. - The Birth of Tragedy (A couple of years ago when I studied Nietzsche with my Philosophy professor, I read a couple of excerpts from this book, but it is only recently that I bought it and decided to read it in its entirety)
Forster, E. M. - Aspects of the Novel (Disappointed so far; I might as well decide at some point not to finish it)
Krleža, M. - At the Edge of Reason (Adore it :D:)
Hamvas, B. - The Wonderful Travel of Joachim Olbrin (The title of the original is Olbrin Joachim csodálatos utazása, I could not find how was it translated to English)
Bettiza, E. - La Cavalcata del Secolo
Breton, A. - Nadja
Espanca, F. - Masks of Fate

[Weisinheimer]

my list of books to read next

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
One flew over the cuckoo's nest - Ken Kesey
The Pickwick Paper's or Hard Times (haven't decided which) - Charles Dickens
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen

[Mortis Anarchy]

*Reading Lolita in Tehran-Azar Nafisi (reading now)
*A Thousand Splendid Suns-Khaled Hosseini
Crime and Punishment- Dostoevsky
Pinball Theory of Apocalypse-Selwood
*Brief Interviews with Hideous Men-David Foster Wallace

*I'm really excited about these!:D

[Niamh]

Still have to read Brideshead Revisited by Waugh
Like the flowing River by Coelho

Must finish Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
Catherine and other stories by Jane Austen
Irish Folk and Fairy tales by Gorden Jarvie
Inferno By Dante
Sabaths Theatre by Philip Roth
Ivanov, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and reread the Cherry Orchard by Chekhov
This Champange Mojito is my last- Ross O'Carroll Kelly

[LadyWentworth]

Still have to read Brideshead Revisited by Waugh


Haven't read it yet? I just absolutely loved it!

Well, the book club has selected the books through December. They are:

*The Jane Austen Book Club - Karen Jay Fowler (currently reading and have read once before)
*Crashing Through - Robert Kurson
*Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson

My non-book club reading line-up is:

*Midwives - Chris Bohjalian
*A Whisper in the Dark - Louisa May Alcott
*Misfortune - Wesley Stace
*Banishing Verona - Margot Livesey
*Until the End - Harold Coyle
*Mr. Lincoln's Wars - Adam Braver

My non-fiction selection:
*Manhunt - James L. Swanson
*The Class of 1846 - John Waugh
*Five Sisters - James Fox
*Christmas Truce - Malcolm Brown & Shirley Seaton
*Adams - Frances Russell
*The Luckiest Man - Jonathan Eig

My list is actually a lot longer (I am completely behind in my reading), but theses are what I have decided to read next.