What are you reading?

Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 8:29 pm

Currently reading some lame Haiku!

Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 7:51 pm

I'm reading A Thousand Splendid Sons by Khaled Hosseini, who also wrote The Kite Runner. Both are very good.

I just finished A Long Way Gone - Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, which is incredible. I highly recommend it. If you would like to borrow my copy, I'll leave it in an ammo box somewhere for you. Very Happy

WGA Member Joined: 2004-07-15 Posts: 86 Location: Sussex

Pickett's Charge

Eyewitness accounts July 3 at Gettysburg.

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:43 am

Just finished "Around the the World in 80 Days" by Jules Verne and just started "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, a book I actually traded for from a geocache! A little trivia for you: "Heart of Darkness" was actually the inspiration for the movie "Apocalypse Now"!

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 12:08 pm

Some how or anther I got into poety and Shakespeare, so I am reading

Sonnets from the Portuguese and Other Love Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

and have good old Romeo & Juliet coming in soon!!

Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 9:14 am

I was a lil laid up yesterday, so finished 2 books:

The Map That Changed the World, by Simon Winchester, is a historical account of William Smith and his travels thru England and Wales, his unique and first observations of strata, which eventually led to his making of the first geological map of England and Wales. There is a lot of interesting information on English canals, London's aristocracts, coal mining, and the debtor's prison that the Father Of English Geology spent time in.

A little lighter was Last Chance to See, by Douglas Adams. The book was written in 1990 and each chapter recounts a journey off to a far away place to see an animal near extinction. The travel writing is excellent. I googled the animals that he wrote about, to see how they fared in the years since he wrote the book (Douglas Adams is himself extinct, at this point), and found that the baiji dolphin is indeed extinct now (thanks, China) and that the northern White Rhino is now down to just 4 creatures in the wild. The other nearly extinct animals he wrote about are doing better than they were in 1990. The kakapo is the most interesting story, helped out by a program to kill all cats, rats, and mice on the island they still live.

zuma

Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 5:42 pm

Finished the final Harry Potter book last night. I'm not going to give any spoilers to anyone who hasn't read it yet, but I am going to say I did tear up once or twice through the book....go ahead, say it. I'm a wuss...

Oh well. Too bad this is the last one....it was excellent.

I'm still waiting on David Gerrold to get his next War against the Chtorr book out...the last one he wrote was in the early 90's when I was in the army...sends out 4 books, then leaves his readers hanging...then says there's at least two more in the series...ARRRRRRGH!!!!!

Later
Phil

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 8:19 am

That Harry Potter book sure is magical...it has sucked me right into it. I was going to read a little bit last night before bed and 400 pages later I decided it was time to go to sleep at around 1:30 am. I am really feeling it today, but I can't wait to get home and finish it. With only 100 pages left to go, it is hard not to wonder how everything is going to wrap up. It is times like these that I really hate my job....

Sara

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 8:52 am

I ripped through Harry Potter the beginning of this week, and now my older son is eschewing his usual routine of PS2 after work to read it. I'm always most drawn to character in any story, and this one answered some questions about the one character I have always thought to be the most complex in the whole story arc.

Now I'm reading "Return to Wild America," by Scott Weidensaul. He retraced a journey undertaken 50 years ago by Roger Torey Peterson and a pre-eminent British naturalist of the day across America's wild spaces. In many cases, of course, that wildness has vanished, but the hopeful part is all the instances of improved habitat from Peterson's time.
Fifty years ago there was the time of making suburbs and strip malls and all things modern. In the intervening years, enough folks have mourned the loss of what we had and worked to regain some of it. Of course, mostly they mention birds of the regions!

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 10:21 am

eheheheh....go jeepers, the last 100 pages are the best part....yes, there were a lot of unanswered questions from the first 6 books that had light shed upon them for me also...some I already knew, but they've been confirmed now.

Later
Phil