Hi there Atlanta! What are we all reading now?

What are you reading now?

Are you enjoying it?

i just discovered afewgoodpens' blog (a new member in this group) . . . i'm enjoying it!

I'm re-reading Great Expectations for personal reasons. I love it more than I remembered. Anyone love Dickens?

I'm reading The Sins of the 7th Sister: A Novel of the Gothic South, based on a true story.

It is thoroughly entertianing! I'm halfway through the book and I believe the body count is 7 or 8, including 2.5 Klansmen. :D

I've only read "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Great Expectations," though I own a few more.

I love Dickens. His plot lines sometimes have some silly coincidences, but practically every page is witty and sparkling. I'm amazed at how he can describe so much in so few words, and make it funny all at the same time.

In G.E., for example, I remember how he described one of the characters as having a mouth like a mail slot, and he kept putting stuff in there like he was mailing a letter. Fantastic.

Right now I'm reading Raymond Chandler's Farewell My Lovely, which I like, but not as much as I'd hoped I would, and Born on a Blue Day, which I've just started. It starts off great though!

gistak, you are so right on about the mail box. It cracks me up every time Pip is in some serious situation and trying to talk it over with his friend and he keeps referring to him as the post office. I love it.

Oh, and I also just started Born on a Blue Day. Haven't gotten too far into yet, though.

Still reading Adrift in a Vanishing City by Vincent Czyz and am thoroughly enjoying it. i'm usually a slow reader and i'm reading this particularly slowly since it's so full of wonderful imagery that i would completely miss if i went any faster. i'm also re-reading The Complete Poems: Anne Sexton.

John Juliues Norwich "Shakespeare's Kings" and some really trashy fantasy novels.

graspingforthewind -- don't you just love those trashy fantasy novels? i was reading Sebastian (Ephemera) by Anne Bishop (not so trashy - dark hero, shattered world, etc.) and Best New Paranormal Romance (the title really says it all) earlier today. Delicious escapism.

NativeRoses - definitely a big fan of reading fantasy. (I own a large library of Forgotten Realms novels, as well as all the big epic fantasy names.) I haven't read any of Anne Bishop, she seems to dark for my tastes.

By the way what do you think of this trend in fantasy that shows an increasing popuarlity in urban fantasy?

Since this group is for Atlantans and since I have a comment I hope you will indulge me as an ex-Atlantan who has lived everywhere from Campbellton Rd about a mile east of Greenbrier Mall, to Riverdale, to Hapeville, to the 10th St. area (during the sixties and early seventies), to Stone Mountain, and finally in Candler Park about two blocks east of Little Five Points before having to move to Texas eighteen years ago. I was just in Atlanta over Easter visiting my in-laws in Woodstock.

Anyway, on to the comment.

#5 & #7 The first Charles Dickens I ever read was The Pickwick Papers which I thought was funnier, page for page, than Catch-22. But my comment is really regarding Great Expectations. I love Pip's description of his upbringing as having been 'by hand'. I think that's one of the most gently humorous lines in all the Dickens I've read.

I recently bought a copy of Demons by Dostoevsky and am reading that with immense pleasure. I of course read Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov many years ago, which made me fall in love with the 18th and 19th century Russian literature, and reading Demons now wants me to go back and re-read those classics again. I am planning to do so as soon as I am finished with this one.

gtg427s: did you finish Born on a Blue Day? I've left Library Thing for a while, due to home renovation and a baby gettin' born, but I'm back now!

I read a lot of it (I had it from the library), but then returned it without finishing it.

I was forced to read A Tale of Two Cities in the 11th grade. Thanks to a change in school systems, I did not have to read Great Expectations in high school. I’ve tried reading Dickens on my own several times, but end up putting them down for one reason or another and never picking them back up. I am determined to read one of his novels this year.

Right now I’m reading Emma by Jane Austen and Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. I’ve been re-reading the Thursday Next series (out of order for some reason) and Lost in a Good Book is the last one I have left. I also want to re-read all of Austen’s novels. After Emma, Sense and Sensibility is the only one I have left.

gistak, that's funny. I didn't finish it either. I guess I could say I'm still working on it, but it's pretty much been abandoned. Couldn't get into it?
Congrats on the new renovation and baby, moreso on the baby haha.

jkt1219, your enthusiasm for Austen is making me want to read her. I don't know why I never have before. I think Dickens can be hilarious.

By the way, Katie Holmes ruined I Want You to Want Me for me too.

Thanks! I think "Blue Day" lost me because of the simplicity of the writing. Also, I was very interested in how he coped, and how he thought, but not so much about what street he lived on....

:-)

I just got done reading The Time Traveler's Wife, as well as Blue Like Jazz, both of which were just a little light summer reading. ( : Now it's back to work with The Right to Write and The Artist's Way. And Dickens is such a hero of mine. I can honestly say that Pip and Estella forever altered my perspective about romantic relationships. ( :

I'm just finished Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, and then promptly tore into the sequel New Moon. Any fans of Young Adult lit should immediately get their paws on these two. The teens at my library are obsessed, and now I am too!

Two months later, and I am just reading your message.... yipes!

Thanks for the comment on my blog ... my updating has been a bit irregular, but I've added a couple of posts with links back to some new photo collections on Flickr.

Thanks again,

Dale
http://www.afewgoodpens.com

I am reading The Honourable Schoolboy . I got a nice edition of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and just finished that so I went on to the next one. I am sure I will read Smiley's People next. I also have going Robert Fitzgerald translation of The Iliad and Grant takes command two others that I picked up at the book sale. Buying used hardbacks at 30% off is a nice way to fill up your library. Oxford University Press recently had a sale also, it must be the slow season. I bought The Oxford Companion to American Military History and The Oxford Companion to American Literature both for less than half price. I am paging through those books, they are not something you just sit down and read. I wouldn't buy them at full price but I will get value from them with the sale.

i recently re-read John LeCarre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and loved it as much the second time through. Now i'm finishing up The Assassin's Gate by George Packer and am amazed at how similar it is in many ways to Le Carre's earlier works.

i'm also reading some fun chick lit The First Assistant to lighten up the non-fiction as well as a really fascinating book called The Botany of Desire which i highly recommend.

I finally picked up a copy of Pride & Prejudice. The only copy at the book store was this horrible annotated version. On the left page would be the story and on every single right page would be an explanation and definitions of what was on the left page. It was horrible. So I finally found a normal version and am almost done reading it.

Every year around this time I walk through the bookstores by the "Summer Reading" table and think, as I'm sure all of you do, that I need to read those that I didn't read in high school - either 1) because it wasn't assigned or 2) I was a knucklehead and got the Cliffs Notes. So that's what I've been doing.

I just finished Lord Of The Flies. Meh...not so much. Anybody else?

Now I'm working on Watership Down and enjoying it but just started.

Haha, I definitely have the same feelings you do. I usually trudge my way through one classic per summer and then I've had enough. James Joyce ruined the novelty of summer reading for me. Now I cringe a little when I pass the high school summer reading section.

I'm taking the summer off from school, so I've been catching up on some reading. Built up quite a backlog, but without classwork taking up my time I'm working my way through it.

Benjamin Franklin - currently reading
The Iraq War - Keegan's a great military historian, and gives a good overview of Saddam's regime and the first year of the war
To Say Nothing of the Dog - A great tribute to Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat
The Eyre Affair - a funny book for fans of literature
The Thirty Years War - probably one of the best books I've read in a long time, an excellent account of an overlooked but extremely important period in history.
Along with a number of other books

Now I've got Terry Pratchett and C.S. Lewis to read...

I never read LoTF, but I LOVED Watership Down. It's one of those books where you feel as though you're learning a whole new culture. In this case, rabbit culture.

I just finished Middlemarch, speaking of classics. I loved the writing, and a lot of the humor, but I did start to feel that I was reading a soap opera. I think that maybe serial publishing a novel forces it to tend towards the long side of things.

I have finished the John LeCarre trilogy and enjoyed it very much. George Smiley is a character with a lot of layers, primarily with the Circus and his relationship with Ann. I am just finishing The Iliad, Achilles is chasing Hector. I like the Fitzgerald translation. I prefer verse translations and Fitzgerald seems not quite as literary as Fagles and less modern than Lombardo.
I have a copy of The Assassin's Gate by George Packer and will read that next. I loaned it to a friend of mine and he loved it.
In between I read Sleeping Beauty by Ross McDonald and am listening to A Confederacy of Dunces. I am having difficulty with the audiobook, it seems harder to follow. So many books so little time.

Finished Watership Down a couple of weeks ago - wow! What an amazing book! I don't know why I waited all these years to read it - truly a modern classic. You almost forget you're reading about a warren of rabbits. The lengths that Adams goes to to create their own language, religion, and myths - quite comparable to Tolkein, in my opinion. If you've never read it, I highly recommend it. It will definitely be one of those like LotR and Mockingbird that I'll read over and over!

Also, just finished Harry Potter - very nice wrap up and I'm glad she ended it the way she did. I didn't want to see some of those characters go, but very well done. Also comparable to Tolkein as far as them sitting around running their mouths a lot and not doing much, so be prepared for that. You also might want to re-read Half-Blood again (or go to Wikipedia) because she didn't do as good a job recapping as she usually does and that was important, at least for me, at the end. I also have the memory of a lawn chair, so whatever.

I just started The Lovely Bones last night. Hope it's good.

Finished Harry Potter last week. Now reading Harlan Coben's The Woods. I like Coben; I'm enjoying this one, though I've just gotten a good start on it.

I'm reading Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. I like Pride and Prejudice Better.
I read The Lovely Bones a few years ago and I really liked it. It was disturbing but also a little comforting.

A good book comparison would be between LoTF and Ender's Game -- some similar themes.

i've been meaning to read The Lovely Bones for forever. Everybody says it and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan are both excellent.