|
|
| Post Number: 1
|
Dicentra 
Bring it.
Group: Members
Posts: 15001
Joined: Sep. 2004
|
 |
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 11:01 am |
|
   |
I'm not looking for recommendations, I'm just nosey.  Don't just give me the title and author either! I want to know what the book is about! 
I just finished The Last American Man (see my review in the book forum) and just started Micalangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, which so far is really good... Italian history, art, politics... Good stuff.
--------------
One Pan Wonders ~ Back Country Cooking at its Finest
|
 |
|
|
| Post Number: 2
|
cat
Group: Members
Posts: 428
Joined: Aug. 2005
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 11:09 am |
|
 |
Julia Alvarez' Saving the World,
a novel within a novel from present day Dominican Republic conflict to 1800 Spanish mission to take smallpox vaccine around the world.
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 3
|
spindle
Group: Members
Posts: 22197
Joined: Dec. 2003
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 11:21 am |
|
|
Just finished Neruda's Cien sonetos de amor and a reread of The Divine Comedy for exercise.
Started Women's Work, The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber last night. It was suggested by the owner of my local spinning shop. It's too easy and has pictures. Very relaxing.
The subtitle is "Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times". Written by a textile expert specializing in prehistoric textiles, it explores her accumulated research into womens economic control of textile manufacture pre-industrial revolution.
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 4
|
Lorax
Cultured hillbilly swine
Group: Members
Posts: 4925
Joined: Dec. 2003
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 11:21 am |
|
|
Marley and Me
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 5
|
|
|
| Post Number: 6
|
BoomerHiker
Group: Members
Posts: 8696
Joined: Jan. 2005
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 11:25 am |
|
|
E.V. Rieu's translation of Homer's Odyssey.
Sadly, it has nothing to do with "The Simpsons" or minivans... 
I'm also looking to score some Mickey Spillane. Anybody got any recommendations for starters?
--------------
Where the wind comes sweeping down the plains.
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 7
|
dmwinch
Group: Members
Posts: 517
Joined: Sep. 2003
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 11:30 am |
|
|
I just started reading Fear by L Ron Hubbard. From what I can tell the main characted losses four hours out of one day, and I guess bad things happen. Just a few pages in, so I don't have any opinions yet.
--------------
The sun is shining, it must be August.
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 8
|
Ldyblade
Blade Mistress of the Olympics
Group: Members
Posts: 3456
Joined: Jul. 2002
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 11:44 am |
|
|
Well, last night I finished Catfantastic III, a series of short stories edited by Andre Norton and Martin Greenberg. I love short stories. I can skip over the boring ones and keep going. I am also reading the second book in a two book series by Naomi Kritzer called Turning the Storm. The main character in the book is a woman musician who is caught up in leading an army to free citizens of the empire forced to build a wall bordering the next country over. Also, the old religion (which reads much like christianity, by the by) is coming back and the new order doesn't like it, of course.
I am also running thru a pile of trail books, including one on trails along I-90, Olympic Mountains and a PCT data book.
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 9
|
RamblinMan
Group: Members
Posts: 1406
Joined: Jul. 2006
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 12:08 pm |
|
|
Right now I'm reading these titles:
* Twilight in the Desert by Matthew Simmons; it's about the Saudi oil industry and it's effect in the world economy given outside estimates of the falling output their superfields.
* American Gospel by Jon Meacham; it's about the place God and religion playing in the creation of this nation, up through the current era.
Just starting The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil; not entirely sure what it's about at this point, just that it appears to be a look forward into the future of mankind and the ever increasing role of technology in it (biological systems, genetics, etc). Looks to be an interesting read at this point!
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 10
|
Bill Speers
Group: Members
Posts: 9628
Joined: Mar. 2004
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 12:29 pm |
|
|
Just finished Stealing The General, about the Great Locomotive Chase of the Civil War. A good book.
For 2006, I've read 71 books, 26,500 pages (72 pages a day), 15 fiction and 56 non-fiction.
Next on my list (I usually read 2-3 books at a time) are: Howard Chadwick, The Early Church (history of the first 400 years of Christianity), Norman Cantor, Civilization In The Middle Ages (Europe from the fall of Rome until the 14th Century), and Robert B. Parker, Death In Paradise (a Jesse Stone murder mystery).
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 11
|
|
|
| Post Number: 12
|
Dicentra
Bring it.
Group: Members
Posts: 15001
Joined: Sep. 2004
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 12:43 pm |
|
|
quote: Originally posted by Bill Speers:
Just finished Stealing The General, about the Great Locomotive Chase of the Civil War. A good book.
For 2006, I've read 71 books, 26,500 pages (72 pages a day), 15 fiction and 56 non-fiction.
Next on my list (I usually read 2-3 books at a time) are: Howard Chadwick, The Early Church (history of the first 400 years of Christianity), Norman Cantor, Civilization In The Middle Ages (Europe from the fall of Rome until the 14th Century), and Robert B. Parker, Death In Paradise (a Jesse Stone murder mystery).
You always are reading such interesting books!
For 2006 I read 57 books. I don't keep track of pages and I'll have to look and see how many non-fiction vs fiction. I'll be posting my annual "best of" list later. I usually read 3-4 books at a time too, but lately I've been going through them so fast I'm only doing one at a time. I guess that is a good thing.
I've written down Stealing The General. Sounds like something my FFIL will enjoy... his two big interests are the Civil War and trains.
--------------
One Pan Wonders ~ Back Country Cooking at its Finest
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 13
|
Woodswoman
Group: Members
Posts: 6440
Joined: Aug. 2002
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 12:55 pm |
|
|
I just finished "Water For Elephants" a few days ago (by Sara Gruen). It was one of those books I couldn't put down. It's about a man's experience with a low-rate circus back in the 1930's.
Right now I am reading "The Widow of the South" by Robert Hicks. So far it's been a good read. It takes place during the Civil War, and is about a woman who takes care of a cemetary of, you guessed it, Civil War soldiers. It is based on fact and fiction.
Lorax, I read "Marley and Me" last summer. It was so good!!
--------------
"Ah, Colorado: the one place in America where people wake up earlier on weekends than workdays."
~Mark Obmascik
"In the high country that we love, trails are steep.
We climb each mile, breath by breath,
and at the threshold of pain, bliss overtakes us.
~Michael Hannon"
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 14
|
|
|
| Post Number: 15
|
orygawn
Sleeping Bag Man!
Group: Members
Posts: 5688
Joined: Jul. 2006
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 1:40 pm |
|
|
From the history/politics dept:
Collapse by Jared Diamond. Just got started - I hope it can at least partially live up to Guns, Germs & Steel, which was an enthralling book.
American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips. The subtitle says it all: The Perils of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century.
From the Mgmt degree maintenance dept:
The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge. My favorite mgmt book - I'm refreshing my memory of it.
The Servant Leader by James Autry. Just getting started. The first book on servant leadership I have found, which does not have a bias to christianity.
--------------
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. -- Galileo
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 16
|
big_load
Group: Members
Posts: 21831
Joined: Jun. 2004
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 2:03 pm |
|
|
Here's the current stack I'm switching between:
Ontogeny and Phylogeny - Steven Jay Gould
Roadside Geology of Arizona - Halka Chronic
The Woodcut Artist's Handbook - George A. Walker
Guide to Colorado Wildflowers (Vol 2: Mountains) G. K. Guennel
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 17
|
Deborah
Deborah - 18 months
Group: Members
Posts: 15712
Joined: Feb. 2002
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 2:22 pm |
|
|
Besides that multitude of CO trail books -- I am listening to "The Alienist"
http://www.amazon.com/Alienist-Caleb-Carr/dp/0553572997
It's quite interesting.. 1896 profilers trying to define a serial killer.
--------------
“What we need is production by the masses, not mass-production” Gandhi
“The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn” David Russell
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 18
|
|
|
| Post Number: 19
|
nic
Group: Members
Posts: 3711
Joined: Jan. 2005
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 2:39 pm |
|
|
Just finished " The Children's Blizzard" by David Laskin about a swift blizzard that swept thru the Dakotas and Nebraska in 1888 taking everyone by suprise and killing many children trying to make their way home from school.
Just started (p 185) The Great Influenza by John M Barry about the 1918 Spanish Flu
--------------
Climb more mountains, eat more ice cream, go barefoot more often, swim more rivers, watch more sunsets, laugh more, and cry less.
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 20
|
|
|
| Post Number: 21
|
DocTom
Group: Members
Posts: 358
Joined: Sep. 2003
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 3:14 pm |
|
|
Just for fun reading (technical and continuing ed reading is not what you want, I'm sure)
Currently, "The Master Butchers Singing Club", Louise Erdrich - Love story concerning immigrants in upper midwest in the period between WWI and II, Ms. Erdrich writes extremly well, well enough that a person like me who generally does not read "love" stories, is slowly working through all her books.
Just finished "Oh Pure and Radiant Heart" an anti nucular weapons fantasy with the central hypothesis of Oppenheimer, Fermi, and Szilard being transported to the present time at the instant of the detonation of the 1st nuclear bomb (test). Also very well written and interesting, with a sub theme of religous fanatics trying to promote armegedon.
--------------
Brush and Floss, it is the secret of life!
Be still, unless you can improve on the silence!
http://www.acomplaintfreeworld.org/
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 22
|
TravisNWood
W Y O M I N G
Group: Members
Posts: 14886
Joined: Apr. 2006
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 3:40 pm |
|
|
quote: What is everyone reading???
Right now my attention span about matches online essays I Google down on university or government websites. A lot of that involves natural history. I rarely read fiction. My mind generally gives birth to enough of that to satisfy me.
I'm about a quarter of the way through the collected works of Sigmund Freud. He sits near my computer asking why I keep missing my appointments. But the Internet has both spoiled and enhanced my reading habits. I read fewer great writers, but track down a lot of information.
Fortunately, while other people were raising families, I spend my 20's, 30's, and 40's reading in my free time — largely history, social sciences, and psychology. Now I spend a lot of time studying other areas, represented not so much in good literature as in research and presentation. Sometimes I just like to "read" maps.
Some nights I may latch onto a long work of poetry and read for an hour. Perhaps that repairs my diction before the next technical essay. I could probably read Tennyson's Maude outloud, in its entirety, once a week and not tire of it.
--------------
Location — Wyoming
Webpages — Cloud Peak Wilderness Maps — Rocky Mountain Wildlife
Photos — Bighorn Mountains — Wyoming Steppes
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 23
|
|
|
| Post Number: 24
|
ltspike
Group: Members
Posts: 50
Joined: Jul. 2006
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 4:22 pm |
|
|
"Of Human Bondage" by W. Sommerset Maugham
Kind of like Dickens on downers
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 25
|
Redfox
Group: Members
Posts: 271
Joined: Mar. 2006
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 4:31 pm |
|
|
i've just started the book I got for Christmas, Rory Stewart's Prince of the Marshes. So far so good. I'll read his first one once I'm done this one.
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 26
|
|
|
| Post Number: 27
|
whistlepunk
Group: Members
Posts: 1657
Joined: Jul. 2006
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 5:13 pm |
|
|
American Sphinx -- The Character of Thomas Jefferson. by Joseph Ellis.
Sort of a psychological profile of Jefferson. Details the events of his life and how they shaped his world view and philosophy of government and society, and how his ideas and values changed over time.
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 28
|
|
|
| Post Number: 29
|
|
|
| Post Number: 30
|
wbtravis5152
Group: Guests
Posts: 14208
Joined: Feb. 2002
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 31 2006, 5:56 pm |
|
|
After reading Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke's War Diaries and his rather poor assessment of George C. Marshall, I decided to read General of the Army George C. Marshall, Soldier and Statesman by Ed Cray. Then it is on to Ed Veisturs' new book.
--------------
“If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog”...Harry S. Truman
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LOL. 
Survival Skills 101 • Eat Better
