Next Book on the LIST

To anybody out there who likes to settle down with a good book....

what are you reading now....
and what is next on your list?


I just finished Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, which is a book about the life of an ex-con who has escaped from jail and smuggles his way into Bombay. Great book, and cool to search up this guy on YouTube and see what he is really like. Quite fitting.

Next on the list: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. I have heard quite good things about this book, so I am pretty stoked on it.

Reading Mystic River by Dennis Lehane.

Next on the list is 1984 by George Orwell.

I'm on a non-fiction kick, so I've been reading:

and, honestly, it's so good that I think its follow-up, Day of Battle is next.

World War Z by Max Brooks

Next up:

Dandy In The Underworld by Sebastian Horsley

Now: The China Study (aaaaaah so good)

Next: The Creative Habit

now: various geology texts

spring break: another roadside attraction by tom robbins, again.

Lush Life by Richard Price. I actually just picked it up in the library on a whim and man is it gripping.

Triton by Samuel R. Delany.
Next on the list is Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Sci-fi kick lately

RECENTLY: Richard Powers' ]I]Galatea 2.2
NOW: Matt Browne's The Future Happens Twice

now: Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth by Marcia Bjornerud.
next: not sure yet. maybe David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, but I've got lots of unread stuff older than that, so that might change.

This thread almost has my next paycheck spent.

Right now, squeezed in between much non-discretionary reading, is American Tabloid.

Currently doing a reread of You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers. And next? I think it will be getting stuck into Middlemarch by George Eliot. I try to balance out classics with newer stuff, so that'll be read at the same time as World War Z. Zombies and provincial English drama, it's a match made in crack heaven.

I just finished The Reader after picking up a cheap copy at an airport, waiting to board. I was impressed with the book more so than the movie, like usual.

I've been meaning to finish a collection of short stories by Chekhov. I'm on kind of a classics kick these days.

Ellroy is one of my favorite authors, but I constantly forget about him. That being said, "American Tabloid" is excellent.

Just finished reading The Defense by Vladimir Nabokov. It's about an obsessive chess grandmaster.

I have no idea what I'm going to start next... A Gentle Madness, a book about bibliophiles and book thieves, is most likely.

Reading: The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins

Next: Mildred Pierce, James M Cain

I recently finished The Final Fire by Dennis Smith. I liked it a lot, but it's more like industry-themed porn for firemen. It's a fictionalized account of the FDNY in the 60's during the height of corruption, arson & riots.

I plan on starting The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs. It's the guy who spent an entire year living as close to the laws of the bible as legally possible in the US.

Right now I'm reading The Great Derangement by Matt Taibbi.

Next up is Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age by Steve Knopper

Just finished: Everyone Worth Knowing by Lauren Weisberger

On my bedside table: Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

I'm reading Eve by Elissa Elliott. Pretty good, takes a new look at the Genesis story, and throws some extra info into the mix (like where did the people Adam and Eve ran into out of the Garden come from?).

I'm also teaching (for one more week) The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. Damn fine book.

JennyLou just finished this recently, she said it was great.

After spending awhile hitchhiking, I've been told so many times to read Kerouac's On the Road that I've finally picked it up. In love with the vivacity of the narrative

In between case books I've been sneaking House of Leaves. It's not perfect, but it's interesting.
After that it's the either Anansi Boys or American Pastoral by Phillip Roth (who, shockingly, sold less than 30,000 copies of his last book I hear.)