BOOKS thread!!!

[Guernicaa]

What books have you guys read lately?

I just finished "Don't think of an Elephant!" by George Lakoff:
http://www.chelseagreen.com/2004/items/elephant

He's a very smart guy, but even if it suites my politics, I get really tired of reading political books that are based on theory of how to go about discussing the issues and how to communicate them.
It was very boring in some parts, and alright in other parts.

I like entertaining things though...which is why I started Al Frankens "Lies and the lying liars who tell them"
The first few chapters on Coulter have been fucking hilarious.
And no, he doesn't lie before any of you try and say he does. He had a team of 14 Harvard students work with him on that book and everything in it is based on pure fact.

[darin]

I haven't read a book in years. Maybe it shows?

[Hagbard Celine]

I haven't read anything lately. I'm in the middle of re-reading Huckleberry Finn (I found a copy of it in some stuff at my house so I picked it up) and I'm also near finishing a book called "Stiff" about what happens to cadavers after people donate them to science. Pretty interesting stuff. I'll probably be reading some Harry Potter soon too.

[Guernicaa]

I haven't read a book in years. Maybe it shows?
Really? I would assume to hear something like that from Pale but not you dmp. I think for now your doin just fine.

[truthmatters]

Spook, science tackles the afterlife

Mary Roach

Same person who wrote stiff

[hjmick]

In the last month and a half:

Spy - Ted Bell

The Wild Trees - Richard Preston

The Navigator - Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos

The Judas Strain - James Rollins

The Alexandria Link - Steve Berry

I am currently reading I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. It was the book use as the basis for the movie The Omega Man and the soon to be released I Am Legend starring Will Smith. The book also contains several of Matheson's short stories.

[dan]

I haven't read anything lately. I'm in the middle of re-reading Huckleberry Finn

I knew you were a racist.

Stiff is really good, too.

Right now I'm reading No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July. She's a filmmaker and visual artist, the book is just a bunch of short stories. She's got a very whimsical, but still sort of deep, writing style that works well in 6-10 page stories, but I could see how it wouldn't hold up over the course of a book. And, it is a little bit "girly" here and there, I guess, in the sense that most of the stories are clearly written from a female point of view. Funny sidenote, when I was about 50 pages in, I told my friend Erin how good it was and that she should read it, then right after that point, the stories got startlingly sexual and very graphically so at times. So, now I'm kind of scared that she'll either think I'm a perv or that I'm trying to send some weird signals her way (she's the girlfriend of one of my closest friends, by the way).

[Hagbard Celine]

I'm in the mood for a really good, realistic spy novel. Any recommendations?

[hjmick]

I'm in the mood for a really good, realistic spy novel. Any recommendations?

Ted Bell is very good, though I'm not sure I'd classify his books as spy novels.

The Company is very good, the authors name escapes me. I believe they have made it The Company into a mini-series, TNT maybe. The books is about the early days of the CIA.

Any of the original three Bourne books by Ludlum. I haven't read any of the newer Bourne books, but my dad assures me that the author the Ludlum estate has writing them, Eric Van Lustbader, is very good and the one book I have read by him, The Testament, was very good.

Any and all of Daniel Silva's books are winners. They all center on a Mossad agent who works as an art restorer when he's not killing bad guys.

[Abbey Marie]

I agree about Silva, though a couple of his books got too sidetracked into Nazi history to be page turners.

Currently reading David Ignatius' Body of Lies.

On deck is Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. My daughter is reading it for an AP English summer project, and recommends it. It sounds fascinating.

[avatar4321]

Dragons of Spring Dawning. I got tired of serious books after the bar and figured i should read some fun ones for a change.

[Trigg]

The Red Tent - Biblical times from a womans point of view

Memoirs of a Geisha

I read a lot of different kinds of books the only ones I tend to avoid are war stories, just can't get into them. Right now the kids and I are re-reading the Harry Potter series before reading the last one.

[Abbey Marie]

I'm in the mood for a really good, realistic spy novel. Any recommendations?

Try anything by David Ignatius. Bank of Fear is very good.

From Amazon:

"To complete the trilogy formed by Siro (LJ 4/15/91) and Agents of Innocence (Avon, 1988), Ignatius, a journalist whose beat once included the Middle East, now focuses his powerhouse stare on Iraq. Combining the sly wit of a Swiss bank caper with the horrifying account of a megalomaniacal political regime, this novel features a modern Iraqi woman who works in London as a computer specialist for an Arab conglomerate. Her innocent discovery of a questionable computer file at the time when the Iraqi head of state is assassinated leaves her exposed to relentless attack not only from Iraqi agents but from Israeli and American ones as well. A smitten freelance industrial spy tries to help her out-at least until his father, a CIA operative, interferes. Against a backdrop of true events, documentary realism in the torture scenes, and computer strategies, the couple ping-pongs between frisky romance and dire straits. Ignatius writes dialog of sustained virtuosity, and the plotting, if a little labored, is dazzlingly clever. For most popular spy and suspense collections."