So What Do You Read?

[Luke]

Let's have a nerd geek pissing contest: Current read, and the book you read before that.

I'm reading God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert. Never read the Dune stuff before this year. It's neat. I think I like it because it is so oblique. But the fascist under (and over) tones kind of raise my hackles.
"I know what we need: An immortal benevolent ruler! Yay!"

This weekend I read the autobiography of Jack Black called You Can't Win. No, not THAT Jack Black. The real Jack Black. He was a bum, a thief, a stick up man and a yegg in 1880s and through the turn of the century. He finally went straight after nearly dying of an opium addiction. It's an awesome portrait of a world little known and a fascinating character study.

Vincent, if you're reading this, I highly recommend it.

-L

[Trevis Martin]

You mean non-RP books I assume?

I'm continuing to burn through Ross MacDonald novels (the reprints by Black Lizard.)  I'm currently on The Underground Man, I just finished The Chill.  I think I'm running out of them!  I just have to cry after that.

Trevis

[Ben Lehman]

I'm reading Yi, a book of Chinese poetry based on the Yijing.  I'm also reading (slowly) the Gormenghast novels.  When I get back to California, I have the end of "All Men Are Brothers" waiting for me.

Last book finished: Book of the New Sun.

yrs--
--Ben

[joshua neff]

Mostly what I read these days is for school. My theme for this semester is "copyright and IP," and I've been reading Larry Lessig's Free Culture and The Future of Ideas, Kembrew McLeod's Freedom of Expression, and Siva Vaidhyanathan's Copyrights and Copywrongs and The Anarchist in the Library.

My non-school reading would be a lot of comics, as well as Robert E. Howard's "Conan" stories. I'm currently reading Midnight for Charlie Bone and enjoying it very much.

[Luke]

title and author, my literate nerds, title and author!

-L

[Judd]

I am chewing through China Mieville's fantasy stuff, Perdido Street Station, The Scar and now I'm working my way through Iron Council.  They are fantastic books and the interviews I have read with the author are spot on with how I feel about geekdom and fantasy.

I am most of the way through David Simon and Edward Burns' The Corner, a narrative journalistic reporting on the drug corners of West Balitmore.  Great stuff about the legal system and how it works from the junkee-eye-view.

[Domhnall]

I am an unapologetic Tolkienian.  Aside from him, I love David Gemmell as a second best.  My system is a mixture of the "high" fantasy of Tolkien with the "grittiness" of Gemmell.

[Luke]

I am an unapologetic Tolkienian.  Aside from him, I love David Gemmell as a second best.  My system is a mixture of the "high" fantasy of Tolkien with the "grittiness" of Gemmell.

that's great, Domhnall, now tell us what book you're currently reading and what was the book you read prior to that.

-L

[Domhnall]

oh yeah...

Last read was actually S King's The Shining (first time I'd tried him).  

Recent read: God, Guilt, and Death by Merold Westphal

[Bankuei]

I just finished Jeff Chang's Can't Stop, Won't Stop, a history of hip hop, as well as Orson Scott Card's Shadow of the Giant.  I'm still digging through Ka Kanaka: Stand Tall, a look at traditional Hawaiian cutural values, and The Sufi Path of Knowledge, an overview of the Muslim philosopher Bin Arabi.

[rafial]

I'm reading Goa, by Kara Dalkey, the first book of fantastical/historical trilogy set in the Portuguese colony of the same name in 1597.  The main character is an apprentice apothecary dragged into intrigue between the Inquistion and a Hindu goddess.  So far I'm pulled in.  The background is rich, and hey, pirates!

Previously, I slogged my way through War of Honor by David Weber (whimper).  My shame at having read this book (which should have been titled My Dinner with Honor, as all that happens are people sit around and talk about the galacto-political situation for endless pages, often while having dinner) is only exceeded by the shame of knowing I'll eventually read whatever the next pile of dead trees that Weber cranks out for fan service in this series.  But only as a used paperback... I still have a shred of pride.

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

Let's get outlandishly nerdish, then:

I'm currently reading and re-reading the following (due to an article in progress, but purely of my own free will and not any mandatory studies): C.S. Peirce's collected works, Adelsten's dissertation Interikonicitet, books on hermeneutics by Phillips, Palmer, Jeanrond, Husserl, Gadamer and Ricoeur (in their original languages, or course) and a half-dozen others on art/culture theory (Kaprow, Bey), child psychology (Winnicott, Korkee, Rizzuto), etc. In the mean time, I'm also amusing myself with Hebbershålsapokryferna by the Swedish surrealist Nikanor Teratologen. It's a thoroughly disturbing and frankly sick book, but also brilliant satire and exceptionally well written.

And no, I indeed do not have a very active social life at the moment.

Happy birthday, Forge.

-Jiituomas

[Tobias]

Just finished Freedom evolves, by Daniel Dennet, am starting on Global brain, by Howard Bloom.

In fiction, hmmmm War of the Flowers by Tad Williams was a way back, but fair(l)y memorable.

[James Holloway]

Currently reading:

Jesse Byock, Viking Age Iceland (again)
W.O. Frazer and A. Tyrrell, Social Identity in Early Medieval Britain
Jack Vance, The Blue World

Read since the 27th of March:

Ethan Coen, Gates of Eden. I didn't even know he wrote fiction.
A.J.P. Taylor, British Prime Ministers and other essays. Would be Britain's foremost living popular historian if he weren't dead.
Benjamin Woollett, The Queen's Conjurer. Resumes had to be a lot longer in Elizabethan England, to paraphrase Ken Hite.
Eric Flint, 1632. Trash.
Jonathan Letham, Motherless Brooklyn. Excellent.
Colin Evans, Great Feuds in History. I'm not sure the English Civil War was a "feud" properly so-called, but it's an enjoyable book and it was only a pound.

[Jack Aidley]

Currently reading: The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin.

Read before that: The Ra Expeditions by Thor Heyerdahl (If you haven't read Thor Heyerdahl's auto-biographical books, do so. They're fascinating stuff).