Reading habits...

[The Amstor Computer]

Curious - comics aside, what's everyone reading at the moment?

I'm working my way through:

Melmoth the Wanderer
The Illustrated History of the Mosquito
Lavondyss
The Illustrated Man
The Rabbits (Shaun Tan!)
Hyperion
The Mysterious Island (preparing for LOEG2 :-))
Stranger In A Strange Land
African Nomadic Architecture

A nice little mix that'll do for a week or so - and any recommendations would be welcome.

[Smiley]

Nomadic Architecture? There's an oxymoron.

[Oddboy]

The Two Towers (AGAIN!)
Man & Boy by Tony Parsons (but I haven't started it yet & probably won't until I've got through Return of the King so it'll take a while).

[DavidXBrunt]

The Wasp Factory - Ian Banks,
Down Under - Bill Bryson,
Doctor Who:Book of the Still - Paul Ebbs,
100 years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
About a boy - Nick Hornby,
The Diary of Jack the Ripper - by some Victorian Madman,
The Rotters Club - Johnathon Coe.

But where to start.... Probably the Who, but there you go, that''s an adicts life.

[Ol^ Marbles]

I read a lot of history for some reason. Best stuff I've read in the last year or so :-

'Dreadnought : Britain, Germany and The Coming Of The Great War' by Robert Massie.

'Peter The Great' by Robert Massie (again). Massie's an excellent writer. Truth really is stranger than fiction - Tsar Peter secretly came to England during his reign and worked as a carpenter in the London docks icognito for 6 months!

'Byzantium' by John Julius Norwich - 3 part history of the Eastern Roman Empire - it only fell in the 16th century, having lasted over a millennium.

'Hundred Years War' by Jonathon Sumption. Detailed account in (so far) 2 thick volumes covering the war between France and England.

All of the above I'd highly recommend.

[Mk13]

>Nomadic Architecture? There's an oxymoron.

I think he means Portakabins...

[paulvonscott]

Orson Welles the road to Zanadu (Biography)
The Druids (non fiction)
Blakes 7 - Afterlife
Top Ten
Victor Book for Boys 1984, featuring a plucky young lad on the cover who is skating away from an evil nazi soldier.  By god, it make me proud to be british.

[Art]

Recent Reads (last month or so):

Lord of Light By Roger Zelazny
- Bonkers 60s/70s SF

The Fifth Head of Cerberus
- More classic SF

The Mechanical Turk  by Tom Standage
- Nonfiction. A book about the hostory of automata, particularly the chess playing turk

Zietgeist by Bruce Sterling
- Very cool book featuring recurring caracter Leggy Starlitz

Unorthodox Engineers  by Colin Kapp
- Extremely old schhool SF short stories

German Trauma by Gitta Sereny
- Nonfiction. Literaly the best book about WWII and its impact on the Germans I've ever read. Highly recommended

Heisenberg's War : The Secret History of the German Bomb By Thomas Powers
- Nonfiction, i've been slowly working my way through thsi one for ages.

[Slippery PD]

People obviously have/had more time than me:-
Recently
Ali - Biography
MSCE W2K training manuals (yawn...)
Simon Schama(sp?) history of Britain 1 & 2
The Beautiful Universe (?) - An investigation of String Theory - Greene - Hey Im a science geek!!
Heavens Mirror - some utterly mad man than likes to link ancient civilisations with atlantis.
It seems theres not one peice of fiction there

I also reread, often
Iain Banks - both contemporary and Sci-Fi (isnt complicity a great book???)
Tolkien
Herbert
Irving Welsh
And of course the galaxys greatest.......

 

[Trout]

Currently, the Trout is deep into The True History of the Kelly Gang, which is fascinating, even if the style's a little hard to deal with.

I've just finished Alan Clark's Diaries (yet again) and in the bookshop on Saturday I had my eye on the newer editions of the same.

I also picked up some Neil Gaiman thing which looks okay. It's his new one but the title escapes me. I'll get round to it after the Australian stuff.

- Picture a Trout with reading glasses on.

[Art]

I'm reading something quite interesting right now:  My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk, which is basically a murder mystery set amongst the illuminators of 1590s Istanbul. Whats interesting about it is that the illuminatuions were inherantly a narrative artform - there to tell a story, and so had a simplified, symbolic style as well as captions and to a certain extent multiple panels. A great upheaval is caused by the arrival of the European style - portrature, the highly detailed depitictions of objects which purport tp show a static moment of time rather than a narrative. Fasicnating stuff, especially for a comics and art geek such as myself.

Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/057121224

[Something Fishy]

Funnily enough i'm reading About a boy.

I wasn't going to admit it but seeing as i'm not alone.

I think its great stuff.  Very amusing and particularly funny if you have a son yourself..