What are you reading?

A place to discuss your favorite authors and poets, Christian and secular

Postby mitsuki lover » Fri Dec 29, 2006 3:13 pm

I hope to take some books back up to the ranch tommorrow and switch them around with some other books I have up there.I'm not sure which ones I will bring back though.
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Postby mitsuki lover » Sat Dec 30, 2006 12:18 pm

Like I said above I decided to exchange some books,which I did today and brought back:
Non-Fiction:
*The Vikings by Ian Heath
*Ancient Celts by Tim Newark & Angus McBride
*The Union Reader ed.by Richard Harwell
*WASP,Where Is Thy Sting?by Florence King
*The Star Trek Compedium by Alan Asherman
Fiction:
Fantasy/Sci Fi:
Maureen Birnbaum Barbarian Swordsperson by George Alec Effinger
Chicks In Chainmail ed.by Esther Freisner
Villians By Necessity by Eve Forward
Witch of the North by Courtnay Jones
Mathemagics by Margaret Ball
Star Trek Novels:
Mudd In Your Eye by Jerry Olton
Pathways by Jeri Taylor
Shadow by Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Seven of Nine by Christie Golden
Currently starting on the Star Trek Compedium.
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Postby Akane » Sat Dec 30, 2006 12:25 pm

The Bible and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
John 8:32~
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Postby yukinon » Sat Dec 30, 2006 1:29 pm

I could never bring myself to enjoy Doyle, no matter how hard I tried. and I did try.
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Postby MorwenLaicoriel » Sat Dec 30, 2006 1:42 pm

Try now I'm in the beginning of Stardust by Neil Gaiman. My friend loves him, so...hopefully I'll react the same. XD
*didn't like the last book he suggested ^^;*
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Postby Fish and Chips » Sat Dec 30, 2006 2:04 pm

I've been stalemated in Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards! for a couple months now. Not his fault, I just have other things that snatch away my attention.
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Postby Fionn Fael » Sat Dec 30, 2006 3:21 pm

I'm reading The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway. It's supposed to be a classic, but I must say that I can't get into it very well.
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"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." -Matthew 11:28

"Even when our eyes are closed, there's a whole world out there that lives outside ourselves and our dreams." --Edward Elric, Fullmetal Alchemist

“To put alcohol in the human is like putting sand in the bearing of an engine." --Thomas Edison

[color="RoyalBlue"][font="Trebuchet MS"]The simplest way that I can understand therapy is that we're born a certain way, we're taught to be something different, and we spend our whole lives trying to unravel it and ultimately align ourselves with who we really are. Life, experiences, traumas -- whatever -- they all add up to make you some altered version of what you are. So there's this battle that goes on between what you are and what you become, and it's been very important for me to unravel what I was taught to be or what I became. and to draw a direct parallel to music -- the closer I get back to being who I really am, the stronger the music gets..." --Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins frontman)[/font][/color]

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Postby Technomancer » Sun Dec 31, 2006 3:21 pm

I'm halfway through Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin by Robert Hazen.

For lighter reading I've also picked up The Ruby in Her Navel by Barry Unsworth
The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its mistakes. Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry—is not even a "subject"—but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning.

Neil Postman
(The End of Education)

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge

Isaac Aasimov
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Postby Kokhiri Sojourn » Wed Jan 03, 2007 10:54 am

Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson. She is easily one of my favorite living writers. She knows the value of words and crafts them together, nearly every phrase, precisely.
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Postby yukinon » Wed Jan 03, 2007 12:11 pm

Housekeeping? What is it about exactly?
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Postby Kokhiri Sojourn » Wed Jan 03, 2007 2:41 pm

yukinon wrote:Housekeeping? What is it about exactly?


I'm only a few chapters in, so I dare not summarize it yet. Here's the back cover description:

Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone, which is set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.
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Postby Icarus » Wed Jan 03, 2007 5:49 pm

Rereading Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher...

Again.

And Morwen, I preferred Neverwhere to Stardust
The Forsworn War of 34

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Postby Mave » Thu Jan 04, 2007 3:23 am

I'm currently reading Pilgrim's Progress. It's an interesting book. Thought it would be allegorical like Chronicles of Narnia but it's quite upfront on Christianity.
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Postby bigsleepj » Thu Jan 04, 2007 3:30 am

I'm currently reading Peace by Gene Wolfe, the James Joyce of sci-fi / fantasy. Difficult but interesting and well written.
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Postby wingedfox » Thu Jan 04, 2007 6:59 am

I just finished Maximum Ride: Schools Out Forever by James...the last name escapes me Patterson or Peterson something like that.
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Postby mitsuki lover » Thu Jan 04, 2007 12:59 pm

Treasury of Poems.
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Postby Kaori » Thu Jan 04, 2007 4:28 pm

Homer's Iliad.

Mave wrote:I'm currently reading Pilgrim's Progress. It's an interesting book. Thought it would be allegorical like Chronicles of Narnia but it's quite upfront on Christianity.

Technically, Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory and the Chronicles of Narnia are not (Lewis himself maintained that the Narnia books are not allegorical). In an allegory, everything has to have a figurative meaning, and it's very common for allegories to announce their meaning by naming characters and places after the thing that they represent. So, Pilgrim's Progress is more or less a textbook example of what an allegory is. But it's definitely an interesting book--I enjoy it, too.
Let others believe in the God who brings men to trial and judges them. I shall cling to the God who resurrects the dead.
-St. Nikolai Velimirovich

MAL
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Postby yukinon » Fri Jan 05, 2007 2:02 pm

I wasn't crazy about the little bit of Pilgrim's Progress that I did read, but I may have been too young for it.

I am currently reading Can You Keep a Secret?, a silly little jr. high drama about a secret club where they have parties without parents. Shocking! Nothing important, but relatively amusing escapism, especially since I'm trying to give my brain a break until school begins again.
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Postby uc pseudonym » Fri Jan 05, 2007 2:45 pm

I'd recommend looking at it again (or perhaps an abridged version if long conversations on minor points bore you). While it still might not be of sufficient interest to you, it is a classic and has plenty of good points.

As far as abridged versions go, I recommend "Dangerous Journey" as selected by Oliver Hunkin. I think that Eerdman's publishes it. However, I could be wrong because that's from memory: this was the version I read as a child before at some point I found the full text online. It's open source now and easily found.

Kaori wrote:Technically, Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory and the Chronicles of Narnia are not (Lewis himself maintained that the Narnia books are not allegorical). In an allegory, everything has to have a figurative meaning, and it's very common for allegories to announce their meaning by naming characters and places after the thing that they represent. So, Pilgrim's Progress is more or less a textbook example of what an allegory is. But it's definitely an interesting book--I enjoy it, too.

Heh. I considered posting something equivalent to this. Hopefully Mave will have time enough to log on and see it.
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Postby Alice » Fri Jan 05, 2007 3:42 pm

I just finished My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult. Wow, that was a long book.

I'm also reading more Alexander McCall Smith books, and a fantasy book.
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share

And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.
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Postby Phantom_Sorano » Fri Jan 05, 2007 9:17 pm

The Glass Menagerie- Tennessee Williams
Jeremiah 29:11-"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord,"plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
"All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players; they have their entrances and their exits and one man in his time plays many parts."-Will Shakespeare
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Postby Dunedan » Sat Jan 06, 2007 3:01 am

Midway through Brighton Rock-Graham Greene, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish- Douglas Adams, and Hippo Eats Dwarf by I'm Not-Sure-Who. For edification reading books on witchcraft, video editing, postmodernism, and Latin. My chances of finishing all of these books- very small.
The reflections of light are everywhere
Only a gilded age of forgetfulness
A drunken slumber, goodnight but no kiss.

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Postby mitsuki lover » Sat Jan 06, 2007 12:18 pm

So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish is probably the best bet for you to finish it.
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Postby Fionn Fael » Sat Jan 06, 2007 2:51 pm

Alice wrote:I just finished My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult. Wow, that was a long book.

Hey! I read that at the beginning of this school year. Did you like it? I thought it was sad, but good. They dropped the F-bomb too many times for my tastes, though. :(

I just finished Twilight Child, by Sally Warner. It was very good, but the only reason I initially picked it up is because I'm so obsessed with LoZ: Twilight Princess, which is only connected to the book by the word "twilight". :sweat:

Now I'm reading Kino no Tabi: Book One of The Beautiful World. I LURVS the anime, and the book is awesome, too!
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"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." -Matthew 11:28

"Even when our eyes are closed, there's a whole world out there that lives outside ourselves and our dreams." --Edward Elric, Fullmetal Alchemist

“To put alcohol in the human is like putting sand in the bearing of an engine." --Thomas Edison

[color="RoyalBlue"][font="Trebuchet MS"]The simplest way that I can understand therapy is that we're born a certain way, we're taught to be something different, and we spend our whole lives trying to unravel it and ultimately align ourselves with who we really are. Life, experiences, traumas -- whatever -- they all add up to make you some altered version of what you are. So there's this battle that goes on between what you are and what you become, and it's been very important for me to unravel what I was taught to be or what I became. and to draw a direct parallel to music -- the closer I get back to being who I really am, the stronger the music gets..." --Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins frontman)[/font][/color]

Adopted by KhakiBlueSocks!

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Postby Alice » Sat Jan 06, 2007 3:46 pm

My Sister's Keeper


It was one of those books you read because once you start it, you've got to know what happens. But regarded rationally, I'm not certain how impressed I was by it.
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share

And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.
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Postby yukinon » Sat Jan 06, 2007 7:05 pm

Sounds interesting. What is it about?
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Postby KBMaster » Sun Jan 07, 2007 5:55 am

I just finished White by Ted Dekker. It was awesome. Again. :P


To answer your question, Yukinon,

Taken from Amazon.com:

Anna was genetically engineered to be a perfect match for her cancer-ridden older sister. Since birth, the 13-year-old has donated platelets, blood, her umbilical cord, and bone marrow as part of her family's struggle to lengthen Kate's life. Anna is now being considered as a kidney donor in a last-ditch attempt to save her 16-year-old sister. As this compelling story opens, Anna has hired a lawyer to represent her in a medical emancipation suit to allow her to have control over her own body. Picoult skillfully relates the ensuing drama from the points of view of the parents; Anna; Cambell, the self-absorbed lawyer; Julia, the court-appointed guardian ad litem; and Jesse, the troubled oldest child in the family. Everyone's quandary is explicated and each of the characters is fully developed. There seems to be no easy answer, and readers are likely to be sympathetic to all sides of the case. This is a real page-turner and frighteningly thought-provoking. The story shows evidence of thorough research and the unexpected twist at the end will surprise almost everyone. The novel does not answer many questions, but it sure raises some and will have teens thinking about possible answers long after they have finished the book.
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Postby yukinon » Sun Jan 07, 2007 4:11 pm

Interesting. I may have to check that out.
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Postby Alice » Sun Jan 07, 2007 4:45 pm

It's not a Christian book, Yukinon. It isn't the most cheerful book I've read, either. ^^; I can't really give you a warning without spoiling stuff; just know I don't recommend it unreservedly. That said, it was engrossing.

I'm reading "Plot It Yourself," by Rex Stout. It's actually not the choose-your-own-ending book it sounds like. It's about people making fake claims against authors, saying they say stole their stories (and planting these "first drafts" in the authors' houses, etc). Nero Wolfe and Archie are hired to find the person *behind* these extortion/accusations.
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share

And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.
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Postby yukinon » Sun Jan 07, 2007 6:14 pm

I'm an adult. I'll live.

I used to love those choose-your-own adventure books.
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