I hate Dickens too, Jaime! Believe me, Ive tried to read like five books by him and couldnt get past the first few pages.

Currently Im reading Greg Palast's The best Democracy Money Can Buy and I just finished Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses (which, Cyan is utterly brilliant). And Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch. Im waiting on more books from the library, and its taking too long.
s

I'm in the middle of a collection from the Library of America called Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s. (The second volume is from the 1950s.) This includes famous (and maybe not-so-famous) classics of this tough, pessimistic, cynical subgenre. So far in this volume I've read The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain (so laconic it makes Hemingway look like Henry James; the black-and-white film version is pretty faithful to the book); They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy (not really a crime novel, despite the killing that gives the book its title, but a remarkably minimalist nightmare; the film was excellent as well, but greatly expanded the book's paper-thin plot); Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson (convincingly authentic and vivid portrait of the lives of small-time bank robbers; there was a film called They Live By Night based on it, which I have not seen); and The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing (manages to combine an incredibly clever suspense plot with psychological depth, social commentary, and literary style; the film was outstanding, too.) Yet to be read are Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham (another great film) and I Married a Dead Man by Cornell Woolrich (apparently filmed under the title No Man of Her Own, a film I know nothing about.)

This thread needs reviving.

I recently read the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton. It was a bit of a guilty pleasure, really ...detectives, zombie-raising, werewolfs, and vampires. Sort of a supernatural soap opera / crime novel. It was a fun and easy read, perfect for Halloween.

I'm now looking to read something with a bit more meat, but I'm still in a dark fantasy mindset. 'Tis the season. Anyone have any recommendations?

You've probably already read The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. If not, it's mandatory reading for any lover of dark fantasy.

I actually tend to prefer shorter works when I read this kind of thing. Dark Forces edited by Kirby McCauley is the best horror anthology I've ever read.

I really liked Usher's Passing by Robert McCammon. It starts with a daring notion -- it tells of the modern descendents of the Usher family in the famous Poe story. Besides this, there's also the sinister Pumpkin Man and his "pet" Greediguts.

For fantasy that's not really dark, but often "edgy" (although also often very funny) I would highly recommend The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles G. Finney, a great classic.

If you like Robert Loius Stevenson, you may like James Hoggs often neglected classic, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.

The book was said to have inspired The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and dealt with a Calvinist who is visited by the devil in the guise of a young man who spurs him on to a series of crimes by playing on his belief of predestination. It carries the distinction of being the first book I've read that is both funny and genuinely scary.


Right now I'm reading Voltaire's Candide, Bronte's (Charlotte? I always get the sisters confused) Jane Eyre, Marcel Proust's The Past Recaptured, and set aside for light reading, Baudelaire's prose poems and Maupassant's short story, Ball of Fat.


Hey, Hugo, I sometimes believe I'm the only person who has read Les Miserables in its entirety! Heh. Glad I'm not the only one.


Um.. I'm something of a writer... so I read a lot.

You read Les Mis too? Poor thing. I found it insufferably drawl and long-winded. Hugo (Victor that is) never understood that character is more interesting than setting.

I just finished reading a collection of Philip K. Dick stuff that I found really interesting, but it's not for everyone.

Thanks for the recommendations, Corvus. I will be on the lookout for that one.

For light reading, I've been dabbling back and forth with Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

What I've spent more time reading lately is not a book. Researching one of my many unfinished projects, I came across this little site and it has consumed much of my time: State Department - Foreign Relations of the U.S. Series.

Those are some good old fashioned scary Halloween stories and one more for good measure

Did you end up reading Quixote? It's a light read - minimalist, really - but it's very, very long. I never did finish it before it was due back at the library.



What, you didn't cry at the end of Les Mis? I di..er..know people who did...

But themes! The book is filled with them, and the story is such a journey you can't help but feel sympathetic with the characters, since, lacking a little in character development, Hugo makes up for it in characterisation. Victor would turn in his grave if he knew how the French are now enslaved to their own ideal of liberty. The book made a very big impression on me.

If Les Mis doesn't do it for you, there's always Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, with its profoundly touching and throughly depressing beauty and the beast tale. He wrote it as part of a campaign to prevent the Notre Dame cathedral from being torn down. Unforgettable it truly is.

Also, it might be noted that character isn't always important to story. Someone here mentioned Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, where the setting is, in fact, the character. The people are flat and lifeless, but you will hardly notice the plot being propelled by the awe and wonder stirred by the mysterious spaceship they investigate. The rest of the series is lacklustre and tedious. The sequel, Rama II suddenly develops real characters, thanks to co-writer Gentry Lee, but the spaceship no longer keeps us in awe. All the books after that one seem to be a boring sermon on the fallibility of humans.

Other book recommendations - and I'm very discriminating when it comes to books and very rarely read any genre or bestseller books, since, to quote Huysmans, "I can't fathom how a man can write 800 pages and still have nothing to say;

Mademoiselle de Maupin - Theophile Gautier
This would be a hit with the Gender Issues crowd. It's an ornate 19th century romance featuring a love triangle between a transvestite woman, an aesthete and his mistress. Deals with beauty as an ideal. Link to my livejournal to learn more about it.

Samuel Butler
I know creationism and evolution debates are big in these fora. Erewhon is a social satire much like Gulliver's Travels, and one of the more interesting parts is a section about how the future will be dominated by machinery, and humans would be nothing but slaves to machines, and the machines slaves to humans, each relying on the other. Samuel Butler was a devout Catholic until he read Darwin's Origin of the Species. He applies a Darwinistic argument to machines, somewhat convincingly stating that "one day they'll become as numerous as the beasts in the fields" and doubting the advent of machines has increased the quality of life at all. (This was first published in 1872) Some people might find it boring, since it's really a collection of essays organised into a story. Another review in my livejournal.

Butler is better known for Way of All Flesh, a social commentary on, mainly, Victorian family values. It came a little too late, though. Both Butler and Victor Hugo are something of heroes to me.

I love books, and I could go on, but I'll shut up now.

Gratienne smiled. "Oh, of course, it has its advantages. But when one learns to read, one is assaulted by a plethora of trivialities parading as substance. Literature, for example. Steer clear of it, Albiere, for literature is either so vapid as to be worthless, or it so complicates a simple thing so as to give the illusion of depth."

-From my yet unfinished novel.

I have actually read Rama... did it in one sitting.

Joe: I you like Dick (er - Philip K, that is), I'd also recommend William Gibson and a couple of Neal Stephenson's novels (especially Snow Crash), if you haven't read them.

Stephenson has recently departed from the sci-fi genre which lead to his early renown and I am currently reading his most recent, Quicksilver (published last month) - which is masterful. Between this and his last work, Cryptonomicon, I am quite willing to rank him with the best of America's "great novelists" from the past few decades (like Pynchon, DeLillo, Gaddis, Vidal, Updike, and Mailer). Quicksilver is an historical adventure that leaps from the Massachusetts Colony and Cromwell's England to the court of Louis the XIV and the Turkish siege of Vienna, looking at science and superstition, reason and madness, politics, war, and piracy. It seamlessly blends fictional characters (some of whose descendants appear in Cryptonomicon, which is set during WWII and in the immediate future) with such historical figures as Newton, Leibniz, Pepys, members of the Houses of Stuart, Bourbon, Orange-Nassau, and Hohenzollern, and even the young Ben Franklin.

Quicksilver is also the first novel of a trilogy (the "Baroque Cycle") and, if it holds up, I might even nudge Stephenson into the list that would include Faulkner, Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Fitzgerald.


EDITED TO ADD:

Heh - in looking back over this thread, I realized that I've already recommended both Stephenson and Gibson. Oh, well - at least Stephenson has a current context for me.

I have read and enjoyed many of the books mentioned. I most often get caught up in an author and become faithful to their work.

I love William Gibson, definitely one of my favorites.
Also love John Irving and have read all of his too.

In the sci-fi genre no one mentioned Kim Stanley Robinson , or perhaps I missed it, the author of the Red Mars trilogy. I really enjoyed that one. Also read his Antarctica book too and it was very good.

But now I want to just focus on books that tend to be more written for the female readers ...since no one really did this

Amy Tan was mentioned and I have read all of hers, and recommend them all.
Isabel Allende...I just LOVE her! and again recommend her highly.
Zadie Smith..I have only read her first novel White Teeth but I loved it. Just purchased her newest out in paperback....The Autograph Man
Recently finished The Secret Life of Bees enjoyed it and recommend it.
Also for fun, trash bubblegum enjoyment I have been reading Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series and I really have been enjoying it.

Politically I am wanting to read The Prince of Providence

Oh I almost forgot some...
my ALL time favorite author is Roddey Doyle... I LOVE HIM! Great great story teller and the most recent of his I read was A Star Called Henry Which was a very serious novel for him, he is usally a lot more comedic, but it was an interesting (altho fictional) insight and look at the start of the IRA.

I also have always enjoyed Banana Yoshimoto and have read all of hers too.

Well after reading about everyones favorite books,I feel pretty small.

My favorite author is Robert Ludlum(who passed away I believe last year) who writes long books(never boring) about espionage. One of his books some might recognize is Bourne Identify which was made into a movie. Movies do not do his books justice.

Since I didn't see any espionage books on any list.I guess I am a oddball.

I usually read books for escaping to another world without all the stress.

Yikes. I know Roddy Doyle and - like most people who know him - I hate his phony, exploitative guts. Obviously, this colors my opinion of him as a writer. If you want any dirt on him, though, just let me know.

If you've got any dirt that could have financial value please feel free to pass it along.

I've been re-reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (never read "Mostly Harmless" before) while simultaneously watching the BBC television miniseries. Gives one a whole new appreciation for text.

Wertz does he live in Orlando? I lived there at one time in my life..I lived dowtown...not going to give the address tho because my brother now lives/owns the house. I also went to high school there...Winter Park High.

Yes I want some dirt...of course ! Why is he phony and exploitive? tell tell....

No, we both used to live in Dublin (and, for all I know, he still does).


Maybe, due to libel laws and all that, this should be taken up via PM. Send me a message if you really want to know more. If you like his work, though, I don't want to be too much of a spoiler...

I lived on the eastern fringe of Winter Park for about two years, btw (on Semoran, just off University). I now, technically, live in Lake Buena Vista.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::

Joe: Hitchhiker's Guide is hilarious! If you like Douglas Adams, you should definitely check out Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. Some find them even better than the Guide series...

In a slightly but not quite similar vein, are there any Tom Sharpe fans here?

ohh OK I had thought he lived in Dublin but then you said he was phony and exploitive and I thought ...well Orlando would be the perfect place for that!

I lived off of Lakemont in WP and downtown if you are familiar with it? I lived right next to the dog park, and like I said if you are familiar with it you will know exactly where that is

Yes please PM me...I like to know these things about those I admire....doesn't everyone?

Done.


And, Joe, if money could (legally) be made off of any of the dirt I've got, do you think I'd be sitting on it??

I don't know... maybe you have those 'morals' that everyone around here keeps talking about.

I just read a great little book by Forrest Carter called The Education of Little Tree. It's autobiographical fiction about the author's experience being raised by his Cherokee grandparents. The books is less than 250 pages and I read it in about 4 sittings. It's a great story, and I had never heard of it before my mom suggested it to me. I wonder if anyone else has read it, maybe in junior high or high school?

Forrest Carter is the same guy who wrote The Outlaw Josey Wales.

Have you read any of my posts?

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul was great. I haven't actually read any of Douglas Adams' other work, but I've heard good things about the Hitchhiker's guide series.

Anyone here a fan of Neil Gaiman? In my quest for a new book to read, I decided to pick up American Gods. I've read a couple of Gaiman's books, and they were very entertaining. American Gods, so far, seems like it will not disappoint.

I am finishing "The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History" by Philip Bobbitt and will be in the market for a new read. Does anyone have any suggestions on political science, foreign policy, history, etc books that they have read and found informative? I would definitly recommend the above to anyone who hasn't already done so.

I'm currently reading W.R. Hay's Two Years in Kurdistan; originally published in 1921, it was recently reprinted. Hay was a junior British officer assigned as a Political Officer in Irbil, in northern Iraq immediately following the end of WWI. The position he held is analogous to that of our current Governance Team head at the Irbil CPA. With current events, and having spent a bit of time in Irbil and the north in years past, I've found it excellent reading. I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in the area.

Walter Laqueur - No End to War: Terrorism in the 21st Century.

After reading this I decided this was a great, thought provoking book. I particularly enjoyed his disscussion of the causes of terrorism generally and his reasons for islamic fundamentalism more specifically. However I do think he placed a little too much weight on internal factors and not enough emphasis on foreign policy. I always argue with my colleagues here that America did not cause the rise of islmaic fundamentalism through their foreign policy since fundamentalism really began to take flight in the 1920's.

However, Laqueur like mnay American Analysts like to detract from the Palestine issue. If there is any correlation that is worth mentioning it is the fact that Zionism began to take flight in the 1920's - the very same time fundamentalism began. In other words, they predicted the establishment of a Jewish state since the British were pushing the idea. To ignore the impact of this conflict in the growth of terrorism is shortsighted.

All in All though a great read with some insightful points, clearly displaying Laqueurs lifetime of study.

Who else has read this and what do you think?

I haven't read that one - but I have read Laqueur's classic The Age of Terrorism and Guerrilla Warfare along with the associated Terrorism and Guerrilla readers, which consist of a collection of essays by key ideologues throughout history in both arenas. They are required reading for those in certain career fields.

But Laqueur is Jewish, and I suppose he stays away from a deeper analysis of the effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict upon the evolution of the concept of Terrorism for different reasons - he has, at the least, managed to stay mainly above the fray as an academic.

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton. This book is good because it details the dangers of space.

Has anyone read this book,

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0...7491426-4456653

She has publicly endorsed Clark, and the books outline seems intriging. Has anyone read it, and what do you think of it?

Just finished up the Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow series by Orson Scott Card.

Currently I have Armor (Steakley), Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them (Franken), Microserfs (Coupland), Fast Food Nation (Schlosser), and a few random PHP books in my reading queue.

I have seen a few good recommendations here I think I need to check out as well.

Hate to admit it, but my favorites are true crime/mystery novels...Ann Rule, Tom Clancey, James Patterson, Jack Douglas (former FBI agent/profiler), and on the lighter side of mystery novels, Sue Grafton and Mary Higgins Clark.

History was the least favorite of school subjects, so before I kick the bucket I have a goal of reading novels about our Presidents and American History-have a huge stack of must reads.

Oh, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons are so good!

Devil in the White City by Erik Larson is a true story about an architect and a serial killer at the Chicago World's Fair nicknamed "The White City" in 1893. It is well written and a bit of history that probably not many know about.

Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand is very good. Haven't' seen the movie yet.

Jennet Conant's Tuxedo Park is a true story about "A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science that changed the course of World Ware II." I really enjoyed it and probably another true event that many are not aware of.

For those of you who may be interested, there is a great free membership book site for book lovers (I have belonged for over a year) where you can release your unwanted books to people around the globe, trade, chat, etc. at:

www.bookcrossing.com

Just a note about the above recommendation, I don't benefit in any way from referring people to this site. I just think that it is one heck of an upscale site for book lovers.

For any of you who are interested in WW2 I'm amid
a book called No Ordinary Time - Franklin and
Eleanor Roosevelt (The Home Front In World War 2).
Written by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

It sheds light on the American perspective during the war.
It is filled with a lot of interesting information.

For a bit of diversion, I've been reading Dan Savage's Skipping Toward Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America. Savage (author of the syndicated column "Savage Love", among other things) is a very funny social critic and, while this book is being primarily sold as a critique of "virtuecrats" like Bill Bennett, Robert Bork, Jerry Falwell, and Dr. Laura, it actually goes much beyond that, examining each of the sins in question, their legal status, and their ardent practitioners - gamblers, stoners, swingers, et al. - on a hilarious and insightful journey in which he gleefully attempts to commit each of the seven deadlies himself. Along the way, he examines everything from the Bible to the Bill of Rights, but it is more a collection of anecdotes and character studies in the form of a travelogue (including San Francisco, Las Vegas, and New York, as well as less likely places like Plano and Dubuque) than any kind of political tract - and it's loads of fun.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::

Desert Resident: Toward your goal of "reading novels about our Presidents and American History", I would highly recommend Gore Vidal's seven American Chronicle novels - especially Burr (which goes from the Revolutionary period through the 1830s), Lincoln, 1876 (covering the Gilded Age of the American Centennial and the Tilden-Hayes election), and Empire (focussing primarily on the election of Theodore Roosevelt). They are meticulously researched, very entertaining, and not at all as biased as some of Vidal's political essays might lead one to believe. For me, they made American history come alive in a very vivid and human way, seamlessly blending the fictional characters with the historical.

Vidal's books are oddly unbiased, considering his political stances.

Thanks for your suggestion of Gore Vidal seven American Chronicle novels, Wertz...even I can hardly believe the number of books I have on my book shelves to read...so we will add another seven!

Just finished Anne Rule's "Without Pity" and "Heart Full of Lies" which means I have read every novel she has written.

Also read James Patterson's "The Big Bad Wolf"...page turner!

Now, I will begin a new path into the world of history.

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!

Books that I finished recently are A Study in Scarlet and The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, She by H. Rider Haggard, and The Memory of Earth by Orson Scott Card, which is actually the first book in the Homecoming series, which as I understand it, is a sci-fi version of the Book of Mormon.

I'm now working my way through The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan, which is very interesting so far.

I've almost finished reading Given Up For Dead, by Bill Sloan.
It's a little known story of the Marines, Navy and civilian contractors on Wake Island when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor...and subsequently Wake.

Even though I'm an avid military historian, I was unaware of the heroism against enormous odds and stunning savagery that took place when Wake was invaded.

Could you recommend me anything to read about the land fighting in Okinawa? It is somthing I have read bits and peices on the internet about, but would like to read an account in greater detail...

To add to this discussion, I have just finshed Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, a 19th Century Russian Author. He wrote the book as a way to empower the Russian peasantry; it was to be part of a three volume series, that would lead to spiritual emancipation for the Serfs. However, because of this ambitious aim, he became disenfranchised with his own work - and became very self critical of it. So much so he destroyed the completed second volume and committed suicide - only fragments of it remain. Consequently, he has made a fair few literary historians yearn for more. This book is probably one of the most original and highly readable insights into the life of a serf in 19th Century Russia- highly recommended.

Dead Souls

I am currently reading "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" by Bernard Bailyn, it's sort of the definitive work on the topic, and hasn't disappointed thus far. I would certainly recommend it thus far to anyone interested in the beginnings of the American Republic.

** An interesting note from the book...Bailyn contends it was English dissidents who created ideological basis for the Revolution, and some Colonists simply took their work to heart acted on it

Robert Jordan Wheel of Time Best Series Ever
George RR Martin's Game of Thrones series
Glen Cooks the Black Company books
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson
The 13th Warrior: The Manuscript of Iban Fadlan, Relating His Experiences with the Northmen in A.D. 922
by Michael Crichton
Orson Scott Card anything he writes
Armor by John Steakley (Thought I was the only one who read that one)
Alan Dean Foster anything and everything he writes
Guy Gavriel Kay Again anything he writes but Lions of Al Rasson was exquisite
Elizabeth Hayden The Symphony of Ages trilogy
Frank Herbert Complete Dune Series plus what his son has produced
Terry Brooks Shannara work
Ben Bova anything he writes
David Brin anything he writes (Uplift Series is incredible)
Laura K Hamiltons Anita Blake series
Phillip Pullman His Dark Materials
Barbara Hambly is fun
Any Cyberpunk but Neal Stephonson has gone far beyond anyone in speculative fiction
Pohl Anderson of course
One name Asimov
Neal Gaiman
etc etc etc

Tom Robbins is interesting fiction
I got real tired of Ayn Rand but still glance thru

Object Orientated Programming with Actionscript by Branden HAll
Mpls Based VPNs by Peter Tomsu
anything related to my technical interests Flash, PHP, XML,VoIP
I keep meaning to start reading Nonfiction in relation to Science, Evolution, genetics, bioengineering
but money is too tight these days. Need to find my local library again

Best series ever? It might be if Robert Jordan actually made his characters do something instead of writing another book of detailed descriptions of clothes. But then, I've grown to hate fantasy.




Ah, She! Said to be - by whom? - a novel rich in meaning. I haven't read that particular novel, But Haggard always wrote fairly trashy but wonderfully enthralling things, like Doyle. A lot of fun. The protagonist, Allan Quatermaine(sp?), is a Victorian Indiana Jones.

I also loved Haggard's books as a kid (How can you forget King Solomon's Mines!!!)

BUT

In my humble mind the best two books of 2003 (one of which I have just finished)
were Edwin Black's The War Against The Weak (Four Walls Press) and James Morone's Hellfire Nation. (Yale University)

I haven't read much fiction since turning 30 (nearly 20 years ago) so......

I also was deeply taken with Elaine Pagel's book, Beyond Belief (Random House).

Books from earlier years that I read this year that I would highly recommend were William Grieder's The Secrets of the Temple (about the creation of the Federal Reserve- Simon & Shuster) and Ron Chernow's The House of Morgan (Grove Press).

Classics I re-read and would recommend were (and importantly so - Penguin)
Cicero - On The Catalina Conspiracy (READ THE CLASSICS!!!)

and Hannah Arendt's 1951 classic The Origins of Totalitarianism - (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)

There were also quite a number of secondary texts -

How the Irish Became White, Noel Ignatiev. Routledge
The American Religion, Harold Bloom, Simon & Schuster
The City of Eros, Timothy Gilfoyle, Norton
Catholicism and American Freedom, John T McGreevy, Norton
Moral Politics, George Lakoff, Chicago University Press
The Next American Nation, Michael Lind, Free Press



Okay - that's the summary of reading in 2003

I love to read - I go through about 3 books a week - I despair of age and death only because there will be so much unread.......


These are just some of the main events of the last year......


What does 2004 hold for us????

Both She and The Lost World were quite fun. Victorian adventure is so interesting because the conventions have changed so much (thankfully). They all have that "Empire" vibe and some of the concepts are so unthinkable now...like going into a lost civilization that has been completely untouched by man and shooting everything in site.

I believe it was Freud who found the novel to be "full of hidden meaning." and there are some interesting themes there to be certain, but for the most part it was just a really fun adventure/romance that seems to have been borrowed from quite a bit...most recently in Anne Rice's vampire chronicles with the character of Akasha.

Ultimate J... I read Les Miserables and found it to be brilliant and had a lot of influence on me, especially politically. I could not get through Quixote though.

I used to love classics.

Ivanhoe- I thought was very well written and engrossing.

I have to be careful about reading Dostoyevsky, although brilliant reads, the darkness in them gets a little much. I thought
The Idiot was good as well as Crime and Punishment

One Hundred Years of Solitude-G.G. Marquez

Cyan
I loved Memoirs of a Geisha. I also like unusual stories and stories of other times and places. For you I recommend, if you havent already,

Perfume by Patrick Suskind
http://www.scwu.com/bookreviews/h/SuskindP...ckPerfume.shtml

Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neal Hurston
http://www.fetchbook.info/search_0072434228/tab_reviews.html

Currently reading Northern Lights by Philip Pullman, first in the His Dark Materials trilogy. Beats Hatty Potter as a classic kids book by quite some distance IMO.

Recently read

Man & Wife : Tony Parsons
A Short History Of Nearly Everything : Bill Bryson
Dude Wheres My Country : Michael Moore
Slaughterhouse 5 : Kurt Vonnegut

Just finished two good books and highly recommend them for those seeking a "lighter" side to reading.

EDISON, A BIOGRAPHY by Matthew Josephson is probably one of the best biographies I have ever read about Edison. Josephson had the advantage of researching over 3,000 documents that were unavailable to other authors, thus he was able to set the record straight on many of the credits and discounts of Edison's accomplishments. He is a master at chronicling Edison's life in a style that keeps the reader's attention from the first to last page.

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN by Frank W. Abagnale/Stan Redding is a fast-pace true crime memoir that, whether you want to or not, will have you cheering for one of the most daring in the flim flam profession...and all before he was 21 years old.

Frank was one of the best con men, forger, imposter, and escape artist in history. Not to worry, Frank's story teaches that crime does not pay (at least not for very long) and that there can be a light at the end of the tunnel for those criminals who make the choice of going straight.

As the former Chief of Police of Houston, Texas said, "Frank Abagnale could write a check on toilet paper, drawn on the Confederate States Treasury, sign it U. R. Hooked and cash it at any bank in town, using a Hong Kong driver's license for identification."

Catch Me If You Can movie is directed by Steven Spielberg and stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks.

This one is an easy read, probably available in your public library, and actually makes sense in regards to how our world economy works and why the United States economy isn't stable.

The Return of Depression Economics by Paul Krugman, 168 pages, no photos or diagrams.

© 1999

ISBN: 0-393-04639-X

Paul Krugman is a professor of economics at MIT and currently has a column in the NY Times.

The main theme I garnered from this work is that international currency speculation is the biggest threat to world economic stability. You might come off it with something different.

Krugman has written a bunch of other books as well. A recent one is a collection of his NY Times columns, arranged to make the book's structure. I've just started it:

The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century

This one promises to make sense out of our recent recession, sort of recovery, and jobless growth.

I suppose the guy is liberal. But he isn't for government controls over trade as much as international controls over international economics (so it seems right now). He writes in a very comfortable manner--not too academic, not too informal.

AM

I just finished reading 'The Great Unraveling' by Krugman. I enjoyed it very much.

Just finished reading "Naked in Baghdad" (2003) by NPR correspondent Anne Garrels and it is an eye-opener and so well written! Highly recommend it to those who are interested in different perspectives on the Iraq war.

Her narrative begins with her early trips to Iraq in October 2002 and takes the reader through April 2003. She was not an imbedded reporter, but on her own and travelled places no others have been thanks to her Iraqi taxi driver, Amer, who becomes her friend and confidant.

From the moment I read the prologue I could not put this book down.

One of the best books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. One thing I would suggest is at least set aside two solid nights to read it(although it took me three nights, because of time constraints). It seems there is already going to be a movie made about it(directed by Ron Howard). Of the five books I have read in the past few months this one is by far the best. I read about eight books a year, but this one has definitely gotten my book reading juices flowing again..

I am reading it right now. It is really good so far.. smart and gripping! I have read all of Brown's other books and he is one of my must read authors. I have had more time to read because I am in Iraq! I just logged 10 months. Wow.