What are you reading?
R. Zamora Linmark (Zack) is reading Lorca by Leslie Stainton and Face, poems by Sherman Alexie.
Teddy Locsin is reading Journey to the End of the Night by the noxious Louis-Ferdinand Céline in the Ralph Manheim translation, The Forever War, classic science-fiction by Joe Haldane Haldeman (confused him with the geneticist), and Sartre: The Philosopher of the 20th Century by Bernard-Henri Levy.
Noel Orosa is reading The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction by Stephen King, and The Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono. Also rereading Save Me The Waltz by that crazy woman Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald.
Ely Buendia is reading the graphic novel Ex Machina by Brian Vaughan and looking for good books on architecture if you have any recommendations.
Gerry Torres is reading The Conde Nast Book of Unforgettable Journeys: Great Writers on Great Places, including Shirley Hazzard on Capri, Philip Gourevitch on Tanzania, Gregor von Rezzori on Rumania, and Simon Winchester on Mt. Pinatubo.
Ricky Villabona is reading Awakening to the Sacred by Lama Surya Das and the Whodunnit anthology edited by Philip Pullman. He is also reading the DK travel guide to Jerusalem and the Holy Lands because he’s going to watch Madonna in concert (again). Ricky says there aren’t many guides to Israel in our bookstores. Does anyone know a good travel guide to Israel? (Don’t say the Bible.)
I’m reading The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow (see his wonderful essay, The Limits of Control), and Ways of Seeing by John Berger, the design of which stopped me in my tracks. The text begins on the cover.
At 88, Ray Bradbury fights for his local library. Listen to the man who wrote Fahrenheit 451. If we ever have to live out that scenario, I will be Fahrenheit 451.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
June 22nd, 2009 at 04:52
After a weekend expedition that resulted in a 20-book haul, I’m reading “The Ode Less Travelled” by Stephen Fry, “The Watchmen” (original graphic novel, not the film companion), Richard Feynman’s “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out”, and “Bonk” by Mary Roach (who also wrote the excellent “Stiff”, about dead bodies; the new book is all about sex). With the odd Georgette Heyer thrown in every now and then, after picking up 21 of her books for a song on eBay.
I’m also looking forward to reading “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” in the original French, but wonder how good the English translation is. It seems to be getting positive reviews.
June 22nd, 2009 at 04:55
I’m reading Mystic River by Dennis Lehane (haven’t seen the movie yet). I just finished two books over the weekend, Villages by John Updike and The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates.
June 22nd, 2009 at 08:27
Last week I finished reading Azadeh Moaveni’s memoir entitled “Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran”, which was excellent and very timely given what is happening now in Iran with the current post-election protests. She was a reporter for Newsweek in Iran, and ironically the current Newsweek correspondent in Iran has just been arrested and taken away!
I’m also reading “The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday”, the memoir of New York Times reporter Neil MacFarquhar, who grew up in Libya and covered the Middle East for the NYT for ten years.
I just started reading Stanley Karnow’s classic “In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines” to deepen my knowledge of Philippine history and America’s involvement in it. I also have Brian McAllister Lin’s book “The Philippine War: 1899-1902”, which I haven’t started to read yet.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:34
You dont have to approve this, but Forever War is by Joe Haldeman.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:37
A good place to start, if Ely is looking for good architecture books, is Tom Wolfe’s tiny but biting history of modern architecture, From Our House to Bauhaus. Worker housing!!
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:07
Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano
Images at War: Mexico from Columbus to Blade Runner by Serge Gruzinski
The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses by Laura Marks
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:49
Ooops. I meant From Bauhaus to Our House.
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:24
Eugenie Grandet by Balzac… misers and their money….
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh… its so weird you hear yourself reading it with a distinct British accent and Im not British… Im Bisaya.
June 22nd, 2009 at 14:34
I am reading The Architecture of Happiness. Quite a lovely book.
Blurb :
It amounts to a tour through the philosophy and psychology of architecture, which aims to change the way we think about our homes, streets and ourselves.
June 22nd, 2009 at 14:48
In between readings of Annie Proulx’s Accordion Crimes, I just finished, for the second time around, Leonard Mlodinow’s Euclid’s Window. Picked up Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero and is almost halfway through it, “That emotional map of France was still true in the present, full of subtexts, social intricacies, unspoken balances of power. One still needed to move warily, with hesitancy within it”. I hope to get back to Proulx before this week ends.
June 22nd, 2009 at 23:27
I’m reading Zachary Mexico’s China Underground.
I enjoyed reading the Karnow book mentioned above. I also started reading Karnow’s book on Vietnam, (Vietnam A History) and Atonement.
June 23rd, 2009 at 00:29
The book I’m reading during the work commute right now is Sarah Vowell’s Assasination Vacation. Reading Sarah’s most recent three books (this one, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, and The Wordy Shipmates) has been an academically enriching crash course in US history. What we learned in school about the Americans in our Civics class barely scratches the surface of the depth of drama behind the people that shaped the country and, as an unintended consequence for the most part, the world.
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:53
I’m reading Saramago’s The History of the Siege of Lisbon (love it because the protagonist is a proofreader), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (have now gotten to the good part), and Murakami’s Underground (in fits and starts).
June 23rd, 2009 at 13:38
im reading the book you gave me: then we came to the end by joshua ferris. :)
June 23rd, 2009 at 15:19
As for architecture, Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City has a lot of interesting bits about the development of architecture in Chicago and the work that went into the 1893 World’s Fair. The fair city’s chief architect, Daniel Burnham, was also the guy who designed Manila…
June 24th, 2009 at 13:38
“Go Tell It On The Mountain” by James Baldwin.
June 24th, 2009 at 20:58
Tom’s bro is trying hard to read:
“Tender is the Night” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
June 26th, 2009 at 05:25
On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change by Ada Louise Huxtable