What Are You Reading Now? Showing 1,051-1,100 of 2,435

[lu]

Reading The Hobbit, having lots of fun!

[Dave]

I finished The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles: Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus; Antigone and started The Orestia. Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Furies by Aeschylus.

[Savita]

luny wrote: "Reading The Hobbit, having lots of fun!"

Oh , it really is a lovely book , so enjoyable ! I read it quite long back , but I still remember the characters - Bilbo Baggins , Filli and Killi , Gandalf ..... enormous fun ! Happy reading , Luny !

[sabagrey]

luny wrote: "Reading The Hobbit, having lots of fun!"

Great! Really a classic ... and do you plan to go on to The Lord of the Rings afterwards? I loved it so much (the books, not the movies!)

[Dave]

Finished No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. Started Hamlet ( Folger Library Shakespeare):

[Dave]

Finished Travels with Charley: In Search of America by Steinbeck.

[Dave]

Finished The War of the Worlds by Wells, started Metamorphoses by Ovid.

[lu]

sabagrey wrote: "luny wrote: "Reading The Hobbit, having lots of fun!"

Great! Really a classic ... and do you plan to go on to The Lord of the Rings afterwards? I loved it so much (the books, not the mov..."

yes! i want to read all the books from Tolkien about this universe, i'm really interested in all of his books.

[sabagrey]

just finished listening to Middlemarch. I think I will also read it when I can find the time, because I would like to go more slowly through some passages, especially the narrator's reflections.

[[deleted user]]

luny wrote: "Reading The Hobbit, having lots of fun!"

Welcome to Middle Earth. LOTR is my favorite. They are my "happy place" books that I return to over and over again, especially when the outside world is "too much". Of course, I do love the PJ LOTR movies, however, I was really disappointed with his version of The Hobbit. My favorite movie version of the Hobbit is the cute Rankin & Bass cartoon. I would recommend checking it out after you finish the book.
Enjoy your time with Bilbo and the Dwarves. :)

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

I finished the third book in one of my favorite fantasy series:


The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rating: 4 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I also finished the book that inspired the film classic:


Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver
Rating: 2 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading the third Narnia book (publication order):


The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

and I also started reading a short story collection by the late great William Gay:


I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories by William Gay

[Dave]

I started Ulysses by Joyce and Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings by Borges.

[Reed]

The Power Of One by Bryce Courtenay

[Dave]

I started Hamlet by Shakespeare

[Dave]

I finished Hamlet by Shakespeare and started Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury.

[William]

Dave wrote: "I finished Hamlet by Shakespeare and started Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury."

I really liked Fahrenheit 451, it was an interesting concept. Hamlet is one of those pieces of Literature that you can read over and over and find something new every time. A true classic.

[Richard]

I've read 370/600 pages of Henry James's The Golden Bowl. It's insanely good, but I find I can only read 5-6 pages at a time.

[Leni]

Richard wrote: "I've read 370/600 pages of Henry James's The Golden Bowl. It's insanely good, but I find I can only read 5-6 pages at a time."

Maybe I should try it again like that. I bailed on it many years ago, but it was during my uni undergrad days and I had a lot of reading to get through and no time (or patience) for 5-6 pages at a time.

I'm currently employing the 5-6 pages at the time technique on At Swim-Two-Birds. I'm not sure I can say it's insanely good, but it's definitely insane. Ironically The Third Policeman wasn't published until after the author died, because his publisher wanted his second book to be less weird than his debut, not more so. I found the Third Policeman to be absurd and brilliant, and definitely my type of thing (I love footnotes referring to made-up, obscure academia). At-Swim-Two-Birds, however, has me in squinting despair. It's a Russian Doll of a novel about an author who writes about an author who writes himself into his book where he forces his characters to behave in ways they don't like. And they sit around telling stories about old Irish heroes until their author falls asleep; at which point they live their own lives. I think. I might have missed out one layer of authorship. I'm also pretty sure that the heroic poetry about Mad Sweeney sound better in Gaelic.

[Richard]

"(I love footnotes referring to made-up, obscure academia)"

At the risk of banging my own drum, I do exactly this in my novels Amoeba Dick: or, a New Tale of a Tub, Pretty Poli: Monsieur Perroquet's Ascent to a High Perch, and helix folt the conservative

[Dave]

I finished The Inferno by Dante

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

I finished two books this week, starting with the Retro-Hugo Award-winning Science-Fiction Classic:


City by Clifford D. Simak
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I also finished the excellent anthology of stories set in Jack Vance's Dying Earth:


Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honour of Jack Vance edited by George R.R. Martin and the late Gardner Dozois
Rating: 4 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading another Science-Fiction Classic by one of my favorite authors:


The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick

[Graham]

RJ - Slayer of Trolls wrote: "I finished two books this week, starting with the Retro-Hugo Award-winning Science-Fiction Classic:


City by Clifford D. Simak
Rating: 3 stars..."

I like Simak but I will be blunt and say that I think I started too strong with his work. Way Station is one of my all-time favorite books yet nothing else that I've read so far holds a candle to it. City came the closest as it was a four star read for me. Yet it was not the masterpiece that I was hoping for. Still waiting for him to wow me again.

[Graham]

Some of my highlights from the last little bit:

The Devil Aspect by Craig Russell: this book is a great psychological thriller set against a historical and atmospheric background.

Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore by Dan Ozzi: I am a sucker for this scene in music so this book obviously really clicked with me. Darn kids with their Green Days and their My Chemical Romances! Ugh!

Without: Poems by Donald Hall: Poetry is hit and miss for me. This haunting and melancholic collection was a huge hit for me.

Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain: Not as strong as her book "Quiet" but still a rather strong follow up focusing on a feeling I experience quite a bit.

[Dave]

I finished Macbeth by Shakespeare

[Monika]

I finished The God of Small Things yday and started Pride and Prejudice right after. Hoping to complete it before next week starts.

[Reed]

I finished The Power Of One today and started Where The Crawdads Sing

[Pillsonista]

Reed wrote: "I finished The Power Of One today and started Where The Crawdads Sing"

I don't know if this would qualify as actual spoilers, but there have been some very interesting developments regarding that book's author, and they are *wild*:

https://www.theatlantic.com/books/arc...

[Wreade1872]

Finished the Johnny Maxwell trilogy with Johnny and the Bomb by Terry Pratchett [4/5] review

*****************
Currently reading another weird early fantasy by the absurdly multi-talented William Morris The Wood Beyond the World and the last book in a ten set sci-fi collection we bought years back The Star Fraction by Ken MacLeod , which seems highly unlikely to have anything Star related in it. Its very near future sci-fi/cyberpunk.

[Dave]

I finished Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings by Borges

[Pharmacdon]

I am slogging through Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens. It is a complicated story in which racism comes to a head at a Florida Army base during World War II. It is complicated because of the military goings-on and many characters. I am also reading The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty. Both books are Pultizer Prize winners for fiction.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

Graham wrote: "I like Simak but I will be blunt and say that I think I started too strong with his work. Way Station is one of my all-time favorite books..."

I'm looking forward to reading that one. Many readers say it's his best.

[Dave]

I finished The Fortune of War by Patrick O’Brian.

[Dave]

I finished Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There and Paradise Lost by Milton.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

I finished the 1972 autobiography of one of the greatest (perhaps THE greatest) college basketball coaches of all time:


They Call Me Coach by John Wooden
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading this massive Pulitzer Prize-winning volume on the Civil War:


Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson

[Lynn, New School Classics]

In the process of trying to fill boxes on various challenges I was looking for something fresh for me in the category of plays. I found The Tenth Man: A Tragic Comedy in Three Acts by W. Somerset Maugham (1913). It looks like the sort of thing that can be finished in an evening. I even found an online BBC radio version that might be interesting. If they are close enough I can read along with the actors.

[Dave]

I finished The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.

[Dave]

I finished The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

[Reed]

I finished Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and now I’m reading I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson

[Amyjzed]

Paused on Beloved by Toni Morrison— Reading (mostly via audio) Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

[sabagrey]

I'm re-reading Radetzkymarsch, first via audio, but I will read the text, too. I definitely was too young when I first read it, decades ago: now it touches me deeply, as part of my own family history and identity.

Given this, and reading some GR reviews of it, I cannot help feeling that my understanding of the book goes deeper and comes from my very roots. I therefore will bear in mind that, similarly, my understanding of other countries', and other peoples', epics must always remain fragmentary.

[Nike]

I'm reading Mrs. Dalloway.

[Pharmacdon]

I finished reading His Family by Ernest Poole. It won the Pultizer Prize for Fiction in 1918, and it was the first prize awarded.

[Dave]

I finished Middlemarch by George Eliot.

[Steve]

I’m reading Maurice by E. M. Forster and The Warden by Anthony Trollope.

[Terry]

Steve, this has been on my TBR for awhile. I will eager to tead your review.

[Dave]

I finished Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust.

[Luffy Sempai]

Nike wrote: "I'm reading Mrs. Dalloway."

It must be her best book, it simply must be. Otherwise she would be far too mainstream, read by everyone. I must begin Jacob's Room before I near old age.

[Wreade1872]

I'm rereading and its going REALLY well. I'm very happy.
LotR's is a quite an important link to my past, unfortunately i've read it twice since the films and both times its been rather painful.

You see, whatever version i had in my head since my first read was severely overwritten by the film version.
It was like coming home and finding that someone had completely redecorated while you where out.

However having studiously avoided the films for years, this time i'm managing to reconnect with it again.
The fact i dug out my first version of LotR's for this reread might also be helping... its battered, water-damaged, stained with grubby finger smudges and with many loose pages but its smells like the past :) .
I do have a much classier version , which i read last time, but as i said, not a great experience.

Anyway, i'm actually gonna read this as 3 books (which i've actually never done before), for my reread targets.
With 3-4 new books inbetween each part as i usually do between rereads.

[siriusedward]

I am reading On Identity and Hard Times ... also , Charlotte's Web as a read aloud with kids ( my first time reading it too , its so sweet ) .

And slowly , slowly reading A Place to Belong: Celebrating Diversity and Kinship In the Home and Beyond and Raising Critical Thinkers: A Parent's Guide to Growing Wise Kids in the Digital Age..

[siriusedward]

Tina wrote: "luny wrote: "Reading The Hobbit, having lots of fun!"

Welcome to Middle Earth. LOTR is my favorite. They are my "happy place" books that I return to over and over again, especially when the outsid..."

Love LOTR too...