Right now I'm reading through a book called The Nature of Metals. I found it randomly at the library while hunting around for the cookbook section. It's an older book (published in the early '60s) that's about halfway between a textbook and a general interest book. I really like it since there's a TON of pictures of what the author's talking about. I'm really learning a lot more about basic materials characterization and the fundamentals you never really learn in school and are instead expected to just learn on the job.

I'm also about 2/3 of the way through Blue Highways. It's a pretty decent road-trip novel. Basic outline for his reason to go is his wife served him with divorce papers and he lost his job as an English professor within a few days of each other, and he says "Fuck this shit" and goes on a roadtrip with his rape van and something like $250. The chapters where he's talking to people are fantastic, while the ones that are just him waxing masturabatorically about how he's looking for this deeper meaning are complete trash (and obviously the failed English professor in him trying to come out). It's an alright book, but the last book I read, Desert Solitare, was much more thought provoking.

Oh RR you nerd!

I'm currently reading Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (duh). It's a very entertaining book, and I'm currently 1/3 through it. You can't imagine how he was able to weave a very intricate web of events filled with twists and conspiracies and secrets on every turn, while giving the book an adventurous and humor-filled tone at the side.

The last book I read was Lord of the Flies. (better late than never)

I'm mostly reading the metals book since I've got my big candidacy exam coming up, and I wanted something that would sort of help tie together a lot of the separate ideas I've been studying so much for the last few months. :(

Ha! Finished that book long ago. Great read still, though the ending seemed to have a bit of a deus ex machina going on.

I think I read the Commonwealth Saga which is comprised of two books: Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, by Peter F. Hamilton. Good space opera with a ton of parallel storylines that can get a bit confusing. After that I believe I read JPod by Douglas Coupland. It was good until the half way point then it just got utterly ridiculous and had some major deus ex going on.

Replay by Ken Grimwood was next and I really enjoyed that book. Jeff Wintson suffers a heart attack but is then thrust back about 20 years into his own past forced to relive it all over again.

I'm currently reading the Falcon and the Snowman by Robert Lindsey. A true story about two childhood friends who end up selling American secrets to the Russians. Really good so far.

Please download and disseminate the biggest load of shite I have read in a long time. It's Dan Brown's latest offering, "The Lost Symbol". The only book I have read recently that is worse is Kate Mosse's "Labyrinth", which is truly frightful.

Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol: MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service

Currently Reading His Majesty's Service By Naomi Novik. It's set in the napoleon era, France vs Europe. It follows the history of those events, only.... There are dragons.

Woohoo, thread necromancy again!

I've just finished reading the latest Horus Heresy novel, The First Heretic. It's a really, really good book, up there with the best of the series and I'm loving what Black Library are doing with the series. I've also been reading the Space Marine Battles series of books which are pretty good but seemed to be aimed at a slightly younger audience. I was going to launch into a highly nerdy discussion of the WH40k universe here but I think I'll save that for my journal...

I just finished War of the Worlds, and now I'm reading Moby Dick. Better late then never!

Fiction-wise I'm occasionally dipping into two books - Sylvia Plath's Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (a collection) and Graham Greene's Complete Short Stories. The Graham Greene in particular is quite unsettling in places (a good writer, then, considering some of the content); so far "A Little Place off the Edgeware Road" has been my favourite.

Non-fiction I'm reading Life on a Young Planet by Andrew H. Knoll. It's essentially about earlier periods of evolution. I never knew I would come to care about fossils and rocks as much as I now do. I'm also going to be getting hold of a copy of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, since almost all of our lecturers have told us it is the dog's bollocks.

Vemp, I've yet to read Moby Dick! I have been meaning to for a while but I feel more comfortable with short story collections I can dip in and out of - when I'm reading a good long piece of fiction I can get quite absorbed - I will literally do nothing but read all day, and I have been known to sacrifice sleep to keep reading when I'm hooked badly.

Short stories are the way to go, man. Novels tend to eat up a lot of your time and sometimes I mix up the events if I stop reading for a while.

Just read the latest Horus Heresy book (The 15th I think), Prospero Burns. It's very good, although not the best of the series but it makes a nice change for one of the books not to be rammed with Space Marines killing each other.

I know nobody else but me cares but they're really good books.

There are certainly a lot of books listed here in this thread's three and a half years of life that I have to check out. American Gods is one I've been looking at for some time now; now I'm definitely gonna have to pick that up.

Glad to see fans of the classics here as well. Agent Marty, your posts about Steinbeck have gotten me excited to finally read East of Eden. It's one I've set aside for a rainy day. Fitzgerald is another I have some serious catching up to do with.

Heya Vamp, have you managed to finish Moby Dick? I'm curious to know what you think of it.

As for myself, I'm currently reading The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan. It's a short and easy read so far, likely because it's written in the first person from the perspective of a fifteen year old boy. The basic plot is about an odd group of three siblings whose parents die and they are left to bicker and mindlessly drift around and, occasionally, take care of each other over the course of a summer. It doesn't really try to be anything of a tragic tale; the real meat of the novel is about the interaction of the boy with his two sisters, the eldest of which he has developed a sort of carnal attraction to. I love stories which utilize such unconventional and deviant behaviors. Also, the general coming of age genre really resonates with me.

An ebook version is available here if anyone's interested in downloading it.

I am also halfway through Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue - The Untold History of English by John McWhorter. I have a great interest in linguistics and love learning about any language. It's less a history of English as it is about the author's attempts to argue that English acquired some of it's commonplace grammar from a few Celtic languages during its "Old English" stage, a view which apparently isn't commonly accepted.