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Just about to begin Palindrome Hannah by Michael Bailey:

Book Blurb
Enter a cruel "palindrome" world: a strangely symmetrical place where disturbing incidents displace the rain-saturated Mayberry calm of contemporary suburban Seattle. A young father fights his suicidal urges. A failing marriage of two entirely unlikable people begins to unravel. An old man given to bouts of mental "whiteness" remembers the cruelty of the orphanage where he spent his childhood and how the "whiteness" began. A psychiatrist strives to understand a mental patient whose several uncanny abilities suggest something other-worldly. A school bully and the gang of misfits he tortures take a playground war farther and farther...

A hidden sixth story, told in reverse and interwoven into the others, uncovers the sad life of the "palindrome" child Hannah and her struggling teenage mother.
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Looks to be /very/ good from the small peek I had when it first arrived.
 
I'm going to be starting The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket very soon (Bk 1 in A Series of Unfortunate Events):

Amazon.com
Make no mistake. The Bad Beginning begins badly for the three Baudelaire children, and then gets worse. Their misfortunes begin one gray day on Briny Beach when Mr. Poe tells them that their parents perished in a fire that destroyed their whole house. "It is useless for me to describe to you how terrible Violet, Klaus, and even Sunny felt in the time that followed," laments the personable (occasionally pedantic) narrator, who tells the story as if his readers are gathered around an armchair on pillows. But of course what follows is dreadful. The children thought it was bad when the well-meaning Poes bought them grotesque-colored clothing that itched. But when they are ushered to the dilapidated doorstep of the miserable, thin, unshaven, shiny-eyed, money-grubbing Count Olaf, they know that they--and their family fortune--are in real trouble. Still, they could never have anticipated how much trouble.
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Looks to be a /very/ short, yet entertaining read, which is exactly what I'm looking for right now.
 
I'm reading Bill Clinton's My Life, and I'm really enjoying it so far. I think I might start The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna too though, Clinton is far to heavy to take to work with me!
 
The Mortdecai Trilogy - Kyril Bonfiglioli

Mortdecai is an art dealer at the very upper end of the scale, a fantasy alter-ego of Bonfiglioli's (who was himself an art dealer, inter alia). Mortdecai is barely moral: a fastidious epicure, an outrageous hedonist who takes more care over his food and drink, and especially his drink, than anything else. Fleming's Bond might have been a bit picky about his victuals, but Mortdecai is in another league. Except he is more generous, saying "I adore Spam" at one point, and ultimately happy with anything if it is washed down with enough good Scotch. As for the other accoutrements: here you will find fancier cars, obscurer references, more arcane information, and grislier violence than anywhere else in the crime section. And it is hard to tell whether Bonfiglioli is taking any of this seriously at all. There is a splendid section in the second novel, After You with the Pistol, which devastatingly takes the mickey out of The Day of the Jackal.
 
Started Brave New World by Aldous Huxley in the car today:

Amazon.com
"Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of Aldous Huxley's utopian World State. Here everyone consumes daily grams of soma, to fight depression, babies are born in laboratories, and the most popular form of entertainment is a "Feelie," a movie that stimulates the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Though there is no violence and everyone is provided for, Bernard Marx feels something is missing and senses his relationship with a young women has the potential to be much more than the confines of their existence allow. Huxley foreshadowed many of the practices and gadgets we take for granted today--let's hope the sterility and absence of individuality he predicted aren't yet to come
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It's pretty good so far.
 
I started Finbar's Hotel last night. I'd read about it in Book Lust by Nancy Pearl, and the idea of a novel written by 6 Irish writers, each contributing an annonymous chapter, sounded too fun to miss. So far, its pretty good!
 
Blindess by Jose Saramago. The last book I read was a Joyce so the style Saramago has chosen for dialogue isn't phasing me at all. I did go to bed last night with the fear I would wake up blind. The book itself is not very comfortable to hold. It's a trade paperback that doesn't open very well. Just saying.
 
I'm currently juggling three:

Rough Crossing: Britain, The Slaves And The American Revolution - Simon Schama
This is interesting stuff, so I'm taking my time to suck all the little nuggets of info out of it.

A Writer At War: Vasily Grossman With The Red Army 1941-1945 - Edited and Translated by Antony Beevor and Vuba Vinogradova. I'm reading this more as a primer before re-reading Life and Fate by Grossman himself.

A Doll's House by Ibsen because it was only 95p in the shop today, and I can't stop myself diving right in.

K-S
 
Prairie_Girl said:
I'm reading Bill Clinton's My Life, and I'm really enjoying it so far. I think I might start The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna too though, Clinton is far to heavy to take to work with me!
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one of my friends got that book for her birthday.. she loves politics and bill clinton so she was very happy.. i might buy the paper back versions if i ever find them out of curiousity.. but i can't imagine myself having the attention span to read about his life. hm. is it any good?
 
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey.

Book Blurb
Chief Bromden, half American-Indian, whom the authorities believe is deaf and dumb, tells the story of a mental institution ruled by Big Nurse on behalf of the all-powerful Combine.

Into this terrifying grey world comes McMurphy, a brawling gambling man, who wages total war on behalf of his cowed fellow-inmates. What follows is at once hilarious and heroic, tragic and ultimately liberating.
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I've been wanting to get my hands onto this for awhile, so I'm excited that I get to read it at last :)
 
Wabbit said:
Started reading War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy. It was late and I'm reading the introduction at the moment.
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Which translation Wabbit? There's a ncie new edition out that comes with a bookmark listing all the major characters. I read over the first page and the translation seemed quite nice. Easy to read while still capturing Tolstoy's poetry. Forgive me I don't recall offhand who the translator is and I'm too lazy to look it up.
 
I am currently reading "Thief of Time" by Terry Pratchett but i have put it aside to read a book that I got at the library...The Long Rifle by Stewart Edward White. The Long Rifle was published in 1930 and was the first of four books in the Saga Of Andy Burnett. The Andy Burnett Saga was strongly recommended to me by my Aunt who is over 80 years old. I am about 100 pages into the book and thoroughly enjoy it. The writing is great and the story is wonderful.
 
muggle said:
I am currently reading "Thief of Time" by Terry Pratchett but i have put it aside to read a book that I got at the library...The Long Rifle by Stewart Edward White. The Long Rifle was published in 1930 and was the first of four books in the Saga Of Andy Burnett. The Andy Burnett Saga was strongly recommended to me by my Aunt who is over 80 years old. I am about 100 pages into the book and thoroughly enjoy it. The writing is great and the story is wonderful.
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I'm so glad I went to Amazon and read more about The Long Rifle. I see I need to mosey on over to the library website and request this book. Thanks muggle!
 
abecedarian said:
I'm so glad I went to Amazon and read more about The Long Rifle. I see I need to mosey on over to the library website and request this book. Thanks muggle!
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You are welcome. I think you will love this book. The first 50 pages of the book will give you goose bumps just as much as The Long Black Veil does in music. It was 50 pages of some of the best reading that I have done.....and now I am going to go and sit on my screened porch and do some more reading. :)

btw abecedarian, do you know where Lyndon, KA is. I had the scare of my life there many years ago. :)
 
muggle said:
You are welcome. I think you will love this book. The first 50 pages of the book will give you goose bumps just as much as The Long Black Veil does in music. It was 50 pages of some of the best reading that I have done.....and now I am going to go and sit on my screened porch and do some more reading. :)

btw abecedarian, do you know where Lyndon, KA is. I had the scare of my life there many years ago. :)
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I had to look Lyndon up on the map, and squint to see it..it's a tiny spot out in thr Flint Hills NE of Emporia, south of Tokeka...besides flashfloods, tornados and the occassional stray head of cattle, what could possibly have scared you out there??

Back to books- have you read any by James Alexander Thom? The Red Heart, Children of the First Man, and Follow the River are all excellent. He has some others,but I can't remember their titles at the moment. I'm still fighting jealousy over your screened porch...be sure to fix a nice glass of iced tea to go with that book and porch!
 
I'm just about to start My Uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl:

Amazon.com
The nameless narrator has revealed snippets of the lovable, lascivious Uncle Oswald's life in other collections, but this is the only novel--brief though it is--dedicated solely to the diaries of "the greatest fornicator of all time." Inspired by stories of the aphrodisiac powers of the Sudanese blister beetle, the palpable seductiveness of the lovely Yasmin Howcomely, and the scientific know-how of Professor A. R. Woresley, Uncle Oswald anticipates the concept of the Nobel sperm bank by some 40 years, flimflamming crowned heads, great artists, and eccentric geniuses into making "donations." The life of a commercial sperm broker has a few surprises even for a sophisticated bon vivant, and Dahl manages his signature sting-in-the-tail ending even in one of his lightest comic works.
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