What is your current "read"?

[Frances]

I highly recommend Bleak House. In fact it is my favorite Dicken's novel.

 

[Duck59]

I highly recommend Bleak House. In fact it is my favorite Dicken's novel.

I'm a bit of a Dickens obsessive. I've read all of his novels and also his sketches and travel writing. One thing that I find interesting is seeing how he developed as a writer, from the pure comedy of The Pickwick Papers to the much darker themes of his later novels. I'd be hard pressed to pick one as a favourite, but perhaps A Tale of Two Cities if I had to choose.

 

[Duck59]

"My father had a profound influence on me. He was a lunatic."

Spike Milligan.

 

[LissaC]

Done with Dickens and it was ok. I didn't find his writing style too accessible. But I'm still in a weird phase where I don't have much motivation for reading. I'm back to detective fiction and continuing a series I really like.

 

[Duck59]

Done with Dickens and it was ok. I didn't find his writing style too accessible. But I'm still in a weird phase where I don't have much motivation for reading. I'm back to detective fiction and continuing a series I really like.
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Have you read The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins? It's often described as the first detective novel.

Collins was a great friend of Dickens, though their styles are very different. Like Dickens, though, he was a campaigner for social reform and many of his works explore some of the things that badly needed changing in the nineteenth century.

 

[LissaC]

Have you read The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins? It's often described as the first detective novel.

Collins was a great friend of Dickens, though their styles are very different. Like Dickens, though, he was a campaigner for social reform and many of his works explore some of the things that badly needed changing in the nineteenth century.

I have not, though it's on my to read list. I just ordered two new books today with Bookdepository's 10% discount code, "Inanna" by Kramer (a book about the Sumerian mythological goddess Inanna) and "Curse of the Pharaos" by Elizabeth Peters, a detective series set in Egypt where the protagonists are archeologists, two of my favorite things right there, detective fiction and Egyptology.

 

[LissaC]

Finished my book, and right from the beginning I could tell who was the killer...can it be I'm finally getting the hang of detective fiction books?

Anyway I've accepted I'm on a reading slump and I won't be make myself read any "complicated" books until this mood is gone, Dostoevsky will have to wait. I wasn't planning on reading Dostoevsky anytime soon, it just means he has to wait even longer. But I was longing to read a history book so I'm reading a book by the History Channel called "The Great Mysteries of History" (it's in Portuguese). I know The History Channel makes a joke of itself with all that stuff about aliens kidnapping people in the Bermuda Triangle but here in Portugal they publish some very decent history books about a lot of different subjects, aliens not included. Today I also purchased another book by Oliver Sacks, "An Anthropologist on Mars", I always enjoy Oliver Sacks.

 

[Hemulen]

I just ordered two Dickens's novels: "Bleak House" in Finnish and "A Tale of Two Cities" in original language. I recall reading just a gross digest of David Copperfield from this embarrasing compilation

The book is not mine, it's...my uncle's . "To go where the fence is lowest"... (A Finnish saying)

Starting Siri Hustvedt's "The Sorrows of an American" over when I'm finished with the Roman orgies ("Satyricon"). Then I'll read the biography of Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt, one of our greatest statesmen. Has anyone read "Smilla's Sense of Snow" by Danish author Peter Høeg? I really loved it - or parts of it but in e.g. Goodreads people mock the novel as boring or inconsistent.

 

[Duck59]

I've finished the John Updike Rabbit omnibus I mentioned earlier. I wasn't overly keen on the first novel, but the second one gripped me. Our hero found himself well out of his depth in some bizarre goings-on. Reading the three books (there was a later fourth), what is interesting is that they are, roughly speaking, ten years apart, so we get a glimpse of life at the end of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. I enjoyed Updike's descriptive style, with his ability to make the mundane sound faintly exotic.

 

[mjd]

I've been on the wait list for this book from my library. I received it last night. It's online so I didn't have to go out in the freezing rain to pick it up. Yeah!

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

 

[Morning Glory]

I've been on the wait list for this book from my library. I received it last night. It's online so I didn't have to go out in the freezing rain to pick it up. Yeah!

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man


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I heard a fascinating interview with the author on the radio. It should be an interesting read.

 

[LissaC]

Very appropriate
35 classic horror stories, free to download

 

[Windigo]

I've been on the wait list for this book from my library. I received it last night. It's online so I didn't have to go out in the freezing rain to pick it up. Yeah!

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man


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I just had that in my hands today, but decided to not buy it yet. I do want to read it badly though!

 

[mjd]

I just had that in my hands today, but decided to not buy it yet. I do want to read it badly though!

I don't know how fast you read but it goes quickly. I finished it in about 9-10 hours. There is nothing earth shattering in there. Basically what we all know from watching him the past four years. Generally speaking, there are very few books that I will buy (just don't have the room) and this one wouldn't make that list.

 

[Windigo]

I don't know how fast you read but it goes quickly. I finished it in about 9-10 hours. There is nothing earth shattering in there. Basically what we all know from watching him the past four years. Generally speaking, there are very few books that I will buy (just don't have the room) and this one wouldn't make that list.

I never posted in this thread before, but I usually read 1 book a day, so I am fast reader. I will wait for the library version however, as I thought this morning and after reading your description.