What book are you reading right now?

ive read perfume and a few by chuck.. good reads..

picked up a few books by paulo coelho.. i tend to get about 3-4 books of same author, read them for some time, and go on with another..

I've recently fell victim to the Dan Brown hype. I just finished The DA Vinci Code, half-way through Angels and Demons, and will commence with Deception Point shortly after.

Recently finished Terry Goodkind's "Chainfire" and the newly-released "Phantom". The Sword of Truth series is my long-running favourite, after Sara Douglass's magical Axis Trilogy.

Yes, I'm an avid fantasy reader.

I just finished Bill Bryson's "A walk in the woods", his account of walking the appalacian trail. This is a pretty great book, and one of Bryson's best. This inspired me to go on my walking holiday, which I had recently.

My current book is "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", by Chuck Barris. Resisting the inspiration to become a spy/tv presenter.

Drama City-George Pelecanos

The Art of Murder by Jose Carlos Somoza

Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

Defeat into Victory by Field Marshall Viscount Slim. An account of the Burmah Campaign in WW2. Heaviest going factual book ive ever tried reading. But absolutely fascinating.

Fiction - Terry Ptratchett - Witches Abroad.

I really dig George Pelecanos. I got into him by reading King Suckerman. Hes a sort of audiophile too. In King Suckerman, one of the guys is a low level drug dealer who has original Bose 901s. Its set back in the 70's in DC.

Oh Im reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

At the moment: Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash", before: Terry Pratchett's "The WEE FREE MEN" & "A Hat Full of Sky" and before that: Ken Follet's "Mitternachtsfalken" (Engl. title: "Hornet Flight")...

...and I think before that it was Pratchett's "Going Postal" for the second time, as I generally tend to read every book I've enjoyed a second time after a couple of months - and especially Pratchett's, 'cause there are always quite a few jokes one tends to miss as a not very thorough "before bed"-reader...

And in case anyone wonders about a foreigner's observations: Yes, I'll usually prefer to read English books in English, despite the translated German versions being much easier available and quite a bit cheaper over here. It's very nice that, with ongoing reading pratice over the years, I can nowadays read through English stuff as if it were German, unless it's something highly specialised with lots of unfamiliar technical terms (or it's written by our dear fellow member Scrypt... ). Same goes for movies, unless it's something like a video session with friends involving a lot of interruptions - if there are several conversations going on, a mixture of German and English seems much harder to follow than either of both alone. I guess that's because once one has got over a certain point in a foreign language, one just switches over one's thinking to that language instead of thinking in the mother language and mentally translating.

What also seems to happen with futher improvement in a foreign language is that one learns to discover mistranslations right on the spot - which are quite frequent, btw (probably mainly due to translators usually being badly paid...). This goes as far as that one can watch synchronized movies and have a laugh here and there despite the translator having entirely missed or falsely translated some jokes, 'cause one practically instantly mentally retranslates back to the original language.

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

"This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession"
by Daniel J. Levitin

I did enjoy Dan Brown's "Davinci Code" mostly because of the 'pseudo-history' and archeology and such, but I normally do not do novels. As such I followed it up with "Holy Blood, Holy Grail".

Normally, I tend to prefer books which are enlightening and educational over entertaining.

I completely agree, it's kind of sad that some people will never understand the satisfaction that comes from reading a good book. I enjoy the occasional novel, [Stephen King/Tom Clancy] but history/biography is my thing. I guess that I read between fifteen and twenty books per year. Right now I'm reading...

"Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" - Doris Kearns Goodwin

Soft Machines: Nanotechnology and Life -- a lucid, non-technical account about the difficulties scientists encounter as they build mechanical and electronic devices on smaller and smaller scales, and how biology is going to be an important inspiration of nano-engineers.

I'm with you. I do read fiction now and then, but the majority of my reading is non-fiction. I read a lot of world history, political books, bios, philosophy, and some more technical reading.

Right now I'm reading Cleary's translation of The Essential Tao. But lately I can't seem to find time away from my textbooks.