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The Pen is Mightier than the Sword

What are you reading?


Silver WInd

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Right now I am reading The Birth of the Venus, by Sarah Dunrant. So far the book is quite intresting. It is about a young woman in Renissance Italy, with a passion for art, in a time when it was not really viewed a thing for a woman to spend her time doing, and her struggles to express herself.

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By The Sword - Mercedes Lackey.

One of the stories set in the world of Valdemar, this one tells the tale of Kerowyn, as she deals with a magical sword, trains to become a mercinary, and ends up with a "horse" that talks to her :P

A good book if you like fantasy, and a great addition to the Valdemar chronicles.

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other than school texts:

 

When I find the time I enjoy thumbing through Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything

And when I can bring myself to bear it I'm struggling to get through John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. Only about 70 pages left, but it's a hard 70 pages. Nothing difficult about the writing style per se, it's just a freaking weird story.

Am also likewise struggling with The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. He's a poet of ideas, which is nice way of saying abstractions. Nice to know it can be done and done well, just not by me.

 

 

rev...

Edited by reverie
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I've got a couple of books on the go at the moment.

 

I'm re-reading both Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling, and I'm re-reading Monsterous Regiment by Terry Pratchett.

 

Both are on the menu because they're fun and reasonably light reading which fits in well when my time seems to be taken up doing other things.

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Shadowmarch by Tad WIlliams. Somewhat on the more typical fantasy side, especially compared to some of his other stuff (although by no means a "been there, done that"), but a good read if you can stomach that sort of thing.

Also just read the national kiddybookweek's book, which everyone gets for free here when buying at least $10 worth of children's books during that week, or when working in the school library http://www.themightypen.net/public/style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif A barely 100 page story about a kid getting tangled up in a Second Life-like MMO thingy. A tad too moralising for my tastes but decently written.

 

That is, next to piles and piles of schoolbooks, of course -_-

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Anything I can find by the Aztec poet Hungry Coyote—He has a very interesting style, though finding good translations can sometimes be difficult. I like the ones where they give phonetic translations as well as textual translations so I can get a feel for the original rhythm as well as the meaning. His work is often concerned with enjoying your life as much as you can because it is bound to be brief.

 

The writings of other students at my college—Tends to be a lot of rough draft work but wildly varying in style and content. So refreshing from that standpoint.

 

Class text books—Necessary reading that can suck the life out of you

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Franny and Zoey is cool. I like Franny's story better than Zoey's. Salinger needs to get off that mountain or where ever he's currently hiding now and finish the Glass Family Saga.

 

 

Currently reading "Stumbling on Happiness" by Psychologist Daniel Gilbert. Informative psycho-babble that can summed up as this: For the most part we as a species have no clue what really makes us happy. In what must have been an attempt to include the lay reader Gilbert style goes for funny ha ha and ironic wit. He misses pretty hard, but comedy is not his specialty. Pretty much his style and tone is too cute by half. "Precious" is how my Prof describes it. Still it's an easy read considering all the hard data he crammed into it.

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I've recently read my way through Terry Pratchett's latest 'Making Money' which revisits the character Moist von Lipwig from his earlier book 'Going Postal'. I also read 'No humans involved' from Kelley Armstrong's 'Women of the Otherworld' series, now in the absence of anything brand new that is shouting at me to read it I'm re-reading Anne McCaffrey's Crystal Line, the third book in her Crystal Singer series.

 

I expect there will be others before long.

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Franny and Zoey is cool. I like Franny's story better than Zoey's. Salinger needs to get off that mountain or where ever he's currently hiding now and finish the Glass Family Saga.

I just finnised reading it, and it was intresting. I would have liked a little more of Franny's story, but I did quite enjoy Zooey.

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God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens

 

Reading this has really just been mental masturbation. I was aware of almost everything he has been discussing and agree with it all. Sometimes its nice to read something that affirms everything you believe in and boosts your ego that much more.

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I finished two books recently.

 

O Jerusalem! - by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins retraces Jerusalem during and before the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Tells the events that happened from all the points of view concerned. Well-written interesting book.

 

Hilton Assignment - by Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville shows a failed plot of toppling Qadhafi in Lybia during the 70s. Not very exciting book.

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