What are you reading currently?

I usually have one or more non-fiction books going in tandem with one that is fiction. I just finished reading World of Herbs, which I picked up for .75 at a local used bookstore that is open bi-weekly called The Gainesville Book Company Everything there is ridiculously affordable and we often walk out of there with 16+ paperbacks and hardcover books for under $20! I am also reading a fiction fantasty/horror series called Ravenloft and I am on the 4th book, Heart of Midnight. I've liked them all so far except one. They are all written by different authors and can be read independently. I just did not connect with the one author's voice and hated that he rehashed things from another series called Dragonlance for the first 60 pages so I gave up on that one.

I really like fantasy books and have never given Ravenloft a chance before but I'm really enjoying it. I am also thumbing through Jim Marrs' Rule by Secrecy. I have so many books lined up to read that it's insane. I make sure to read every day, no matter how busy I am.

What are you guys reading?

I love fantasy, and I try my best to set aside some time every night for reading.
I'm currently re-reading my Terry Brooks collection; his Shannara series is one of my favourites. I'm on 'Ilse Witch' right now, but there's quite a few books in this series.

Jodi Picolt's Sing You Home-she is one of my favorite authors. There is always a moral dilemma, indepth character portrayal, and a twist. Her books would be great in an ethics class.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe. It's a historical fiction novel that takes place in Massachusetts and flips back and forth between the late 1600/early 1770's and 1991 and follows a woman in Harvard who's working on her dissertation in American Colonial Studies when she's asked by her mother to help clean and sell her grandmother's old abandoned house. While there she thinks she may have stumbled on evidence of an undocumented witch from the witch trials who may have left behind a "recipe" book that had been passed down through the generations.

It's an interesting read to have so close to Halloween.

I am about to start a book called Malled (My unintentional year in retail) by Caitlin Kelly. I used to work in retail so I am interested in what the author has to say about her experience.

I'm always reading multiple books at once, but I just started The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, which is amazing thus far! Angela, I think you would really love this book. Morgenstern credits BPAL as one of the inspirations for the novel, and who wouldn't love a book inspired by perfume?

Another notable read as of late is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. This is a work of creative non-fiction but is so well-written it reads like a novel.

For those of you that like to read within the SF/Fantasy/Speculative fiction genre Octavia Butler is probably my favorite author of all time, in particular her novel Wild Seed. She was the first internationally-known black female SF author. I teach her books often, and students always love them.

Wow guys, everything you're reading is sounding right up my alley! I just ordered Karen White's Strangers on Montagu Street which is the 3rd book in a series she wrote that I love. It is light reading but it all takes place in Charleston and is a mix between mystery, paranormal and a bit of historical fiction. It is a lot of fun if you like the concept of someone finding mysterious items in a house that leads them on a goose chase to figure out what they mean and represent. They are a lot of fun!

Loved The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks! Just finished Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.
Currently reading Medium Raw also by A. Bourdain & Blood of Victory by Alan Furst. It is historical fiction set at the beginning of WWII.

hey there! know i haven't posted to the forum in awhile, holidays. blech. in my defense the last couple of times i tried, the forum devi ate my post on submission and who wants to start over. (because i can never learn my lesson and copy the text before i hit the bloody send button.)

anyway, hope everyone's solstice month was great and the new year is looking good. (so far, so fair on this end!) what i'm reading, yikes, that's a bit of a list for me too. my habits are such that it's more precise to list what i've just read rather than what i'm reading now, since it's always been my way to read four hours a day, a habit i developed when i was little. (much more when jay isn't around to fetch me.) if i'm honest reading is where i've been and what i've been doing for the last couple of months almost exclusively. it's how i get so behind on posts and messages. (i havent forgotten about you solsticescholar!! thankyouthankyou!) since i'm pretty quick about it it's hard to make lists. i can usually inhale at least one in a day or two and then take some time every day with long-term "project" books worth meditating over. i'm not wild about non-fiction but my husband insists it's good for me (i've learned over the years he's right.) so i sort of randomize subjects as much as possible.

right now i'm meditating on Karen Armstrong's, "A History of God" (fascinating!), G. I. Gurdjieff's "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson: All and Everything/First" (killing me! but i'm hooked completely.) and as many works of Al-Ghazali as i can find. as always most days i'm nibbling away at my life goal to read the whole of the contents of the library of liberty. (a task made much easier since they sent me a disk of the library's entire catalog of my very own for free. did you know they did that? i almost fainted with wonder!) now every time jay turns on the news i ignore it by reading john stuart mill. just started michael chabon's "the yiddish policeman's union" (er.. i'll have to let you know. one of jay's suggestions.) and the "principia discordia." (not sure why i took so long to get round to this. i'm thick. consequently, while it is available printed, the principia is free on the internet, for the interested.) I plan to start "The Botany of Desire" by Michael Pollan and "The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris sometime this week, I'm really looking forward to those. Also I've recently become interested in the works of Angela Carter, I haven't gotten hold of any yet, but I hope to soon. I just re-read the catcher in the rye, i have a house full of teenagers, i guess i was trying to re-connect. i read it for the first time when i was 11, i thought it was silly, and i disliked it just as much the second time. I also recently reread about half the bibliography of Terry Pratchett again, never get tired of those. ("nanny ogg's cookbook" rocks!) also recently read: C.H. Dalton "a practical guide to racism" (absolutely stupid. didn't finish, don't bother.) and david foster wallace "infinite jest" (uhm, i didn't get it. anyone?) "the narrative of the life of frederick douglass" by frederick douglass (one of a handful i read every year) and "the audacity of hope" by barack obama (one of the kids' winter reading assignments left lying out. i'm compulsive. i did rather like it though.)

nobody asked, but in case someone does down the road and by then i've forgotten all about this thread -- the answer to "what's your favorite book(s)/author?" that would be roberto calasso's "the marriage of cadmus and harmony" no question. and mark twain, always. my favorite poem? well that depends on the day i'm having. almost every day it's "Via Lucis" by Charles Rosher. but there are days every now an again i'll say it's "The Second Coming (Slouching Toward Bethlehem) by W.B Yeats...

anyway, that's that. cheers everyone, can't say i haven't been around love and light to everyone!

lye-