What are you reading now?

[Dogmatix]

I'm a member of another online book forum and a popular thread is the "What are you reading now?"

I'll start :)

Number 9 Dream - David Mitchell

Last year I read Mitchell's - Cloud Atlas and it really knocked my socks off.

Number 9 Dream From Publishers Weekly
A young Japanese man's quest to find his estranged parents throws him into a bizarre world of mobsters, dream villains and cyber-tricksters in Mitchell's second novel (after Ghostwritten), a hyperactive, erratic sprawl of a book that begins when narrator Eiji Miyake finds himself out on his own after his twin sister, Anju, dies: his alcoholic mother had had a nervous breakdown and left her two children with their grandmother when they were very young, and they have never met their father. Miyake makes the move from rural Japan to Tokyo to stake out the company where his father is a powerful executive. But his search lands him in a nebulous yet dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with an equally powerful Japanese mobster who uses Miyake's need to find his parents to kidnap and threaten him in a series of malevolent and nearly inexplicable scenes. The most coherent sequence in the narrative takes place when Miyake is contacted by his grandfather, a former seaman who gives Miyake his diary, a poignant account of his stint on a submarine in the final days of WWII, as the Japanese frantically scrambled to deploy a new undersea warhead. Miyake eventually manages to meet his parents, but those potentially affecting scenes are overwhelmed and overshadowed by Mitchell's relentless tendency to spin out futuristic, over-the-top scenarios in which Miyake is whisked away into strange settings and then abused as if he were the hero in a deadly video game. Mitchell showed considerable promise in his highly acclaimed debut, but his sophomore effort is so chaotic that it will test even the most diligent and devoted reader. (Feb. 26)Forecast: Rave reviews from the British press, a Booker Prize nomination and a five-city author tour will give this challenging novel a needed boost.

[Sarah Goodyear]

I'm reading Moby-Dick. It's the fifth time in my life that I've read it. I was inspired to do so again by Marianne Wiggins's excellent novel Evidence of Things Unseen, which features Melville's book prominently.

Anyway, I love Moby-Dick and always have. It's a real treat for me to read something other than contemporary fiction.

[Natasha]

I am starting the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. I have been putting off the books until the newest arrived on bookshelves today. I am also waiting for the latest book by Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Mercy, to arrive at the library. I needed something to fill in the wait!

[Trey]

I'm reading the collected short stories of Patricia Highsmith. You probably know her from the Ripley novels and movies (The Talented Mr. Ripley with Matt Damon as Ripley, Ripley's Game with John Malkovich as Ripley, more). I always wondered how she could write such an amoral character.

The first section of the short story collection, The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder, gives me a clue. Fascinating stuff, she writes stories about animals who kill humans who mistreat them—from the animals' point of view, sometimes even in first person. They're still absolutely real animals, possessing no Stuart Little-like human faculties, which make the stories all the more striking. I imagine that exploring how animals might think, and how they might do acts that humans would qualify as "evil" even though animals (most non-primate animals, anyway) lack any moral sense, gave her the mental grounding to create Tom Ripley, a man who almost completely lacks a moral sense.

I just ordered The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff after hearing an interview Scott Simon did with the author on today's Weekend Edition. It's a novel about one of the "lost boys" cast out by a polygamist LDS (Mormon) sect and how he returns to the community that excommunicated him after his mother, a nineteenth wife, is accused of murdering her husband. This young outcast protagonist is gay. I have several (mainstream) Mormon friends who are struggling with homosexuality and the church, and I find Mormon theology and history fascinating, so I'm excited about this book.

[April Love]

I just finished Emma by Jane Austen for my other book club. I've started Standard Operating Procedure (a book about Abu Ghraib) and I'm half-way through The New Kings of Non-Fiction (short stories, edited by Ira Glass).

@Trey- let me know how you like The 19th Wife. It sounds interesting (I spent a lot of time with members of the LDS community in high school).

[Cayde]

sisterhood of travelin' pants, and still waiting on valerie wilson plame's fair game.

[Dogmatix]

I've read quite a few classics over the last year; Jude the Obscure, The Last Man, Crime and Punishment. I love the classics ad find they keep my reading piles interesting. Plus they look great on the shelf. I've actually never read Moby Dick, Though I did read Melville's Billy Budd a few years ago.

Sarah Goodyear said:

I'm reading Moby-Dick. It's the fifth time in my life that I've read it. I was inspired to do so again by Marianne Wiggins's excellent novel Evidence of Things Unseen, which features Melville's book prominently.

Anyway, I love Moby-Dick and always have. It's a real treat for me to read something other than contemporary fiction.

[Ranger Susie]

Right now I'm reading Femme Fatale a biography of Mata Hari, the seductress cum spy during World War I. It's fascinating, although I had trouble getting into the author's writing style. I've been into non-fiction for a while now. Next up will be Kitchen Confidential which I know is old, but it finally showed up at my local library. As far as fiction goes, I just finished Winter Study by Nevada Barr. The protagonist is a law enforcement park ranger who's working on the wolf study at Isle Royale National Park. (It's part of a much larger series of mystery novels.) Good stuff if you like mysteries and your National Parks.

[Harmony]

I'm currently reading Unaccustomed Earth, a book of short stories by Jhumpa Lahri. I really enjoyed her work in a McSweeney's collection so I wanted to give her more of a chance. So far it's been great. Very well written and lyrical with a lot of depth hidden in the bright descriptions.

Make sure you see the movie that the book was involved in. It's a heartbreaking, beautifully made film by one of the best documentarians around. It's just so good.

April Love said:

I just finished Emma by Jane Austen for my other book club. I've started Standard Operating Procedure (a book about Abu Ghraib) and I'm half-way through The New Kings of Non-Fiction (short stories, edited by Ira Glass).

@Trey- let me know how you like The 19th Wife. It sounds interesting (I spent a lot of time with members of the LDS community in high school).

[Stewart]

I just finished the latest in Louise Rennison's Georgia Nicolson series (Stop in the Name of Pants!), which I think are hands down the funniest books being written right now. And my nightstand currently has the new David Sedaris, a biography of the blind composer/street musician Moondog, and America Unchained by the British comedian Dave Gorman. Also, I'm next in the queue to get Charlatan!, the new biography of Dr. Brinkley, from the library. I've always been fascinated by this guy through my radio fixation -- Dr. Brinkley founded the first border radio station back in the '40s -- but I've never read a book that's specifically about his quackery and the agents who were trying to take him down.

The problem is that I only have so many hours in the day -- well, more at the moment, at least -- and I also have active subscriptions to MOJO, The New Yorker, Gourmet, Cooks Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly and Real Simple. So the books tend to get lost in the constant onslaught of magazines. Only recently when I've made a pact with myself that I don't have to read every word of every magazine have I even gotten it slightly under control. I can skip a New Yorker article if it doesn't hook me by the second page, and I can also skip the short story most weeks, since most of them are crap these days.

[Dogmatix]

Loved Julie and Julia! Laughed out loud.

Seth in Kansas said:

I'm reading Wine and War http://tinyurl.com/688fvm which is slow going but interesting. I'm also reading Julie & Julia http://tinyurl.com/2fxr8x despite never having read the blog that originated it. It's breezy and fun but is much less of a food book than I thought I was picking up.

[Nathan in Holland]

I'm reading a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories (again).

[Stewart]

Nice, aren't they? I've got the red one.

Seth in Kansas said:

Shall I brag to you about my new Thermopen, or does that discussion belong in the Mangia! group?

Stewart said:

The problem is that I only have so many hours in the day -- well, more at the moment, at least -- and I also have active subscriptions to MOJO, The New Yorker, Gourmet, Cooks Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly and Real Simple.