I don’t do memes, because once I start, I doubt I’d be able to stop. That wouldn’t end well for anyone, especially my cat who is bacon-averse.
This morning, though, while I was Propelling, I stopped at SF Signal and saw Quick Meme: What are You Reading?
Q: What book are you currently reading? Is it good so far?
Oh! Good question. I’m so glad you asked. I love to read, and I love to talk about books, so I’m going to go ahead and hop onto this one. Don’t worry, I won’t be tagging anyone, because that’s just silly.
Until last year, I’d limit myself and only read one book at a time, but as the pile of things I wanted to read grew ever larger, I decided that it made more sense to go ahead and read a few books in parallel, sort of like watching different channels on different nights. So far, this has worked out pretty well for me, and allowed me to read more books than I normally would without making me feel like I’m sacrificing anything in each individual book.
Does anyone else do this? Is this the normal way people read books, and I’m just figuring it out now? I wonder about these things. Enlighten me.
So, to the meme! Right now, I’m reading The Living Dead anthology, edited by John Joseph Adams. I just love it, but it’s huge. Also, as John at SF Signal observed, because it’s an anthology, it takes longer to read than a book of equal length, because you have to adjust to a new author’s style and find the groove of each new story. I never thought about that very much, but it explains why I don’t read anthologies with the same enthusiasm that I read novels.
I’ve read a few stories in The Living Dead, and I especially liked Kelly Link’s Some Zombie Contingency Plans, Dan Simmons’ This Year’s Class Picture, David Barr Kirtley’s The Skull-Faced Boy, and Dale Bailey’s Death and Suffrage.
I’ve wanted to write a zombie story for years. The last one I wrote was the 7th grade tale of turgid terror “The Land of the Zombies” and I’m anxious to revisit the genre. The Living Dead has inspired me, and I have an idea that I’m outlining right now.
Is it good so far? Oh, you betcha, my friends. It’s fantastic.
I’m also re-reading, for the first time in over fifteen years, Ender’s Game. Nolan has a Sci-Fi class at school, and when he told me that he’d picked Ender’s Game from the reading list, I thought it would be fun to grab my copy out of storage and read it with him.
Nolan isn’t a voracious reader like Ryan is, but when he finds a book that he likes, he pretty much drops everything else in the world until the book is finished. After two days, he had read over 100 pages of Ender, while I was still in the third chapter. He’s agreed to give me a day to catch up, though.
Is it good so far? Yes. Ender’s Game is as fast-paced and accessible as I remember it, and I’m picking up on all sorts of stuff I missed when I was a kid. I loved this book when I was a teenager – I think I first read it when I was 14 or 15 – but I never got into any of the sequels. I find Orson Scott Card’s recent raging homophobia and associated ignorant ranting pretty reprehensible, and I have no interest in giving him any of my money or spending any time reading his current work, but I didn’t know about any of that when I was a kid, and none of that changes how great Ender’s Game is.
Soon I Will Be Invincible. (I’m updating because I forgot to add this one. I’m kind of stupid today.) I still love this. I’m taking my time, though, because I don’t want it to end.
I keep finding myself picking up and skimming through The Pirate’s Guide to Freeport, the 4th Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, The World of Darkness, and a bunch of old GURPS books: Cyberpunk, Horror, Autoduel and Space. I really want to teach Nolan Car Wars, but I don’t think he has the patience. Goddamn video games.
Are they good so far? Um. Duh.
I’m taking this one step beyond (with the rockingest, rocksteady beat of MADNESS!!) and adding the books I can’t want to start:
Zoe’s Tale. This one is at the top of the pile, because I love the Old Man’s War universe, and Scalzi is my friend. I think it’s another one I can read with Nolan, too.
Pattern Recognition. I was trying to decide if it was going to be this or Spook Country, and everyone I know who has read them both says Pattern Recognition is the way to go.
The Terror. I’ve had this one on the nightstand for months, and I’ve gotten about 2 chapters into it. It’s nearing that point of no return where I know I won’t be able to put it down. I can’t risk losing even more productivity than I already have, though, so it’ll have to keep waiting.
Carter Beats the Devil. My friend Yuri says that I shouldn’t even open this book unless I can clear my life of everything else until I finish it, because it’s that good.
The Graveyard Book. I bought this the day it came out, and it’s going to be my reward when I finish . . . something. I haven’t decided what it is, yet.
House of Leaves. A friend of mine knows the author, and gave me a copy a million years ago. I was intimidated by its size, but I understand that it’s worth it.
Spin. Recommended by a friend, as well. I made it about 100 pages into the book and got distracted by a red balloon. I was intrigued enough to finish it, though. Maybe I’ll get to move it up to the Stuff I’m Reading list.
I’ve been acting more than usual lately. (I know, I know, it’s weird for me, too.) It uses the same creative energy and inspiration sources in my brain as writing, so I just haven’t had anything left at the end of the day to work on the stories I have in various stages of creation. This is frustrating and a little demoralizing to me, but Stephen King says that writers have to read, though, so I’m going to go ahead and give myself permission to . . . uh . . . draw some inspiration . . . from some other writers.
Okay, let’s throw it open in comments: What book are you currently reading? Is it good so far?
I’m currently perusing various political works on DailyLit. I’m on installment 10 of the Communist Manifesto. Meh. It’s historical. I tend to get whiny when anyone tries to blame EVERYTHING on one group of people like social classes and races are “group minds” with real objectives.
Not sure what is next. Working on getting my entire library into LibraryThing and that has meant uncovering boxes of paperbacks that might have been opened for a decade.
::is lost digging through books for half an hour:: Ahem. Yes. Well, I think I’ll start The Moon Children by Jack Williamson tonight. Looks to be a nice hourish read before sleep and I don’t have a raid so I can beg off from WoW early.
I m reading “Nothing By Chance” by Richard Bach. I read it 5 years ago and love it. It s a great book!
From Uruguay
Gaby
Like a few others have said, I really gotta urge you to read at least Speaker for the Dead from Orson Scott Card. It’s a stunning novel. The next one, Xenocide, was a little to long, but I enjoyed it. I haven’t read the fourth one yet. Get it from the library, or off or Ebay, if you don’t want to give him your money. But don’t rob yourself of the experience.
Affluenza by Oliver James. It’s a real eye-opener about how those of us in developed countries are duped into wanting a lot more things than we need, and how this leads to unhappiness.
John’s Naish’s Enough: Breaking Free from the world of More – a compelling read to take stock of excess in your life. I didn’t drink the cool-aid but it is a fascinating concept.
Finished whole Ender Series of books over the summer- all of them good.
Devil May Care by Sebastian Falks – a “new” James Bond novel – not as barbaric as Ian Fleming’s creation form the 1950’s but still, a good read.
Sorry I’m late to the thread – been ill.
I just finished The Lost Colony (it got misfiled!) and Anathem. Both were excellent.
I’m now working on two non-fiction – McCullogh’s massive biography John Adams and A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
On the fiction side, I’m starting Spook Country.
Oh, and I’m slowly reading a book you may have heard of: The Happiest Days of Our Lives the author has great fashion sense, btw.
Wil, instead of reading the Graveyard book, you can listen to Neil Gaiman read it… one chapter per day.
Neil Gaiman reads Graveyard
does that as well. My husband seems to manage well reading 4 or more books that way. I tend to have 2 or 3 on the go that way. *lol*
Oh and I’m reading book one in Peter Davids series of Sir Apropos of Nothing right now, as well as Anonymous Rex by Eric Garcia.
Pretty good. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
i must be simple; i can’t actively read (audio books don’t count) more than one book at a time. luckily, i read really fast so my intake doesn’t suffer.
currently:
“fool moon” 2nd dresden files book
last great book:
“the sparrow” by mary doria russell. it’s sci-fi via anthropology.
“carter beats the devil” one of my favorites to the point i lent it out enough that my copy is now lost forever.
& i want to thank you for recommending the Old Man’s War series. had to buy them in hardback to keep forever (haven’t risked lending them yet).
I’m currently reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence. I normaly read only one book at a time, but while I’ve been reading Lawernce I’ve finsihed Bone: The Great Cow Race, Commanche Moon (a graphic history of Cynthia Anne and Quanna Parker), Good as Lily, and a Wallace and Grommit book (I forget the title).
Currently all my reads are re-reads:
*The Road Less Traveled*–M.Scott Peck
*The Power of Now*–Eckhart Tolle
*Feeling Good*–David Burns
*Gravity’s Rainbow*–Thomas Pynchon
Eclectic, no? Let’s just say I’m dealing simultaneously with depression and existential crisis.
The Northern lights. (waaaay better than the movie, and been in my pile of ‘to read’ books long before I knew it was a movie). The Lovely Bones is one of the next. I want to read it before the movie is out, it made my GF cry.
Does The Amazing Spiderman Vol:3 count?
I’m currently re-reading 1984 because I decided to have my senior English students read it this month. It’s one of the books that changed my perspective about the world when I first read it, and with the election coming up and all…it just seemed apropos. As a warm up, the students are creating their own little dictatorships and deciding how to best manipulate their unsuspecting, fictional populace. They are having a little too much fun with it. Scary.
I’m sad to say that I’m not reading anything outside of school books at the moment. I think it’s one of the pitfalls of teaching literature; I lose out on my own personal reading time. Cahbon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is next on my list, though. I’ve been hearing great things about it for ages and am dying to read it. (Have you read it? I think it might be a book you would love.)
Chabon, not Cahbon. I really should preview my comments before I post them.
I’m unpacking a few hundred (yes) boxes of books, after a recent move, so I’m reading DOZENS of books at a time, right now, as they’re unearthed. I’ve missed them so!
I don’t know that I’ve ever read only one book at a time; maybe it’s my ADD, but I’m comfortable bouncing around between at least a few, if not several.
Just wanna comment on OSC/”Ender’s Game”: I don’t blame you re: the current nonsense, and I wasn’t shy about confronting him about the turnabout of various characters in “Xenocide” when my cousin & I (inadvertently) kidnapped him after a convention, about 16 years ago… But I thought “Speaker for the Dead” fully deserved its Hugo & Nebula. Give it another try, when you finish “Ender’s Game” again.
I frequently read more than one book at a time. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I’m only reading 2- the 6th Harry Potter book I mentioned in my first post, and also a book of JRR Tolkien’s letters (can’t remember the exact title and am too lazy to go into the bedroom & look at it.) Just like a few other posters here, I also read in the bathroom… I just don’t get much time to read (HATE that!!) and I figure reading while on the can is better than staring at my feet. 🙂 To the reader of the Dark Tower series who can’t seem to get into it- it is different from SK’s usual works, but it’s worth finishing. Someone mentioned not understanding people who don’t enjoy reading… I’m married to one of those people, and I don’t understand him, either. It’s not that he can’t read, or isn’t intelligent; in fact, he’s quite intelligent. He just doesn’t enjoy reading. I don’t get it! Oh well, he’s lucky he’s cute. 😀
-Alicia
[email protected]
http://www.thewagband.com
I was reading a stack of things at the same time and the only drawback would be, for me anyway, that the mind wanders off to the other text sometimes. I was reading Clarke’s The Promise of Space and Madame Bovary at the same time and my brain would sometimes skew off and wonder things like if Emma was to leave her country doctor husband what velocity would her carriage have to travel to penetrate the atmosphere? How many husbands and lovers would she have to chuck off her sled to reach escape velocity?
6.4, I think.
Still, reading Promise of Space, which I highly recommend. Sci-fi is best when grounded in real science and this is a primer on all the basics of space travel from rocket design to fuel options and thrust ratios required for orbit with cool historical anecdotes thrown in for good measure.
Also, rereading some Oscar Wilde. But there are so many amazing political zingers it’s hard to concentrate on the story sometimes.
Must-keep-Palin-rage-under-control!
Right now, I’m reading Brisngr (Paolini)and The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (Philip Zimbardb). The first one is entertaining. The second one is scary as hell. I usually have at least two books and 2-3 magazines going at any one time. 🙂
Just had to answer this one. I’ve been reading voraciously since 3rd grade and have always read more than one book at a time. I guess my usual number is usually around 5. I am currently reading “Next” by Michael Creighton, almost done with it and it is fascinating. Also reading “Chanur’s Endgame” by C.J. Cherryh, not far enough into it to make a judgement. “Into the Wild” by Erin Hunter, what can I say? It’s supposed to be a children’s book, but I love it; there is a whole series of these books about wild cats, which are really written by a trio of authors. I’m also reading “Dragonholder” by Todd McCaffrey, a biography about his mother, Anne McCaffrey. Not quite as interesting as I had expected, but I’m hoping it will get better. Now I’ll have to check out the other comments, to see if they read multiple books at a time too!
I finished reading Ender’s Game to the girlfriend a while ago. I think we’re about to start “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”
Currently working on Making Money by Terry Pratchett. I love PTerry’s stuff generally, and this one is his satiric take on banking and the economy in Ankh-Morpork, so it’s timely as well.
I’m also a few stories in on Robert J. Sawyer’s Identity Theft and other Stories, but since it’s a book of short stories, it’s easier to put down and come back to.
On the waiting list are Jo Walton’s Half-a-Crown, the continuation of her alternate history in which Britain made peace with Nazi Germany (good stuff, btw) and Fast Forward 2, another short story collection edited by Lou Anders which contains a story by one of my favorite up and coming authors, Jeff Carlson. (And Jeff’s two books, Plague Year and Plague War are worth checking out.)
Zoe’s Tale r0xx0rz my s0xx0rz, but you know I’m a big Scalzi fan, since I mentioned it to you briefly at con a couple weeks ago.
-kat
I’m actually reading Shadow Puppets, by Orson Scott Card. I do like the Ender saga…I don’t buy new books, though so I’m not giving Card money…But it is really amazing how such creativity can come out of someone and how intelligent they are, and yet, they just hold onto such arcane beliefs as Card does with gays. But from a descendant of Brigham Young, I am not surprised.
quick update to my post of OCtober 8. I got the title of one of the books wrong. Instead of “playing the game” the book was called Playing the Enemy and was a very good book about Nelson Mandela, rugby, and how the two interacted to help make the transition to majority rule in South Africa peaceful.
Well, now I’m reading _Soon I will be Invincible_. Also, so are all my knitting friends and, apparently, their coworkers. A friend and I are going to read _Godel, Escher, Bach_ concurrently, but he doesn’t have a copy yet. I’ve been a chapter away from the end of _House of Leaves_ for a while now, but most recently, I was reading _Alpha and Omega_ which is a general overview of the cosmological history of the universe (not the biblical tome one might guess from the title). It’s thorough and informative, although at times a little… I might say pedantic. But I’d still recommend it.
Because of your recommendation, Wil (and some friends), I am reading Ed Brubaker’s Captain America, and I LOVE it! Best run since Mark Waid’s/Ron Garney’s (circa 1995-1996) and Dan Jurgens/Bob Layton’s run (2000 or so).
I’m reading a ton of Iron Man, like Matt Fraction’s IM run (I’m jealous that he’s writing Iron Man, and doing it well).
I read Redezvous with Rama, and enjoyed it, and I’m thinking about picking up The Road and/or The Terror. I’m a fan of those monster books, like Steve Alten’s.
But I guess I’m mostly just reading comic books.
heath
I’m reading several books, such as About Time: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who Volume 2 by Tat Wood & Lawrence Miles, The World of Harry Potter by Tere Stouffer, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, and America (The Book) from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
I wrote my thesis paper at college this year on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, and it’s one of my favorite books. I first read it in a science fiction class I took in college in 2007. This class was where I read a lot of interesting novels like Neuromancer by William Gibson and Synners by Pat Cadigan as well as Androids. Now that I’m finished with school, I’m catching up with books I’ve wanted to read like Doctor Who and Star Trek novels.
I am enjoying all the books I’m currently reading, they are well-written and fascinating.
I’m currently reading Blood on the Strand, a historical mystery set in Restoration London. I want to reread Spin because I just picked up its sequel Axis but I also want to start reading the Repairman Jack series. And then there’s The Last Colony that’s already been mentioned. Honestly? I have over 5000 books filling my house and I’ve only read about 75% of them for various reasons.
Currently reading:
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stephenson
World of Wonders – Robertson Davies
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell – Susanna Clarke
Sailing to Sarantium – Guy Gavriel Kay
Vivia – Tanith Lee
cheers Wil, I enjoy your blog. 😉
This is not including the leaning tower of books I am going to read, which includes Gaiman’s Fragile Things and De Lint’s Spirits in the Wires.
I’m currently reading “Glory Season”, by David Brin. I picked it up at a used bookstore after I decided to re-read “The Postman”, which is such a great book (haven’t seen the movie, because I can’t stand Kevin Costner and I’d hate for it to be ruined for me). It’s interesting so far, but I’m not sure if I’ve already read it or not. Lol!
As for reading styles… I can only read one book at once. It takes me too long to get into an author’s style, to be reading more than one at a time.
And as much as I hate Orson Scott Card’s personal beliefs, I absolutely love his books. So I’ve negotiated with my conscience by only buying his books from used book stores, so that my money goes to the used book store instead of him. Sure, somebody ELSE paid him, but it wasn’t me so I don’t feel so bad. 🙂
Currently reading: Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel” and Roald Dahl’s “Boy.” Plath is morbid and weird, Dahl is morbid and funny. I’m enjoying both. ;o)
Recently finished: Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War.” *Loved* it, Wil! Thanks for the recommend!
Hi, Wil! I’m new to your blog. I just started reading your stuff, and I actually like it a lot. Anyway, to answer your question, I’ve actually just finished your memoir, Just A Geek. I received it from Amazon in three business days, which I really liked. I thought it was a really good book, which was pretty apparent because it took me a day and a half to read. I’ll be honest, though: I don’t normally read memoirs because they’re actually kind of boring and, in some ways, can be very self-serving. But I was grateful that I took a leap of faith and read it. However, there were some parts that almost made it hard for me to continue, since they reminded me of my own life – especially the isolation and feelings of being different as a kid and as a teenager. Granted, I didn’t grow up in front of the camera, but by no means was it a picnic.
But I think the one thing about it all that really made me enjoy it was the fact that you found your inspiration by writing. You were encouraged to do so, because you were good at it, even though you defined your life and career by acting. You thought it was your destiny. I am a writer myself, and even though I have such a mental block, I feel bits of my creativity coming back. Actually, this helped me remember my love of writing in the first place, and I just want to thank you for that.