What are you currently reading?

[Ender]

1. Great Expectations by Dickens
2. I'm around 200 pages into it.
3. I really like it so far. I love the humor, the arc of the story, the predicament he places his protagonist in. And there are moments in his prose that incur laugh-out-loud delight.

[rabbit]

1. Disclosure - Michale Crichton
2. 408
3. "It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer: (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or (2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."

or, arguably

"CONSIDERING THE MERGER, I THOUGHT YOU SHOULD GET THIS AT HOME AND NOT THE OFFICE: TWINKLE PRODUCTION LINES RUNNING AT 29% CAPACITY DESPITE ALL EFFORTS TO INCREASE."

4. Yes.  Lots of twists, though some parts seem pretty predictable.  I'm not used to 1993 tech being the height of fashion, so some things have thrown me a bit.

[Newby]

Pick-up artist books. :P

[Hitmen]

Pick-up artist books. :P

this is far funnier than it should be

[Armin]

1. Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art by Stephen Nachmanovitch
2. 56
3. "Improvisation, it is a mystery. You can write a book about it, but by the end no one still knows what it is. When I improvise and I'm in good form, I'm like somebody half sleeping. I even forget there are people in front of me. Great improvisers are like priests; they are only thinking of their god.
4. Fucking incredibly deep and relevant to my current lifestyle.

[Ender]

1. Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
2. p. 105
3. It's a fine first sentence.
4. I like it very much, and it promises to get even better. In particular, I really like the characters.

[Newby]

Pick-up artist books. :P

this is far funnier than it should be

I downloaded a torrent called "Pick Up Books" a year or so ago, because TehUser had mentioned some book called Rules Of The Game a year or so ago with an interesting concept. That torrent package had it. And I was looking through my Downloads folder and saw I still had all of those books, and since my strategies with women are terrible, I figure it could only be good to glance through them. And they're quite interesting. =P

[Super_X]

1. Bringing Out the Dead, Joe Connelly
2. 279
3. "I parked the ambulance in front of Hell's Kitchen walk-up number 414 and Larry and I pulled the equipment from the back."
4. yessir

Is this book on film, too, with Nick Cage playing the main roll?

[iago]

1. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
2. 926
3. "'Two tires fly. Two wail / A bamboo groove, all chopped down / From it, warring songs.' ...is the best that Corporal Bobby Shaftoe can do on short notice--he's standing on the running board, gripping his Springfield with one hand and the rearview mirror with the other, so counting the syllables on his fingers is out of the question."
4. It's awesome, but an endurance test. I don't normally read books that are over 1000 pages (I'm not sure if I ever have)

Post what you are currently reading! This will be a good way to share recommendations.

If you want, you can follow the suggested format:

1. Title & Author
2. What page are you on?
3. What's the first sentence of the book?
4. Do you like it so far? (No spoilers. Just say whether you like it or not and perhaps what you're feeling.)

Good day,
Ender

[Sidoh]

I finished Speaker of the Dead a few days ago, now I'm reading Xenocide.  I'm starting to regret it, though.  The pseudoscience and crappy metaphysics are kinda painful.

I have a Kindle and an Amazon giftcard to blow through.  Anyone have any "must read" suggestions?

[rabbit]

I love Cryptonomicon.  I read it a couple times, and it's definitely worth the time.

Sidoh, I definitely recommend Jack McDevitt's Hutch series.  Starts off with The Engines of God.  As for a must read...try out Pratchett's Watch series if you haven't already.

[Ender]

I finished Speaker of the Dead a few days ago, now I'm reading Xenocide.  I'm starting to regret it, though.  The pseudoscience and crappy metaphysics are kinda painful.

I have a Kindle and an Amazon giftcard to blow through.  Anyone have any "must read" suggestions?

Yeah, I remember that I really liked some books in the Ender series, and then didn't think too highly of some others.

I don't really know what you like so it's hard to give suggestions. I'll cover a broad range of genres, though:

Fantasy
I remember being enamored with the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. There are a lot of books in the series... but they are all very good. It's almost like reading a Diablo II storyline.

Novels
If you're looking for a more artistic book, I'd recommend Vladimir Nabokov. A good starting point is probably Lolita - an infamous book from the 50's/60's.

Classics
Give poetry a try! Try Dante, Homer, or Virgil. For Virgil and Homer I would recommend either the Fagles or Fitzgerald translations of The Iliad and The Aeneid. For Dante, it's harder to say. I have two copies of The Inferno: one is by Robert Pinsky, and it is a lot more poetic, meaning it sounds better; the other is by Robert M. Durling, which is a much more literal, direct translation, meaning that it is more accurate and true-to-Dante, but less poetic.

[iago]

I love Cryptonomicon.  I read it a couple times, and it's definitely worth the time.

Sidoh, I definitely recommend Jack McDevitt's Hutch series.  Starts off with The Engines of God.  As for a must read...try out Pratchett's Watch series if you haven't already.

I am enjoying it, but it feels like it progresses very slowly, and each story arc almost returns to baseline. The all-encompassing story that it's building to (the gold and e-commerce stuff) doesn't seem to be a big enough payoff.

But I still like it. :)

[deadly7]

I finished Speaker of the Dead a few days ago, now I'm reading Xenocide.  I'm starting to regret it, though.  The pseudoscience and crappy metaphysics are kinda painful.

I have a Kindle and an Amazon giftcard to blow through.  Anyone have any "must read" suggestions?

The psuedoscience isn't why you read those books. I love OSC's writing because he does an excellent job in creating human relationships and getting you to empathize with a character's suffering while understanding his decision process.

Also, relativistic travel is not really that unheard of. His science is internally consistent, which is more than can be said of other sci-fi novels I've attempted to read.

I love Cryptonomicon.  I read it a couple times, and it's definitely worth the time.

Sidoh, I definitely recommend Jack McDevitt's Hutch series.  Starts off with The Engines of God.  As for a must read...try out Pratchett's Watch series if you haven't already.

I can't power through it. It's just so damn boring and long. Brevity is beautiful.

[Sidoh]

The psuedoscience isn't why you read those books. I love OSC's writing because he does an excellent job in creating human relationships and getting you to empathize with a character's suffering while understanding his decision process.

Also, relativistic travel is not really that unheard of. His science is internally consistent, which is more than can be said of other sci-fi novels I've attempted to read.

Mmhm.  That's why I liked Ender's game, and that's why I continue to read the other books in the series.  It gets progressively harder to suffer through, though.  There was very little of it in Ender's Game, there was a little more in Speaker of the Dead, and there's a whole chapter in the first quarter of Xenocide that talks about the "philotic connections between people".

Have you read the other books in the series?

I don't mind the space travel stuff at all.  That's kind of enjoyable, actually.  It's interesting to read about a world that sees the effects of relativistic space travel.  I was actually quite pleased that OSC included those details.  The other scifi details are starting to become a little painful, though.  The "philotic connections", the pseudo-sentient subatomic particles, the details of the piggies' reproductive cycle, and descriptions of the Descolada are getting ridiculous.  I continue reading because I enjoy the bits in between (especially the initially separate story about the girl on Path, the Chinese world), but holy shit that chapter aboute the philotes was fucking paiiinnfful.