Reading list

[autographedcat]

So, I'm thinking that if I actually start talking about the books I'm reading, it'll encourage me to spend more time reading them. I used to read a lot, but in recent years I've started spending too much time in front of the computer and not enough time with a book in my hand. Time to fix that.

Currently, I'm in the middle of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, which is one of the most entertaining general overviews of science and the history of science that I've ever come across. I really enjoy a genre of non-fiction that I call "anecdotal history", by which I mean "history told in a nonfiction but entertaining manner". I also have Kenneth Davis's "Don't Know Much About History", which I'd read before but only recently reacquired.

Last week, I read Nerve.com's Guide to Sexual Etiquette, which was a marvelously informative book with a droll style. It was slightly different in focus from The Bride Wore Black Leather (And He Looked Fabulous), which is a different sex etiquette book focusing more on altsex than more usual fare. And I'm reading Dan Savage's Savage Love in pieces. As a collection of columns, its easy to read in small pieces. (What I sometimes refer to as a "bathroom book").

So, what are YOU reading right now?

Comments

Books...

[aunty_marion]

Just finished re-reading Diane Duane's "Stealing the Elf-King's Roses", and next fiction on the list (from the 6 or so I bought yesterday ) is Diana Wynne Jones's "The Merlin Conspiracy", now that it's out in paperback. It will probably go into the bath with me later and keep me up far too late....

Non-fiction - one of the books I bought yesterday was reduced (!) to 13.99 UKP - four books about M.C. Escher in one enormous coffee-table hardback (that's not one you put on the coffee table, it's big enough to make a coffee table *from*!). But it's a "dip in, read a bit, put it down (because my arms ache)" book. So the next other more or less non-fiction will be What Does a Martian Look Like, by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart.

Re: Books...

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I was really annoyed with the marketing of "Stealing the Elf-King's Roses", specifically the cover which looks like a trash romance and Diane doesn't do 'trash'. Plus the book isn't even a romance. I think someone saw "elf" and "roses" and that's all they thought about. Almost as bad as the original cover for "Door into Fire". The book itself is Diane's typically high standard...

I didn't realise that "The Merlin Conspiracy" is out in p/b, something else to read...