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What are you reading at the moment?

I just finished (for the nth time) Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett. I'm not sure what to start next. Probably Operation Mincemeat by Ben McIntyre though I really ought to finish Half the Sky so I can send it on to Stella.
 
'Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers' by Simon Louvish.

Published in 1999, it's exhaustively researched and is quite interesting. I enjoy the Marx Bros. movies, so this adds another dimension to them. A lot of what they wrote about themselves is untrue, but that's their MO...they learned from the master, their mother. ;)
 


Ibn Sa'ud and his conquest of what is now Sa'udi Arabia is a fascinating story— and it wasn't all that long ago. His 1902 storming of Riyadh was the capstone of that campaign. Robert Lacey's The Kingdom ( New York, NY. 1981. ) is a fascinating account of the country's history and serves as proof that non-fiction can be every bit as gripping as fiction.



Ibn Saud Wed 200 Virgins, Found Huge Oil Reserves
by Lewis Lapham

July 3 (Bloomberg) -- In 1932, the fierce warrior Ibn Saud united the lands he conquered as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. To refute rumors that he’d been made impotent in battle, Ibn Saud would pick a village virgin, marry her on the spot and take her into the royal tent.

The royal family eventually had more than 200 wives, 125 daughters and at least 45 sons. It was not a rich kingdom, producing dates, wheat, barley and livestock, supplemented by revenue from pilgrims who journeyed to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Envious of the oil boom in Iran, Kuwait and Iraq, the king hired American mining engineer Karl Twitchell and Standard Oil of California to explore his lands. They found commercial quantities of the black gold in 1938, and by the following year the Saudis were earning more than $1 million in fees and royalties.

One royal adviser exclaimed, “The oil story was a veritable romance, surpassing the most improbable tales of the Arabian Nights!”

It had taken Americans nearly 100 years to find 30 billion barrels in the U.S., while the Saudis found more than that in a decade. The discovery of massive oil reserves was just the beginning of a close American-Saudi relationship.

... Geoffrey Wawro [ is the ] author of “Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East” (Penguin)...


http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601122&sid=aRN0zCgO5HfY
Click to expand...


 
Last edited:
a stack of Spanish 'ar' verb flashcards

mirar - to watch . . . dibujar - to draw . . . gustar - to want . . .
 

... a German visitor described his trip to America as late as 1857, "Ten years in America are like a century elsewhere."

This view was echoed by a British parliamentary commission that visited the United States in the 1850s. The group was especially impressed with how American workers accepted progress instead of resisting it as they "hailed with satisfaction all mechanical improvements [ that were ] releasing them from the drudgery of unskilled labour, [ which ] they are enabled by education to understand and appreciate." Coming from a British group, this was an exceptionally high compliment. But the commission went on to emphasize the contrast with their own labour force, which stubbornly resisted "mechanical improvements" for fear of losing their jobs.​


-Peter L. Bernstein
Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation
New York, New York 2005.



The profound importance of the Erie Canal to the development of the early U.S. economy has been completely forgotten. The audacity required to propose and construct a 363 mile-long canal across the forested wilderness of New York state largely by hand is nearly unbelievable and the story fascinating. It is perfectly understandable that people though DeWitt Clinton mad.

Peter Bernstein's earlier book Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk was very popular amongst a certain segment of investors ( that segment being of the brighter variety ). I will wager that those who read, understood and enjoyed the book likely avoided most of the landmines in the great mortgage-backed securities and collaterallized debt obligation fiasco.


 
Half way through The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Anybody seen the movie yet? Any good?
 
Of Human Bondage
W. Somerset Maugham

One of the hundred classics included with my e-reader. :)
 
litfan10 said:
Half way through The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Anybody seen the movie yet? Any good?
Click to expand...

I'd really like to read this. I've heard fantastic things about it. EW did a article about him and the mess surrounding his estate when he passed away.

I'm not reading anything right now. I've got a number of books waiting for me, including Stephen King's Under the Dome, John Flanagan's Rangers Apprentice 8, the rest of Red Pyramid (Rick Riordan - Percy Jackson author) and the entire Bride Quartet from Nora Roberts...

And I can't get my head out of my own story long enough to give anyone else's a fair amount of attention.
 
djserani said:
I'd really like to read this. I've heard fantastic things about it. EW did a article about him and the mess surrounding his estate when he passed away.

I'm not reading anything right now. I've got a number of books waiting for me, including Stephen King's Under the Dome, John Flanagan's Rangers Apprentice 8, the rest of Red Pyramid (Rick Riordan - Percy Jackson author) and the entire Bride Quartet from Nora Roberts...

And I can't get my head out of my own story long enough to give anyone else's a fair amount of attention.
Click to expand...

Red Pyramid Rocked!

Let me know how Under the Dome is

Dragon is very good
 
Elizabeth George's What Came Before He Shot Her--and I'm reallly finding it a hard go. I don't really like reading about people this much down and out. And the book is quite long.
 
Bird by Bird: Some instructions on writing and life by Anne Lamott - I'm finding it very inspirational and instructive.
 
I'm currently reading my review copy of Alison's Wonderland, Alison Tyler's collection of fairy tale themed erotica. It's quite good, and I look forward to writing a review on my blog.
 
MagicaPractica said:
Bird by Bird: Some instructions on writing and life by Anne Lamott - I'm finding it very inspirational and instructive.
Click to expand...

I use that in my college class. I think it is one of the finest book on the craft of writing!

Her Faith/Grace series is great as well
 
Pretty much Literotica stories tonight. Trying a smattering of the top fifty favorite authors. Mixed results.
 

On the day of Anne's miscarriage, Chapuys— not yet having heard of it, for he does not mention it in his dispatch, and was not to report it until February 10— was told by the King's cousin, Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter, and the Marchioness, Gertrude Blount, how they had been "informed by one of the principal persons at court" that the King "said to someone in great confidence and, as it were, in confession, that he had made this marriage seduced and constrained by sortileges [ i.e., divination or sorcery ], and for this reason he considered it null, and that this was evident because God did not permit them to have any male issue, and that he believed he might take another wife, which he gave to understand that he had some wish to do."
​


-Alison Weir
The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn
New York, New York 2010.



I've ne'er had the pleasure of Alison Weir before as the majority of the biographies I've read about the Tudors has been the handiwork of Antonia Fraser.

The more I read about court life— be it Plantagenet, Habsburg, Capet, Saxe-Coburg Gotha, Bourbon, Ming or Romanov— the more I agree with Shakespeare: "Uneasy the head that wears a crown." It was every bit as unpleasant as the life of a U.S. Congressman. Humans in pursuit of money and power are downright nasty. If that's the life you seek, be certain to read and comprehend the original instruction manual of politics— that authored by Niccolò Machiavelli.

 
I am reading High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

As I am reading it the main character Rob reminds me of a guy I dated years ago. The similarities are uncanny.
 
Im finishing up The Man Who Walked Through Time: Colin Fletcher

Next is Into The Wild: Jon Krakauer
 
The Dragons of Pern by Anne McCafferey

A very pleasant, light, read by a skilled story-teller.
 
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