what are you reading right now?

[DodgeDanger]

Black Seminarians and Black Clergy Without a Black Theology: by Yosef Ben-Jochannan

Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann

[Myron]

I've just started the Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

[kara]

I've just started the Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

just hit page 100 ...

and halfway through The Help (great read!)

[darrow]

I'm about half way through Weaveworld by Clive Barker.

[Soulman T]

Reading that House bible and comparing it to that other House bible ..
lotta bibles in the house kid .. just gotta grab the right bible ..

[ngeso]

Ploughing through this. If you like magical realism (Marquez, Allende, Esquivel), you will totally enjoy this.



...

[Martin Red]

Loved this


What happens when God dies?

The sun still rises and sets, because God had already set the planets in motion. But what happens to us?

This is the theme behind the novel, God is Dead.

It begins with God, disguised as a wounded Dinka woman from Sudan, being killed by the Janjaweed in the Darfur desert. The observation that feral dogs feeding on her body now speak ancient languages give rise to the conclusion that God, indeed, has died.

What happens next? Author Ron Currie looks at humanity from a variety of perspectives, and the text almost reads as if the succeeding chapters were given to a variety of authors to experiment with this theme. But they were all written by Currie, of course. He writes well, with intensity and clarity.

But God remains dead. No Gandalf resurrection here.

This novel is worthy of more than one reading. I've only read it the once, but I "see" that I missed subtle messages here. Knowing where Currie takes the story, I know I can get more out of it the second time around. It is also easy to select one or two chapters to revisit.

And remember, this is a novel, not a "God is not Great" expose of religion. But you will feel sorry for God, who lives, and dies, experiencing the suffering in Darfur.




Synopsis
"[A] stoic poignancy reminiscent of Raymond Carver..."God Is Dead" is a heady cocktail of ideas...Currie has proved he can write and write well." - "Guardian". God - or Sora, as she's called - has come to earth to experience its conflicts first hand, but adopting a human form also means assuming human frailty and mortality, and when Sora's death - and her true identity - is discovered, the world is immediately and irrevocably changed. Waves of panic, civil unrest and mass suicide sweep the globe; young men take the future into their own hands, armies go to war over fate versus free will, and parents - in the absence of an alternative, and with nothing else to do on a Sunday - turn their children into objects of worship. "God is Dead" is truly - and terrifyingly - original; blasphemous and heretical, it's an exceptional debut and a remarkable read."From its stark title to its startling final page, Ron Currie's novel packs one tight punch of fresh ideas in prose so smart it smarts...As a satirist, Currie has only bad news to impart but, as a devotee of Kurt Vonnegut, he does it with such humour, you'll barely notice." - "Telegraph". "As smart and addictive as any debut novel you're likely to pick up this year..." - "List".

[Martin Red]

Synopsis

The first of those born in the baby boom following the Second World War came of age in the radical sixties. Not since 1918 had the young talked serious revolutionary politics as they did then. But in 1918, the men who came back from the war knew that the world was amiss, and what they had to do about it. When at last the generation that fought the Great War came to power, they changed the world. By contrast, the generation that came after decayed fast. For the first time since the Second World War, there was money, there was safe sex, there was freedom, and no one bothered to stop and remember the price earlier generations had paid for this. Most of them hardly realised the privations of their parents, and the struggle that had taken place to ensure that they were not equally deprived. What began as the most radical-sounding generation for half a century turned into a random collection of youthful style gurus, sharp-toothed entrepreneurs and management consultants who believed revolution meant new ways of selling things; and Thatcherites, who thought freedom meant free markets, not free people. At last it found its most complete expression in New Labour, which had no idea what either revolution or freedom meant, but rather liked the sound of the words. While the philosophy of the sixties seemed progressive at the time, the baby boomers we remember are not the political reformers, but the millionaires. In What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do for Us? Francis Beckett argues that the children of the '60s betrayed the generations that came before and after, and that the true legacy of the swinging decade is ashes.






What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? by Francis Beckett

Fiona Millar wonders if perhaps it's time for the 60s generation to fade from view

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010...beckett-review

[El Mayimbe]

Hit Men by Fredric Dannen

[OneMasterMixer]

A young American couple is murdered while vacationing in Europe. The young woman’s father Jack Kanon, a New York City police investigator travels to Europe to hunt down the murderer. Other young couples in, France, Germany, Denmark and Sweden have since then been killed and the evidence points in the same direction. Kanon joins up with Scandinavian journalist Dessie Larsson to find the murderer. Kanon and Larsson must work against time since every murder is preceded by a postcard to a regional daily.

[kara]

just bought and the 1st chapter is like whoa

[OneMasterMixer]

A new edition of the first novel by the legendary musician and Godfather of Rap, a 1970s Harlem noir tale



Digging the rhythms of the street, where the biggest deal life has to offer is getting high, this hip, fast-moving thriller relates the strange story of the murder of a teenage boy called John Lee. The story is told in the words of four men who knew him when he was just another kid working after school, hanging out, waiting for something to happen. Just who did kill John Lee and why?


A very accomplished first novel which the author wrote while still at college. Four distinct narratives bound up with a murder in an area of New York full of racial, class, political and generation tense.

[Martin Red]

Chicago pimp and hustler-turned writer who has had a great influence on black culture in the US ...

Born Robert Beck, Iceberg Slim was a smart kid 'poisoned by the street', who was sent to prison during his second year at University for selling bootleg liquor and pimping. It was here he adopted the name Iceberg Slim, because "the best pimps keep a steely lid on their emotions, and I was one of the iciest."

Throughout the forties and fifties, Slim effectively ruled Chicago, with 'stables' of girls earning for him. He became addicted to cocaine and heroin, but after a third stretch of prison he cleaned up, moved to L.A. and became a writer. His seven books describe the rage in which the black man has been said to live, with particular focus on sex and violence. Iceberg Slim is one of the key influences on 80s and 90s rap stars, especially Ice-T who named himself after his idol.

Fact file
Name: Robert Beck

Date of birth: 1918 (d. 1992)

Place of birth: Chicago

Similar Authors: Donald Goines, Herbert Simmons, Clarence Cooper






Synopsis
The ultimate anti-hero, Iceberg Slim, takes you into the secret inner world of the pimp, and the smells, the sounds, the fears and petty triumphs of his world. A legendary figure of the Chicago underworld, this is his story: from defending his mother against the evil men she brought into their lives, to becoming a giant of the streets. A seething tale of brutality, cunning and greed, "Pimp" is a harrowing portrait of life on the wrong side of the tracks, and a rich warning from a true survivor.

[ngeso]

Finished Roth's Nemesis last night. Didn't really like it that much (i.e. to me one of the lesser Roths).

Am now going to maybe throw in Richard Yates' Cold Spring Harbor over the weekend, before doing either Franzen's Freedom or Rachman's Imperfectionists.

Also on my nightstand: Oscar Niemeyer's memoirs The Curves of Time and Daphne du Maurier's Vanishing Cornwall.

...

[ngeso]

...and having a great time with Cold Spring Harbour. I didn't know about Yates until I saw Revolutionary Road, so I'm looking forward to reading his other work as well. He's like Updike, but less funny and more startling.

...

[John Ep]

...and having a great time with Cold Spring Harbour. I didn't know about Yates until I saw Revolutionary Road, so I'm looking forward to reading his other work as well. He's like Updike, but less funny and more startling.

...

Speaking of Updike, i'm reading "Rabbit is Rich" now, and really loving it. contains the best line in the history of American literature when Rabbit meditates, "Cunt would be a good flavor of ice cream." I don't want this novel to end.

If Yates is like Updike, he's on deck....thanks!

[kara]

Black, White and Jewish by Rebecca Walker

and

One Day by David Nicholls

[ngeso]

Speaking of Updike, i'm reading "Rabbit is Rich" now, and really loving it. contains the best line in the history of American literature when Rabbit meditates, "Cunt would be a good flavor of ice cream." I don't want this novel to end.

If Yates is like Updike, he's on deck....thanks!

I think Yates is not as ribald as Updike. With Updike I usually enjoy the raunchy bits in a post-AIDS wistful, nostalgia kind of way; his protagonists (like Roth's) are always the most likable with their pants down. With Yates (off the back of my one-book experience) it seems to be more in-your-face, nonchalant taboo-breaking with bad endings. Yates is (probably) more depressing than all his contemporaries. That said, Yates portrayal of post-war suburban cars & girls America is fascinating. If you dig 'Mad Men', you're going to like Yates.

Re Updike, I've had the Everyman's Library Rabbit Angstrom edition sitting on my desk for close to a year now. I'm still contemplating how to tackle that 1500+ page read. In the meantime I've started into Freedom...so far not bad.

[John Ep]

[QUOTE=ngeso;1471701]I

Re Updike, I've had the Everyman's Library Rabbit Angstrom edition sitting on my desk for close to a year now. I'm still contemplating how to tackle that 1500+ page read. In the meantime I've started into Freedom...so far not bad. (Quote)

You can just read one novel at a time, starting w/ Rabbit Run, then take a break. But I warn you, they are hard to put down. Updike is a freak, I had know idea.

I'm on the last few pages of Rabbit is Rich and am dreading finishing it....

[Devant]

ganked the Communist Manifesto from my girl's place for desk reading at work today.

[kara]

ganked the Communist Manifesto from my girl's place for desk reading at work today.

if i saw someone reading that at work, i'd be scared...

[ngeso]

Currently immersed in roaring twenties culture, so I'm reading Nancy Mitford, F. Scott Fitzgerald and works on British colonial history, and listening to loads of Duke Ellington.

...

[kara]

Currently immersed in roaring twenties culture, so I'm reading Nancy Mitford, F. Scott Fitzgerald and works on British colonial history, and listening to loads of Duke Ellington.

...

LIke biograhies? WHo's nancy Mitford??

[ngeso]

LIke biograhies? WHo's nancy Mitford??

Nancy Mitford wrote The Pursuit of Love and Love In A Cold Climate. I've got them in an omnibus edition, and I want to perhaps get into it sometime this weekend, depending on whether I finish Scott's Tender Is The Night or not. During the week I raced through The Bolter, the biography of Idina Sackville, a between-wars nymphomanic hedonist flapper, an icon of scandal, and one of the infamous "Happy Valley" set.

[kara]

Nancy Mitford wrote The Pursuit of Love and Love In A Cold Climate. I've got them in an omnibus edition, and I want to perhaps get into it sometime this weekend, depending on whether I finish Scott's Tender Is The Night or not. During the week I raced through The Bolter, the biography of Idina Sackville, a between-wars nymphomanic hedonist flapper, an icon of scandal, and one of the infamous "Happy Valley" set.

wolw I haven't heard of any of these people or works, thanks for sharing the information/wealth... going to look into all of that!~