Myself: rereading some Nero Wolfe stories.

I couldn't find the exact essay where I read this (it was a good two years ago), but I was able to find this link you might find intersting about Steyn's views on "Club Gitmo". Gives you a feel for what he thinks about the lavish treatment of prisoners.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1711552/posts

But I do agree that oftentimes certain quotes can be taken out of context, and I am probably as guilty of it as anyone else.

I just finished reading Bitter Chocolate and have started on The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway.

Bitter Chocolate was OK. It might have been better if I was more in the mood to read about all of the injustices of big corporations, because it talks about that a lot. It is an interesting read and it is informative so I hate to be too critical of it. I really believe I just wasn't in the mood to read that type of book when I did.

I've only read two of the Hemingway short stories so far, but like them. The first one "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" was excellent, whereas the second one "The Capital of the World" was only so so. The next story is "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and I am looking forward to completing it. This is my first short story anthology and I think I will enjoy it a lot. Based on recommendations in this thread I have Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories on my night stand.

You're in for some real treats.

I wrote a review of "The Black Swan" by Nassim Taleb in the Books and Pubs forum.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/forumdisplay.php?f=33

Cliff Notes: Wowzers, what a ****ing o-hole!

Years ago, I read a ton of those. Good fun.

I finished Monster Island. This book was ridiculously goofy. The narrative writing was enough to keep me interested. However, the actually things going on in the story are beyond your typical monster novel. It's a monster farce book. There are telepathic zombies and mummies that get reanimated,too. Way too much. I gave it 2.5/5* just because it was worth finishing for the half of the narrative that wasn't entirely silly.

I'll be starting either Camus's The Stranger, Scott Smith's A Simple Plan, or continuing reading Schoonmaker's Your Worst Poker Enemy book.

I take it your worst poker enemy was recently named Time magazine's Person of the Year.

2004 or 2006 imo.

I just read Freakonomics. I thought it was a good, light read.

This one, I have picked.

Just finished reading "The Filth" a comic written by Grant Morrison and Chris Weston. The comic was extremely weird. It reminded me of movies done by David Lynch. I wouldn't recommend the comic, but I read it because the author is one of the most renowned writers in comics (it seems the lists of favorite writer have him, Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman).

I am also reading "The Good War" by Studs Terkel and I am reading a couple of math books ("Elements of Algebraic Topology" by Munkres, "Topology" by Munkres, "Foundations of differentiable manifolds and Lie groups" by Frank Warner, among others).

The Ruins was a pretty good book, haven't been out to see the movie yet. Its pretty chilling and there are plenty of twists. Even though it is a book its quite easy to visualize the events and they can be quite graphic in nature.

fraser, thanks for the words. I'll probably be starting Simple Plan next (hopefully later tonight) and then going into The Ruins.

I just finished The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy. A really really excellent book (I just saw that there was a movie made in the 1980s, anybody see it?). The book is about a Cadet's journey through a strict military institue where he is directed to help the first black student in the rural south. I highly recommend this book:



I also finished

And the sequel, Ghengis: Lords of the bow. Both are great historical fictions based on the life of Ghengis Khan. The author's portrayal of the warlord is very clear and fascinating. I really enjoyed these three novels.

I recently picked up 'Dixieland Delight', a football book following a football season in the SEC. Looked like a fun book so whatever. I'm thinking about picking up the Ruins as well as ordering other Conroy books (perhaps the Prince of Tides) as well.

Orange,

Have you read the Julius Caesar series by Iggulden? Also pretty good.

The Brute,

No I havent. I really enjoyed this series though so I'll have to check it out. I took a Rome class earlier last year though and loved it.

I actually thought the Caesar series was a little bit better. Although I read it first, so my expectations might have inflated. If you want another good historical fiction book, I'd recommend Gates of Fire. It is about the Spartan war, but is much better than the movie 300.

Good choice. My favourite book of all time.

Just started reading Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) last night.

Labarde, please let me know how that turns out for you. I've been contemplating reading that for awhile now but I've stayed away for fear of it being "boring."

Kitaristi, I like this a lot (I have one chapter left) but I don't think I've let it fully soak in yet. It seems deceptively deep in a lot of ways. I really wanna reread it at some point.

The beginning was so excruciatingly boring I couldn't continue.

Well I'm gonna soldier through and report back with how it turns out.

fight club. the book

I finished my Sophie Kinsella book the other day and now I'm half way thru Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now". Also about 60 pages into "Jews, God and History" a fascinating read. There's so much ancient history that seems to have been lost in time in this book. He relates how the ancient countries of Israel and Judah stood up to two of the biggest empires in the world each as tiny countries and almost won against insuperable odds.