Ladies and gentlemen,

Lolita is really hard to read for me. It has many words I do not understand and it is an emotionally taxing endeavor. I'm only like 50 pages in, too. I want to finish it so I can read and bump the thread. But what the heck here.

Also, did the book club add a book since then or is it on hold?

I just picked up Bruce Feiler's "Abraham" and Jacob Needleman's "Lost Christianity" in the secondhand bookstore today.

So far Feilier's book is a rather charming read. The Boston Globe calls it "exquisitely written" and it is. Very reader friendly and interested in explaining Abraham's importance as a shared ancestor of the big 3 monotheistic religions. I believe it was a bestseller. I like the intro where he gives a small description of the city of Jerusalem. It gave me a small feeling for the city I never had before.
http://www.brucefeiler.com/about/index.html
slideshow: http://www.brucefeiler.com/resources/multi_slide.html

Jacob Needleman's book is his personal search for the essence of Christianity which he thinks has been obscured over the centuries. So far though only the introduction has been personal. I think his philosophy background kind of keeps him from getting too personal. He's a philosphy professor at San Francisco State University and before that studied philosophy at Harvard, Yale and the University of Freiburg, Germany. Part of his search involves him exploring the early contemplative history of Christianity.
http://www.jacobneedleman.com/index.htm

Blindsight (and other watts books) are available online for free and with (afaik) the authors permission.

http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

I read starfish back in the day and recall thinking it was ok but nothing special.

I will give this a shot (it is free afterall) but I am slightly concerned by the crews composition. I realize that Watts gives us a motley crew in order to provide insight into the (post)human condition from a variety of angles but I'm guessing that credibility is going to be strained, especially in a 'hard sf' novel.

Issue from the first page : one of the crew members apparently had 1/2 of his brain removed to combat epilepsy. I don't know yet what year this is set in, but honestly, this seems like a joke to me on par with BSG having gravity generators and jump drives but firstaid is 20th century lite and consists of gauze and IVs (heh sorry Dom).

Anyway, into the fray.

all the crew members have different "modifications" that make perfect sense for the story as well as being quite likely in the near future...i'd be interested to hear what you think of it after you've read the book.

I love this genre. I read Helter Skelter a few years ago, and am currently reading The Devil in the White City. I'm about halfway through it, and it's just awesome to watch everything develop.

If anyone could recommend me some titles based on the information i've given, I would really appreciate that.

Helter Skelter was definitely a fascinating read.

Mike, there was an incredible book on serial killer Richard Ramirez that I read, but I can remember the cover, not the title. I may dig through Amazon and find it. Really super chilling and well done.

How about Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Its a true story about a famous crime and it was also considered by some to be the novel of the decade when he wrote it.

Always wanted to read that one but never have yet. One thing for sure is that Capote was a hell of a good writer though.

At some point, read The Family, by Ed Sanders. It's a more detailed look at Manson and his followers, written from a more human and less legalistic perspective. It doesn't jump to the easy conclusions Helter Skelter did. Both books are very good, though.

Great book. Also, The Executioner's Song, by Norman Mailer, about Gary Gilmore. All books of this stripe owe a debt to In Cold Blood, though.

If it was Philip Carlos' book The Night Stalker, that was a prety disturbing read. Not just about his crimes, but the personality cult that grew up around him.

Splendour, have you read any John Shelby Spong or Katherine Armstrong?

Yeah that was it. Disturbing for sure. The details of how Ramirez became a cult figure during and after the trial disturbed me quite a bit. I found some of the trial's hangers-on sounding about as sick as Ramirez himself. And in general the detail about Ramirez's past and life was really really good.

William Shatner's 'Star Trek Movie Memories' for the third time. It's pulp, but it's fun.

If people like this sort of stuff they should read Alfred W. Crosby: "Ecological Imperialism - The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900"

Its not that long and its a pretty easy / well written read.

The Shoemaker
I read this a long time ago and remember it made me very unhappy it shows abuse leading to madness and murder and worse still he makes his child an accomplice to his murders The Shoemaker

And another endorsement of In cold blood

I read The Shoemaker way back when. Good stuff.

Later questioned by some psychologists as being a sort of psychological apologetics for bad behavior and possibly somewhat fictional or purposefully mistold, but it's hard to tell. Definitely a sad story.

World war Z
American Gods
The Book of Secrets-OSHO

To jump on the serial killer/true crime bandwagon, I'm a third of the way through Mindhunter by John Douglas now and it's been ok so far. It's a semi-autobiography with serial killer tidbits added in about the guy who pioneered the FBI serial crime unit. He was also the inspiration for the FBI agent in Silence of the Lambs (not the girl, the older guy). I may check out The Night Stalker after I've finished this, Serial Killers by Vronsky, The Night Gardener by Pelecanos and Down and Out in Paris and London by Orwell.

That's a good read

Also The Jigsaw Man by Paul Britton about an English Pyschiatrist helping in real life British cases is pretty great and in the same arena

Includes cases like the sad death of the little boy James Bulger at the hands of two lads

You can get it second hand on Amazon for about a buck fifty

I fully support this. It was my introduction to Capote. It's quite gripping.

Edit to add: After laboring through FDR and the New Deal for a few weeks, I decided I didn't care anymore and tossed it to the side. Since then I read some book a friend let me borrow called Unmasking the Cult. It was a pretty good logical treatise of what defines a cult, how they operate, and what makes them so attractive. The way it was written reminds me kind of math proofs in that one step follows logically into the next until you have this unified picture of cult-dom. Really my only problem with this book was that it was written with the overlying belief that there is a God, and that cults are in some way separated from him (as opposed to traditional churches who are not). I don't have a problem with the belief, I just think that if you are trying to write a logical treatise on cults, that it is kind of shaky ground to start off on.

I also spent the last three days reading Patriot Games. I thought it was entertaining. Really entertaining.

Last night I started Centennial by Michener. I've liked all his other books I've read (Space, Hawaii, Texas & South Africa) so I'm sure I will enjoy it as well.

am reading HOH volume 1

What was the "Twilight of American Culture" about diddy? Any good?

About to read a bunch of books for an English course at uni:
Crying of Lot 49, Fight Club (already read) and Trainspotting

Centennial is very good if you can get past the first 100 pages or so of geology lessons. Michener really knows how to try a reader's patience.