http://www.amazon.com/Iris-Murdoch-P.../dp/0393048756


At present I'm fully engrossed in this biography of Iris Murdoch "A Life" A fascinating woman.

Crime by Irvine Welsh

The plot moves back and forth between the past and it's ghosts to the present day and the pressing matter of saving a child from a gang of molesters. The characters were so vivid and the plot was paced such that I found I could not put the book down until I finished it.

Behaving Like Adults by Anna Maxted

Total chick lit but such a good read! Perfect for the tram on the way to and from work. First book of hers i have read but it was very well done. She took a serious topic and was able to still keep it funny and relatable.

I just finished "Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles" by Don Felder.

I have the other side of the story - "To the Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles" on my night table waiting to be picked up, but I don't know if I have the energy to read it right now. So much negativity

I will definetily look and listen to "Hell Freezes over" with different eyes after reading the book.

Alan Kardec's Book of Spirits.....

Just finished Switch and started Made to Stick

After I finish this I need to find the next batch of books.

The War for Late Night by Bill Carter

Gerald Weinberg's "Perfect Software and other illusions about testing" . I find it quite entertaining.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It's weird. And long.

Henning Mankell's 'Faceless Killers'. Just finished Australian author Tim Winton's excellent 'The Turning' and Parsua Bashi's 'Nylon Road' (similar to Persepolis but not as charming).

Glen Cook - Black company...
again.

And wrong.

"Caress from a Bear's Paw", a self-published novel by some dodgy Greek Cypriot who has pencilled in extra hair in his photo on the back cover...

Probably the worst book I have ever read, even taking Dan Brown's "work" into account - and absolutely wonderful!

Any book featuring an "eminent Byzantinologist" as a masculine action hero has got to be worth reading, no?

(If you were at the ploughman's lunch at Basel, this is the book you would have seen me arguing with Wollishofener over... )

"Lost in the Funhouse" by John Barth - Postmodernism, hard to swollow, and "Thinks" by David Lodge - hilarious.

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas


It won the Commonwealth Prize, but it's hard to figure out why. Lots of "f-words".

It's supposed to be a panorama of the society today - in Australia, but I guess everywhere else too.

"Playing for Pizza" by John Grisham.

Freakonomics by Levitt&Dubner.

An excellent read, very interesting.

As usual, the unfinished book pile is overflowing.

-Misschien wisten zij alles (a collection of Dutch short stories by Toon Tellegen) - Amazing! but in Dutch.

-The burnt book: Reading the Talmud, by Marc-Alain Ouaknin. This book is alternately killing my head and becoming my world. What is a book? What is an idea? What is learning?

-A Latin textbook. Let me tell you, doing Latin grammar exercises right before you fall asleep is a 100% guarantee for *weird* dreams.

I'm a latecomer to a lot of classics and about halfway through Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

I was a couple hundred pages into Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver but left it at home when I went to the UK for a few days and got C&P for free on the Kindle.

Warning for potential readers of Crime and Punishment on the Kindle: I was really enjoying it until I looked at the list of characters (Kindle has it, not sure about dead tree version) to remind myself of somebody after a few busy weeks of not reading and it contained a huge spoiler. As such I know of something significant that happens towards the end and it is making the experience rather more hollow than it was previously.

Very interesting book though

"Something Sensational to Read on the Train" - by Gyles Brandreth

I always thought he was a trivial fool.....but what a life he has lived and its a well written diary.

And on the subject of celebrity books - Spilling the Beans by Clarissa Dickson Wright (one of the Two Fat Ladies) is quite an astonishing read. What a girl SHE was in her day! The story of her being sh@gged behind the Speakers Chair in the Houses of Parliament is quite an eye opener. Definitely one for the Christmas stocking