Time for a new thread (to meet alternaut's plaint).

I'm currently reading THE PAGAN CHRIST (2004) by Tom Harpur (Anglican priest and columnist for the Toronto Star). Immediately put me in mind of Immanuel Velikovsky's work, especially OEDIPUS AND AKHNATON (1960). Fascinating stuff. Give it (all) a read. If anyone wants, I can post a Velikovsky bibliography.

Ain't nobody read in the summertime?! Or just nothing you're willing to admit to? Ooooh, rampant speculation.

Y'all might wanna try out the following:

Rescue Ink : how ten guys saved countless dogs and cats, twelve horses, five pigs, one duck and a few turtles (Rescue Ink).

Far Out : A Space-Time Chronicle (Michael Benson). Unbelievably beautiful photography of the universe; and the test is superb.

In the President's Secret Service : Behind the scenes with agents in the line of fire and the presidents they protect (Ronald Kessler). Bet there's stuff in here you didn't know about many presidents (and their families) and about the workings of the Secret Service.

Pandora's Seed : The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization (Spencer Wells). This could turn you into a hunter-gatherer, as could:

The Omnivore's Dilemma (Michael Pollan).

Everybody's reading. It's just that no one is writing.

In addition to my normal assortment of mysteries (John Lescroart, Michael Connelly, et al), I've lately read a couple of books by William Alexander: 52 Loaves and The $64 Tomato, nominally about my interests in bread-baking and vegetable gardening, respectively, but really about the human comedy and how each one of us is a contributor thereto. Highly recommended.

I guess you're right....everybody's too busy reading to write.

My preference has always been biographical works although summer is not the greatest reading time for me. I have forest on two sides so a lot of effort is spent in the annual 'beat it back before it takes over' campaign.

However I do have two on the go - Philip Norman's John Lennon:The Life and, waiting in the wings, Robert Hughes' Goya. Both have a level of detail that would appeal to anyone who likes biographies.

ryck

I'll start making a list for when summer starts in about 5 months' time. (I am tired and grumpy and have the flu - it's winter here!)

I just finished Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England (very exhaustive) and am now reading South of Broad by Pat Conroy (he's done better), and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsen (I'm only 30 pages in, but I'm not impressed).

I haven't had a lot of time for reading lately. I have so many projects going on right now, I'm putting up a new whiteboard just to keep track of all of them! Tow of those projects actually involve writing books; I've been stalled for a long time on the book about polyamory I'm writing, and I've also started tossing around the notion of writing an illustrated humor book with an artist friend of mine called Do-It-Yourself Taxidermy of Faeries, Leprechauns, and Other Fey Folk.

The two books that are currently sitting in my neglected to-read pile are The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Taleb. The latter is a book about how our brains, hard-wired by adaptation to seek patterns even where none exist, attempt to impose order onto chaotic events and so mislead us about the amount of chaos and disorder in everything from weather patterns to politics. It was given to me by a rather lovely young lady I met and played with at a BDSM convention a few months back, who is also the artist that I plan to start working on the humor book with (and who has subsequently started dating one of my girlfriends, which will probably make it into the book on polyamory)...itself a rather nice illustration of randomness and chaos, I think.

I'll limit my reading list to the 'distracting' items, which mostly involve SciFi. The season doesn't matter much to me, as I continually pick up books that strike my fancy (about 30-40 right now) and go through them by spur of the moment selection after finishing each one.

The last couple of months' list reads (newest on top):

The City & The City - China Miéville
Wireless - Charles Stross
The Lords of the Sea - John R. Hale
Northworld Trilogy - David Drake
House of Suns - Alistair Reynolds
Bitter Angels - C.L. Anderson
Conspirator - C.J. Cherryh
Ender in Exile - Orson Scott Card
Temporal Void - Peter F. Hamilton
The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross
Fool's Experiment - Edward M. Lerner
Regenesis - C.J. Cherryh

I often find myself reading several books at a time, one 'main' book and one or two others that I read a chapter or two of before returning to my primary read. Exclusive 'chapter nibbles' currently include:

What If? - Robert Cowley
The Scientists - John Gribbin

Despite this rather long list, I only manage to read after going to bed at night, which frequently is less than 30 minutes, if that, plus whatever irregular times I wake up at night.

I generally have several books going at the same time. Recently most of my fiction titles have been either on the Kindle app on the iPad, the iBook app on my iPhone, or they are audio books on the iPhone or iPod I read/listen to in the car or at the gym. I tend to read fiction series. My current fiction titles are:

• The Lost Fleet series by John G. Hemry (a.k.a. Jack Campbell) [iBook on the iPhone]
• The Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell [audio book on the iPhone]
• Robert Jordan's The Gethering Storm by Brandon Sanderson [audio book on the iPod in my car]
• Alexander Kent's Richard Bolitho series [the Kindle app on the iPad]

For whatever reason, non-fiction titles are hard copy. Probably because it is easier to have three or four hard copy books open on my desk ready to be picked up than it is to pull out the electronic reader device and call up the book. At the moment I have the following open and being read/used:

• The Filemaker Bento Book [I have used Bento for years, but I finally decided to get serious with a woodworking projects database and have discovered how powerful Bento really is]
• Scribus Manual [a new project for me]
• Calvin by Bruce Gordon
• Ellsworth on Woodturning
• Wood Identification and Use by Terry Porter
• Earl Scruggs and the Five String Banjo
• Instructions In Faith (1537) by John Calvin

As I look over these lists, I realize how much they reflect how catholic my interests are. (Please note that is little "c" and not big "C" catholic.) Needless to say I don't "read" all of these every day and I am a bit like Alternaut in the time I have to dedicate to reading fiction each day; maybe 30 to 45 minutes. Listening to the audio books depends on how much time I spend in travel each day but that can easily add up to an hour or more; or even several hours on a cross-country trip. The non-fiction books are all read on an" as needed basis and may total anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 hours on any given day.

> Ender in Exile - Orson Scott Card

How is the new Ender book?

Even though assembled 'Philistines' – no offense intended – haven't requested it, I'm supplying it anyway.

IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY READING LIST

WORLDS IN COLLISION.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co, 1950.

AGES IN CHAOS, VOLUME 1: FROM EXODUS TO KING AKHNATON.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co, 1952.

EARTH IN UPHEAVAL.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co, 1955.

OEDIPUS AND AKHNATION: MYTH AND HISTORY.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co, 1960.
ISBN: 0-385-00529-6

PEOPLES OF THE SEA: THE CONCLUDING VOLUME OF THE AGES IN CHAOS SERIES.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co, 1977.
ISBN: 0-385-03389-3

RAMSES II AND HIS TIME: A VOLUME IN THE AGES IN CHAOS SERIES.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co, 1978.
ISBN: 0-385-03394-X

MANKIND IN AMNESIA.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co, 1982.
ISBN: 0-385-03393-1

STARGAZERS AND GRAVEDIGGERS: MEMOIRS TO WORLDS IN COLLISION.
New York: William Morrow and Co, 1983.
ISBN: 0-688-01545-X

3 other books were in preparation (1983), but never saw the light of day:

BEFORE THE DAY BREAKS
THE DARK AGES OF GREECE
THE TEST OF TIME

Related works:

Ransom CJ. THE AGE OF VELIKOVSKY. New York: Delta [Dell], 1978 [1976].
ISBN: 0-440-50323-X

Kuhn TS. THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS.
Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1970.

Tasty, fits right in.

he can write 'em, can't he!

After The God Delusion you might want to give the following a boo:

God : The Failed Hypothesis (Victor J. Stenger)

God is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens)

I have both God : The Failed Hypothesis and God is Not Great on my Amazon reading list (Christopher Hitchens is absolutely wonderful), but I have no idea when I'll actually be able to get 'round to ordering them, much less reading them. Oh, to have that many hours in a day...

Are you familiar with Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things? I met him at DragonCon a couple years back and I've always been impressed with his razor-sharp intellect and his ability to write. He's a fascinating guy, and one of my personal heroes.

I'll have to check it out. Merci.

Clearly, loungers are taking their summer reading seriously (or are trapped in their mesh hammocks). There hasn't been a new post here (in the Lounge) for 5 days!