Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[Don Coyote]

Jousts and Tournaments: Charny and the Rules for Chivalric Sport in Fourteenth Century France Steven Muhlberger

This is what I get for wandering around in the post library while my Kindle downloads all the free books I had 'purchased' this week.

[Reginald Ret]

I'm re-reading  Olympos by Dan Simmons.
Its the sequal to Illium and both books are crammed full of references to pretty much all the great literary works(The work of Homer, Shakespeare, Proust to name a few) and has a scarily high information density. Also, lots of quantum, timetravel and creatures from other dimensions done in proper form.
I can best describe it as High Sci-Fi.

[Cain]

Finished Pandemonium.  Wasn't bad, especially for a first novel, but I did guess the outline of the plot about a quarter of the way through.  This could just be down to obsessive reading of TV Tropes, though.

Now reading Kraken by China Mieville, who I've been meaning to read for forever but have only just got around to yesterday.  Kraken is pretty good.  The start is fairly routine, the main character a curator at the Natural History Museum specializing in molluscs, giving a tour.  But then, a fully preserved giant squid  - Architeuthis dux - is somehow stolen from the museum.  And then Scotland Yard's Fundamentalist and Sect Related Crime Unit, are put on the case....

[Don Coyote]

ZOMBIE SQUID!!!!!!!!!!!

[Sister_Gothique]

Machiavelli-The Prince

[Jasper]

I just got my hands on a copy of John Dies At The End.  Goanna read it soon!

[Placid Dingo]

Machiavelli-The Prince

One of the most brain popping books I've read, this.

Also, now reading Thomas Payne's 'The American Crisis'. Blah blah, England sucks, blah blah America wants peace.

[Cain]

I think his Discourses on Livy are better than The Prince.  Remember, the latter is a satire of Vatican claims to godliness masquerading as a job application, and the former he had far greater lattitude on, and deals with subjects which fall outside the remit of acquiring and controlling absolute princely states.

[Placid Dingo]

I think his Discourses on Livy are better than The Prince.  Remember, the latter is a satire of Vatican claims to godliness masquerading as a job application, and the former he had far greater lattitude on, and deals with subjects which fall outside the remit of acquiring and controlling absolute princely states.

I've heard the idea before that it's a parody, which had occoured to me at points. I'll hunt down those suggestions if i ever feel I'm making a dent on my reading list. Which I'm not.

[Cain]

Machiavelli was most noted as a satirist in his own time, with several plays of his taking direct aim at the hypocrisy of the Church, which was at the time threatening to make even the Avignon Papacy look like a cleanly run charity by comparison (Alexander VI sold cardinal roles in order to finance Cesare Borgia's wars of expansion in central Italy, for example).  Of course, like all the best satires, it works because it makes so much use of the truth.

[Brotep]

Fearful Symmetry - A Study of William Blake, by Northrop Frye

[Juana]

Rereading Making Money by Terry Pratchett

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Something about an apocalypse that Dok gave me.

[Doktor Howl]

Something about an apocalypse that Dok gave me.

WELL, IT'S ABOUT TIME!

[Freeky]

Gonna start reading 101 Arabian nights fairly soon, if I can find my copy.