halfcreek @ 89

If you want an engaging, thoughtful, intriguing, well-written page turner give Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon a try. Set in Barcelona in the 1940s, has a historical flavor, but is mostly a wonderful tale. I have recommended it to 20 people and all have loved it.

I loved this book too!

When I read for fun, I read to escape this dark world and go visit someone else’s(*g*) I just finished Donna Leon’s latest police procedural about Comissario Brunetti’s latest crime to solve in his gorgeous city, Venice. (Through a Glass Darkly). Loved it, as usual. Wonderful characters (human and city). Anything by Henning Mankel is also great. I’ve started rereading Dorothy Dunnet’s Lymond Chronicles…incredible historical fiction about Scotland and the world in the 15th century. And, I’m reading anything I can find about fused glass, my latest addiction.

Thanks, Martha for the tip on Dunnett. They will be under the tree for my wife.

Which translation of Pamuk’s The Black Book? I’m reading that new one, only to find that it seems a very different book than the book that i read before. It’s a strange sensation. I’m used to alternate translations from older works, but with Pamuk, it feels like a trick of a dream.

Currently reading the Fagles translation of the Aeneid, Ishamel Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, and Ismail Kadare’s Agamemnon’s Daughter. I bought the new Pynchon, but feel no desire to read it now. (Did the same thing with McCarthy’s The Road.) Just re-read the TPs of the Grant Morrison run on Doom Patrol.

Annals of the Former World by John McPhee: a collection of four works by my favorite essayist that takes on a trip across the continent, and into “deep geologic time”. This book isn’t just about geology (which would be more than enough), but the geologists and, surprisingly, their words. Amazing read — I’m 3/4 of the way through and doling it out in small sips to make it last.

Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape by Brian Hayes: Ever read a book you really, really wish you had written? This is one of those reads for me. One of my favorite memories as a child was my father taking me and my friends on a series of factory tours — the Ford assembly line in Fremont, the C & H Sugar factory in Crockett, the shipyards in Richmond, the sewage processing plant in Oakland. I have always been an urban tourist, and have taken my kids (almost from birth) to every port, railroad, refinery, and construction site in the area. (Of course, it didn’t hurt that driving was their only soporific!) Infrastructure is exactly what the title promises — a wonderfully illustrated guide to the industrial wilds in the style of a nature guide.

The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose: could be described as a tour of theoretical physics for the motivated/advanced layperson. I’m only a few chapters into this 1000pg. table thumper, but like what I’ve seen so far. This book seems to focus on the foundations of theoretical physics, and especially the links between math & physics. My favorite part so far — it doesn’t dumb down the math or science, yet never goes into pros-only territory. (This level works for me — I have a couple of years of graduate astrophysics in my past, and my math is metaphorically that old Ford pickup in the backyard…) It’s somewhat dense prose, but rich with content.

The Crimson and the White was wonderful, bookswise, and Anansi Boys too.

Nonfiction: The Great War for Civilisation – The Conquest of the Middle East, by Robert Fisk
I picked this up as a gift for a brother-in-law, and have dived into it. There’s a very good review of it in The New York Review of books which got me interested in the book. Fisk is a long time correspondent, spent about thirty years in the Middle East, met Osama bin Laden a few times; Fisk’s a very eloquent and engaging writer.