I've been cramming in a lotta books over the last few months (Borders FTW):

Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace (epic)
Hadji Murad
The Kingdom of God is Within You (finished yesterday. profound, in my view - one can see how it affected Ghandi)

CS Lewis
Mere Christianity
The Screwtape Letters
The Problem of Pain
The Four Loves
The Great Divorce
Surprised by Joy

Paulo Coelho
The Alchemist
The Valkyries
The Fifth Mountain
Eleven Minutes
Veronika Decides to Die
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Various
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (David Hume)
The Case Against Christianity (Michael Martin) [crap, albeit logically so]
The Case For a Creator (Lee Strobel) [complete crap]
The Sikh Faith (Gurbakhsh Singh)
Miyamoto Musashi (Eiji Yoshikawa)
The Husband (Dean Koontz)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)

Next up on the bookshelf:
Candide (Voltaire)
The Everlasting Man (GK Chesterton)

Legend!!! So you have all the series of podcasts, and all the xfm stuff?

Books I can remember in the last year:

Paladin of Souls (currently "reading")
Curse of Chalion
Cetaganda
Sally Lockhart trilogoy
The Warrior's Apprentice
The Vor Game
Lyra's Oxford
His Dark Material's trilogoy
Bartimaeus trilogy
Kingdoms of Elves and Reaches (1, 2 & 3)
Xenocide
Dune
Dragonvarld trilogy
Magyk
Angels and Demons
Eldest

and, a few others that I can't remember.

Really, I've not read any of them - instead I listen to the audiobook versions as I try to numb myself commuting to and from work. The only book I am actually reading is "flyte" and it's taking ages since I'm too lazy to turn the pages!

My mission for 2007 is to make a serious dent in the past Hugo award winners, some of which I've read and really enjoyed.

Books I am reading/have read lately:

Dictators by Richard Overy - a comparative and operational history of the Stalin and Hitler regimes

Russia's War by Richard Overy (this guy is seriously one of the best contemporary historians)

The War for Children's Minds: Liberal Values and Why We Should Defend Them by Stephen Law

The Roaring Nineties by Joseph Stiglitz

Fatherland by Robert Harris (I normally hate contemporary fiction with a passion but this is just a cracking read)

just finished George Martin - A Clash of Kings

in the middle of all of the following:
re-re-re-re-reading Song of Ice and fire series (just re-re-re bought them all to stock my new bookshelf in UK)..as enjoyable the 4th time through as the first, currently midway through Storm of swords

re-re-reading Nights Dawn trilogy (peter f hamilton): see above...still a good read despite the terrrible ending of the series..just about to re-begin the Naked God

re-reading : Pandora's Star / Judas unchained , also by Peter f Hamilton..a much better series IMHO..very entertaining (at beginning of Pandora's star again..cool)

Angry White Pyjamas , Robert Twigger...a bio-story about a British guy living in Tokyo who does the Tokyo riot police Aikido course..not bad..pretty funny..

but most importantly!..reading for the first time, Naomi Novaks : Temeraire books!...so much fun!, shame they are so tiny :( ..read Temeraire in 2 days :( .. still 2 others to go../rubs hands ...if anyone is intersted in an alternative hostory Napolionic series with an Air Force (Dragons) then you should read this..very cool so far ..light entertainment for sure, but fun all the same

I've been trying to buy a copy of this for a while now and it's hard to get my mitts on. I blame you.

If you're interested in Lewis then I also suggest A Grief Observed, which was not listed in your post.

Just finished:
Emperor: Gates of Rome - Conn Iggulden
Dancing Girls - Margaret Atwood
Flights of the Mind - Can't remember who
WinterSmith - U Know Who
Blink - Malcolm Gladwell

Reading:
Hitler's Generals - Correlli Barnett
The Toyminator - Robert Rankin

Upcoming:
Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Nietzsche
Nightseer - Laurell K Hamilton

I hope they serve beer in hell - Tucker Max

Damn right mate :)

Just listened to their xmas special too _b

Passion is not a bad thing. Being passionate about ignorance and stupidity is and bad thing.

yeah, but will he 'convert' many of the religious types if he starts off with the ad hominems?

Almost finished:
'Wicked: The Life and Times of The Wicked Witch of the West' by Gregory Maguire. Really really enjoyable read - couldn't put it down. _b

Just started:
'The Life of Pi' by Yann Martel. Slow starter :/

Next:
'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass' by Lewis Carroll.

And then:
Hopefully Spink will lend me 'Sophie's Choice' by William Styron. ;)

political philosophy ftw. I've read much of that list. You don't study postgrad Labour Studies at Uni of Waikato per chance do you?

my progress/recent reads include a fuckload of poststructuralism related books.
Most recently i've been doing my own thing since i finished the final paper for postgrad.

Jacques Derrida - Spectres of Marx
Jacques Derrida - Of Grammatology
Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyondn Good and Evil
Louis Althusser - For Marx [if you havn't read this one, give it a blast. Althusserian marxism ftw]
Michel Foucault - Discipline and Punish [this book is relatively boring compared to some of his others. it's bland, unchallenging and drags on, better to read the commentaries imo]

I've just started re-reading "Talon of the Silver Hawk" (Conclave of Shadows Book 1), and I picked up Judas Unchained (Peter F Hamilton) to read after that.

'The Eyre Affair' by Jasper Fforde
'Linux Administration: A Beginner's Guide' by Steve Shah and Wale Soyinka

I'm halfway through this again - I read it too quickly last time too late at night, and didn't have time to digest the jangly bits properly.

Currently thumbing through The book of General Ignorance by QI.

You have good taste in books, both of those are great :D

Currently re-reading Shards of a Broken Crown.

Nope, political studies at Otago uni in Dunedin.

Just finished reading 'Gravity's Rainbow' by Thomas Pynchon.
Pretty epic stuff - quite unlike anything else really. It was extremely dense and somewhat bewildering in parts. Would love to hear opinions from anyone who has read it.

Reread 'V For vendetta' by Alan Moore yesterday. Am rereading 'Preacher' by Garth Ennis today, though I only have a few of them :(

I'll pick up a normal novel when I run out of Preachers.

The Mothman Prophecies

NOOOOO!!!!! They OUT TO GET US!!!

Frank Miller's 300

Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden


Fascinating book.

Ha, just bought Guests of the Ayatollah by him with some of my Christmas book tokens. I wanted to get that one as well, but haven't found anybody with it in stock locally. Road Work is also well worth looking at if you don't mind shorter pieces.

Just finished:

I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
The Road - Cormac McCarthy

Reading:

Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide - Dave Thomas
Anabasis - Xenophon

Next:

Guests of the Ayatollah - as mentioned above
The Man Who Was Thursday - G.K Chesterton

Finished: God Delusion - Richard Dawkins, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell - Tucker Max

Starting: The Ancestor's Tale - Richard Dawkins

Just picked up "Inside Little Britain" today. Should get stuck into that tomorrow / today.

'The Little Lady Agency' by Hester Browne; complete pap, but entertaining in a beach-reading, chickish way.

The Conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk. Great read, so far.

Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
The Light Fantastic - Terry Pratchet
The World According To Clarkson Volume 2: And Another Thing
O'Reilly Java ServerFaces
JBoss Seam: Simplicity and Power Beyond Java EE 5.0
About to start reading The God Delusion

Is the Tucker Max book in shops here?

Yeah, I've seen Tucker Max's book at Whitcoull's.

_b I've heard great things about that

Yeah it's interesting to see how venomous the reviews are while simultaneously ignoring the actual contents of the book.

Peter F Hamilton - Pandora's Star
Feist - Faerie Tale

Been trying to read the Stephen King gunslinger books but I lost interest around the 4th book for some reason.

I seem to be on a Terry Brooks kick atm, nice ez reading for the holidays.

Currently on Armageddons Children....By ....Terry Brooks....prequel to all the shanarah series

Currently working my through Peace and War by Joe Haldeman - first part is probably his best known work The Forever War and it follows on from there.

Over the break I read...

The Invisibles (most of) - Grant Morrision
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - HP Lovecraft (some good summer reading there!)
My collection of 60's and 70's Analouge Magazines (got about 60 of them in mint condition).

Pixie

"The Invisibles (most of) - Grant Morrision"


That that is a messed up series. you didn't get to the end? Or didn't have all the books?

I have read it all through a couple of times - currently don't have all the books so only read the ones which I had...

And if you think thats messed up try reading the "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea - Morrison has pretty much stated that the invisilbles were strongly inspired by his reading of this series as a teenager.

Oh and it makes the invisibles look sane by comparrison.

Pixie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus%21_Trilogy

That's the one with the Nazi army submerged in Swiss lakes and lots of rooting on a submarine and Dillinger and his monster kooz? I think that took me the good part of a year to try and chew through.
/edit - yeah, that's it.