What books are we reading at the moment ?

[hatler]

Dalrymple's The Anarchy. Every page is fascinating. Exactly my sort of book.

[Regulator]

I'm reading Dalrymple's 'From the Holy Mountain'... 

[nobby]

Swords around the Throne by Ian Ross.

Had a trip to Shrewsbury yesterday with a mate and found, among others, The Bluffers Guide to Cycling in a charity shop.
The book highlight of the trip was on the return in Much Wenlock: a 1978 first edition of The Wonderful Ride - the true journal of George T. Loher's ride across America.

[andrewc]

I'm reading Dalrymple's 'From the Holy Mountain'... 

By a strange coincidence I ordered a copy yesterday. 

[pcolbeck]

Going the wrong way - Chris Donaldson

A 21 year old from Belfast rides to Cape Town then all the way down America in 1980 on possibly the most unsuitable adventure bike ever a Moto Guzzi Le Mans.

[cycleman]

Around the world on a wheel by John Foster fraser .
1896 circumnavigation of the world using safety cycles. I just got as far as Russia but it is a interesting read 

[Mr Larrington]

Professor Larrington's as-yet-untitled new book.  It's to do with Norse mythology.  So far I have bunged it on my Kindle, removed it from my Kindle because it won’t let me increase the font size of a .pdf and I can’t read text that titchy even with glasses and squinting, converted it to .mobi and bunged it on my Kindle again.  Where it is now in a legible size

Now to start reading it in the bath.

[Kim]

<fx: splosh>

[Ashaman42]

Ah, and here I've been reading pdfs in landscape because zooming in just means scrolling for every single line.

And even then the text is a tad smol.

I should try this conversion malarkey.

[Mr Larrington]

No splosh but lots of confusing names.  Doubly so now that Richard bloody Wagner has popped up with his so-called “operas”

Ah, and here I've been reading pdfs in landscape because zooming in just means scrolling for every single line.

And even then the text is a tad smol.

I should try this conversion malarkey.

It’s dead easy in Calibre, though obv you'll need to bung it onto something that speaks e-bookese afterwards. 

[nobby]

The Wall - Rome's Greatest Frontier by Alastair Moffat

[SteveC]

This thread encouraged me to actually see how many books I am 'reading' at the moment.

On Kindle:
The Discovery of King Arthur - Geoffrey Ashe ^[1]
The KIng’s Painter - Franny Moyle [biography of Holbein]
The Prince Who Would Be King: The Life and Death of Henry Stuart - Sarah Fraser [Biography of James VI & I’s older son, Charles I’s big brother]

Dead Tree:
The Cauldron, the Spit and the Fire: How We Cooked Until the End of the Nineteenth Century - Robert Deeley
Artemesia - National Gallery catalogue from the exhibition of her paintings which I didn’t get to
Sir Hugh Plat: the Search for Useful Knowledge in Early Modern London - Malcolm Thick
Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth Century Britain

There might be a bit of a theme here. And I could really do with actually finishing some of them.

[1] This is my current 'night time' book. I've read it before, it's not too taxing, the sort of thing I can read before going to sleep or if I wake up during the night. I won't get too involved or want to remember all the details.

[cuddy duck]

Nudged by this online essay - https://www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing/lissen-by-kathleen-jamie/ - I'm on James Wood's 'Serious Noticing; Selected Essays'.

[Regulator]

I picked up a copy of Dom Joly's 'The Downhill Hiking Club' to take on the next cruise in November.  It's got very good reviews.

[nobby]

Around the world on a wheel by John Foster fraser .
1896 circumnavigation of the world using safety cycles. I just got as far as Russia but it is a interesting read 

I've read that. Different times, eh?

[L CC]

I've just listened (well, not 'just'; over the last week or so) to the first two (excellent) books in Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy and between me buying the first two, excellently read by Peter Firth, they've removed the third from sale and now I can only get it on Pre-Order, read by Simon Russel Beale.
a) the book came out in 1995. Pre-Order?
b) I bet some names are now pronounced wrong
c) I HAVE TO WAIT A WEEK

Pat Barker's The Ghost Road. It dropped at 08:00. I checked at 07:45 and it wasn't there. 

[nobby]

I am currently reading my way through Bernard Cornwell's Arthur books, having finished the Uthred books.

Also re-reading "The art of deception" by Kevin Mitnick, a great book which will change the way you view seemingly innocent cold calls and "informatin gathering".  Paranoid, moi? shurely not!

I regularly re-read the Uhtred series - and the Heretic series - but I have never been able to get into his Arthur novels. I may try them again if you report back favourably.

[nobby]

Am I the only one reading a cycling book? 

Read those 
Have you read Louis Sutherland's 'I Follow the Wind' and 'The impossible Ride'?

[T42]

Ted Chiang's short story The Story of Your Life, which was the basis of the film Arrival.  The linguistics are much more technical than in the film, which is no surprise. Dunno about the ending yet.

The only other linguistics-centred SF novel I can remember reading was The Embedding, about 50 years ago. Both fascinating, even though Arrival was an enjoyable 2-hour spoiler.

[Rod Marton]

Ted Chiang's short story The Story of Your Life, which was the basis of the film Arrival.  The linguistics are much more technical than in the film, which is no surprise. Dunno about the ending yet.

The only other linguistics-centred SF novel I can remember reading was The Embedding, about 50 years ago. Both fascinating, even though Arrival was an enjoyable 2-hour spoiler.

Babel-17 - Sam Delaney
Native Tongue - can't remember who wrote this but the feminism was laid on rather too thickly for me to enjoy.
I'm sure there are others.

[spesh]

Native Tongue - can't remember who wrote this but the feminism was laid on rather too thickly for me to enjoy.

A search for the title in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database suggests it's by Suzette Haden Elgin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Tongue_(Elgin_novel)

[T42]

Ted Chiang's short story The Story of Your Life, which was the basis of the film Arrival.  The linguistics are much more technical than in the film, which is no surprise. Dunno about the ending yet.

The only other linguistics-centred SF novel I can remember reading was The Embedding, about 50 years ago. Both fascinating, even though Arrival was an enjoyable 2-hour spoiler.

Babel-17 - Sam Delaney
Native Tongue - can't remember who wrote this but the feminism was laid on rather too thickly for me to enjoy.
I'm sure there are others.

I read a deal of Delaney in the 70s but I don't recall reading Babel-17.  Saw the title in the "By the same author" page often enough.

Anyway, I finished The Story of Your Life.  Different from the film, of course, but the film didn't betray it so much as add bits to entice funding. I could still watch it without getting pissed off. I've since read and enjoyed one other story in the collection - The Tower of Babylon, funnily enough.

I've just been looking at paintings of the Tower of Babel: they all have a right-hand thread.

[nobby]

Trying to read Aftermath - Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich 1945 - 55 by Harald Jahner
Finding it a bit 'weighty' and of little relevance to my interests.

[fd3]

Babel 17 was my first Delaney and I think my favorite.

[T42]

I just bought it. Tell you later how I get on.