<p>This is as I recall the most boring and threfore nerve wracking time of the year for CC parents and Students, as there is nothing to do but wait for late March and early April. In the past one of the ways we have passed the time is to give each other current reading suggestions. Supposing that none of us has Alzheimer’s, I expect that we will give each other new suggestions unless the list functions like a chain letter and each of us has moved over one book leaving only two new suggestions.</p>
<p>Current Book: A History of God by Karen Armstrong</p>
<p>I read this about ten years ago, I.e. before 9/11. It is a history of the monotheistic religions. I am reading it as if for the first time.</p>
<p>mardad, for a post-9/11 discussion of religion, try the one I’m currently reading - The Faith Club. It’s about 3 women, a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim, starting a dialogue to discuss the differences and similarities in their faiths. </p>
<p>Also In my Brother’s Image - identical twin boys born in Hungary before World War I to Jewish parents who convert to Catholicism. The mother becomes devout and the children are raised as devout Catholics. Then comes WWII. The twins survive; one returns to his Jewish roots and the other becomes a priest.</p>
<p>I’m reading The Radiant Seas by Catherine Asaro. It’s sci-fi. Next up the newest book by Tamora Pierce who writes fantasies for teens with feisty girls. I find them irrestible. :)</p>
<p>O.K. again, “Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth” by Marcia Bjornerud. I highly recommend it if you want to get past the pundits of faux news and get to the heart of what may be happening on our planet right now. Puts things into perspective, so to speak.</p>
<p>I am about half way through The Time Traveller’s Wife which was recommended on another forum I read. Well, it was actually recommended a while back, but I am just now finding some time to read!</p>
<p>“Big Trouble” by J. Anthony Lukas, about the murder of Idaho’s former governor by a union activist in 1905. It’s an epic look at America at the beginning of the 20th century. Lukas was an outstanding writer (he also wrote “Common Ground”). I bought this book 10 years ago and then forgot I had it! So glad I finally dusted that bookshelf. :)</p>
<p>Thanks for the tip, frazzled1! One of my great-grandpas was a Wobblie and I’ve always been fascinated by the western labor/class struggles–I’m sure there are still so many compelling stories buried in archives. Anyway, I hadn’t heard of Big Trouble but just ordered it…looking forward to it.</p>
<p>It’s certainly sweeping in scope - in just the first 150 pages Lukas gives the reader a history of African-Americans in the military from the 1860s through the early 1900s; the evolution of the private detective in Europe and the Uniited States; a truly enthralling description of boom town life in the late 1800s; a recap of the history of mining in the West - all written in a clear yet masterful style. And he hasn’t even introduced Clarence Darrow as a character yet! Lukas was amazingly talented. I was sorry to read online that he died an apparent suicide at about the same time “Big Trouble” was published.</p>
<p>River Town and Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler.</p>
<p>Both give interesting insights into contemporary life in China.</p>
<p>The first book describes the author’s experience teaching English at a college on the Yangtze. He and a colleague were the only two Westerners living in the city at the time.</p>
<p>Corsarios de Levante by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Just finished Faiza Guene, Kiffe kiffe demain. Both interrupted my attempts to read the new Pynchon novel.</p>