Just finished A Feast For Crows earlier today. Might start Machiavelli's The Prince tomorrow, partly because it's short.
Just finished Starkey's Crown and Country. Apparently 80% of the Kings of England were gay. Who knew?!
Really? It pretty obvious who some of them were, but a figure that high is kinda surprising. Finished the Hunger Games now and it really is very good (though I do have some of the same issues with it I had with the film) although I did love Spoiler: spoiler that all the dead tributes were effectively turned into monsters for the finale. Need to figure out what to read next, got a small pile of books so just need to pick one!
The Time Traveler's Wife. I'm really, really enjoying it. So much so I stop myself from reading too much in any one sitting so I can enjoy the book for longer.
A Scientist in the City Black Rednecks, White Liberals, Thomas Sowell The latter just for the title essay, in which he posits that the ghetto culture of poor, urban blacks is in fact inherited from the poor rural whites that slaves once lived among, and that these rural whites (the "cracker' culture) brought it from some godforsaken border region of Scotland and England before it became civilized. He adds that the urban blacks would have abandoned the self-defeating "cracker" culture (lax sexual behavior, lack of work ethic, frequent fighting) if they weren't being bailed out by the government trying to help them. I'm not convinced, and Sowell's frequent use of cracker culture didn't sit well with me given that where I live, "cracker" is a pejorative on the level of kike or wop and is usually applied to working-class rural whites like my own people.
Pygmalion by Shaw. It's quite different from the movie. I love Shaw's sarcastic comments. We have quite the same sense of humour
While working, and relaxing, in my garden I have been listening to the audiobook recording of the classic sci-fi novel When Worlds Collide which I finished yesterday. Now I am downloading the 1951 movie based on the book, I haven't seen that movie for many years. I have also started listening to the book sequel After Worlds Collide.
Currently reading Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely, which I'll be interrupting for my annual reading of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
oooh, that sounds interesting! I love old SciFI! Must try if I can get that one as ebook (I keep forgetting my reading glasses at my office when I need them at home and at home when I need them at my office *sigh* - ebooks are so useful: you can adjust the font size till you can read it without glasses)