Finished Don Quixote - frankly, not all that impressed. There are a lot of amusing episodes, but good god it just never seems to end. Hundreds and hundreds of pages could have been cut, all for the better.

I finished a few books recently, two of them that I had been dragging on for a while:

- Fathoms - A non fiction about whales, their influence on us and our influence on them
- Cujo - A biography of a pro hockey player which made me happy that I was never put into that sport as a child
- Investigating Lois Lane - A historical and feminist look at Lois Lane, Superman's sidekick and love interest

Baston I can relate with Don Quixote. If you want to read something entertaining set in old Spain, have a look at :The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
It's stories within stories and pretty entertaining, if you can remember where and when you are.

Andi64 - Thanks!

The Silmarillion. A compilation of stories of Tolkien about how the Middle Earth was created.

Always reading several books at the same time. Just finished 'Missing New York' by Don Winslow. Half way through with Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography 'Total Recall'. The others books I am currently in are Matt Schifferle 'Calisthenics for beginners', John Bingham/Jenny Hadfield 'Running for Mortals', also re reading George S. Clasons 'The richest man in Babylon', just begun Eric Hobsbawm 'The age of Capital 1848-1875' and Joel Kotkin 'The Coming of Neo Feudalism'. Half way through with Eric Ambler 'The Levanter'.

I'm a fan of Hobsbawm and Ambler, Botenlauben - The Mask of Dimitrious is by far my favourite, and quite a good film - and in awe of the amount of reading you are doing!

Good Heavens no Colin - as I said, I change the books all the time and sometimes that means that I have to start anew though because I have forgotten too much.
I just start so many because I have never been able to fall asleep without at least having opened a book before. Another reason is that the TV is not mine so I cannot choose the program and, most important of all, I cannot stand it if someone else is in charge of the remote control . So withdrawing into the hermitage to read a bit is a smart choice quite often -Avoids a lot of trouble

Hobsbawm has definitly been one of the great scholars of our time - has read it all, has worked through everything. Books he has written decades ago are still as inspiring as they used to be. Awesome!
In terms of thrillers I am I have to admit a big fan of Raymond Chandler's novels. Here my favourites change but I have always held the "Long Goodbye" in highest regard although the Gimlet-recipe Chandler recommends is undrinkable.

Good training!

Well, when I was an alcoholic - like Chandler - I used to drink a lot of gimlets in his style; perhaps I wasn't fussy enough!

Good training to you too! And good luck with finishing at least some of your books!

Finished The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) - Fantastic, lives up to its reputation. And it's so short! My copy was 159 pages - read it in a few days. But even with that brevity, there's a lot to chew on. Great book.

War of the Worlds (Wells) - Pretty good. There are some great passages, but Wells gets too focused on making his story journalistically "real" that the whole thing kind of suffers.

Finished Interior Chinatown (Yu) - Good, interesting, but a little too cutesy and clever for its own good. I would recommend it, but it's not the Great Book on Race I expected.

Nightwings- Robert Silverberg. I got it from the library two weeks ago and it's turning out to be a really good read. It's thoughtful and kind of slow for now and somehow helps with focus.

Maybe I should expand, now that I've read the first two thirds; Rome and Paris. I'm reading it in Hebrew so the distortion of the names (thousand of years into the future) is even worse. It's about human nature, as hard-core sci-fi books really are, and it uses three cultural focus points in order to lead the reader through the follies of humanity. There might be Christian pilgrimage and their meaning involved but I really can't tell...
Firstly, 3 travelers to Rome (which in my copy is written as Rahum) they are in search of work, food and humanity is still free at that point, after they get to Rahum, they encounter brutality alongside beauty and successful struggle. Then Earth is invaded, I won't say more than this at this point, there's an invasion, one protagonist remains, he makes his way with a companion to Paris (Pareris) to find a new "guilde" for himself after sounding the alarms before the invasion when he was in Rahum. There it's, daily drudgery mixed with deep emotions of loyalty, lust and treason.
The third part is the road to Jerusalem (Yirushalem)...

Baston Do you like any of the films of Gatsby, Baston? I read the book at school as a "set book" for an exam and we watched the Robert Redford film version, but I don't recall that very well - I think he's good casting though - and I know there are others. I love the book too.

Colin - I've only seen the Baz Luhrmann one, to be honest. It was okay. Very faithful to the plot, but didn't capture the spirit of the novel. A very hollow movie.

Thanks Baston!

To get on topic here:

Just finished Radical Belonging by Lindo Bacon PhD

Largely at the recommendation of another Bee.

I enjoyed it. It's challenging. It's a brave book. I found it inspiring. I'm not 100% on board with everything in the book but broadly I agree and I recommend it.