Three quick questions:

1) What book or books are you currently reading?

2) What are the last three books you have read?

3) What is your favorite and why?

My answers:

1) Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America, by Steve Almond. This was the result of what can only be called an Amazon Moment. So far so good, though. The jacket isn't kidding when it describes the book as "part candy porn, part candy polemic." Here's an excerpt.

2) Flush, Virginia Woolf (this is her "biography" of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel, written in large part as a sort of displaced memorial to Woolf's own recently deceased spaniel, Pinka); The Loved One, Evelyn Waugh; A Handful of Dust, also by Evelyn Waugh

3) Confession: I had never read any Waugh before A Handful of Dust. I was so astonished by it that the moment I finished reading it I dashed over to the shelf to get the only other Waugh novel in the house, a tiny crumbling Dell paperback I've been carrying around unread with me for years, inherited at some point in my childhood from my mother's remaindered college books. It was just as astonishing, only in different ways. Who can adjudicate between a bitterly satiric novella about Hollywood shallowness that is set in a pet cemetery and takes embalming as its dominant metaphor, and a bitterly satiric novel about English shallowness that culminates in the protagonist (no such thing as a hero in Waugh) getting stranded, Heart of Darkness-fashion, in the midst of the Brazilian bush, where a crazed illiterate Kurtz-like white man takes him in and forces him to spend the rest of his days reading Dickens out loud to him? There can be no adjudication in such an instance. There can only be awe--or, to wax neologistical, wawe.

Almond certainly has an appropriate last name . . .

I am a moderate candy consumer, but he holds down the niche of "there but for the grace of God go I . . . "

I never read any Waugh, but I'll look for him now.

What do you think of Muriel Spark? I read one of her novels via a paperback remainder bin, and then read about 8 more. What a virtuoso of tone. A little too arch for me sometimes, but when she turns down the volume on the irony just a bit she's very affecting . . . "The Girls of Slender Means" is my favorite.

How fortunate to discover Waugh! His trilogy on WWII is superb, as is _Black Mischief_ and _Scoop_. I am reading Michael Chabon, _Summerland_, and David Weber's _March to the Stars_, also William Manchester's life of Churchill, _Lion Alone, 1932-40.

Currently reading:
1. _The Magician's Nephew_, C. S. Lewis
2. _The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt_
3. _Things Fall Apart_, Chinua Achebe
4. Poems of Catullus

Last three books I've read:
1. Homer's _Odyssey_
2. _Death-ritual and Social Structure in the Ancient World_, Ian Morris
3. _Cannery Row_ and _Sweet Thursday_, John Steinbeck

Just finished The Life You Save May Be Your Own, by Paul Elie (about Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, and Walker Percy). A remarkable narrative.

Have just started re-reading Stephen Jay Gould's powerful The Mismeasure of Man.

Before that, Age of Iron by J. M. Coetzee. Not one of his best, but a good novel about the last years of apartheid.

Greetings from a lurker!

Currently reading: La Regenta by Leopoldo Alas.
Last three books I read:
1)Germinal by Emile Zola.
2)That Bringas Woman by Benito Perez Galdos.
3)La Tribuna by Emilia Pardo-Bazan.

I'm one of those ex-academics jumped ship after the masters and enrolled in library school!

Currently reading:
1. D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers [about time]
2. Stanley Weintraub, Disraeli [found a competent, recent Disraeli biography]
3. G.K. Chesterton, Man-Alive [incredibly weird!]

Last three books read:
I forgot already.

Currently reading:
Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey's Embodiment of African American Culture, Thomas DeFrantz.

Last three books (from the most recent backwards):
1. Makes me Wanna Holler, Nathan McCall;
2. Eragon, Christopher Paolini;
3. The Day Kennedy Was Shot, Jim Bishop.

My favorite of this current set? DeFrantz, absolutely.

Delighted you discovered Waugh. I read for the first time last summer Brideshead Revisited and found it absolutely delightful. I had seen the PBS version years ago and as I read the music kept playing over and over in my head.

Currently reading David Hackett Fischer's Washington's Crossing and learned again what a brilliant leader Washinhgton was and how fortunate America was that he was there and in charge. Also just finished Victor Hanson's Carnage and Culture. Good background for understanding why we will win the war on terror.

1. Currently reading:
-Counting Down by Steve Olson (about the 2000 US team to the International Math Olympiad, held in Washington DC that year)
- Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens
- Don't Step in the Leadership, by Scott Adams (Dilbert book)

2. Last three read:
- Our Mutual Friend, by Dickens
- some books on investments, but I've blocked their names (for an actuarial exam, that's now over.)

3. My favorite, right now, is Our Mutual Friend. Very juicy book, plenty to chew on. Next in line is Persuasion, by Jane Austen.

1) Currently reading: a) on the metro to work -William Langewiesche, The Unruly Sea. The author of the book on the deconstruction of the World Trade center takes on the world's shipping business - piracy, corruption, natural disasters. A brilliant book(excerpts about the sinking of the ferry Estonia may be found in the Atlantic Monthly; b) on the metro home - Mark Perry, Grant & Twain, the Friendship that Changed America. The story of Mark Twain's (in his role as a publisher) relationship with U.S. Grant as he helped Grant write and publish his autobiography -perhaps one of the best presidential life memoirs ever written) while he was alsostruggling to write, complete Huck Finn. The publication of the memoirs pushed Twain to the brink of babnkruptcy. Am only a chapter or two in - so I cannot give a thumbs up or down yet - but it is trending up.
2. Last three books read - my non-metro, at home reading: [I have moved on from Russia and am now exploring Czech writers) Ivan Klima, My Golden Trades. Novel, series of stories actually, about a dissident Czech author forced to take on a series of blue collar jobs; Bohumil Hrabal, I Served the King of England (a brilliant book about the life of a Horatio Alger-like[in a perverse sort of way) waiter's rise, decline, and possible redemption set against the German occupation of the Sudetenland, the war, and the early years of Communist rule); and Bohumil Hrabal's Closely Watched Trains, a novella, later made into a film that won the Oscar in 1966 for best foreign film, about the interplay between a young man's (working as a train signal-man during WWII in occupied Czechosovakia) agony over his failed first attempt at sex and his ultimate act of heroism.
3. Favorite and why: No way I can really answer that - but limited to the books noted above - I would go with I Served the King of England. Perhaps one of my all time favorites though is Naghuib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy. I assume it was brilliantly translated as I felt I was walkign the streets and alleys of early to mid 20th century Cairo as I read it.

1. Currently reading: Nabokov's collected stories
2. Last read, Yocheved Reisman, Sleeping Bird (Hebrew) and stories by Tatyana Tolstaya.
3. It's difficult to beat Nabokov, but he is seldom racy, and Reisman is.

Waugh can be amusing, but compared with other stuff of the 30s (e.g. Joseph Roth) he is, IMO, a lightweight.

"The Loved One" is a classic. I read it in college. The movie, with Jonathan Winters, Robert Morse, Milton Berle, James Coburn, John Gielgud,....., and Liberace in a most suitable role, is also a classic.

In the stack now:
"Ripples of Battle", V. D. Hanson
"Emergence of the Catholic Tradition", Jakob Pelikan
"Dawn to Decadence", J. Barzun
"Galileo's Daughter", Dava Sobel

The last fiction I read that I liked was something by T. Coraghessan Boyle ("The Road to Wellville"). His short stories (I read a few in the bookstore) are quite good.

Currently reading Paul Johnson's "A History of the Jews." Before that, his "History of the American People." Plus tons of detectives(Roger Simon), sci-fis (Neal Stephenson) and thrillers (Childs, Brown).

Reading:
1. Jean-Luc Nancy, Hegel: The Restlessness of the Negative
2. Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution
3. Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia

Last Three Read:
1. Alexandre Kojeve, Intro to the Reading of Hegel
2. GWF Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
3. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

You may be thinking I'm taking a course on Hegel or something, but you'd be wrong. Heller's Catch-22 is not my favorite book, but last night I was reminded how funny it is.

Last read:

1. The Devil's Disciples (Read)
2. Enemy at the Gates (Craig)
3. The Forgotten Soldier (Sajer)

Currently reading:

1. Hitler's Shadow War (McKale)
2. I Will Bear Witness (Klemperer)
3. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Dillard)

Devil's Disciples was quite good, even though Read overuses "to the extent..." a bit.

Hello from the dregs of Corporate America...

I'm so glad you're reading Evelyn Waugh, he's been one of my favorite writers ever since I realized he had three titles listed on that pesky MLA "Best of the 20th Century List" that rules my list-making life. "Scoop," "Vile Bodies" and "Brideshead Revisted" are my favorites of his, and if you're like me, you will rush out and get the BBC miniseries version of "Brideshead" on DVD as soon as you're done. It stars a very young and very dreamy Jeremy Irons.

Currently reading: Michael Chabon, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay;" Stephen Fry, "The Liar."

Last 3 books read: "Einstein's Dreams," Alan Lightman; "The Way We Live Now," Anthony Trollope (it probably wasn't a good idea to read this at the expense of studying for finals, but it was worth it), "Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form," Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

3) My older brother is an unabashed anglophile, but not quite of the literary bent. He has a particular penchant for classic British TV comedies like "The Young Ones," "The Office," and most importantly, "Black Adder," which I think Stephen Fry wrote scripts for. I don't know how else to explain how my brother owns the entire Fry literary ouevre, but he does and I'm glad. One of the characters in "The Liar" is obsessed with Elvis Costello too!

I just finished teaching a modern novel seminar and "A Handful of Dust" was the last novel we read (also the Last novel, I guess). Waugh is a somewhat unconventional (or at least neglected) choice for such a course, but I included his novel and O'Connor's "Wise Blood" because I wanted to teach at least a couple of really funny novels, and also because I wanted a couple of novels that satirized all that fashionable 20th century nihilism. The students really seemed to enjoy Waugh's grim hilarity.

Last three books not for teaching:
"The Life You Save May Be Your Own" Paul Elie
"Dead Souls" Gogol
"The Chosen" Chaim Potok

Currently reading: _Akehurst's Modern Introduction to International Law_; Christopher Logue, _War Music_; Halldor Laxness, _Iceland's Bell_.

Last three books read: All books for the lit class I teach, alas.

My favorite? Honestly, I have no idea.

Yehudit: The only Muriel Sparks I've read is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It's one I go back to from time to time. I find myself quoting Miss Brodie from time to time: "For people who like that sort of thing, that's the sort of thing they like." It's actually quite profound.

I'm finishing up Portrait of a Lady for the thousandth time. I'm going to have to make my daughter read it so I can talk to somebody about it. Last was China Court by Rumer Godden. Next will be Frederick Forsyth's The Deceiever whenever my husband finishes it. It'll make a change from the chick books.

That's Deceiver.

Currently reading The Age of Gold by H.W. Brands. I highly recommend him for anyone who thinks history is boring.

Previously read:
To Catch a Cat and Murder at the Cat Show by Marian Babson
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman

My site (click my name) is primarily book reviews; there's a lot of children's novels because they're easy to finish on a lunch break. I love working at a bookstore. (My copy of The Age of Gold is a galley, as are many of the other books on my site. Yay for free books.)

on waugh: you must read his collected correspondence with Nancy Mitford, which contains some of the cruellest and funny character sketches I have ever read.

and my two cents: i am currently (re)reading Wyndham Lewis' Revenge For Love, a viciously funny and oddly poignant story of two doomed lovers set in the literary precincts of 30's era fellow-travelling London.

The last three books I read were: I looked something up in the dictionary, I picked up Joe Wilson's book in Border's because I met him a few times in Africa but couldn't believe the ego on the guy (in the book, he's better in person), and a book that was published by an ex-girlfriend which I sort of jealously scanned and held my breath until it thankfully dropped to about 10,000 on Amazon's sales list and fallen to obscurity. Oh, and I read Spin Sisters by Myrna Blyth and A Reader's Manifesto by B.R. Myers. I don't remember what the antepenultimate book I read was.

BTW, I thought Scoop was brilliant. If you're going to read Waugh, check out Scoop.

1. Regeneration, by Pat Barker: found it curiously flat, but see the point of it I guess. Loved the revision to the famous pub scene in the Wasteland. Hey Erin, it's really an inverted academic novel, what with all the inside jokes etc.

2. Why God Won't Go Away: tradebook about the now well known "God experiments" at Laurentian University. I find cognitive science and evolutionary biology offensively witty and disturbingly persuasive.

3. Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer: ok, ok, i read about Jesus people a lot.

Current:
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke;
The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent, Lionel Trilling;
Complete Short Stories, Mark Twain

Prior, widdershins, for large values of three:
The Gods Will Have Blood, Anatole France;
The Princess Casamassima, Henry James;
Postmodern Pooh, Frederic Crewes;
Voss, Patrick White

Of these, 19th cent America prevails.

Currently reading:

1. London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd
2. Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

Last three:

1. Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
2. Property and Freedom by Richard Pipes
3. Koba the Dread by Martin Amis

Laura - For Jamesian bookchat, the NY Times bookforums book-o'-the-month discussion will be on Portrait of a Lady (no direct link 'til beginning of June).

Oh thank you!

We love Wodehouse. My kid uses his stuff for an antidote when her school reading gets too grim. It makes a change from Hemingway.

because my college has four..4..4... endless weeks of spring term left, I am reduced to crime fiction (for the first time in my life). Ian Rankin, The Falls; Ian Rankin, Resurrection Men; and Ian Rankin, Tooth and Nail. Nasty, brutal, and short, unlike the trimester system.

Currently Reading:

1. Ray Bradbury, One More For The Road
2. Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides), A Guide to the Perplexed
3. Oxford Notable Quotations

Recent Reads
1. Neil Gaiman's Sandman (all 13 volumes, which together make a doozy of a novel)
2. Dan Brown, Da Vinci Code
3. Umm.... something last summer?

Last three:

Reflections on a Ravaged Century, by Robert Conquest.

The Peloponnesian War, by Donald Kagan.

Nicholas Nickleby, by Dickens.

Currently working on:

Dutch Interior, by Frank O'Connor

The Killing of History, by Keith Windschuttle

Cobb Would Have Caught It, by Richard Bak.

Currently reading: Bloodsucking Fiends (Christopher Moore)

Last 3 books I read:
1) Inside the Third Reich (Albert Speer)
2) Mad Monks on the Road
3) Brothel (The story of Mustang Ranch)

Next book: Limbo (Alfred Lubrano)

Reading:
- The Crossing, McCarthy
- Oscar and Lucinda, Carey

Have read:
- Amsterdam, McEwan
- The Screwtape Letters, Lewis
- Sylvia, the play about a dog by AR Gurney

Waugh is wonderful, if acidic. Brideshead Revisited is much better than the TV adaptation -- which dwelt rather too much on Sebastian and his teddy bear. I'd nix the Muriel Spark -- she's a little too dry for me -- but a writer in a sort-of similar vein is Iris Murdoch. There's also her sister Margaret Drabble, who is ponderous, but interesting.

Oh, when I listed books read recently, I completely blanked out on the books I really read....

Syd Hoff, Sammy the Seal, Stanley (a fascinating theory about the origins of civilization), Grizzwold
Robert Munsch, The Fire Station, Murmel, Murmel, Murmel, Purple, Green and Yellow, Something Good
Richard Scarry, Cars and Trucks

Yeah, I have a 2.5 year old....