What are you reading now, beginning of 2012?

[posey]

I am reading Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending. Loving it.
Also Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I have never read them before but am in the process of reading them to/with ds and thoroughly enjoying them.
Have got so many books piled up to read it is really quite exciting!

Just finished 'Snowdrops'. It wasn't as good as I was expecting from all the rave reviews I'd read, but it was a decent holiday-type read. I thought his descriptions of Russia in winter were good, but there was far too much build-up where I wasn't sure where the book was going IMO.

Now reading 'Jamrach's Menagerie'. I've only read the first chapter, but I'm hoping it will be good - like of like 'Life of Pi'.

I too started 'Wolf Hall' and 'The Children's Book' and failed to get into them. Will try again with both at some point.

I'm nearly at the end of The Finkler Question and finding it slow going, the reviews all say "hilarious" but it isn't my sort of humour.

I love threads like this! I'm reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I love it and haven't wanted to devour a book so fast for a long time - unfortunately I can't as DC3 is only 7 months old so reading time a bit limited and I've been reading it since September.... I now really want to read the Virgin Suicides and will be keeping an eye out for his latest coming out in paperback.

I am reading the Alienist by Caleb Carr. It is a really good book if you like thrillers. It is a really interesting read as it has loads of history in it as well as being a thriller.

Have nearly finished Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Was given a Kindle for Christmas and a £50 Amazon voucher to download books, so I have had a mad splurge and bought loads of books on the kindle sale. Lots of cheap books with good reviews, so looking forward to reading some different things to what I would normally read. Downloaded lots of the free classics as well - Austen, Dickens, Wilkie Collins etc etc.

I lurve my Kindle, best present ever...

I just finished reading 'Never Let Me Go' but I was hugely disappointed! Currently beginning 'The Tiger's Wife', but its taking a little while to get into...

I'm also a new kindle addict. Having been fairly sniffy about them in the past. Now I'm re-reading old (free) classics on the Kindle and working through my paperback backlog (charity bookshop weakness) at the same time.

Just starting "Hare with amber eyes" in paperback, and re-reading North and South on Kindle. It's a sort of contest between the two formats, to see which I am going to pick up more often.

I am now starting fingersmith (with thanks to the other thread in adult fiction) Only a couple of pages in but loving and looking forward to reading more. Have also just bought a couple more books of Amazon!!

CBH88....I read the Tiger's wife quite recently, I really enjoyed it in places but overall the book left me a little bemused. I dont know if it was just me but it seemed to lack a narrative thread. I would be interested to hear other opinions

I read it recently too but could only really say I enjoyed the last quarter. I was very tired when I read it so kept falling asleep which probably didn't help!

My second post on this thread....just to report that I also recently finished 'Greenbanks' by Dorothy Whipple - a Persephone book - and absolutely loved it. She's one of the authors they've rediscovered and now made a bit of a cult out of, but none the worse for that. It's about a family living in the eponymous house in the early 20th c, and their various lives over the next 20 years or so.
I was so gripped by it that I've started another Whipple novel, 'High Wages', whose heroine is a draper's assistant in Lancashire in 1909....very good so far

I'm reading The Finkler Question - its my book club read for January, it's OK so far, but I haven't been blown away yet.

I read The Finkler Question quite recently, Kurrikurri; picked it up in a charity shop. I thought it was a light read, quite amusing (though the hero is so irritating and stupid, but probably purposely so, except I think he's meant to be funny, which he was in a way which doesn't make you laugh).

Interesting for it's detail of Jewish belief/ritual, and so on, and the description of London (because I miss London a lot, and I knew most of those parts well). Fine for whiling away a couple of days.

In other words, it didn't blow me away, either. Was it reputed to have that effect?

I think I just expected something a bit more wow, because of the Booker Prize tag. To be fair though - I'm only about 80 pages in, and certainly don't hate it - it has amused me so far, and looks as if it will deal with some interesting areas.

Our last read was Beloved - which I loved (although I was very much in the minority at the club )

I've got Snuff by Terry Pratchett and The Children's Book by A S Byatt on my To Read pile.

I see GoandPlay is reading The Hunger Games - I gave my grown up DS that for Christmas, and the next two for his birthday last week - he says it's brilliant too, so I will swipe it from him soon

I've given up on adult fiction and read the better end of Young Adult these days. Recently finished Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve and I, Coriander by Sally Gardner; now on Life: an exploded diagram by Mal Peet.

I read a fair amount of Young Adult fiction too Elderberry - a good book is a good book IMO whatever age it is aimed at. My local library only seems to stock variations on the Twilight/Vampire stuff in its YA section though.

Over Christmas, Death Comes to Pemberley.

After Christmas, The Stranger in the Mirror by Jane Shilling - excellent.

Now, the new Dickens biography. Promising.

Re-reading The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton and really enjoying it

Re-reading Birdsong

Just finished reading the blood pact novels by Tanya Huff (given the set for Christmas) and The Game, a novella by Dianne Wynne Jones. I have Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Dark Star Safari lined up to read next.

And have got Housebound by Winifred Peck and Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons waiting to be read- am quite excited.

Plus lots of ideas on here; great

I am a few pages into Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain Fournier (for reading group) and I am having a go at Dickens' Hard Times. Enjoying so far.

Elderberry - I really rate the, 'Mortal Engines' series. Didn't think a great deal of, 'I, Coriander' though. It was okay but I expected it to be better/do more.

The Sense of an Ending is excellent - definitely not one you'd forget in a hurry, even though none of the main characters are at all likeable. But I'm reading Dickens by Peter Ackroyd, as it's the Charles Dickens Bicentenary this year (and I've never read a Dickens novel before)

Have just finished Water for Elephants, a nice easy going read. About to start Cancer Ward, which won the Nobel Prize in 1970. If anyone else has read it let me know!!