What book are you currently reading or have just finished... (77)

...as for myself,

it's called..Ratpack confidential..by Shawn Levy, very funny in parts, here's the first two paragraph's to give you a flavour...

This was Frank's baby.
Onstage, Dean, singing almost straight, then pissing away anything like real feeling with jokes.
In the wings , Sammy, Peter, Joey.
Out front a mob scene:Marilyn, Little Ceasar, Kirk, Shirl, Mr Benny, that Swedish kid that Sammy was so crazy for, that senator and his tubby kid brother, a few broads without addresses, a few guys without real names.

Famous faces at a ringside for the cameras, infamous ones in the shadows in the back, plus a hundred or so civilians as bait and dames to blow it with them until it ran out....

*copyright..shawn levy*

I read "Brother Grimm" by Craig Russel.It was about a mass murderer who made all the scenes of his crimes similar to the tales by Brothers Grimm.He enjoyed himself like the one of the Grimm brothers who had been a real serial killer.The action was in Hamburg in the conterporary.The good guy was Comissar Fabel.He was investigating and catched the killer.This is the second book by this author about Comissar Fabel.The first one called"Bloody Eagle".

I've just finished re-reading

A Short History of Nearly Everything

by Bill Bryson

Skipped some of the 600 - odd pages though, though I didn't miss a line the first time I read it. What an amazing book!

The Times Literary Supplement wrote at the time:
.... all schools would be better places if it were the core science reader on the curriculum"

Here's how he addresses the reader on page 1 :

Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn't easy, I know. In fact I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.
To begin with, for you to be here now, trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and curiously obliging manner to create you. It's an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, co-operative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally under appreciated state known as existence.

Why atoms take this trouble is a bit of a puzzle. Being you is not a gratifying experience at the atomic level. For all their devoted attention, your atoms don't actually care about you - indeed, don't even know that you are there. They don't even know that they are there. They are mindless particles, after all, and not even themselves alive. (It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.) Yet somehow for the period of your existence they will answer to a single rigid impulse: to keep you you.

The bad news is that atoms are fickle and their time of devotion is fleeting - fleeting indeed. Even a long human life adds up to only about 650,000 hours. And when that modest milestone flashes into view, or at some other point thereabouts, for reasons unknown your atoms will close you down, then silently disassemble and go off to be other things.

end quote.
There's a lot more.

I'm just finishing "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini. It's a book about the author's life in Afghanistan as his past catches up with his new life in California. I don't want to ruin any plots, but suffice it to say that this book brings home the ugly reality of war and ethnic cleansing, the suffering war causes and brings you face to face with the Taliban...

But it's more than that ... It's how one single decision in life can have repercussions on many people... How past mistakes can haunt you and return ... but also about the redeeming quality of life - that gives you the opportunity to change.

I haven't finished it yet though. So it's a general impression...

Me too...

Hey, love that pic