"Currently Reading" Books

The main page of my homesite usually shows a book I'm currently reading, and this page shows that and then the previous books that have been shown. (BDSM Book News has a broader Top 100 list of BDSM and Fetish titles, plus book news.)

Current
Dear Raven and Joshua by Raven Kaldera and Joshua Tenpenny (December 2009) Subtitled "Questions and Answers About Master/Slave Relationships". I believe this is the most realistic book about M/s relationships yet published. Amazon UK: £18.95 £18.00 Amazon US: $25.00
Previous
This Curious Human Phenomenon: An Exploration of Some Uncommonly Explored Aspects of BDSM by Peter Masters (October 2009) Similar to his Control Book, but covering more of BDSM, including its social structures. (My review.) Amazon UK: £14.99 £12.74 Amazon US: $19.95 $14.96
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (September 2009) I read "Atlas Shrugged" in 2006, and I finally got round to reading its predecessor, about creative rather than economic freedom. Amazon UK: £9.99 £6.99 Amazon US
Separating Fact from Fiction: The Life of a Consensual Slave in the 21st Century by Shannon Reilly (August 2009) I'm not sure about this book. Some of the way terms like TPE are used (eg TPE with limits) don't make sense to me, but most of what she means about 24/7 D/s is quite reasonable. Amazon UK: £14.50 Amazon US: $12.95
In the Courts of the Crimson Kings by S.M. Stirling (May 2009) Stirling continues his series started with "The Sky People" in which the fantastic worlds of pre-war science fiction really do exist on Venus and Mars. In this book, the ancient civilisation of Mars, complete with canals, is explored. For me, this book started rather slowly and never developed the kind of thought provoking themes of his "Dies the Fire" series. Amazon UK: £5.37  £5.18 Amazon US: $7.99
Walden by Henry David Thoreau (March 2009) "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Thoreau describes two years living in a self-built log cabin, surviving off nothing but his own efforts (and weekly pic-a-nic baskets from his mother, although he missed that bit out. I kid you not.) Amazon UK: £2.25  £1.99 Amazon US: $3.50
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (February 2009) I read this at the same time as watching the first season of "Mad Men" and after watching the recent film adaptation. It's a similar world, of sharp suits, cocktails, sexism, lunchtime affairs, cynicism, corporate life, and suburbs where there's something missing that no one talks about. Amazon UK: £7.99  £4.99 Amazon US: $14.95  $8.97
The Scourge of God by S.M. Stirling (January 2009) The second book of Stirling's second "Dies the Fire" trilogy, following straight on from The Sunrise Lands that I read last year, and set in a post-apocalyptic world where petrol and steam engines, electricity, and explosives suddenly stopped working. Twenty-two years later, the children of those who survived the chaos and the mass starvation continue their journey across North America. Amazon UK: £25.99  £23.39 Amazon US: $25.95  $17.13
The Lost German Slave Girl by John Bailey (December 2008) "It is a spring morning in New Orleans, 1843. In the Spanish Quarter, on a street lined with flophouses and gambling dens, Madame Carl recognizes a face from her past. It is the face of a German girl, Sally Miller, who disappeared twenty-five years earlier. But the young woman is property, the slave of a nearby cabaret owner. ... In brilliant novelistic detail, award-winning historian John Bailey reconstructs the exotic sights, sounds, and smells of mid-nineteenth-century New Orleans, as well as the incredible twists and turns of Sally Miller's celebrated and sensational case." Amazon UK: £9.57 £8.68 Amazon US: $14.00 $11.20
Soul by Soul by Walter Johnson (December 2008) The New Orleans slave marketplace presented as consumerism, with slaves bought as we might buy a new household appliance, a car, or even a piece of agricultural machinery. "For white Southern slaveholders, buying slaves buoyed a fantasy of manly bourgeois self-control, speculative savvy and economic independence. ... The evil business of slavery has seldom been exposed with so much humanity and insight." Amazon UK: £14.95 £9.86 Amazon US: $19.50 $17.55
The Human Pony by Rebecca Wilcox (November 2008) This book sets new standards for the presentation of BDSM on the printed page. Gone are the designs that could have been run off with a wordprocessor in letter mode, with a few line drawings in the text and a set of colour plates sewn into the middle of the book. This is more like a modern book about home or garden design: full colour throughout, side-boxes to expand on key points, step-by-step and side-by-side pictures to illustrate how to do things and to compare different options. I'm not a lover of the high-fetish side of pony-play myself, but this book will gather converts (my review.) Amazon UK: £17.44 £14.56 Amazon US: $27.95 $18.45
Exit to Eden by Anne Rice (October 2008) I've never read it before, having being completely put off Anne Rice by her "Claiming of Sleeping Beauty" in 1997. Initially, I felt a bit cheated when I realised Laura Antoniou's "Marketplace" series wasn't a brilliant invention but merely an elaboration of Rice's scenario. However, the truly awful ending of "Exit to Eden", from a D/s point of view, perhaps explains why Antoniou felt justified in copying but then correcting someone else's idea to such an extent. Amazon UK: £7.99 £5.99 Amazon US: $13.95 $11.16
Shogun by James Clavell (August 2008) I picked this up in an airport with the last of my local currency, after watching the TV mini-series back in the 1980s: a 16th century English navigator is shipwrecked in feudal Japan and has to contend with heretic-burning Catholic missionaries, the harsh samurai code of bushido, and the practical dislocation of plunging into such a different culture - one that turns out to be more similar to our own times than 16th century England in many ways. Amazon UK: £7.99 £5.99 Amazon US: $7.99
The Man Who Would be Queen by J.Michael Bailey (August 2008) Discusses the dangerous idea that some transsexuals don't want you to know: some male to female transsexuals are sexually motivated. Bailey was subject to a hate campaign for highlighting the research of Blanchard and others who came to that conclusion, but it has given many autogynpheliacs (who's sexual desire is to see themselves as women) a chance to speak up about their sexuality. The positive reviews on Amazon contain many such first-hand testimonies that other types of transsexual have no right to silence. Amazon UK or Amazon US
Caesar by Adrian Goldsworthy (July 2008) I rounded off McCullough's series of novels with the best regarded recent biography of Caesar himself, with Goldsworthy's expert eye on the military side of his career. Amazon UK: £9.99 £6.99 Amazon US: $19.76
Caesar and The October Horse by Colleen McCullough (May 2008) McCullough's versions of Caesar's Gallic and Civil Wars, and their aftermath up to the Ides of March. Amazon UK: £9.99 £6.99 Amazon US: $16.95 $11.53
The Woodland Way by Ben Law (April 2008) A radical alternative to conventional woodland management, mixing forestry, farming and woodland crafts whilst arguing that planning law should allow people to live in the woods they work (as Ben does in his house featured on Channel4's "Grand Designs") Amazon UK: £16.95 Amazon US: $30.00 $22.80
Caesar's Women by Colleen McCullough (March 2008) Caesar now becomes central in the fourth of McCullough's "Masters of Rome" series, and displays his traits of self-belief, iron discipline, uncomprising attitude to his own principles, and unshakeable optimism. Guided by regard for his own dignitas, he navigates the treacherous waters of Roman politics, military campaigns, financial debt, religious decorum, and living in a house full of women. Amazon UK: £9.99  £6.99 Amazon US
Origins of the British by Stephen Oppenheimer (February 2008) "Two thirds of the English people reveal an unbroken line of genetic descent from south-western Europeans arriving long before the first farmers. Most of the remaining third arrived between 6,000 and 3,000 years ago as part of long-term north-west European trade and immigration, especially from Scandinavia - possibly carrying the earliest forms of English language." (My brief review) Amazon UK: £9.99  £5.99 Amazon US
Blood of the Isles by Brian Sykes (February 2008) "Bryan Sykes, the world's first genetic archaeologist, takes us on a journey around the family tree of Britain and Ireland, to reveal how our tribal history still colours the country today." (My brief review) Amazon UK: £8.99  £6.99 Amazon US: $16.95  $11.53
The Sunrise Lands by S.M. Stirling (December 2007) "Set 12 years after A Meeting at Corvallis (2006), Stirling's latest novel of a chaotic near-future U.S., crippled when the mysterious Change rendered most technology nonfunctional, combines vigorous military adventure with cleverly packaged political idealism." Amazon UK: £12.07  £10.86 Amazon US: $24.95  $16.47
Woodlands by Oliver Rackham (November 2007) "Rackham takes us through: how woods evolved and how they are managed, the basic botany (understanding roots, partnerships, longevity, tree-rings), outline of woodland history, pollen analysis and wildwood, archives of woodland and how to study them, different types of woodland, the rise and fall of modern forestry." Amazon UK: £20.00  £12.00 Amazon US: $75.00  $54.75
Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees by Roger Deakin (November 2007) Have you ever thought that the rise and fall of tree sap each year is like a great tide coming in and out across our woodlands? Deakin shares this and many other striking observations in his forestry travel book. Amazon UK: £20.00  £12.00
The First Man in Rome, The Grass Crown, Fortune's Favourites by Colleen McCullough (July - November 2007) Part of McCullough's near definitive series of historical novels set in the late Roman Republic. Amazon UK: £8.99  £5.99    Amazon US
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (June 2007) Neo-Victorian nanotechnologists in Neo-Confucian mid-21st century Shanghai. Warm beer and Tea Houses, The Times on smart paper, and a leather-bound book that's really a computer. (My review focussing on the Neo-Victorian aspects.) Amazon UK: £7.99 £5.99    Amazon US: 15.00 $10.20
The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance by Paul Strathern (May 2007) A history of the Medici family and their tranisition from bankers, to party bosses (more "Miller's Crossing" than "Donnie Brasco") and finally to monarchs in Renaissance Italy. Thankfully, Strathern doesn't push the Mafia Godfather analogy more than a couple of times. Amazon UK: £8.99 £6.99    Amazon US
Donnie Brasco by Joseph D. Pistone (Apr 2007) "In 1978, the US government waged a war against organised crime. One man was left behind the lines. From 1976 until 1981, Special Agent Pistone lived undercover with the Mafia. Only able to visit his young family once every few months, Pistone - under the alias Donnie Brasco - ate, drank, partied, worked and sometimes killed with the wiseguys." Amazon UK: £7.99 £4.00    Amazon US: $7.99
The Control Book by Peter Masters (Apr 2007) "The Control Book is unique in its approach as a robust guide to understanding, gaining, exercising, maintaining, and using safe, sane, and consensual control over another or experiencing it as a willful submissive. Masters' step-by-step approach has both depth and an experiential basis. He adeptly uses sound psychology and common sense to instruct all those, both dominant and submissive, who are drawn to any kind of dominant/submissive encounter or relationship." (Reviewed 17 April) Amazon US: $14.95
Master Nage's Guide to Training Consensual Slaves by Master Nage (Apr 2007) This book is a bit of curate's egg and I've written a review spelling out what I think are its good, bad and very bad points. Amazon UK: £14.95    Amazon US: 14.95 $11.56
The Prestige by Christopher Priest (Mar 2007) "Two 19th century stage illusionists, the aristocratic Rupert Angier and the working-class Alfred Borden, engage in a bitter and deadly feud; the effects are still being felt by their respective families a hundred years later." Includes a lot of forward- and back-story that was missed in the recent film. Amazon UK: £7.99 £5.99    Amazon US: $7.99
Evolutionary Psychiartry by Stevens and Price (Feb 2007) I've had this book since it came out in 2004, but up to now I'd only read the Sadomasochism chapter and some of the introductory material. Now that I'm getting interested in evolutionary models for D/s again, I've decided to read it properly - not least because they discuss social rank and dominance in detail as part of their attempt to explain some psychiatric problems. (I've written an extended review, discussing their positions and some alternatives with relevance to IE.) Amazon UK: £19.99 £18.99    Amazon US: $31.95
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (Jan 2007) Derren Brown hypnotised me into reading this book in the final chapter of "Tricks of the Mind" ... Amazon UK: £20.00 £11.00    Amazon US: $27.00 $16.20
The Ties that Bind by Vanessa Duries (Jan 2007) An autobiographical account of a Master/slave relationship by Duries. Following it's publication in 1993, she shot to fame and notoriety, and even appeared on French television, before dying in a car crash in the December of the same year, at the age of 21. I've written a (rather negative) short review. Amazon UK: £15.99 £6.59    Amazon US: $14.95
The Sky People by S.M. Stirling (Jan 2007) In this alternate history, the 1960s Russian and American probes to Venus and Mars discovered not dead planets, but the fantastic worlds described in early 20th century science fiction. Amazon UK: £11.48    Amazon US: $14.45
Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown (Dec 2006) A refreshingly upfront and self-aware book by the psychological illusionist. Amazon UK: £11.39
The Story of O by Pauline Reage (Dec 2006) I'm rereading "The Story of O" and it feels like a different book: somehow the elements I detested the previous times (O being shared in particular) seem like unimportant details that can be glossed over, and even Paulhan's postscript makes sense. Maybe I'm going mad? (I eventually wrote a weblog post about my reinterpretation of O, Rene, Stephen, Reage and Paulhan.) Amazon UK: £6.99    Amazon US: $14.45
The Domination by S.M. Stirling (Nov 2006) Collects Stirling's Draka trilogy into a single volume, and is set in a world where slavery survived in a British colony in southern Africa, which eventually broke away and became an industrialised imperial power in it's own right. This timeline has slavery still continuing in the Draka Empire in the 21st century, including domestic slavery in Draka homes throughout Africa, Asia and parts of Europe. I'm rereading parts of it now, after picking it up again to write my recent short history of The Slave Register. Amazon UK: £10.99    Amazon US: $16.32
Why Men Rule: a Theory of Male Dominance by Stephen Goldberg (Oct 2006) "... demonstrates that patriarchy is the basic structure of all human societies, and that no matriarchy has ever existed ... He is also careful to state that facts cannot necessarily yield value-judgments, but nevertheless do provide some guidance for understanding the differences that do exist between men and women." (Reviewed Oct 06) Amazon UK: £18.95    Amazon US: $13.26
A Meeting at Corvallis by S.M. Stirling "This is the final book in the 'Dies the Fire' trilogy. The free communities of the Williamette valley have to unite against the psychotic medieval historian turned Warlord, Norman Arminger. But even if they do, they are still badly outnumbered." Amazon UK: £12.24    Amazon US: $17.13
The Erotomaniac: The Secret Life of Henry Spencer Ashbee by Ian Gibson "Henry Spencer Ashbee seemed a prosperous and respectable Victorian gentleman. But his well-upholstered chambers in Gray's Inn concealed a shocking secret: a vast collection of erotica and pornography, thousands of volumes strong." Amazon UK: £7.19    Amazon US: $10.50