Holy holiday afterburners Batman!  Like never before, the holiday season has put everything on fast-forward.
This is probably partly due to the exuberance that Adobe has for the holiday -- 2 or 3 org parties and a couple of "give during the holidays" charity event.  It's also probably due to the standard required set of holiday concerts, recitals, church parties and other activities.  While the latter can be quite fun (or terribly boring, depending on the activity), the former is just impressive.  I was even able to convince my wife to go to the company '80's-themed party--mostly because we haven't had a real company party in many years.
Unfortunately, even with all the holiday activities, I still tasks to do and deadlines to meet.  While this can be stressful, it's also exciting.  So, at least for now, fire up those afterburners.

My interests are varied, so I tend to work through books fairly slowly as I do other things.  I like to think that I get more time to savor and think on what I'm reading.  My oldest daughter (who reads at an inhumanly fast rate) tells me I'm just lame.  Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle: I'm a lame guy why savors his reading.

For academic reading, I'm currently in the middle of a number of books, including "Pearls in Graph Theory: A Comprehensive Introduction" and a couple of chapters of "R in a Nutshell."  Not being an by profession academic means that I go slowly through these sorts of texts unless I can generate a real need (easy enough with R, not so easy with graph theory as yet).  On a rather different note, I picked up "Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy through Jokes," some time ago, so it will find its way onto my reading list pretty soon.  

For my personal fiction reading, I'm working through C.S. Lewis' "That Hideous Strength."  The first two books in the series, "Out of the Silent Planet" and "Perelandra" took a while to get my attention, but eventually grabbed hold and wouldn't let go.  I finished "City of Ember" at my younger daughter's suggestion, so I have "People of Sparks" in the queue.  I've also burned through all the H. Beam Piper sci-fi stories I could get my hands on over the last few months (most are at gutenberg.net and Librivox.org).

My son and I are reading Atherton books by Patrick Carman -- the first book, "The House of Power" grabbed both of us and was literally a cliff-hanger (of sorts), so we have "Rivers of Fire" on order.  I've enjoyed reading to my kids over the years and we've been through some amazing book (including "The Hobbit" and the full "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, most of Roald Dahl's books, the EarthSea trilogy, several Patricia McKillip books, including the Riddlemaster series, etc.).  While I was in grad school over the last 5 years, reading to my kids (particularly my youngest) was the only fiction I took time to read, but now I hope to have more time for such diversions.