I qualified the question with ‘bedside’ as opposed to ‘what are you reading now’ since most of us probably have more than 1 thing going at a time. Mine:

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

On History by Eric Hobsbawm.

Sunday night I finished Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic by Martha Beck.  Now I am trying to force Tim to read it!  

When I read I find it hard to do anything else.  I get completely caught up in it and it consumes me.  Unless it is a book I don’t really like.  So, for the time being, I don’t get to read very much.  I used to read Harlequin Novels because I usually don’t like them much.  I could read some, put the book down for a few days, and then pick it up again.  After a while, I decided it wasn’t a good use of my time.  I’ve been wanting to read Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  

Oh!  And the other book on my bedside table is Stuart Little by E. B. White.  My son, Thomas, and I are reading it together.

~Shannon

The three  ::) books next to my bed are (an annotated list):

Forces in Motion: the Music and Thoughts of Anthony Braxton by Graham Lock.  More or less a biography, this book is difficult to stomach in a cover-to-cover fashion, so I read it in sections.

Granta (a literary magazine, though it’s really more of a book) issue 70, mid-year 2000.  Entitled Australia, it’s a special issue devoted to the continent and nation.

Letters on Cézanne, Rainer Maria Rilke.  I am reading this one front-to-back.  Howard Moss sums it up better than I could on the back cover: "The greatness of Cézanne could be conveyed only by an artist equally great.  Rilke and Cézanne are peers."

inanna

I can never remember if magazine titles are supposed to be underscored/italicized, put in quotation marks, or none.  Does anyone know?

I currently have a Katherine Kurtz novel (I forget the title) and Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudoun.

I’m gratified that folks are answering this thread!

Linnet, I found the subject matter of ‘Devils’ more compelling than Aldous’ prose and I’m not sure why since his other work appeals to me enormously.  

Not to underline my reputation as an ignorant bore,
I will tell you that right now on my bed are two books,
"Aspects of Language" by Bolinger and my Arabic to
English Dictionary.

Sitran

I’m the dummy here. I have no books on my bedside table. Oh wait! I’m wrong! But it probably doesn’t count. I don’t read in bed; my bedside table (very small) is a mess of things that probably do not belong there. But anyway, the book is "Tao Te Ching" translated by Stephen Mitchell; pocket edition. I’m not reading it; it’s already read. Several times. I just like to refer to it every now and then.

Patricia/AgDrgn

On my bedside table is:

an ashtray
a telephone
a bottle of anti-snore spray (which doesn’t work)

- PW

Next to my bed is an anthology called Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural (about 600 pages and 52 stories), although I haven’t read from it lately; if I don’t fall asleep in my recliner in the living room I play "Columns" (a Tetris clone) on an ancient Sega Game Gear to exercise the mind before drifting off.  In what is sometimes euphemistically called the "reading room" I have The House of Islam and Kierkegaard’s Either/Or which I am s-l-o-w-l-y working through.  Both are circa 1969 college texts I want to re-read.  The Agora cut into much of my recreational sci-fi reading, although I just finished an old sci-fi novel, title forgotten, a old relic I found among some of my old books stored in my mother’s basement.  

I also have problems with reading in bed since I go to sleep much later than my wife.  But top-most at the table beside my reading chair is The Art of War by Sun Tzu, translated and commented by Samuel B. Griffith.
The book under the above is called Stockholms gatunamn (meaning Names of Streets in Stockholm) with a host of contributors giving a history of all streetnames in my beatiful city, which I hope all of you will have a chance to visit in the summer when it is a its best.

my beatiful city

I know of no more beautiful city than Stockholm, particularly in the early summer.

- PW  

[quote author=AgDrgn link=board=omni;num=1048875789;start=0#8 date=03/28/03 at 22:12:48]But it probably doesn’t count… the book is "Tao Te Ching" translated by Stephen Mitchell; pocket edition. I’m not reading it; it’s already read. Several times. I just like to refer to it every now and then.

I think that counts. As, I guess, does a pocket edition of the Burton Watson translation of "Cold Mountain" by Han-Shan that is under my night stand and has been for years.

I am not very religous, but this sounded interesting. So far it has been.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore

Bob