I also recently got interested in renaissance italy, so I randomly picked up some book called April Blood about murder and intrigue in Florence. It's okay. And similar to Chuck, I have recently decided to try to take up reading sci-fi. So far I've read two China Mieville books, which i -loved-, absolutely amazing. And now I've started the Phillip Pullman trilogy, I listen to it on my ipod while I jog actually. And like andie I keep having to re-start against the day. I liked it alot, but my attention wanders, because the book seems to read best at a slow savory pace.
Also I'm reading Harvey's Brief History of Neoliberalism and Lichtenstein's Labor's War At Home--- both absolutely great. And Sacred Hunger by Unsworth, which came very highly recommended to me, a massive novel about a slave revolt in the atlantic, and while I do like it, it hasn't yet hit me like I was expecting it to.
I just finished my first Pelecanos book, King Suckerman, loved it. And my girlfriend got me to read Kitchen Confidential, which I liked too.
But the main thing I do with my life now in my sabatical from 1199, is try my amateur hand at working on a book I want to write about the history of the rust belt. In my research I'm still in the late nineteenth century, so I've been reading John Bodnar's many exemplary studies of immigration and ethnicity in pennsylvania and indiana then; Brody's fine works on steelworkers; josephson's The Robber Barons; Roedigger and Foner's book on the history of worker struggles for a shorter day; and a handful of books in the whiteness studies cannon that explore various stages in certain ethnicities becoming 'white' or not. And, of course, the Foner history of teh american labor movement. I haven't been reading the mainstream Commons school of labor history but I guess I probably should. It's just hard to re-read about May 1 1886 so damn many times!
Oh yeah and finally, a friend lent me this book called reasons to be cheerful, that's written by a british stand up comic (I think) who's a member of their socialist workers party; the book is a sort of critical humorous look at how absurd living a life on the left is. I've only flipped through it yet but man, does it look funny.