Wonderful thread for a book freak such as I.
I often have two to four books going at the same time but, right now, only two.
One is "The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts" by Louis de Bernières. Not that it matters much but he is british, in spite of his name. Anyway, to me, he belongs to what I call the sons of John Irving, recent writers who, like Irving make you laugh and cry all at the sale time. Wally Lamb is another one that you may be more familiar with.
Anyway, "The War" is a wonderfully crazy tale of everyday South America that includes revolution, the peasant daily life, the role of the USA in that region, the different races, and more and more. Beautiful book.
The second book is "Food First" by Frances Moore Lappé. I had read this book years ago (it came out in 77) and started reading it again because I work with a lot of organic farmers and slow food people. I don't know if anything better came out since, but this book is still very true today in a lot of ways. Scary!