What are you reading now?

edited October 2007 in conversations
Nature Girl

Post your reading matter! (Hi Tao :) )
«13

Comments

  • edited 11:36PM
    Generally speaking, I'm eyes deep in technical documentation for things Apple. I'll post if that changes.
  • edited 11:36PM
    sorry no image;

    New Art City by Jed Perl

    not bad at all. going through a re-read now, just about finished.... don't know what's next, i'm waiting on a couple from the bookstore.....
  • edited 11:36PM
    i bought a couple of books recently (2007) that i'll get round to reading pretty soon, i reckon! (christmas time / 2008).
  • edited October 2007
    A Maggot – John Fowles

    btw, nice cover art on Rant
  • edited 11:36PM
    websnap:rant

    Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey
    Chuck Palahniuk

    That's a lovely cover!
  • edited October 2007
    Not sure if you all have seen it up close. It's a dust jacket with circular die cut. The "R" is a it the printed title in gold foil in the hard cover underneath. The illustration is quite nice and wraps around the whole cover. All his covers are quite clever.

    Oh.

    And so far a good read too...
  • edited 11:36PM
    The Restless Decade: John Gutmann's Photographs of the Thirties

    http://www.adsw.org/perspective/2001/Gutmann/index.html
  • edited 11:36PM
    I only read Chuck Palahniuk and magazines. I had no idea he had another book, so I guess I'll be buying that one. He went to the same school that I live across from right now, UofO. I only found that out after moving here, so it was a pretty cool fact to come across.
  • edited 11:36PM
    Nothing at the moment.

    Just finished an obsession with Stephen Fry (Read him!!!) And also read To Kill A Mocking Bird. Need to go to the charity shop to pick up a few more classics.
  • edited 11:36PM
    cover image of the robert peel biography by douglas hurd
  • edited 11:36PM
    Biff:Generally speaking, I'm eyes deep in technical documentation for things Apple. I'll post if that changes.
    What are you reading? I'm interested.
  • edited 11:36PM
    nothing apart from my course textbook, after finishing EON i discovered the prequel and sequel to it were discontinued so trying to find second hand copies if i can
  • edited 11:36PM
    well right now am finishing the 7th potter and at the same time starting with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

    the following books will be Through the Looking-Glass (alice sequal) , harlen coben's "the forest" and another book by joseh finder (didn't decide which one yet)
  • To Kill A Mocking Bird
    agree with i-sync, one of my all time favs
  • edited 11:36PM
    Just picked up a book today called 1884:Spring by Arthur C Clarke (?)

    Was worried it'd be an abomination and a sequeal to Orwell's brilliance, but was actuall written in 1984 as a piece of non-fiction to look at the world how it really was and how it might be. The go on about how everyone will have a phone and how you won;t need wires, people will carry devices which they can use to talk to people, and I'm freaking out, because that seems such a big idea ot them and to me it's just normal. Crazy! But really good so far.
  • edited 11:36PM


  • edited 11:36PM
    middigit:nothing apart from my course textbook
    Hey, you signed up to a course - what are you doin'?
  • edited 11:36PM
    The Fourth Bear

    The Ongoing Moment
  • edited 11:36PM
    yes peak, i'm doing the Desktop Support Technician course
  • edited October 2007
    TEU.. you might really enjoy The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner.

    i'm enthralled with Redneck's nickname for idiosyncratic! iSync it is! wonderful... :)

    interestingly, Jed Perl's book is waiting for me at my local library, bull. it's been on request.


    i read a lot, i read fast, and i read any damn thing i can get my hands on. the library has a special little bin for me, as their reserve shelf space is limited. i just went upstairs and got the stack of nonfiction from next to my bed. i won't list the fiction titles.. preference for hard sci-fi here, but i read a book a day of fiction.. it's like some people watch tv.

    non-fiction this week:

    Jacquard's web : how a hand-loom led to the birth of the information age. by James Essinger.
    card weaving techniques, Babbage, Ada Byron, Thomas Watson, and on to Howard Aiken.



    Natives & Settlers, now & then : historical issues and current perspectives on treaties and land claims in Canada / edited by Paul W. DePasquale.

    this was published in 1965, but it's good background to review before the book about current land claim issues gets to the library.



    Nuns : a history of convent life, 1450-1700 by Silvia Evangelisti.

    i was expecting to be bored; this one's fascinating.



    The buried book : the loss and rediscovery of the great Epic of Gilgamesh by David Damrosch

    so far, talking about the compostion of the epic around 1200 BC. (Gilgamesh was a very cool superhero)



    Confessions : an innocent life in Communist China by Kang Zhengguo

    a free spirit in the context of the Cultural Revolution. the stories/vignettes illuminate some cliches for me, and destroy others.



    Charm offensive : how China's soft power is transforming the world. by Joshua Kurlantzick

    China's making nice all over the place.



    i'd love it if all of you would give a brief synopsis/review like some have done. that's very helpful. :)


    x
  • mick said
    i read a lot, i read fast, and i read any damn thing i can get my hands on.
    explains a lot

    expect to see you often in this post ;-]
  • edited 11:36PM
    Mick, have you heard of a guy called Frank McCourt? He wrote three books about his life, Angela's Ashes which was made into a film for tv, T'is and recently Teacher Man. All brilliant and all made me cry.

    He's basically an Irish boy growing up in a catholic family and then emigrating to America and dealing with it. All really good reads.
  • edited 11:36PM
    burned my way through (and thoroughly enjoyed) the harry schmotter series and i have war of the worlds and spook country (william gibson) queued up.
  • edited 11:36PM
    So what should i read next? I like crime thrillers in the mould of James Ellroy, fantasy like Clive Barker, and sheer comedy like Carl Hiaasen (see my first post)...

    I'm willing to read something not in my usual... Biff give me OS X Admin stuff!
  • edited 11:36PM
    mick:TEU.. you might really enjoy The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner.
    x
    Reading exactly that :smile:
  • edited 11:36PM
    Maus II

    Finally had a few hours to read the second volume yesterday. Wow. I'm a fan of Spiegelman's, and I had NO idea that a) he was one of the co-creators of the Garbage Pail Kids (got screwed on royalties by Topps, btw), and he worked at the New Yorker for 10 years (he designed that famous cover for the magazine after sep.11).

    Anyway, great graphoc novel. I read it in one sitting.
  • edited 11:36PM
    ^ reading part II without reading part I recently doesn't have the same effect (IMHO), loved every bit of it!
  • edited 11:36PM
    Did you mean YOU haven't read the first volume, or did you mean that I was missing out by not reading the first?

    (I have)

    Yup, good read! :)
  • Idiosyncratic:Mick, have you heard of a guy called Frank McCourt? He wrote three books about his life, Angela's Ashes which was made into a film for tv, T'is and recently Teacher Man. All brilliant and all made me cry.

    He's basically an Irish boy growing up in a catholic family and then emigrating to America and dealing with it. All really good reads.
    A particularly good read, especially if you find yourself thinking that YOUR life is tough. Most hardships pale to mere nothings by comparison. Thanks for reminding me, it was a few years back. Have you read Teacher man?
  • edited 11:36PM
    i read Angela's Ashes a few years ago, and i agree, McCourt is a fine writer. i'll keep an eye out for his other books, thank you. (you too, Redneck.. for reinforcing.)

    Maus was a great enjoyment to read.. in a sobering way. Spiegleman refused to offer any consolation at the end of the third book, because there is none. i was particularly touched by his refusal to "whitewash" Vladek's own racial predjudices.

    Meska.. you could well enjoy China Miéville's books. He's wordier than Clive Barker, but i like his politics much better. Try Perdido Street Station. you might also like The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin. Yashim Lastname, an brilliant eunuch, is a marvellous character, and the Ottoman Empire in the mid-1800's is a great place for a murder mystery.

    :)
  • edited 11:36PM
    mds76:Did you mean YOU haven't read the first volume, or did you mean that I was missing out by not reading the first?
    the latter (I wasn't reffering to you, because you didn't mention if you did or not in your post, I was saying in general it is a good idea to read both volumes one after the other :) )
  • edited 11:36PM
    I'm slightly between books at the moment after Spook Country...I was trying to spin that one out on the train a bit, and it was OK, I guess...not my favourite Gibson. I've been going through a bit of a Gene Wolfe phase; lots of short stories from a liquidation shop that for some reason periodically has his stuff. My favourite science fantasy author.

    I had forgotten about Chia Mieville...I bought a couple of his books from that same shop after reading that first one (maybe it was Perdido Street Station, I can't remember)...good stuff, but I seem to have wandered off in the middle of the last one. It reminds me of Mary Gentle, for some reason...Rats and Gargoyles..? My memory is shot. I think there was a sequel named Architecture of Desire, which is a good title.

    When I don't have a novel to read, I re-read older things, so Nicholson Baker's The Size of Thoughts lives in my bag at the moment. I can't actually take too much of that at the moment, because when I opened it up all these pictures and scribblings from 1999 fell out...stuff dating from a time when I actually drew and jotted down things that seemed noteworthy. Apparently I was quite fired up by his essay on The Projector, as there were all sorts of diagrams and cut-outs of intermittent mechanisms that I had made in my efforts to understand it. Thinking back on it, that must have formed the basis for the stop-motion animation I made that year. Year after that...I bought a computer, stopped producing anything worthwhile. Heh. That film has aged well; my CG output has dated.
  • edited 11:36PM
    still cant upload pics, no idea why why why why AAGGHH

    meanwhile am reading "Advanced Psychometric Tests" to get some inspiration for a brief I have which is hush hush to say the least.


    vortexual
  • edited 11:36PM
    Any good recommendations? I'm looking for something evil, scary and downright nasty.
  • CPUCPU
    edited 11:36PM
    finished cryptonomicon some weeks ago


    cryptonomicon.com

    Its neither evil, scary or nasty but a good reading imho.

    currently (since yesterday) i am reading this one;


    german version at amazon

    cannot judge it yet
  • edited 11:36PM
    I'm reading cryptonomicon right now! I'm about 1/2 way through.
    also reading 'in conquest born' by CS Friedman. Read a few of her later books (this being the first I think) and found them to be pretty addictive and colorful.
    I've also dipped my eyes into 'Drawing on the artist within' by Betty Edwards. had to stop because there are exercises to follow that I want ot do, but not enough sit down time to do them properly.

    I read pretty much everyday, probably for at least an hour. lately I've been reading lots of forum stuff at work and Iv'e been pretty busy at home so my pace has really slowed to a crawl.

    I'll also read pretty much anything that enters my hands, and I've enjoyed in some form or another almost everything Ive read. I actually think there are only a handful I haven't.

    At the moment my all time fave is James A Michener. the guys a freaking genius. also for fantasy RA Savaltor is def. at the top of my list. I've been tossing the odd spy/WWII/thriller/nazi type book into the mix of fantasy to great effect. I also really like biographies and book that make me learn something, but I read mostly to unwind not to wind my brain up so those usually take a long time to read. Which is why I like michener so much being historical fiction, the facts are right, and many events (usually explained in depth at the beginning or end of the book, and lists sources as well).
  • edited December 2007
    Have you read "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami, meska? You might like it.

    I thought it was a bit, as you put it,
    meska:Any good recommendations? I'm looking for something evil, scary and downright nasty.
    It's way better if I don't tell you anything about it. Just pick it up and enjoy the ride.

    I'm reading "Norwegian Wood" by him at the moment. I'm not along way into it yet.
  • edited 11:36PM
    er … also kafka on the shore is pretty good too.
  • edited 11:36PM
    What are you reading now?

    this thread
  • edited 11:36PM
    Gospel according to Biff.

    Naturally.
  • edited December 2007
    Just finished:

    Papillon

    And now in the middle of:

    Roadside Picnic

    and

    The Insulted And The Humiliated

    Next I want to read:

    image
  • edited 11:36PM
    jesse said...Have you read "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami, meska? You might like it.

    I thought it was a bit, as you put it,
    meska:Any good recommendations? I'm looking for something evil, scary and downright nasty.
    It's way better if I don't tell you anything about it. Just pick it up and enjoy the ride.

    I'm reading "Norwegian Wood" by him at the moment. I'm not along way into it yet.
    Next on my hitlist, cheers dude.
  • edited 11:36PM
    The Sacred Art of Stealing
    by Christopher Brookmyre
  • edited 11:36PM
    CLOCKERS


    CLOCKERS
  • edited 11:36PM
    American Gods
    by Neil Gaiman

    (which can be downloaded for free the next month)
  • edited 11:36PM
    spawn armageddon
    essential actionscript 3.0
  • edited 11:36PM
    jesse:

    my wife's into murakami, reading "norwegian wood" at the moment also :) don't know much about it, since i'm not into this.

    i myself am currently in the middle of asimov's body of work - again - for the n-th time in my life, the man's a genius.


    image
  • edited 11:36PM
    Maus -A Survivor's Tale


  • edited 11:36PM
    murakami is something else. I read Norwegian wood recently, very moving.
Sign In or Register to comment.