What kinds of book are you reading?

[Obsttorte]

I just wondered what books you guys may be reading. Actually I don't know much people that really read books, what is sad. I prefer scientific thrillers. I love the books by Douglas Preston and Lincon Child (Aloysius Pendergast is just ... cool ) and the ones by Frank Schätzing (that's a german author). Funnily the latter I've started reading because of Thief. The first book of him I've read was "Death and Devil". It's about an assassination and the main actor is a thief (he is the good guy, so not the assassin). It plays in medieval Cologne. Pretty good.

[grayman]

Recently finished World War Z, by Max Brooks.

 

I'm currently reading Side Jobs, by Jim Butcher. Part of the Harry Dresden series. Two more Dresden books to go after that and I'll be caught up with the series.

 

Next up is Doktor Glass, by Thomas Brennan.

 

Then Pathfinder, by Orson Scott Card.

[Diego]

I don't read much, it's very difficult to find literature that interests me besides science books. Lately I found myself reading some of John le Carré's novels, espionage thrillers. It's good but a little dense, if I didn't read the book before seeing the movie adaptation of tinker tailor soldier spy I don't think I would be able to follow the movie (the 70s TV series adaptation is also pretty good)

[Fidcal]

I used to read a lot when I was younger - mostly sci-fi and non-fiction then video recorders and computer games came along and killed that way of life. Recently I've started again and have several on the go at the same time. Dickens, Rowling, Tolkien (re-reading,) Burroughs I read all his stuff last year.

 

You can get a free Kindle for the PC from Amazon and there are quite a few free stories and ultra-cheap ones. One I can recommend that I'm in the middle of is The Phoenix Conspiracy by Richard Sanders. It's a sort of detective starship mystery sci-fi thriller.

 

There are also tons of text and html freebies at guttenberg. One old story I can recommend is The Wonder by J. D. Beresford. It's about a strange baby prodigy who is like this mega-genius - so advanced in fact that it can't relate to 'ordinary' people well and seems freakish. Written in the early part of the twentieth century it's an 'undiscovered' gem. They'll probably make a spooky movie out of it one day.

[woah]

Paul Krugman's "End This Depression Now!"

 

Lawrence Lessig's "Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a plan to stop it" (highly recommend this one)

 

David Wessel's "Red Ink"

 

Hedrick Smith's "Who Stole the American Dream?"

[scarridale]

I was a heavy reader when I was younger, and still do when I have time. I find that when I am at home I have too many other things to occupy my time, but when I travel for work and get some downtime in a hotel room, I burn through books pretty quickly.

 

I enjoy several genres, but at the moment, I just finished "Fevre Dream" by George R. R. Martin (known for Game of Thrones), where vampires meet steamboats, and I just started "Guns of the South" by Harry Turtledove, an alternate history novel where the South wins the Civil War with the help of AK-47 assault rifles. I guess I'm on a 1800s kick since both of these fiction novels take place then, but I read everything from spy novels, historical fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, Stephen King novels (other than him, not too big on horror), even resource books like survival guides and such.

 

Good thread, I will be keeping an eye on this for reading suggestions!

[Moonbo]

Hey Fidcal,

 

If you're interested in good Guttenberg-available books, I'd recommend The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope, and The Man who was Thursday by G.K. Chesteron.

[Sotha]

No time for fiction, I must read science textbooks in order to finally finish my studies.

 

Last fiction book was Orwell's 1984 about a year ago. It was great. We live currently in a peculiar mirror image of Orwell's utopia.

[demagogue]

I read a lot of non-fiction these days, and I tend to read books concurrently, but some fiction too -- I'm trying to read some bona fide literature. I also tend to read books that contribute to my ongoing project to understand the human sciences, humanities, and culture naturalistically -- so cognitive science, neuroeconomics, linguistics, and social psychology, (and a lot of phenomenology which is kind of a guilty pleasure because it's not very naturalistic, but I try to "translate" it to such)...

 

Recent books I've read have been Cognitive Linguistics, King Leopold's Ghost (bloody history of colonial Congo), Rushdie's Midnight's Children... And lots of philosophy books.

 

Edit: And good popular science books. Oereter's Theory of Almost Everything: The Standard Model, and Brian Greene's Elegant Universe on String Theory.

[Fidcal]

Hey Fidcal,

 

If you're interested in good Guttenberg-available books, I'd recommend The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope, and The Man who was Thursday by G.K. Chesteron.

 

OK, thanks. I'd not heard of Zenda since I was little when we used to have a copy. I think I must have read it but I can't remember anything. Chesterton I've heard good things about. So, I've downloaded those two now and added them to my collection for future reads. Zenda as html and Man as Kindle.

 

I've got mixed feelings as to which is the best format for me. Both html and Kindle can have images but html zooms those better (I struggled to view the Lord of the Rings maps even at max zoom in the Kindle so downloaded the main map from elsewhere.) I've got auto-scroll in Opera but Kindle has a nice two-page display which makes it feel like a book. Also, Kindle auto-bookmarks your latest position whereas html I generally copy and past a few distinctive words into a plain text file so I can find my place again (why don't web browsers provide a positional bookmark as well as web page bookmarks!)

[Melan]

I'm mostly reading books related to my job, which often makes me want to do something else when I get home.

 

That said, I'm currently reading Something to do With Death, Christopher Frayling's bigass biography on the life and works of Serio Leone. It is a very good book, and of course Sergio was a colourful character.

[Obsttorte]

Personally I never read books on my PC. Maybe I'm a bit old-fashioned but I like the feel and the smell of books.

 

According steampunk books: I recently read Affinity Bridge by George Mann. I just stumpled over this one. It's pretty nice. I always like it when books have some sort of fantastic things in it that turns out to be described in a natural way in the end. I'm not the type who believe in supernatural things and if something like that occures in a roman I'm always thinking there must be a rational explanation. It's nice if you get something like that in the end what you never thought of.

 

Sci-Fy: I can highly recommend Metro 2033/2034 by Dmitri Glukhovsky. Also the Stalker books were not bad.

[Fidcal]

Personally I never read books on my PC. Maybe I'm a bit old-fashioned but I like the feel and the smell of books.

 

So did I but I struggle to read fine print these days. Also, my PC uses a giant 40 inch monitor so I'm leaning back in my armchair with my feet up on a footstool and the auto scroll moving the text along for me! That leaves me free to slurp coffee and munch. I would not fancy reading a book on my old pc in my 'office/study' room sitting on an office chair.

[pusianka]

Hah, reading mostly about italy lately. ^^ I finished and still come back to "Obrazy italii(The forms of italy)" by Paul Muratov, also reading many books about polish travelers who went to italy and admired its beauty.

 

Just picked up Italo Calvino, finished his short allegorical novel called The Nonexistent Knight and I think I'm gonna dive deeper into his works. ^^

 

I never was a person who liked reading but I gradually start to apreciate the literature more then other mediums.

[ithel]

Good topic! In my first life, I was an ABD in English. I'm an eclectic reader (and film buff... just saw The Turin Horse).

Right now I'm reading "Caleb Williams" a novel from 1794 by William Godwin, and it's very good. It's often considered the first "mystery novel."

[Theothesnopp]

... just saw The Turin Horse).

 

 

Is it any good? i liked werckmeister (atleast first half), but sometimes their just hard to go through. long, slow paced, few cuts and the melancholy.

 

i should sleep

[Melan]

Good topic! In my first life, I was an ABD in English. I'm an eclectic reader (and film buff... just saw The Turin Horse).

I admire that guy for his cinematography, but I'm not sure his work qualifies as "moving pictures".

[7upMan]

I read mostly contemporary Fantasy and Sci-Fi. Also, I don't confine my fiction reading to just one language. For English, I have almost everything by Timothy Zahn (with the exclusion of his Star Wars books). The same goes for Glen Cook (with the exclusion of The Black Company series), and you might also have heard of William Gibson (the writer who created the term cyberspace), I have read everything written by him as well. For Russian, there is Metro 2033/3034 by Dmitri Glukhovsky and the Night Watch series by Sergei Lukyanenko. As for German, there is a huge mix of Fantasy and Sci-Fi. Hard to name just one, but Bernhard Hennen and Andreas Brandhorst clearly stand out. Both have a very good style and deep, interesting stories.

[Springheel]

I used to read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy when I was younger, but now I read almost exclusively non-fiction. Just finished "Mortality" by Christopher Hitchens, and before that "Reality is Broken" by Jane McGonigal (sp?)--an interesting book about what makes games appealing and how we can improve reality by making it more like a game.

[ithel]

@Theothesnopp "The Turin Horse" has that same maddeningly slow pace and bleak outlook. Every shot in the film is about five minutes long. But the impatience and discomfort of watching it convey the meaning of the film. I didn't enjoy it....yet the images and the experience have stuck vividly in my mind several weeks now. Besides, in what other film can you watch people eat boiled potato with bare hands. There is a gimmicky quality to his work though. My wife watched the first two shots with me before turning with a grin: "Are you seriously going to watch this?"

[Theothesnopp]

hahahaha, your wifes comment cracked me up, well. if you like black and white, pretentious artsy fartsy films i highly recommend "Idi Smotri".

"Oldboy" and enter the void are my all time favourites though. I read Turin horse and got excited, resulting in OFT madness.