Which book are you currently reading?

[livemusic]

I listen to audiobooks mostly in the bus when going to work and back. I see people reading books inside the bus but I can't do that, it gives me a headache. Listening to it when going to bed is good too, since I have some trouble falling asleep right away.

And as Foolkiller said the narrator is very important. If it can't do its job well you'll get distracted very easily, specially if it's a non fiction book where there's no dialogs.

 

[RUI]

Very interesting read, and interesting to note that when we focused on anti-utopian novels in high school 1984 and Brave New World were brought up, but not this. It clearly fits the bill. I guess it is OK to say oppression is bad and individuality is OK, but absolutely horrible to say that I is the highest ideal one can have and have I overcome the oppression of We.

Maybe literary quality plays a more important role than content alone...
_________

I'm currently reading this:

 

[FoolKiller]

Maybe literary quality plays a more important role than content alone...

This was a better read than those two in my opinion.

And if they were worried about literary quality I wouldn't have had to read The Scarlet Letter or Dracula. It's pretty bad when I finished reading Dracula and asked my teacher if Bram Stoker just got tired by the end and she agreed that he seemed to just end the story in the most boring and unoriginal way possible.

 

[rhys159]

Micheal Grant:
Gone
Hunger
Lies
Plague

 

[RUI]

This was a better read than those two in my opinion.

And if they were worried about literary quality I wouldn't have had to read The Scarlet Letter or Dracula. It's pretty bad when I finished reading Dracula and asked my teacher if Bram Stoker just got tired by the end and she agreed that he seemed to just end the story in the most boring and unoriginal way possible.

I've never read anything by Stoker.
I find it strange though that you say Hawthorn's prose is bad. Regardless of your own opinion, he is widely considered a master of the American novel (or rather, romance); even Edgar Allan Poe (who apparently wasn't that found of his moral tales, and who I find a much more interesting author) said he was the finest stylist of his time.

 

[deadcell96]

'Bout to finish Romeo and Juliet with the class, SO boring! I'm reading Initial D for an english project

 

[F1GTR]

'Bout to finish Romeo and Juliet with the class, SO boring! I'm reading Initial D for an english project

The way Shakespeare is taught at schools doesn't do the big guy justice...

Anyway, the last things I read were (starting from Monday this week):

Henry IV Part 1
Romeo and Juliet
As You Like It
Hamlet
Othello
Twelfth Night
The Tempest
Beowulf
Marie de France's Lais
Pearl
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Prioress' Prologue and Tale
The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale

All that for exams I had on Thursday and Friday. Now that uni's over I can concentrate on other books!

 

[Rossticles]

Shakespeare would much better if his work was able to be understood more. The style and language he wrote in makes what he writes not an easy read. I found myself often having to pause and almost translate what he was trying to say. It's like reading a book by an astrophysicist who uses nothing but jargon in their essays/books.

I just finished up Go Like Hell and it was great. I'm on to this:

The book is incredible and covers every imaginable topic, seriously. The author helped write A Brief History of Time with Stephen Hawking. It's amazing how many things in the world are simply up to chance, or random.

 

[FoolKiller]

I've never read anything by Stoker.

Seen the movie with Keanue Reeves? If so, cut out the last 15 minutes and you basically have how the novel ended.

I find it strange though that you say Hawthorn's prose is bad. Regardless of your own opinion, he is widely considered a master of the American novel (or rather, romance); even Edgar Allan Poe (who apparently wasn't that found of his moral tales, and who I find a much more interesting author) said he was the finest stylist of his time.

Hawthorne is the king of the run-on sentence. In the edition we used in high school we counted a three page long sentence in The Scarlet Letter. Of all the stories I was forced to read in all my years of schooling that was the one story I had to struggle to read because of how it was written.

 

[Pyle_PMG]

By the Numbers: From 00 to 99 by Scott Morrison. With a foreword by Don Cherry.

 

[AlexGTV]

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior.

Very good read! I purchased it thinking it would be a light read, but it was scientifically backed providing some really interesting anecdotal stories and their analysis; like the biggest plane crash ever (by the best pilot!), how perceptions of people on other people drive the later to behave that way and the bandwagon effect winning logic.

 

[niky]

Just started reading "The Difference Engine", pleasantly surprised. Steampunk, but grounded in reality as much as possible, with a logical progression of technological advances arising from the computer being fully developed (by Lord Charles Babbage) over a century before its time.

The attention to detail is incredible, the manners, the society, the clothing. Despite this striving for believability, the authors are not above tongue-in-cheek references, such as calling punch-card programmers "clackers" and having an Italian steam racer blow up on the race track, due to "shoddy Italian workmanship".

A bit slow at first, but it picks up once you've become familiar with the era-specific references. I'm only a theirs of the way through, but I can already see why this was nominated for so many awards.

 

[leowan731]

Just finished the man in the white suit. I gotta say one of the biggest eye openers on how television can be morphed into.

I also finished Night by Elie Wiesel for my freshman English class.

 

[Tesla]

Currently reading:

And just finished :

Both very interesting reads 👍

 

[niky]

Finished "The Difference Engine"... slightly let down. I don't really like historical drama... simply because I hate reading period correct dialogue. But the big issue is that they introduce characters, stay with them for fifty pages, then completely drop the narrative and go to another character for a hundred pages or so... then go to another... you're left wondering... what the hell is happening to everyone else?

The action is good, the atmosphere is great, and the stories themselves are truly involving. The authors do a good job of making you feel that these are real, living, breathing people (and they're mostly based upon real people), but very little of what the main characters have to do has anything at all to do with the central mystery posited at the start of the book.

Still, if you're an alternate history buff and tech geek, you'll love this. The depth in historical, technical and scientific (everything from steam technology to firearms to paleontology) research is incredible.

Moved on to "Assemblers of Infinity" (Anderson & Beason), a Sci-Fi thriller based upon the nanotechnology. A bit dated (I mean, who hasn't heard of the "gray goo" scenario, yet?) but not bad. A bit unbelievable in parts... to the point of Deus Ex Machina... but not bad.

 

[35mm]

Richard Matheson - I Am Legend​

(Not only I got the idea from TheCracker from a few pages ago, I also used his image ).

 

[Neal]

Currently reading:

You may be interested in Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

And just finished :

Both very interesting reads 👍

My wife's read that but based on what I know about it I'm not too keen on reading it...at least not until the kids have left home. Also they've made a film of it which is due to be released in September this year.

 

[F1GTR]

Kelvin not Kevin. Anyway the Shriver book is very very good and absolutely heart wrenching. It's got a slow start though.

 

[Icarus25]

I can't get enough Game of Thrones on HBO, so I decided to pick up the first four books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series.

 

[Pyle_PMG]

Still reading the Rise and Fall of Communism. Now reading The Game We Knew: Hockey in the Sixties. Great book by Mike Leonetti, with photography by Harold Barkley and foreword by Frank Mahovlich.

 

[Damirgt]

Just finished this book; it was a pretty interesting book.

 

[corporatesteve]

Just finished this book; it was a pretty interesting book.

Read this next, hes the first stiggy, great story

 

[leowan731]

I would but I hate buying books from borders and having it ship to me. I live in LA and All the used copies of 'man in the white suit' are out of state.

 

[Neal]

Kelvin not Kevin. Anyway the Shriver book is very very good and absolutely heart wrenching. It's got a slow start though.

Doh! I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover but I should have picked up it was a bit too jolly for a disturbing book even if I did fail at reading the title, I think you showed great restraint not giving me a facepalm.jpg

 

[66'Roadster]

The follow up, 25 years later

 

[AMCNUT]

I'm currently reading one called 'The World's Worst Cars - From Pioneering Failures to Multimillion Dollar Disasters' by Craig Cheetham. It's pretty good - very witty and informative!👍

 

[Crash]

Recently read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. This book became controversial a while ago because people were appalled by how she pushed her daughters. I really enjoyed the book, it was a relatively quick read and I thought Amy Chua did a good job telling stories. I had a few good laughs throughout it too.

 

[Daniel]

I'm currently reading one called 'The World's Worst Cars - From Pioneering Failures to Multimillion Dollar Disasters' by Craig Cheetham. It's pretty good - very witty and informative!👍

I've got that too, good choice

 

[35mm]

As per Neal's suggestion:

Alex Garland - The Coma​

👍

It's looking good. Very good. It's just a shame that it seems to be so short: half an hour last night and I'm already throught 1/5 of the book (lots of illustrations and blank pages)!


Oh, and I Am Legend was OK. It leaves you wanting something more, but it's definitely interesting and different enough from the movie to be worth a read.

 

[daan]

Just about to start this one.