What are you reading?

Vampire_Hunter_Bob

Cats are great
Just finished reading Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. I was never a big fan of the title story, so that caused me to steer away from reading this book, but thankfully I ended up giving it a chance. It is a really great book, with "The Lives of the Dead" being my favorite story.
 
I just started The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet and I get the feeling that I'm going to enjoy it very much.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
m said:
I just started The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet and I get the feeling that I'm going to enjoy it very much.

It's a bit longish at times but pretty good overall.
 
Aazealh said:
It's a bit longish at times but pretty good overall.

So I finished reading the book during the weekend. I can definitely see what you mean, but those parts didn't bother me at all. Two things that did bother me a bit were that
Martha kind of disappeared towards the end and no real conclusion is given to her character,
and
the conclusion given to Waleran Bigod's character
. Overall I really enjoyed reading the book, so much so that I'll be reading the sequel as soon as I get the chance. I might watch the TV series as well.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
I didn't even know he'd written a sequel. And I unfortunately can't really relate to your spoilers because it feels like it's been 20 years since I read it and those details have become fuzzy.
 
Aazealh said:
I didn't even know he'd written a sequel.

My copy of the book actually included the first chapter of the sequel at the end. I guess the editors were trying to get readers to also get it (it worked with me).

Aazealh said:
And I unfortunately can't really relate to your spoilers because it feels like it's been 20 years since I read it and those details have become fuzzy.

No worries. I was just nitpicking anyway.
 

Viral Harvest

Every Knee Bent Too Shall Break
Lots and lots of Hemmingway. Haven't since high school probably, and reaffirmed to me that he is still a misogynist prick, even in death. He certainly had a good way of painting ugly portraits of people through his characters though.
 
Viral Harvest said:
Lots and lots of Hemmingway.

I love Hemingway. (He's like an idol for the writer in me.) Funny enough I'm reading a book that he technically did write but didn't write called Ernest Hemingway On Writing. He refused to teach people how to write because he believed it was a personal experience. Each person had to find his own way through the wilderness and all that. But he did leave little bits and pieces of how he viewed writing, technique, how to create a story, and the like in some of his stories and letters to his friends. So this guy went through everything Hemingway ever wrote, from novels to magazine interviews to personal letters, and put everything he said on the subject of writing into one book. It's great stuff.
 
I'm now reading World Without End by Ken Follet (the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth). I'm about one third in and I can't say I'm enjoying it as much as I did the first one. I hope it gets better at some point.
 

KazigluBey

Misanthrōpos
The Lair of the white worm is the newest story I've read. Other than that I've been listening to audio books of HP Lovecraft, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert E. Howard, etc. Good inspiration for writing.
 

Vampire_Hunter_Bob

Cats are great
My Summer (to mid Fall) reading list:
summerreadinglist.jpg
 
6 months on and I'm almost at the end of American Gods. Been a bad reader but there were days where I could spend some more time on it or felt like reading it. I'll check out Neverwhere next.

I see Bob's post full of physical books, which is really really cool. I grew up watching my parents grow a library of their favorite books and I've asked them a few times whether they'd want an e-reader and they prefer a physical book.

How do you read your books ... physical format or digital on an e-reader? Is there a significant price difference between the two? It piqued my curiosity because of this article - http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/06/digital-publishing-genre-fiction/

Sorry if this's in an inappropriate place to post.
 

Vampire_Hunter_Bob

Cats are great
Finished The Outlanders and As I Lay Dying. I originally wanted to have three books finished this month, but I think this is fine.

The Outlanders, a collection of poetry by Peter Weltner, is divided up into three section, which the first was mostly about his conflict with God. I preferred the second and third sections the most. Overall, I enjoyed this collection of poetry.

By now I've read As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, three times. It’s a great book. If you haven’t read it, do so.

Working on Inherent Vice and The Sound and the Fury.

IncantatioN said:
How do you read your books ... physical format or digital on an e-reader? Is there a significant price difference between the two? It piqued my curiosity because of this article - http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/06/digital-publishing-genre-fiction/

Sorry if this's in an inappropriate place to post.

I think it's appropriate.

My preference is physical books, which are much easier to read. My girlfriend got me an e-reader (I have a Nook Color) and it just doesn't have the same feel as a book [duh], because it is incredibly slow and occasionally hard to flip pages. I use it for books that I don't want to take up the book space in my apartment, such as detective/science/fantasy fiction or theory books [gender, race, ect].
 
Since I got back to reading that 1 book, I've quite enjoyed the experience of it - riding the subway and reading as opposed to closing my eyes for 45 mins to and fro from home-work. It was a ritual for 2ish weeks and I finished the book finally on Friday last week. Do you have set times or rituals like that or you can read whenever, wherever?

Thanks for that little insight on the Nook Color. I might invest in an e-reader but only after a few months of constant reading. Don't want to dive into that sort of purchase without justification, you know. The friend who lent me American Gods met me over the weekend and lent me Gaiman's Anansi Boys, which I started to read this morning. I think
Mr. Nancy from American Gods dies in the first chapter of this one, description's too coincidental? Hah
. Not sure if he owns Neverwhere but I'll pick up a 2nd hand copy when I get close to the end of this book.
 

Vampire_Hunter_Bob

Cats are great
IncantatioN said:
Since I got back to reading that 1 book, I've quite enjoyed the experience of it - riding the subway and reading as opposed to closing my eyes for 45 mins to and fro from home-work. It was a ritual for 2ish weeks and I finished the book finally on Friday last week. Do you have set times or rituals like that or you can read whenever, wherever?
I'm pretty bad about setting schedules. Part of my summer reading goal is to reading As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and Light in August in three months, but I'm pretty behind in my reading mostly because I am easily distracted and do other things instead of reading.
 
Three months for those books, I couldn't do it haha. So much to take in, I quickly looked em up.

I finished Anansi Boys this morning and I don't have anything to read on my way home grrr. It's not-so-serious tone made it quicker to read, was entertaining, the end being more satisfying that American Gods. With the latter, everything comes to
an end very quick, like Shadow gets the Gods to stop their war within 2/3 pages of dialog when it took 400 pages to planning/ setting up the upcoming battle
.

Neverwhere has not arrived yet. Has anyone read Gaiman's new book?
 

Deci

Avatar by supereva01 @ DA
Just finished A Game of Thrones and today I started A Clash of Kings. Really enjoyed the first book, and HBO did a pretty decent job of adapting it accurately. The one character that stuck out as much more likable in the book was Renly Baratheon for me. Also, the characters being much younger made them more interesting and understanding their actions and motivations easier.

I've never understood why people stop reading them because of the changing of perspectives too often breaking any momentum built up. If you want you can strictly read the perspective you want to alone, unlike the TV show. The idea is actually pretty neat in my opinion, the way you'd find out about the other characters and events would be just as the characters do. For example, I could follow Jon Snow explicitly, then when he gets news from a raven about his family or the king is when I would find out about his family or the king.

If he dies, then the books over! =) Not that I will do it that way, but if someone thinks they want to try it out I'd love to hear how it goes, heh.
 

Kompozinaut

Sylph Sword
Deci said:
If you want you can strictly read the perspective you want to alone, unlike the TV show. The idea is actually pretty neat in my opinion, the way you'd find out about the other characters and events would be just as the characters do.
That would be an interesting way to approach the series, but I feel like you'd be cheating yourself quite a bit. Most of my favorite characters either aren't perspective characters or barely get any chapters when they are. I'd be missing out on almost the entire story.

I'm still reading A Dance With Dragons. I've barely begun but I haven't touched it in a month or so. I really need to finish it. Every couple weeks my book list grows and I'm fixing to start grad school, so I don't think I'll have much time to leisurely read. I don't know when i'm going to find time to finish all these books.
 

Akebobo

my god... it's full of pants
IncantatioN said:
Three months for those books, I couldn't do it haha. So much to take in, I quickly looked em up.

I finished Anansi Boys this morning and I don't have anything to read on my way home grrr. It's not-so-serious tone made it quicker to read, was entertaining, the end being more satisfying that American Gods. With the latter, everything comes to
an end very quick, like Shadow gets the Gods to stop their war within 2/3 pages of dialog when it took 400 pages to planning/ setting up the upcoming battle
.

Neverwhere has not arrived yet. Has anyone read Gaiman's new book?

Read it Sunday (it's fairly short.)
It's well worth an afternoon spent in a comfy chair. Very much in the vein of Coraline or Clive Barker's Thief of Always. Recommended :ubik:
 
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