- Do you read?

- What do you read?

- Should we be reading it?

POST HERE

^___^

myself...

i haven't read anything non-academic in a while now... except i have my very well-thumbed copy of Catch-22 on the windowledge by my bed pretty much all the time. I dip into and out of it.

If you haven't read it, go out and read it now. Full of a beautiful, irreverant wit and constant offhand references to earlier or later in the book that together tie together to make a big picture that...

well, its almost as ironic and entertaining as real life itself. If i was education secretary, its the book i'd force people to read.

what about you?

Everyone should read Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides, the author of The Virgin Suicides, which everyone should read as well. My two favorite books. The guy has the best word choice ever. Middlesex is fairly lengthy, but VS is a nice short read.

Margaret Atwood.

Canadian Author, a lot of people don't like her. The Edible Woman was the first adult novel she published and a lot of people think it's just really weird, pointless, and generally horrible as far as books go. Personally I liked that one, but whatever.

If I'm to recommend any reading of hers, Oryx and Crake. This should be the first book of hers that you read. It's a futuristic science fiction ish type novel, featuring a character they call 'Snowman' who narrates in flashbacks.

Margaret Atwood Society
(Yes, she has her own society. It's kind of like the Group of Seven thing, popular because it's something Canadian, which we don't really have much of.)

Oryx and Crake - read it! I swear it's good!

I read the handmaiden's tale. It was so good that I read 5 other books by her after. I second Sumisem's recommendation.

cool ^__^ that was the first book of her's I read too. well.. other than her childrens books XD like Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut

Another author that I have been reminded of - is Virginia Woolf. I havn't actually got my hands on any books of hers, but I have seen 2 movies, 1 The Hours based on a book that was sort of about a book of hers? and sort of about her life in part. And another one based on her book Mrs. Dalloway by the same name.

Maybe it's just the readers, but the passages (or what i believe to be passages) that were preserved in these films are absolutely beautiful. The words are knitted together so well. I would think that it must be such a pleasure to read. So I'm recommending to me as well as everyone else to find something by Virginia Woolf.

Sumi,
I had the same experience with The Hours. I have watched the movie over ten times, and I even read the book (which was great, too). Because of it I read Woolf's To the Lighthouse (cause it was already available for me to read) and I didn't take to her style at all. A lot of my friends have. But I was dissapointed. I would recommend reading The Hours, though. It is just as good as the film, if not a bit better.

To keep the thread going: UPDIKE! He is my all-time favorite author. I recomend his entire Rabbit Tetrology (4 books), or if you don't have the time, the best book to represent him would be Roger's Version. After that I would recommend Towards the Future, S, Brazil and In the Beauty of the Lillies.

Dragon Lance...

It's a huge series. But everything I've read was wonderful. Paticularly the War of Souls. It was a three book series that requires only a little knowledge of past Dragon Lance books.

I hope I'm not the only person who's read these.

^ I've heard of them before. Don't read them myself, but some friend mentioned them ^^

@atreides - heh, that's too bad that you didn't really take to her style. I can enjoy nearly anything though. ^^

I have never even heard of Updike before. But I googled him and he sounds interesting. Though this:



Kind of scary. That's one thing that deterrs me from school, being taught what to think as opposed to how to think? I just don't like the idea that you have to agree with the teachers to get good marks. And I've heard from quite a few people that it sort of goes that way. =\

Recommendation of the Post:

Mervyn Peake. He has a wonderful trilogy collectively called 'Gormenghast'. It's about a royal family basically in a fictional world and it happens over the period of the boy Titus's life. If you've ever read 'The Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis... the third book of Gormenghast is somewhat reminicient of the style of telling. It's a somewhat slow moving book at time, but I really enjoyed it. It's quite dark which is one of the things I enjoy about it. And the architecture is described in detail, and this is a pretty complex castle, but it has all kinds of interesting passages and corridors. ^___^ tee! but anyway.. yeah.. that went longer than i meant it to. so i'll stop here.

I like reading, but do it slimly.

But I am a fan of Stephen King. I like reading horror stories.

I once read The Stand complete edition (1100+ pages) over about a week and a half.

oh, man. The Stand.

^^ wonderful book, even after it begins to degenerate into strangeness. absorbing and easy to read. ^^ or so i thought. If you ever felt like reading some really large amounts of literature though, i'd try the Dark Tower serioes by King. The first one of which is The Gunslinger. If i start talking about those books i'll never ever stop ^^;

[biglongboringessay]

my Official Recommendation this time though is going to be Cloud Atlas, by a guy called David Mitchell who i never knew of before i picked up the book, and have never heard of since. It was a strange book. The first 50 pages or so had me persevering purely in hope of better things. which the book certainly delivered.

a story about (among other things) the impact that our lives have and leave on the world and the future, it contains many interesting thoughts on many topics, and is except for a couple of bad patches really rather readable. An original and worthwhile effort. ^^

[/biglongboringessay]

...Just finished reading 'If men have all the power, how come women make the rules'

And, quite frankly, I liked it... alot.

Huge book reader so I'll go ahead and say yes to all of the previously mentioned.

I would definetly recommend Watership Down by Richard Adam's. Absolutely wonderful book, although it is about rabbits it is quite political. Woot for communist bunnies!!!

I also recommend George R. Martins Song of Ice and Fire series. 4 books total all incredibly good reads.

I read the book Lantis recommended 2 posts above. It was pretty good. Nice to see the other side of the whole femenist arguement. I would recommend it to guys who feel walked over and to girls who feel like their needs are never met. The book definitely gets its point across, and it's free to download.

Indeed and agreed to ^

State of Fear - Michael Crichton

... a book primarily about the global warming phenomenon, and the question of just how much of this phenomenon is myth and propaganda.

while it is a work of fiction, its a work of fiction just like Jurassic Park; which prompted and actually provoked not just a rather entertaining film, but a whole new line of science. References to and the scientific contents of Jurassic Park was taught to me at A-Level Biology (ie; 17-18 year-olds)

This new book is highly sceptical of the trends and theories involved in global warming. if you want to cultivate a balanced opinion on the subject, you pretty much have to read this book. it's so damn full of sources and backup (i suspect possibly because he was scared of the environmentalist backlash) that it presents an intruiging case.

^_^

@ Regal - Lol.. Love the Dark tower series. And where can I find this Cloud Atlas. I need a new book. Lol. Already read State of Fear. Good read. Actaully looking forward to this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeRflX2ySBQ

@ Topic - My new recommendation is the Kushiel legacy by Jacqueline Carey. Wonderful wonderful series.

this is an excerpt from

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/gen ... 71,00.html

if you click continue, though, you ARE gonna suffer horrific spoiler death from the rest of the article.

this article, amusingly enough, totally agrees with what i thought about the book.

Read it. I never expected it to be any good, and then after fifty tedious pages it started to mess with my head in an excessively awesome way.

I haven't made (I was going to say "had" but that's not true) time to read much lately. I still have the first book that I remember reading through when I was a kid. It is tattered and torn, and the pages are yellow. Really. It's called "Invasion of the Blue Lights" by Ruth Glick. I found out a few years ago that she writes cookbooks now, and I even had an address to get in touch with her publishing company. I wanted to send her a letter of encouragement telling her that I still had a copy of her sci fi kids book. I never did. Well, I guess I still could if I did some research to get that info again.

I'm a C.S. Lewis fan. I've read all of the Chronicles of Narnia and two out of the three in the sci-fi Trilogy he wrote.

you read all of the Narnia books?

XD ...same...

hehehe ^_^

c'mon, they were awesome.

@Kajak - what makes the Kushiel legacy so wonderful? I'm interested... ^_^

and yeah, i think i'll have to read 'If men have all the power, how come women make the rules'. If only so i can keep on top of all the gender conversations we seem to be getting around here recently. =P

....and.... kids sci-fi writer turned cookbook author.

ecks dee.

w00t for C.S. Lewis. I've read the narnia chronicles through two or three? times in my life... in such intervals as i have near completely forgotten them from the last time ^_^
also read some of his other stuff, short stories etc. some of seems quite faith based, though he was an athiest. *Shrug* for instance the one i mentioned in my other post - "The Pilgrim's Regress" and, ever popular, "The Screwtape Letters."
A lot of people are .. devout almost, fans of Tolkien, and though i appreciate Tolkien, he was brilliant really - if it comes to preference I must say i really enjoy Lewis.
though i may enjoy Mervyn Peake more ^__^ I'm not sure anything could top my enjoyment of Gormenghast.

Must notice though.. i don't think anyone has said anything about Tolkien yet in this thread. O_O