2013 - What are you reading? - Page 45

Azera

3800 Posts

November 01 2012 01:35 GMT

#881

Just finished Disgrace. The symbolism was alright (ending).

Gonna start 1984, finally got the money to buy it. Brave New World will come next.

Excelion

Bulgaria59 Posts

November 01 2012 11:00 GMT

#882

On November 01 2012 03:32 Prugelhugel wrote:
Lem is the best!
You may like "The invincible" too, it's very similar to Solaris. I would also recommend "Robot fairy tales" (Even though it is very different to Solaris and overall a totally crazy/twisted book, you would probably like it)

Thank you I'll check both those book.

itsJaeger

Australia17 Posts

November 01 2012 14:32 GMT

#883

yay bookkS :D

MrF

United States320 Posts

November 01 2012 14:48 GMT

#884

ThomasjServo

15244 Posts

November 01 2012 15:58 GMT

#885

On November 01 2012 10:35 Azera wrote:
Just finished Disgrace. The symbolism was alright (ending).

Gonna start 1984, finally got the money to buy it. Brave New World will come next.

As without political connotation as I can say it, 1984 is spot on in ways Orwell could never have imagined. Going to have to fish this off the shelf now.

Pasargadae

Korea (South)173 Posts

November 01 2012 16:02 GMT

#886

Just finished Huxley and am almost done with Marx and Engels. Anyone want to recommend anything? I prefer philosophy, antiquities, or just any old classic.

(Going to assume most people know the general synopses of these books...if not I'll be happy to reply)

Apollo_Shards

1210 Posts

November 01 2012 16:09 GMT

#887

Just finished reading this, an excellent read. One of my favorite books so far.

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Im not too far in, but this book has some great advice and you learn a lot as well.

zalz

Netherlands3704 Posts

November 01 2012 16:10 GMT

#888

On November 02 2012 01:02 Pasargadae wrote:
Just finished Huxley and am almost done with Marx and Engels. Anyone want to recommend anything? I prefer philosophy, antiquities, or just any old classic.

(Going to assume most people know the general synopses of these books...if not I'll be happy to reply)

"Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius.

Written by a Roman emperor, deals with stoic philosophy, though not on a political level, more on how one should (according to him) regulate his/hers own life.

Pasargadae

Korea (South)173 Posts

November 01 2012 16:13 GMT

#889

On November 02 2012 01:10 zalz wrote:

Show nested quote +

"Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius.

Written by a Roman emperor, deals with stoic philosophy, though not on a political level, more on how one should (according to him) regulate his/hers own life.

Thanks, but I read it quite a while ago ^.^

Edit: Anyone read An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser?

phANT1m

South Africa535 Posts

November 01 2012 18:57 GMT

#890

this year the focus is on Rober Ludlum books (big fan of his work), atm finishing up on The Janson Directive.

YoucriedWolf

Sweden1456 Posts

November 02 2012 09:33 GMT

#891

Finished

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Meditations - Marcus Aurelius

Good book, one of the few I wish people would understand rather than read. Encouraging that so much wisdom could be aquired so long ago.

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Because my education sucked yo.

Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare (et al?)

Spoilers
Wow talk about a book that hasn't aged well. Turns out Juliet is just a stupid kid and I'm supposed to believe that their love is the stuff of legends even though Romeo rather killed a dude. Lyrics are amazing though and very insightful to one who is interested in linguistics WP shakespeare.

No update in current read as I'm soon done with that one too, it will be in my next post.

Kontys

Finland659 Posts

November 02 2012 10:22 GMT

#892

The Lost series of Gaunt's Ghosts.

It has been almost 8 years since I first discovered Dan Abnett, but I'm still re-reading his stuff. One of the most addictive authors of all time, even in spite of the fact that Gaunt's Ghosts are all war hero novels with doom and gloom applied in stupendous quantities. Maybe that says something about me, who knows.

I also have a partly read Philosophical Discussions of Gottfried Leibniz sitting pretty in my bookshelf.

YoucriedWolf

Sweden1456 Posts

November 02 2012 10:42 GMT

#893

Pasargadae:

I am sure that many people here could recommend you great classics, maybe even myself included.
But I think that the purpose of this community would be best served by me recommending you a rather hidden cultural gem by the title of "Kallocain" (author Karin Boye).

Train of thought being that reading brave new world is usually preceded by reading 1984 and what is really interesting about Kallocain is that it is basically a swedish 1984 written eight years before 1984.

Wiki states it's only 156 pages so not a big commitment either, well worth your time should you be able to aquire it. It also says that it has been translated to more than 10 languages so I will assume that english is one of them

qeMix

Germany71 Posts

November 02 2012 11:49 GMT

#894

read some books in the last three months or so as i had some free time:
Haruki Murakami - The Wind Up Bird Chronicle 4/5
Hermann Hesse - Siddhartha 4/5
Stephen King - The Green Mile 4/5
Jeffery Deaver - Roadside Crosses 3/5
Jeffery Deaver - XO 4/5
Jeffery Deaver - The Devil's Teardrop 3/5
Brent Weeks - The Way of Shadows 4/5
Brent Weeks - Shadow's Edge 4/5

currently reading:
Brent Weeks - Beyond the Shadows

and next up would be Murakami - Kafka on the Shore i think.

Topin

Peru10110 Posts

November 02 2012 16:43 GMT

#895

i started this book yesterday and is so good, i have read like 1/3rd of the book and the way the author tell the story and the story itself is so good, i can feel the sadness of the characters... damn good book

RvB

Netherlands6271 Posts

November 02 2012 18:15 GMT

#896

Challanging read since it's my first economy book in English sadly a lot of books don't get translated to Dutch so I have to get used to reading difficult books in English anyway.

Raktavijan

Finland48 Posts

November 02 2012 21:32 GMT

#897

Right at this moment, I'm reading Iain M. Banks' Use of Weapons and a few weeks before that I finished his Player of Games. Next up are three more books from the Culture series, namely Excession, Inversions and Look to Windward.

I love Mr. Banks, his style of writing is incredible and he has nice pacing, switching between action and calm as well as describing in vivid detail the surroundings, emotions and thoughts of the books characters. I strongly suggest that if any of you are into scifi, look him up. Consider Phlebas, his first Culture book, was incredible and well worth a read even if you wouldn't be interested in his other books.

sorrowptoss

Canada1431 Posts

November 02 2012 22:29 GMT

#898

This will be my second post in this thread because I finished reading what I first set out to read and now I got some new books to eat up:

First one is A Clockwork Orange by A. Burgess. Great read, very explicit and provoking. (Removed the img because I couldn't find any that were small enough).

Second on is a "comic" book that's actually real life journalism by Joe Sacco. It's really political but nice to read.
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Cambium

United States16368 Posts

November 03 2012 09:01 GMT

#899

On July 22 2012 21:53 Cambium wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

On June 03 2012 23:39 Cambium wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

On May 09 2012 13:32 Cambium wrote:
Just finished:
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Read this in five days after watching the movie. It was a surprisingly good read; book three was lacking, but it wasn't terrible. The writing style sucked, there was almost no character development, and the plot was linear; but overall, it was fun and enjoyable.

Reading:
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I've been putting this off since last year hoping that I would catch a paperback version, but I finally gave up and started reading it. So far so good, a lot more engaging than book four to say the least.

Next up:

It's either going to be this, Ready Player One or 1Q84, but this book won out, and the others have to wait.

Just finished:
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This was a surprisingly good read after great disappointment with Feast. A lot of actions and changes in and outside of the Westeros. This is probably my favourite after Clash.

Reading:
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Next up:

Just finished:
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1Q84 was okay.... the first book was really good with a lot of character development, then things got pretty boring/strange/weird (typical) from the 2nd book. Too many loose ends at the end, didn't feel very satisfied after finished reading the book.

Reading:
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Pretty interesting so far, but nothing spectacular has happened.

Next up:

Just finished:

In the Garden of Beasts

The was a exceedingly dry book with very no real crescendos, and tells a story through a very matter-of-fact narration. I actually managed to finish this book despite wanting to give up multiple times along the way. One of the biggest draws was the book's literary value: the sentences and paragraphs were extremely well written, and the prose had a very consistent tempo (even though very very slow) and flowed very well. I was reading more for the language lesson than the story itself.

I don't recommend this book unless you have a very keen interest in WWII history.

Ready Player One

Having suffered through the book above, I desperately needed something refreshing and easy to read, and nothing fit the bill better than Ready Player One. In comparison to Garden, this book was almost purely plot driven, and the overall prose was akin to Harry Potter (i.e. extremely easy to read/terrible). There are a ton of geeky buzzwords planted throughout the book that resonated with my inner nerd, a cheap trick, but worked very well.

The plot is very contrived, the world is taken almost directly from Second Life and Snow Crash, the love story is childish, and the ending is predictably vanilla Disney. However, the book is very entertaining. I didn't find any deeper meanings in the book; to me, it was almost like watching a Transformer movie: just turn off the brain and enjoy the ride.

11/22/63

This was the first Stephen King book I have ever read, and I actually loved it. The writing style was mature yet simplistic (a nice balance between the two books above), and the story had so many twists and turns, and most importantly, the story had a reasonable and logic ending; although predictable at times, it still managed to draw me in just to see how events actually pan out. I felt very engaged reading this book, and didn't even realize how long it was until I had finished it (I read books on Kindle). There was a very nice mix of internal struggles (within and amongst the main characters) and explicit and implicit battles against the supernatural/laws of physics (?? sci-fi elements). The pace was fast throughout, and the character development was great. Undoubtedly, there are a lot of plot holes in the story due to the sci-fi-esque nature of the story, but those can and should be overlooked.

I would actually set aside hours before bedtime to read this novel, and often lost sleep because I didn't want to stop.

Reading

Lost in Shangri-La

This book is exactly like In the Garden of Beasts except it doesn't even have exceptional prose. I read over 50% of the book, and I think I am going to give up.

The story is immensely interesting, but the author goes on **very big** tangents to describe every person who is remoted related (up to three degrees of separation) to the main characters invovled including childhood, education, career, etc. where their histories have absolutely nothing to do with the main story line. I feel the whole book could be summarized in three chapters: crash, survival, and return to base (this is just my guess, and I have no idea what will happen) rather than hundreds of pages of nonsense. There is likely more filler than the actual story.

I will not finish this book.

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