Writing What Are You Reading?

[John]

[quote name='Dragonboym2][color=blue']I don't think "Brazil" was a book. How come you think you'll never be able to get your hands on those movies?[/color][/quote]Erm, I was saying that I had never seen the movie Brazil, or read the other books by Orwell. I probably won't be able to get my hands on them because I don't think any of the libraries around here -- and probably most anywhere, for that matter -- would carry anything other than Animal Farm and 1984.

[Gavin]

[SIZE=1]The latest book, or books actually I've read would by Douglas Adam's [B]Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[/B] series, I personally found the first three book to be gems in terms of comedy [and I can see now where Dragon Warrior gets a lot of his humour]. But the fourth instalment [B]So Long and Thanks for all the Fish[/B] was a bit of a disappointment for me, I just didn't find it as funny as the previous ones and the story was a bit ropey.

Other than HHGttG, I bought the third book in Kevin J. Anderson's [B]Saga of the Seven Suns[/B], titled [B]Horizon Storms[/B], and found it to be a great little addition to the series that builds on a lot of what was begun in [b]A Forest of Stars[/b]. I found the story in Horizon Storms to be might tighter than A Forest of Stars, it seemed to flow much more easily between the dozens of characters than before. The storyline also took on a lot of new intrigue in the fact that the Hansa have struck against an enemy far closer to home that the almost faceless 'Drogues.

I really have to get down the library and see if I can get a few good Sci-Fi books. [/SIZE]

[Dragonboym2]

[QUOTE=Gavin][SIZE=1]The latest book, or books actually I've read would by Douglas Adam's [B]Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[/B] series, I personally found the first three book to be gems in terms of comedy [and I can see now where Dragon Warrior gets a lot of his humour]. But the fourth instalment [B]So Long and Thanks for all the Fish[/B] was a bit of a disappointment for me, I just didn't find it as funny as the previous ones and the story was a bit ropey.

[COLOR=Blue]Heh. Those books by Dougless Adams are silly. Very silly indeed. :laugh: The movie better be good. They better not ruin it. Well, they have allready gave Zaphod Beeblebronx one head, and two arms for some reason. But still, it looks good. As long as they have my favorite parts from the book. I know it will be better than the BBC version that came out years ago.

"KAMEHAMEHA!"

Dragonboym2
[/COLOR]

[eleanor]

[color=darkslateblue] I usually read three or four books at a time, and right now I'm reading:

1) [b]All the King's Men[/b] by Robert Penn Warren. I [i]just[/i] started this book. As in, I've only read about twenty pages. It's pretty slow so far, but I'm determined to finish it. Summary:

[i]"All the King's Men tells the story of Willie Stark, a southern-fried politician who builds support by appealing to the common man and playing dirty politics with the best of the back-room deal-makers. Though Stark quickly sheds his idealism, his right-hand man, Jack Burden -- who narrates the story -- retains it and proves to be a thorn in the new governor's side. Stark becomes a successful leader, but at a very high price, one that eventually costs him his life."[/i] [amazon.com]

Everyone says it's amazing, so I'm going to stick with it. :3

2) [b]Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close[/b] by Jonathan Safran Foer. I seriously just fell in love with Jonathan Safran Foer after reading [b]Everything is Illuminated[/b], which, by the way, is an incredibly amazing novel. Everyone go read it. Anyways...in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the narrator is a nine-year-old by the name of Oskar Schell. His father was killed in the 9/11 tragedy, and left behind a 'mysterious' key to Oskar. So like any other kid...he goes around NYC looking for the lock to the key. Sounds dumb, but it's actually a good book.

Foer uses literary gimmicks and photographs and all sorts of other things, which makes it an easy target for literary snobs, but I think it's very well-written. As far as I'm concerned, Foer is a comtemporary literary genius. His work in his first novel excited me to no end, and although his sophomore novel doesn't quite match up to his first, it is nonetheless good. Pros: Excellent prose (I LOVE this guy!), is hilarious at some points (although not as funny as Everything is Illuminated), Foer tackles themes such as love and truth and sentimentalism well, and the whole book just felt very tender and 'from-the-heart'. Cons: some of the characters are not that very well-developed, and in some cases, it's a love-or-hate relationship with Oskar. But the pros outweight the cons significantly. I believe half of the negative criticism against Foer is completely justified, while the other half seems to come out of some sort of jealousy. And who wouldn't be jealous of this guy? His writing is brilliant.

Can you tell I love this guy?

3) [b]Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[/b] by Douglas Adam. Again. Only because the movie is coming out. I never thought the book was that hilarious when I first read it, but I decided to read it again to refresh my mind.[/color]

[Arcadia]

[size=1]I haven't been doing as much reading as I would like, thanks to classes and my ever-approaching finals, but every once in a while I do get the chance to get a little late-night reading in before I go to sleep. Lately I've been [b]The Phantom of the Opera[/b] by Gaston Leroux. I got the book for Christmas and I'm only just getting around to it. Very sad, I know. It's actually quite different from the play and the movie, though, so that's pretty cool.

The other book I've been reading is [b]Three Kingdoms[/b], attributed to Luo Guanzhong. It's pretty much the same book that Chaos is reading, except that this one is one of four or five books in a series. It's broken up because the left side of the page has the actual chinese characters and the right page has the translated text. It's pretty cool, although right now I'm kind of stuck between historical filler stuff that doesn't really have any immediate relation to the actual three kingdoms. It's more of the building up to it all. Anyway, it's about one of the most chaotic eras in Chinese history and it's really fun to read. A couple video games have been based off of it (such as Dynasty Warriors).

After school I think I'll start on [b]The Ratastrophe Catastrophe[/b] by David Lee Stone, along with some other classic books that I have to read for a summer literature course in order to be ready for classes in the fall. And here I thought summer reading was over and done with. :p[/size]

[future girl]

[size=1]About a week ago I finished [b]The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists[/b] by Gideon Defoe. It's a very good book. It has this very nice silly wit about it and I was literally cracking up out loud at how absurdly he worked his details in. One of the things I love most about the books is that it's littered with footnotes on things that don't really have much to do with whatever's at hand.

After I finished that I began reading [b]Vamped[/b] by David Sosnowski. It's a vampire book, but it doesn't employ all the typical vampire stereotypes. As odd as it sounds, it humanizes what is it to be a vampire. It's not all sex and darkness. It's pretty funny and it has a happy ending with no double metaphors :)

I'll be starting something new this week, but I haven't quite decided what yet.[/size]

[eleanor]

[color=darkslateblue] I'm always confused as to what kind of threads you can bring back or not. *sigh* I will take a chance, anyway.

I haven't been reading nearly enough, so I recently went to Barnes and Noble to stock up on book. For summer reading, I have to read [b]Anthem[/b] by Ayn Rand, which I don't really mind because I loved [b]Atlas Shrugged[/b] and [b]The Fountainhead[/b]. I also have to read [b]A Separate Peace[/b] again, which is a novel I have no strong opinions about.

I just started reading [b]Anthem[/b], and I like it so far. Basically the book is about a man named Equality 7-2521 who lives in a dystopian society where men are raised to live as one, giant clump of order, equality, and mindless herd. No free expression, love, etc. I heard from a friend that it greatly resembled [b]The Giver[/b], and I agree with her to an extent, but it is already obvious that the two novels are still very different.

The other books I got:

[b]Middlesex[/b], Jeffrey Eugenides
- I randomly picked this up while I was browsing the Summer Reading section B&N set up. :3 I've heard glowing reviews of it, though.

[b]A Clockwork Orange[/b], Anthony Burgess
- This novel was always near the bottom of my 'To-Read' list, but in a review of [b]Everything is Illuminated[/b], the book was mentioned, which intrigued my interest because I worship EiL. And I just recently watched the movie, which was excellent. My friend nearly killed me when he heard I hadn't read it yet.

[b]The Kite Runner[/b], Khaled Hosseini
- Many friends' advice to pick this book up.

[b]Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books[/b], Azar Nafisif
[b]The Namesake[/b], Jhumpa Lahiri (I loved [b]Interpreter of Maladies[/b])

[b]Saturday[/b], Ian McEwan
- Has anyone read this? I was sort of 50/50 on getting it, because it was either this or [b]A Long Way Down[/b], by Nick Hornby. [/color]

[John]

Nice to see Shin cares about keeping up with his own threads.

I'm reading The Inheritors by William Golding. It's about a small group that consists of the last of neanderthal man, and their encounters and observances of human beings. (Of course, I haven't gotten that far yet. It's taking a while for the story to get up and running.)

[Sinistra]

[FONT=Palatino Linotype][quote name='Lunox']I just started reading Anthem, and I like it so far.[/quote] I loved Anthem by Rand. While a majority of my classmates and friends who had read it didn't like it, I found it rather intriguing. How different Equality 7-2521 felt and how out of place he seemed. My class was actually entered in one of the essay contests about it. I didn't make the deadline. However, I do hope you like it, it's a short read and I love what Rand did with it.

I am currently reading "How to Read Literature Like a Professor" by Thomas C. Foster as required summer reading for school. The Professor Foster gives an insiteful analysis of different aspects of literature ranging from the Bible to Shakespeare to sex and still manages to give it an interesting spark to it. It's not like reading from a manual where it's very basic, but rather lively like as if you were taking his creative writing courses and he was right there staring you in the eye.

If someone's in High School or their early college years and this isn't required as reading, then I would definitely recommend picking this up to learn some handy tricks of the trade, it [U][B]will[/B][/U] pay off in the end.[/FONT]

[Shinmaru]

[quote name='Who?']Nice to see Shin cares about keeping up with his own threads.[/quote]

Shut up. :( :( :(

I'm re-reading all of the [i]Dark Tower[/i] novels just to catch things I might have missed before, and to make better sense of the storyline in places where I felt it was a bit vague before. It's always so cool how you catch a bunch of things on the second or third read of a book lol.

I also have a ton of books I have yet to read sitting on my bookshelf... I've been really lazy with reading lately. Blargh.

[Break]

I've [i]recently[/i] finished reading [b]Angels and Demons[/b], Dan Brown (we all know what that is about), and also [b]Birdsong[/b] by Sebastian Faulks. That is about the First World War, from the perspectives of a guy called Stephen Wraysford and another called Jack Firebrace, one is an officer and the other is a tunneler who lays down the mines underground. It's an interesting story that switches between 1914-1918 and 1978. The character in the 1978 sections is the granddaughter of Stephen Wraysford, and she tries to find out about him and stuff. It's a good read, if you like emotional war-time stuff. Another book I've recently finished is [b]All Quiet On The Western Front[/b], by Erich Maria Remarque, it's different because it gives a German's perspective on the First World War, being the only decent book about it that has come out of Germany. It is pretty much an anti-war novel in which all of the main characters die throughout the book, showing the life in the trenches, etc.

(I have to read a lot about First World War works for my English Literature synoptic unit)

I am [i]about[/i] to read [b]The Problems Of Philosophy[/b] by Bertrand Russell. It addresses, as the title suggests, the problems that can arise in the field of philosophy, and - says the blurb - apparantly has "never been supplanted as an approachable introduction to the theory of philosophical enquiry." In it is discussed existence of matter and its nature, idealism, knowledge, etc. Sounds pretty interesting, I'd say.

[Lafleur]

[COLOR=DarkRed]Let's see... Recent reads... Man, I read a lot of stuff... Here goes.

Illium/Olympos - A story that is based in the future (Basically) in which Quantum holes have punched through different realities and really stirred shit up. Basically, it stresses on the theory that the human mind is a quantum existence, that the human conciousness exists on a quantum level. Extremely, extremely, extremely intellegent or creative minds can create, basically, a new quantum universe. Homer, who's epic Illium is the center for much of the story, is one, also Shakespear (Prospero and Caliban from the Tempest are main villan/middlemen, as well as Setebos and Sycorax) Proust and a few others are the main ones emphasises in the story. Now, beings called Post-Humans (Who literally manipulated their own genes to change their... well, change them completely) have been mucking about in quantum space. Than these robot-humaniods (Launched in the late 25th century) that exist independently in Jupiter Space were afraid that all these quantum holes would tear the universe apart on every leve. So Orphu of Io (My favourite character) Mahnmut of Europe, Ri Po, and Koros III were sent to fix everything. It's really, really, complicated and I cant explain it all now, but it does involve Greek Gods, laser rifles, Moravecs, and the Illiad.

Dune Preludes - A bit of a prelude to the amazing Dune series, they were written by Brian Herbert, Frank Herbet's son, and pretty much fill you in on all the details leading up to Dune. Amazing read on a political level, lots of neat plot elements... s'all good. [/COLOR]

[grecords]

I actually just finished the 3 Halo Novels (Fall of Reach, The Flood, and First Strike) and I realized that I do enjoy reading books much more than I thought I did, just so long as the book is about something I'm already into. Like books based on comics, video games, movies I've seen.

So once I get some cash I'm going to buy and read Star Wars Revenge of the Sith since I think it will be a good read.

I need to since I spend a lot of my time Imaging CPUs at work and find myself with nothing to do sometimes.

[eleanor]

[color=darkslateblue] I finished [b]Anthem[/b], and I have to say it was a very good read. I liked the last two chapters, and how [spoiler] the word 'I' was discovered[/spoiler]. So I started [b]Middlesex[/b], and for some reason it is a slow read for me. I found a bit boring at times, but I love the story that is going on about the history of the Stephanides.

I also finished [b]The Kite Runner[/b], and I was sort of dissappointed. Everyone (really, [i]everyone[/i]) raved about how amazing it was. After [spoiler]the main character and his father arrvied in America[/spoiler], the book sort of lost something and I finished it only to finish it. It didn't leave me "haunted" or anything, as the New York Times or some other newspaper said.[/color]

[Mitch]

Right now I'm slowly reading [i]Haunted[/i] by Chuck Palahniuk. I'm about halway through it. It's about 300 pgs.

Also was reading [i]Order of the Phoenix[/i].

I haven't read in days, though.