Reading List?

Denerick

We're all geeks. Might as well face up to that fact at this stage. I hope to get through quite a few novels this summer... (In no particular order)

1) Patrick Kavanagh, Tarry Flynn
2) Umberto Eco, Foucoults Pendalum
3) Charles Dickens (Bleak House, Tale of Two Cities)
4) Jonathon Swift, Gullivers Travels
5) Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
6) John Banville, The Infinities
7) Phillip Pullman, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundral Christ

Those are just books I presently own and have been haunting me for a while! (Except no. 7)

How about you?

Eliot Rosewater

Summer reading! :pac:

Given that I'm studying for the next two months I'm keeping all the books I read at the moment short (less than 300 pages). As such the summer will be an opportunity to get through long or difficult books I want to read.

Fiction:
1) War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
2) Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander Dumas (despite the lukewarm review :pac:)
3) Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

Non-fiction
4) Europe: A History, Norman Davies
5) Modern Ireland, RF Foster
6) A History of Western Philosophy, Betrand Russell
7) God Created the Integers, a compendium of Maths writings, spuriously edited by Steven Hawking


Other than that I'll be happy to continue reading my backlog (only 11 now!) and some of the books on my wishlist.

Plowman

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OxfordComma

Funnily enough, I actually made out a list of books I want to read in the not too distant future earlier today...

1. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman
2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
3. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
4. Either Kafka on the Shore or the Wind-up Bird Chronicle (or both) by Haruki Murakami
5. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
6. Sophie's World by Josteiin Gaarder
7. Dracula by Bram Stoker
8. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
9. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I already own nos 2, 3, 7 and 9, and I've been interested in the others for quite a while. These plans rarely work out as I hope, but hopefully I'll be able to read most of them before I start college again!

Malari

Good idea

Seems Phillip Pullman's new book is popular - it's on my list too.

Also...in no particular order:

Non-Fiction
Berlin - Antony Beevor
Nemesis - Max hastings

Fiction
Shutter Island - Denis Lehane
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K Dick
The Count of Monte Christo - Alexander Dumas
The Book with No Name - Anonymous
I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
Flash Forward - Robert J Sawyer

Getting into my history and sci-fi these days

Eliot Rosewater

Plowman wrote: »

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I'll be doing nothing for the summer, bar a two week trip to London, so I'll have lots of time hopefully!

Dades

Malari wrote: »

GSeems Phillip Pullman's new book is popular - it's on my list too.

Mine too - have it on the locker waiting.

I don't like to plan too far ahead as then the book pile doesn't get dusty.
Two or three at the most.

Denerick

Dades wrote: »

Mine too - have it on the locker waiting.

I don't like to plan too far ahead as then the book pile doesn't get dusty.
Two or three at the most.

I only managed to whittle it down to eight in order to look like I've got a grip on it. Its more like 25...

Plowman

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smallerthanyou

Few books left over from the Christmas haul that have to be read.

1. Calcio, History of Italian Football - John Foot, looks like lots of stats and stuff so would need to be in form for it
2. The Constant Gardener - Really should finish it, didn't like it a few weeks back when started it
3. House at Riverton - Kate Morton, I've been told it's good. Any opinions??
4. Back from the Brink - Paul McGrath, started it at Christmas and it was just too depressing for the season so another must finish
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude - looks like nice little read
6. The 19th Wive - More Richard & Judy (or else Oprah) bookclub. Any good??
7. Main aim for the summer is to read back over George Martin's A Song of Ice & Fire series if the new one is supposed to be out in November. I still curse the "friend" that recommended that series to me without warning that it wasn't finished..... (at at this rate may never be!!)

Wow pretty lightweight but that's what summer reading is about!

buck65

Going to Portugal next month for a week and hope to get through some of the following.

1. A Dark Night's Passing - Naoya Shiga
2. Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton
3. The Snowball (Warren Buffett biog) - Schroeder
4. Logicomix (Graphic novel)
5. Sacred hearts - Sarah Dunant
6. Frank O Connor - Short stories

Moby Dick and the Count of MC is on my longlist for this year too.

Cannibal Ox

Eliot Rosewater wrote:

6) A History of Western Philosophy, Betrand Russell

The Classical section is excellent, but the section on his near contemporaries is a bit sketchy. Still a very impressive book though.

Fiction:
Waiting for the Barbarians - J. M. Coetzee
The Famished Road - Ben Okri
A Star Called Henry - Roddy Doyle

Non-Fiction:
Techno Rebels - Dan Sicko
In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz - Michel Wrong
King Leopold's Ghost - Adam Hochschild
Society Must Be Defended - Michel Foucault
Ecrits - Jacques Lacan

If I get through half of them I'll be happy.

ZorbaTehZ

Denerick wrote: »

2) Umberto Eco, Foucoults Pendalum

Half-way through this, it's very good. Make sure you keep a notepad with you and note down any obscure references - a lot of the enjoyment is looking them up on wikipedia and elsewhere and spending (unfortunately?) hours reading about them.

Denerick

ZorbaTehZ wrote: »

Half-way through this, it's very good. Make sure you keep a notepad with you and note down any obscure references - a lot of the enjoyment is looking them up on wikipedia and elsewhere and spending (unfortunately?) hours reading about them.

Eco is a wealth of knowledge, after reading Baudalino I had to spend hours on wikipedia reading up on all of the mythical creatures who form such a large part of the book...

ZorbaTehZ

Summer generally tends to be my most productive book reading time also. A few I want to get around to:
"American Prometheus" Bird & Sherwin
"Gravity's Rainbow" Pynchon
"Satanic Verses" Rushdie
Finish "Lathe of Heaven" and "Cerberus" from Ursula LeGuin.
Few others I can't think of now.

Edit: Formatting

Eliot Rosewater

Cannibal Ox wrote: »

The Classical section is excellent, but the section on his near contemporaries is a bit sketchy. Still a very impressive book though.

Yes, I was debating whether to get his book or not; I've heard of some bias. At the end I just decided to go with the positive recommendations I got, and that the book is so well known. What I'm looking for is an overall view of philosophy. I'm dying to read individual works, but I'd like to contextualize it first.

I'm also reading Norman Davies book for that purpose - a general introduction to read first before "zooming in" on different parts.

Denerick wrote: »

...after reading Baudalino...

Hoping to read this too, but (at the risk of insulting the Ecophile ) it's not my main priority. :pac: My girlfriend read it and she said it was very funny. She also mentioned that thing about wanting to find out more about stuff within!!

Denerick

Your girlfriend has good taste. Has she read Name of the Rose? Its the better book of the two but more challenging. I'll have to re-read it at some stage... (And calling me an ecophile makes me sound like some kind of sexual deviant... Maybe cos he's Italian)

Eliot Rosewater

She'll probably read In the Name of the Rose when I buy it, but I want to read Baudalino first because I hate having unread books hanging around my bedroom. I went through a phase of clicking "Mooch" at every second book I was on BookMooch.

Speaking of BookMooch, I notice your new status message "So those who are that impatient - kindly get stuffed!" I imagine the number of people mooching from you decreased sharply after that

Denerick

One woman got impatient and pissy with me over email because I was taking 3 weeks to send her a book. So I told her to 'eff off. Of course I felt bad but I was busy and wasn't back home to collect the book to post, and I tried to explain that I wasn't going to go home especially for her. She didn't like the explanation!

Eliot Rosewater

You'd think people would appreciate it being free.

I requested a book off of a new member once. He emailed me back, "thats ok, just send me the money for postage." Unfortunately I was drunk when I saw that, so I assumed I was being scammed and sent him an aggressive email and reported him for abuse! I got back this big lecture from the new member about how the community is based off of trust, and how he couldn't trust me anymore.

I no longer use BookMooch late at night.

Cannibal Ox

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Yes, I was debating whether to get his book or not; I've heard of some bias. At the end I just decided to go with the positive recommendations I got, and that the book is so well known. What I'm looking for is an overall view of philosophy. I'm dying to read individual works, but I'd like to contextualize it first.

All philosophy books are biased, its part of the fun of it I started with Russell as well and I think it's as good a place to start as any. It won't teach you everything, nothing will, and, I think, philosophy can be quite a personnel thing in terms of what and who you like so I'd recommend being loose with it. If you're on a section or thinker that you find boring, skip ahead, and, on the other hand, if you find a thinker or a period you're interested in, get a more in depth introduction or read the material. Philosophy is heavy going at the best of times, and if you're not enjoying or getting anything out of what you're reading, it can be very difficult to persevere.

DonnieScribbles

1fahy4 wrote: »

Either Kafka on the Shore or the Wind-up Bird Chronicle (or both) by Haruki Murakami
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

If you have to pick one, pick The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle!
The Handmaid's Tale comes highly recommended from me also. Atwood's pretty good at the whole dystopian future thing. It's fairly heavy though, so don't read it if you're feeling at all depressed!

smallerthanyou wrote: »

5. One Hundred Years of Solitude - looks like nice little read

It really is! Just finished it recently. It's a sprawling tale but it comes together fantastically at the end. Excellent book.

_Godot_

The books on my to read shelf:

Mean Streets
The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril
Inkspell
Inkdeath
Princep's Fury
Shades of Grey
The Timetravellers Wife
Let The Right One In
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Through The Looking Glass
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Lirael
Skulduggery Pleasant: The Faceless Ones
Procession of the Dead
October Skies
Carpe Juggulum
The Last Continent
Small Gods
Unseen Academicals
Lord of the Rings
A Game of Thrones
A Clash of Kings
Pompeii
Warlock
The Mirror of Her Dreams
A Man Ridea Through
The Demon Lord
The Lightning Thief
The Sea of Monsters
The Titan's Curse

lemon_sherbert

I'm not making a list, I have too many unread books in my room to list. I am making a resolution however not to buy any new books at least till September... if I have enough self control.

Eliot Rosewater

lemon_sherbert wrote: »

I'm not making a list, I have too many unread books in my room to list. I am making a resolution however not to buy any new books at least till September... if I have enough self control.

If you're anything like me you won't!

About 3 weeks ago I decided to only buy one book at a time, to avoid having bought books creating a backlog I wouldn't read. So I bought 1 book online. But it was taking ages to come, so I decided my scheme needed to involve at least 1 or 2 books hanging around. So I bought 2 more. Then (about an hour later) I found an old credit card with money on it. So I bought 3 more.

Then I saw a pretty book for €22 and I bought that.

But then my Visa card wasn't charged for the last one, for some reason. Well if there was ever an excuse to buy more books it was this! So I then spent another €27 on books.

The €22 was subsequently charged, so in the end I went from a determination to buy only one book at a time to spending €80 on books in 2 weeks. :pac:

Travel is good

That is so funny! I never saw a better reason for buying more books. You sound like me. I am trying really hard to stop buying more. I have a gift voucher for Waterstones, but I'm trying to use it later on in the year.

So because I haven't been buying books, I've been visiting various libraries. I now have approx. another 6 books to read from the libraries. I'll never get through them all.

I got some good ones including;

The Border Trilogy by Colm McCarthy
The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis

& a few others!

I could quite happiliy give up work & spend the rest of my life trying to catch up on all my reading. I also hate seeing books lying around that I haven't read. I'm afraid to count them all.

Denerick

I just read Pullman's book, and was very impressed. Has anyone else tackled it yet? (Considering its on quite a few 'reading lists' )

BroomBurner

Non-Fiction
Two Treatises of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration
The Art of War
Khan (actually, I can't remember the full title)

Fiction
Waiting for Godot
More Pricks than Kicks
Conscience of the King
Arms of Nemisis

sponsoredwalk

Some great literature spread throughout this thread, my pile of books is so big at this stage it's crazy but I've reduced the pile to the essentials, all of which I'll take notes on... :rolleyes:

Henry David Thoreau - Walden
Douglas R. Hofstadter - Godel, Escher, Bach
Romain Rolland - Jean Christophe
Marcel Proust - A la Recherche du Temps Perdu
Charles Darwin - Origin of the Species
Victor Hugo - Les Miserables
George Orwell - Down & Out in Paris & London
Bertrand Russell - A History of Western Philosophy
Karl Marx - Das Kapital
Roger Penrose - The Road to Reality
Leo Tolstoy - The Cossacks
Ivan Turgenev - Fathers & Sons
Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason
James Joyce - Ulysses
Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy
John Milton - Paradise Lost



I think I'll just get Foucault's Pendulum on audiobook, it's supposed to be great.

Quality

Fiction:
2666 Roberto Bolano
The Book Thief Markus zusak
The reader Bernhard Schlink
That they may face the rising sun McGahern



Non Fiction:
Michael Collins Tim Pat Coogan

I have the complete Dramatic works of Samuel Beckett on my bedside locker that I like to flick through.
Also have some short stories apps on my i phone they include Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allan Poe, Chekhov and are nice for a little read.

Sl!mCharles

A Game Of Thrones
American Psycho
The Acid House
The Bible