Books you're reading now

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Thysane
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Thysane » 15 Feb 2015, 15:19

I finished both William Gibson's The Peripheral and China Miéville's Looking For Jake and Other Stories over the past week. Both really great reads, for very different reasons. Now I am embarking on the third book of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, which is over a thousand pages long and could probably give me a nasty concussion if it fell from a high shelf. That's me sorted for a few months.

Also reading parts of Montaigne's Complete Essays for this semester's Ethics and Aesthetics module (basically a crash course in philosophy and ethical debate). Good brain food.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Bebop Man » 15 Feb 2015, 18:34

In between reading Cat's Cradle I finished reading John Updike's The Carpentered Hen, which was quite a lot of fun.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Hekla » 18 Feb 2015, 14:18

I'm reading, and thoroughly enjoying Ursula Le Guin's somewhat neglected 'novel', Always Coming Home.

It's a beautifully written, let's see, somebody described it as the archaeology of the future or something like that. It concerns a valley in a future northern California. There is a narrative thread, but most of the book is a collection of poems, songs, some wonderful little folk stories, that really build an amazing world around the stories of this little society.

It's not exactly page-turning stuff, because it hardly has a plot, but it's strangely compelling.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Our_O'Boros » 20 Feb 2015, 22:01

Recently I read Peter Watts Blindsight (which you can find legally for free at http://www.rifters.com), a First Contact Scenario with an alien species that deserves to be called that. Also some musings on the nature of consciousness and such things. Oh, and vampires rooted in actual science. What more could one ask for?
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby viscomica » 15 Mar 2015, 12:27

I finished reading Snow flower and the secret fan during my vacations. I liked it even though the author sometimes felt the need to say things that no chinese woman from that time would say.
Now I'm reading We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. So far so good! :D
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby viscomica » 15 Mar 2015, 12:28

Hekla wrote:I'm reading, and thoroughly enjoying Ursula Le Guin's somewhat neglected 'novel', Always Coming Home.

It's a beautifully written, let's see, somebody described it as the archaeology of the future or something like that. It concerns a valley in a future northern California. There is a narrative thread, but most of the book is a collection of poems, songs, some wonderful little folk stories, that really build an amazing world around the stories of this little society.

It's not exactly page-turning stuff, because it hardly has a plot, but it's strangely compelling.


I know this has nothing to do with your post but can I just say "awwwwwwwwwww" at the picture of your cat? I have a black cat that's just like that! :D
(Sorry, crazy cat lady here)
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Hekla
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Hekla » 16 Mar 2015, 17:58

viscomica wrote:
I know this has nothing to do with your post but can I just say "awwwwwwwwwww" at the picture of your cat? I have a black cat that's just like that! :D
(Sorry, crazy cat lady here)


I can't help going 'awwwww' at Quinton (the cat in the picture) sometimes. He is such a dreamy little black cat. Thanks for the comment, I'll be sure to, um, tell him.

And in order to stay on topic, here's another book I'm reading:

Myths of the Norsemen by H. A. Guerber – Basically the most available summary of Norse mythology that I can find in the UK. If you want to learn about Norse mythology without reading the Eddas themselves, this is a good summary of the various gods and some of the myths about them. It's great.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Volafortis » 16 Mar 2015, 19:34

Just finished Good Omens, by Niel Gaiman + Terry Pratchet. Currently reading Philip K. Dick's Ubik, after which I intend to read either Neuromancer by William Gibson or A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace. Depends on if I'm feeling like I want more sci-fi or not.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Lord Chrusher » 20 Mar 2015, 01:39

Books I have recently read:

The Exploration of Space by Arthur C Clark
Published six years before the launch of Sputnik, Clark wrote this volume to explain on the science behind space flight and speculating on what path space exploration would take. Reading this more than sixty years later, it was quite interesting to see what Clark was right and wrong about.


The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough
An account of the massive effort involved in the building of the Panama Canal. Started by the same Frenchmen who had built the Suez Canal and finished by American government who saw it as key to their naval power, the building of the canal touches on many topics including domestic politics in France and the United States, tropical disease control and the founding of the country of Panama.

A book that I am reading:
QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman
The book form of a series of public lectures that Feynman gave on quantum electrodynamics, the amazingly powerful but quite weird theory that describes the interactions between charged particles and light. Feynman is able to explain the theory that he won a Noble prize for in an accessible, non-mathematical manner.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby RedNightmare » 20 Mar 2015, 05:16

Reading The Goldilocks Enigma right now. It's about why the universe seems so perfectly built to support life. Getting a crash course in the major themes of physics along the way :D
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Duckay » 26 Mar 2015, 17:06

I notice that last time I updated with news on what I was reading, it was Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography. Well, now I'm getting into Nerd Do Well, Simon Pegg's autobiography.

I may have a little memoir problem.
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Thysane
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Thysane » 22 Apr 2015, 02:50

Took a break from Malazan to read David Cronenberg's Consumed. It is incredibly messed-up and weird and I'm loving it.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Gap Filler » 03 May 2015, 14:03

Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed and Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space. Recent hometown return also rekindled an old Philip Larkin flame.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Volafortis » 03 May 2015, 16:46

I love Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness is easily one of my favorites, been trying to track down a copy of The Dispossessed for a while now, might have to just order it online.

Currently reading A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, it's a really fantastic novel, very different from PKD's other works. Next in my book queue is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Hekla » 03 May 2015, 16:55

BBC Radio 4 has been dramatising a number of Ursula Le Guin's books recently. There are two one hour episodes of The Left Hand of Darkness up online, and I think you can listen to them from outside the UK. They are pretty good, although a very condensed form. Have a listen if you are interested.

They are also doing Earthsea in 30 minute chunks, but I'll leave you to find that if you are interested.

I know I've already stated it, but I really recommend Always Coming Home to anybody who enjoys Ursula Le Guin, as it is a beautiful world that she constructed there. I've finished the main section of the book, and still have the back of the book to enjoy.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby AdmiralMemo » 03 May 2015, 22:01

Gap Filler wrote:Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed
That book was... interesting... I read it and... Well, I think it's not a book for me, but it is objectively good.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Bebop Man » 04 May 2015, 08:31

I finished The Carpentered Hen by John Updike, but still haven't retaken Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.

I did read another book in the meantime: Kwaidan, by Lafcadio Hearn. It's a collection of Japanese ghost stories (or just "strange" ones). And I read a couple more books just yesterday: Frank Miller's 300 and This Is Water by David Foster Wallace.

The last one was beautiful and inspiring until I learned the author commited suicide a few years after. Major irony over there, because one of the points he makes in the book - emphatically, too - is "making it to 50 without killing yourself". And it turns out Wallace hanged himself at 46 in 2008. So now I feel rather cheated and depressed.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Volafortis » 04 May 2015, 19:07

David Foster Wallace is definitely one of my favorite writers. Infinite Jest is certainly in my Top 3 for favorite books of all time, and basically everything of his I've read is absolutely top-notch.

His death was beyond tragic, although he was very open about his struggle with depression. Infinite Jest helped me deal with so much of mine.

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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Bebop Man » 05 May 2015, 22:22

I would love to read Infinite Jest (or The Pale King) but I'm utterly intimidated by the size of those things. I don't think I ever read anything that lengthy.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Volafortis » 06 May 2015, 12:35

Understandable, but if you like DFW's writing style, I can't imagine not liking it. It's just a lot more of it.

Granted, it's also pretty heavy on absurd humor, and it's a bit labyrinthine in story structure, but I feel like that's sort of true of all of DFW's works. Constantly referring to footnotes, etc (There's like 100 pages of footnotes in Infinite Jest, and like in all of his stuff, reading them isn't really optional; he hides entire chapters in them.)

That said, I'm totally biased. I could awkwardly ramble about the brilliance of Infinite Jest for the better part of a week and still not feel I've satisfactorily explained why it's so great; It's in my top 3 of all time for a reason, and I feel I've read a lot of other very good books, so to break the top 3 (Honestly, it might even be my favorite,) seems to be no small feat.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby viscomica » 22 May 2015, 07:01

Blandings castle and Elsewhere by P.G Wodehouse
It's proving to be a super fun read. I actually laughed quite a few times!
I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to have a laugh and not think about serious matters for a while.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Lord Chrusher » 23 May 2015, 00:36

I just finished rereading Millennium by Tom Holland. It is a narrative history of Europe in the centuries on either side of the first Millennium.

I also recently read A Better Place on Earth: The Search for Fairness in Super Unequal British Columbia by Andrew MacLeod. Unfortunately, British Columbia is one of the most unequal provinces. The book is a bit too lefty in places for my taste but it reminded me of how much I disliked former Premier Gordon Campbell.

On to Frank Herbert's Dune next. While watching Jodorowsky's Dune, I felt I should reread the book.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Lord Chrusher » 28 Jun 2015, 23:12

Finish Dune. Quite a good book although I felt it went off the rails a bit in the finale.

I am currently reading Anthony Trollope's The Warden, the first book in his Chronicles of Barsetshire.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby viscomica » 29 Jun 2015, 08:27

Wodehouse: "Uncle Fred in the springtime"
It's utterly funny.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby OccamsRazor » 29 Jun 2015, 12:18

I'm currently finishing For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, which I've found incredibly interesting, even if Hemingway's writing can get a little dense.

I'm excited to finish, so I can start reading Andy Weir's The Martian, which has taken the top spot in my "I can't believe I hadn't heard about this sooner" list.

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