In a recent discussion, which I remember nothing of, aside from the fact that I mentioned "I have not read a book in years."

I used to read all the time.

I enjoyed Michael Crichton type Sci-Fi, anything History (1776, stuff like that), wack stuff like Douglas Adams (RIP as well as Michael), and books that throw out a lot of random factual references... so you enjoy reading a book and learn stuff that you would have never bothered to look up.

Anyone got recommendations?

Or do you not read?

I love reading Star Wars novels. Unfortunately, they are hard to get down here, especialy in English, so I illegaly download them.

I'll sell you all my starwars books if you want.

I already downloaded them all.

I have a friend who's really fond of telling me and other how he hates reading. Today the Watchmen TV spot came on during The Office and he went on about how he wanted to see it. I offered to let him borrow the book, but he refuses because he doesn't want to read. It's really pathetic. He is 20 years old.

I stopped reading for a long time...didn't ever seem to have the time. But lately I've been making some time; I love reading. Non-fiction, historical accounts, studies on interesting things. Stuff like that.

I strongly recommend Terry Pratchett's discworld series (The whole series is good, but the later books just keep getting better and better).

Also, if your the type who loves random factual stuff, try cracking open the "Annotated Pratchett File" while your reading them. Allot of the references are pretty easy to get, but some of them are amazingly obscure.

Otherwise I'm reading "Kavalier and clay" by Michael Chabon right now.

Warhammer 40k Black Library books, mostly what Dan Abnett has written, are ****ing ace.

Fantasy, a la David Gemmell, David Eddings, Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind, Dragonlance, and a few other authors.

Sci-Fi/Cyberpunk such as Jack Campbell, Orson Scott Card, and the guy who wrote Altered Carbon.

Richard Morgan! I think I read that book at your recommendation... it was somebody on here, anyway.

It was really excellent... and his first novel, too.

I read quite a bit. A lot in the summer when there is time to kill on assignments. I've read a lot of WWII stuff (Band of Brothers inspired me and I kept going from there). I also throw in some fiction as well. Read the Bourne books this past summer amongst others.

I'm reading Galapagos, Welcome to the Monkey House, Slapstick, Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, Siren of Titans, and Cat's Cradle at the moment.

I like war books, but not books about war. I don't want to read the tactics of fighting of war, but how war affects people. I'm hopefully going to read Catch-22 and All Quiet on the Western Front soon.

I never liked science fiction. Only science fiction book I like was Ender's game and to an extent, KV's books as well.

Asides from book, I usually check up on Joel Stein's columns because he's awesome. I usually read the featured article on Time.

What I really want to read though is House of Leaves. I accidentally destroyed this book and really regret it. It was a waste of money doing that and also a waste of a good read. I did get a glimpse of the first few pages. Seemed promising.

Oh and dystopian literature. I like that stuff too. Dark and eerie is cool.

My Roommate had House of Leaves. I picked it up once and was completely "WTF."
It wasn't even a book.
Should I bother with it?
(Maybe I'm thinking of something else, but HoL and a certain book makes a connection, it's like, completely not a normal book, right?)

Come on. You can't recommend cyberpunk and not mention Snow Crash or Neuromancer.

He said he wanted to READ, not bludgeon small children.

yes it isnt a normal book.

[So I read through my post and it sounds like the most pretentious piece of intellectual tripe ever. >_< Sorry]

I'm a huge Fitzgerald obsessionist and I'm really into deep (mostly language/writing-wise, but content-wise as well) stuff and his fantastically artful use of imagery, symbolism, metaphor, etc. as well as the resulting openness to interpretation of the message he wanted to convey vs meanings he might not have intended but that people will take notice of anyways. I've read almost all of his novels and short stories (never read Tender is the Night) Incidentally, I loved "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (the movie) because although it had almost NOTHING to do with Fitzgerald's original short story, it did a really good job of capturing the aforementioend Fitzgerald-esque feel.


I also really love Tim O' Brien's The Things They Carried (for much the same reasons ... the subtle and not-so-subtle implications in that book about the usefulness and power of storytelling in dealing with both national grief/strife/unrest and personal haunts are awesome), but I haven't read any of his other books (I don't know if there are any other well-known ones by him ... forgot to look into it >_<)


In other words, I tend to like books not necessarily for the plot but for the writing and its expressive ability (and as a result when I write, it's usually short stories that are in the same vein rather than ones that are very plot-centric ... although I've been TRYING to balance it out with portions that are less writing-heavy and are just fun to read plotwise so that it doesn't become a dry prentetious piece of crap).

HOWEVER -- some books that I really had to force myself to finish that fall into the above category:

-Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
-Beloved by Tony Morrison (it's a good book, I guess, but there are some chapters in there that go to the extreme with what I was talking about and just make NO SENSE at all / I'm too stupid to understand ... there's a chapter that has NO PUNCTUATION in it and is just ... @_@. Also, they constantly talk about having sex with cows which I thought was sort of weird)

And by contrast, books that are NOT extremely writing-deep or are writing-deep but are strongly plot-centric / just tell a good story:
-The Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix
-Pride and Prejudice

I'm torn between poll answers.
I love reading, but I rarely read an actual book anymore.
Stupid internet.

comics mostly

i read all the ****ing time

if i am not currently reading a book then something is wrong

There should be a choice for "I love to read, but only get to sometimes."

lets see, been re-reading OSC's Ender/Bean books since december, almost done with the Ender half and about to start the last three Bean books... (So, for all you learneded people, I'm on Children of the Mind)
but other than that I'm a huge Star Wars reader, and I used to be huge into Battletech until i read 99% of Classic series and gave up reading them through again.

I also read random books other than those also.

I don't read nearly as much as I'd like to. I'm honestly considering investing in a Kindle.

JASPER FFORDE.

FOR THE LOVE ALL THAT IS GOOD AND PURE JASPER FFORDE!!

reading the enders game series.. currently on xenocide

1; only on t3h internet
2; paperback?
3; random f***ing sh**

Only if I have to. And I have to. All the ****ing time. I'm pretty sure I've read more since September than 80% of Americans have in the past decade.

I read quite a bit of Bill Bryson, Robert Rankin and Pratchett, and I have a few books of Clarkson's newspaper column thing.

Mostly I read PC Gamer, though, but that doesn't count because it's a magazine.

I try to keep it generally broad flitting back and forth between fiction and non-fiction; and high and low brow. Kinda got a thing for reading natural history and nature writing as well.

Currently reading: Why I Write by George Orwell - a bunch of essays on writing, Englishness, socialism, fascism and the death penalty (ie all the things that agitated him and made him a great writer)

One thing I've noticed lately is the dearth of female authors in my list of books I've read. Anyone else find that?

Stereotypical gender roles carry over into fiction pretty well, it seems. The dudes are writing sword and scorcery and scifi, and the chicks are writing romance. Just about everything on my shelf is by a dude. The only series that isn't is the Potter series.

Also you people are all missing out on Greg Keyes and George R R Martin and the amazing Niven/Pournelle duo and Robert Jordan, but at least you're reading Orson Scot Card so you can't be all bad.

Except that several female authors such as Christie Golden, Margaret Weis, Robin Hobb, Anne McCaffrey, Marion Zimmer Bradley have written excellent fantasy novels, several of which did not even include a romance subplot.

For my part, I'm a huge fan of reading and also writing. I'm currently hard at work on my first novel, and reading technical books by published authors, not so much as a perfect guide to writing a break-through novel, but rather to get an insight into their methods and way of thinking.

In terms of reading I've enjoyed several author's work in several genres from Michael Chricton to Stephen King to Robert Jordan to Troy Denning to JRR Tolkien to Dan Brown to Christie Golden to Robin Hobb to Dean Koonz to David Gemmel.

I usually always have a book underway, though I read more actively during the colder months of winter.

I went with "I love reading", despite the fact that I've been stuck on the same book for the past year (Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson) and have yet to advance much more than a couple of pages at a time. I don't know what it is, because I enjoyed what I have read and it's a really interesting series (Malazan Book of the Fallen, you'll enjoy them if you like your fantasy worlds to throw you in at the deep end with a thoroughly planned out and extensive history). I just can't seem to make time for it anymore. Hopefully the next time I go on holiday I'll blitz through several

Past favourites include the Discworld series, going on sprawling webs of Wikipedia articles, and Snow Crash. Coincidentally, I was considering buying the latter again last night because I lent my copy to a friend years ago who never read it or gave it back before moving away. The jackass.

There are exceptions to ever rule. Except this one.

Personally I can't stand McCaffrey. I think it has something to do with the '**** you' way she treats her fans in regards to fan fiction.

Also her implication that being a grandmother is mutual exclusive of enjoying porn.

http://annemccaffrey.net/index.php?page_id=20

Mind you I'm no McCaffrey fan. I'm neither a fan of Dragons of Pern or her attitude.

I... I never learned how

Yes well I'm explicitly anti-McCaffrey. Also that kid who wrote 'Aragon' or whatever sucks sweaty monkey balls.

Agreed I'm quebecer too and I think Eragon is terribad.

Personally I think this should be checkbox for I love to read, and sometimes.

For leisure, the only books I can get into are Michael Crichton novels. Besides that, I only read books when required. I do read a lot on the Internet though. I just don't read a lot of books.

I don't really like reading books that much anymore.

I do, however, enjoy reading anything on a computer.

Funny how that works, eh?