Poll: What do you like to read?

looper · Post by **looper** » Tue Apr 15, 2003 10:30 pm

Just curious.

Please extrapolate if your tastes span several genres or you just feel the urge to explain or whatnot.

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Tue Apr 15, 2003 11:21 pm

I read books about how to cook, books about how to fly, and books about how to program.

And occasionally a book about how to play poker.

anonymous coward · Post by **anonymous coward** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 1:43 am

I read high theory and fetish prOn.

Sometimes at the same time. "It is only in the context of the grand narratives of legitimation...oh baby, yes, lick my nostrils!...that the narrator must be a metasubject in the process of formulating both the legitimacy of the discourses of the empirical sciences..."

OH yeah.

looper · Post by **looper** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 1:49 am

pinback wrote:books about how to fly

would that be small, single-engine planes? hang gliders? sail planes? I've always wanted to fly a sail plane.

Egon Spengler · Post by **Egon Spengler** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 4:21 am

Print is dead. I collect spores molds and fungus.

danzaland · Post by **danzaland** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 4:24 am

I am taking not books nor comic books to mean websites and newspapers.
I read:
www.infowars.com, www.kitco.com and branch out from there.
Added: Medical site www.mercola.com a very interesting site with a ton of information about you and your health. I urge you to take a look!

chris · Post by **chris** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 5:59 am

I basically read boring old man stuff nowadays.....books on woodworking mostly. Occasionally a book that rails against something I don't like, just so I can feel good about my opinions.

AArdvark · Post by **AArdvark** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 5:44 pm

Ah where to start..

OK. Online books, out of print, from the Gutenburg FTP site.
anything by Booth Tarkington.

Aything else, from my shelves. ringt now I am finishing off
"Danse Macabre" by Stephen King. (thats my 'work' book)
"Harry Potter/Goblet of Fire" (that's my 'home downstairs' book)
and the ever popular
"Huckleberry Finn" (thats my 'home upstairs' book)

The last fantasy /Sci-fi I read was either 'Space Cadet' by Heinlein or 'Statjacked' by Bill Greenleaf. I can't remember which was last, No biggie, I'll just re-read them both so nobody feels left out..

THE
FAIR AND SQUARE
AARDVARK

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 6:09 pm

Last book I bought was "Jennifer Government." I really dug it, but I could definitely see how a critic would think that it was too screenplay-y.

(OK, technically, the last book I bought was Jekyll and Hyde, but I had read that one originally 15 years ago.)

I've mostly been on a re-reading kick lately. I went through the Hitch Hiker's series (except for Mostly Harmless, natch) last week, and re-read "The Exile Kiss" by Effinger a couple weeks ago.

I need to finish off "Gravity's Rainbow" by wossname there, and Cryptonomicon by Stephenson. I am about halfway done with Cryptonomicon, but I haven't gone flying recently.

bruce · Post by **bruce** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 6:19 pm

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: I need to finish off "Gravity's Rainbow" by wossname there, and Cryptonomicon by Stephenson. I am about halfway done with Cryptonomicon, but I haven't gone flying recently.

That would be Thomas Pynchon and it's only THE GREATEST BOOK IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. And no, I'm not joking.

Bruce

Carolina Bunky · Post by **Carolina Bunky** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 8:11 pm

I'm reading "An American Tragedy" for about the twelfth time...

I have "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" on hold at the library (SciFi channel just showed "Riverworld" which is based on this series of books).

Also lookin' interesting is "Black Dahlia Avenger" - nonfiction account of this guy investigating the Black Dahlia murder only to realize chances are pretty good that his own father was the murderer.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 8:24 pm

Carolina Bunky wrote:Also lookin' interesting is "Black Dahlia Avenger" - nonfiction account of this guy investigating the Black Dahlia murder only to realize chances are pretty good that his own father was the murderer.

Oh, wow, I didn't know there was a book out on that. I had seen an URL passed around on that story recently... I presumed it was a recent revelation.

I was going to do a riff on how much it would suck to investigate one of the most notorious crimes in the country's history and come to the end of it, Maze Craze style, looking at your own father with his finger on the trigger, or hand on the knife or whatever the hell that guy used, but there's really very little you can say. I've got to imagine that every conversation the guy had with his dad while growing up has become totally tainted, though. When I was five or six my dad told me a joke that went like "What kind of wood doesn't float?" The answer was 'Natalie Wood.' OK, ha ha, whatever. This Dahlia guy's kid is living a life where after hearing that joke he realizes thirty years later that *his* old man pushed her off the frigging boat.

Roody_Yogurt · Post by **Roody_Yogurt** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 8:24 pm

I just read the short story that the Spring Comp game 'Cross of Fire' is based on. Other than that, I also have been doing the gutenberg thing and read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

One of these days, I'll probably read Stephen Tunney's _Flan_ again or read another sci fi book with lots of funny in it like I usually do.

Also, my brother has a book about the 1893 World's Fair serial killer that he may lend me.

looper · Post by **looper** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 8:56 pm

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Cryptonomicon by Stephenson.

Ah, have you read The Diamond Age?

...

Ok, I tried (accidentally) to derail someone's thread earlier this year by mentioning a book when they started talking about the Game Kid book or whatever the book was titled. But now I won't be derailing...BWAH HAH HAHH HAH HAH *ahem*...ok, so, has ANYBODY read The Innkeeper's Song, by Peter S. Beagle? Or has anyone heard of Peter S. Beagle?

And also, do we have any Philip K. Dick fans in the house? Particularly of the book Ubik by said author?

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 9:55 pm

looper wrote:
Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Cryptonomicon by Stephenson.
Ah, have you read The Diamond Age?

Haven't yet... only because I have finished off the Crypt yet. But yeah, that's one that I definitely have my eye on. I'm hoping to work up the courage to talk to the Diamond Age sooner rather than later, and maybe ask it if it would like to, I don't know, maybe get some coffee or something. If it's not busy! I mean, if it's not doing anything anytime soon and was, you know, free.

Sigh.. Someday. It's rough when the one you fancy happens to be the one with the spine.

And also, do we have any Philip K. Dick fans in the house? Particularly of the book Ubik by said author?

Ubik I have not encountered, though I have heard that it is excellent. I've got the obligatory well-worn copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? kicking about though. Before I read it, I was aware that there was some big question in the book, and I went in thinking that the ultimate answer revealed would not be whether or not Deckard was a replicant, but whether or not androids really do dream of electric sheep.

I think Dick made the right choice with what to run with there.

gsdgsd · Post by **gsdgsd** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 10:37 pm

For fiction-- mostly straight lit fic, the Delillos, the Roths, the Amises, and so forth. Most recently was Ismail Kadare's "The File on H."; next up will be the new Delillo or a second try at Jonathan Franzen's "The Twenty-Seventh City" (about St. Louis, Bruce!).

The majority of the reading nowadays is non-fiction that I have at least a mildly professional interest in; foreign policy treatises mostly. Also a lot of history and travelogues, currently "Prague in Black and Gold" by Peter Demetz.

Greg

bruce · Post by **bruce** » Thu Apr 17, 2003 9:18 am

I've read a bit of Beagle, though not The Innkeeper's Song. Specifically, The Last Unicorn, A Fine and Private Place, and I See By My Outfit.

Anyone else here make it all the way through David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest?

Bruce

Vitriola · Post by **Vitriola** » Thu Apr 17, 2003 4:44 pm

Ooo, Rob, Cryptonomicon is great, but stay far, far away from The Diamond Age. I actually threw that bbook across the room when I was done to get as far away as possible. Like, one of the worst books I've ever read. I just lent out my copy of Crypto, too...

Currently starting Necroscope, back in 1.3 years...

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Apr 17, 2003 6:05 pm

Vitriola wrote:Ooo, Rob

Hey, where did my other "b" go?

I actually threw that bbook across the room

Ah, there it is.

when I was done to get as far away as possible. Like, one of the worst books I've ever read. I just lent out my copy of Crypto, too...Currently starting Necroscope, back in 1.3 years...

What didn't you like about the Diamond Age? I don't know anything about it except what's being said in this thread.

bruce · Post by **bruce** » Thu Apr 17, 2003 10:18 pm

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: What didn't you like about the Diamond Age? I don't know anything about it except what's being said in this thread.

I liked it right up until the end, when Stephenson's editor apparently called him up and said, "Hey, that's 75,000 words. You can quit now."

Bruce

Poll: What do you like to read?

What do you like to read predominantly?

Poll: What do you like to read?

Me

categories