'Sup fellow bibliophiles

kittenmay

kittenmay

So I was looking through a forum, and I realized that there are no topics on books. Pretty sad because books are amazing. I thought it’d be pretty cool to have a thread to discuss what we’re reading, what books and genres and authors we like, etc. Not sure how many Smogonites read, but if this gets a pretty good following, we could have some pretty awesome discussions. We could also possibly merge this with writing advice, etc, if anyone wants.


Just putting these ground rules up:
1) No judging other people’s choice of books or authors. You can respectfully disagree, but there’s no need to mock. Everyone has their own tastes.
2) This is NOT a place to brag about how intelligent and hipster you are because you read exclusively intellectual books. This is for ALL types of books. Don’t be a pretentious prick!
3) Opinions, book recommendations, questions are all good. If you know what you’re talking about, don’t be afraid to speak up!

I guess I’ll start off then!

I’m mostly into fantasy, with certain sub genres (Epic fantasy, high fantasy, steampunk, dark fantasy, dark urban, etc) I read and write a lot of it, and some of my favorites are ASOIAF (A Game of Thrones, etc) by George R. R. Martin, the Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss and the Deepgate Codex series by Alan Campbell.
I’m also a fan of classic literature, such as the Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Paradise Lost by John Milton, and the Inferno by Dante.
Religious texts are something I’ve recently been getting into. I’ve read a lot of varied religious texts, and I’m currently reading the Egyptian book of the dead.

What about you guys? What books/genres do you like?

EDIT: Also, if several people have a book they have read or would like to read, discussions are always an option
 
hey kitty

but i reckon that's old enough for mark II ?

uh i recently read the undercover economist, pretty basic stuff but some cool things in there also!

i also read this book called 'blink'; iirc, it's about snap decisions and the like, very interesting. it talks about first impressions, thinking on your feet, long term thinking v. short term, etc. lots of rich anecdotes/case studies and generally quite informative (i hope, anyway!), i gave it to my mother to take back to my dad to read, since he's always a stickler for making really, really informed decisions.
 
I've been reading Trainspotting in my (increasingly rare) spare time and been enjoying it, although the dialect is kind of a pain in the ass to follow and the quotation conventions are disorganized and weird. I am gonna start Requiem for a Dream next, as I've seen the film and enjoyed it. After that, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. If anyone else knows some more cool litfic novels for a drug-addled retard please let me know.


Poppy I had to read Blink over the summer for school and I enjoyed it a fair bit, but idk how much stock I would really put into it
 
I love reading and really wish I had more time to do it (for pleasure). The last books I read for pleasure were Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, both by Vonnegut. Cat's Cradle is absolutely brilliant and everybody should read it; Breakfast of Champions was another great piece but its very typical Vonnegut and is a bit of an "acquired taste." I've also been reading Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe on and off and been enjoying it. When I get more free time I'm going to try and finish this up.

Most of my work this semester (and last) has been from a class here called Literature Humanities where we basically throttle through the highlights of western literature. Some of the stuff we've read includes Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey, Euripides' The Medea, Plato's Symposium, parts of the Bible, Ovid's Metamorphoses, St. Augustine's Confessions (oh my god this was punishment), Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio, Boccaccio's Decameron, Shakespeare's King Lear, Cervantes' Don Quixote (highly recommended), Goethe's Faust, and now Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (also really great). Sometimes it's pretty painful when on Tuesday you're assigned 200 pages of dense reading for Thursday, but overall I've really enjoyed the class and I've definitely read a lot of classic stuff that I've enjoyed but wouldn't have read otherwise. You feel pretty cultured when you can bring up Dante's Inferno in a random conversation and then relate it to Crime and Punishment ;)
 
Oh sorry Poppy, I guess I didn't look far enough! Mark II it is then ;)
I also read Blink, which was a very enjoyable book. It certainly made me think and it was interesting to see the sort of psychology that goes into that sort of thing. I actually read The Tipping Point by him first, which was also great. If you liked Blink, you should look into it.

Bojangles - Cat's Cradle was one of three Vonnegut books I read this summer for school. It was my favorite Vonnegut book to date. I also read Breakfast of Champions, but when I was a lot younger (8 or 9) so I don't remember a lot about it, and I don't think I really enjoyed it either.
The literature class sounds great, I love a lot of those books. Its really interesting to see the writing evolve and different cultures and styles of writing across the ages.
 
I used to be an avid reader, but my free time has been taken up by other things for the most part.

It's cool that people have been mentioning Malcolm Gladwell. I find nearly everything he writes interesting, with special mention going to his book Outliers. I usually don't read a whole lot of non-fiction, but I get entranced by what Gladwell has to say.

I loved Vonnegut in high school, and I'm curious to see how I'd feel about his novels today. I'm thinking I should reread my library of his works.

This is my threadly plug for House of Leaves. You'll either think it's bullshit or the most extraordinary thing you've ever read, and I fall into the latter category. It's a book about a book about a movie about a house that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, and like the plot the book is layered in such a way that you can approach it from a different angle each time you read it. It was a horror story the first time I read it, a love story the next time, then an account of one man's struggle with depression. The typographical style can be a turn off to some people, but I highly recommend the book to everyone.
 
I'm not that avid of a reader, but I recently read Battle Royale by Koushun Takami and Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis.

I really enjoyed Battle Royale; it's a bit disgusting at times and the principle of 42 kids killing eachother may be a bit crude to some, but it is actually pretty interesting and psychological. Definitely a good read, especially if you have a vivid imagination and don't mind some killing and immorality. If you're looking for actual gore, the manga is quite decent too.

Scar Tissue is the autobiography of RHCP-singer Anthony Kiedis, and man, it's sex, drugs and rock 'n roll incarnate. It's a must-read for everyone who considers themselves even the slightest of a Peppers-fan, and highly suggested to everyone who is only mildly interested in the life of a real rockstar.
 
I'm pretty big into reading classic literature, particularly those written around the early to mid 20th century. Some authors that I have enjoyed have been Updike, Stienbeck, and Hemingway. I'd consider my favorite author to be Ayn Rand, as she wrote my favorite book Atlas Shrugged. Besides classic literature, I also enjoy some fantasy novels such as Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, but outside of that, I really am not too into those type of books, as most are just copies and repeates of the same story.

The last book I read was A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burrgess, and I finished it last week if anyone wants to talk about it.

Edit: I've been looking for a website that's like IMDb, but for books. Something where I can keep track of all the books I've read, create a list of books to read, rate and comment on my opinions of books, a list of books that the computer thinks I would like based on the books that I've read, ect. If any of you know a wedsite like that, I'd really apprieciate it if you could point me in that direction, as currently I've found nothing.
 
Lately I've been into Biographies and sports. I just finished reading the Bio of Steve Jobs, David Winner's Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer and now the Apex: The Gran Turismo Exclusive Magazine (comes with GT5 premium edition).

When I'm done I'm gonna read up The Intelligent Investor (chapter 8 and 20) then More Attention, Less Deficit Success Strategies for Adults with ADHD and I'll be free :)

I love Sci-fi novels (Digital Fortress), History and photo books.
 
I've heard a lot about Battle Royale lately, especially with the Hunger Games craze. A lot of people claim Suzanne Collins ripped of the concept of Battle Royale for her books. I've personally never read it, but I've heard great things about it.

I love Ayn Rand, and her books. But I must say that the amount of hate she gets is somewhat credited. Her novels are not so much novels as a media to soapbox on.
A Clockwork Orange is a book on my to read list. I've heard that its quite annoying to read, due to the language?
The site you would be looking for is called Goodreads. Its pretty much exactly what you're describing, and you can link it to a blog if you have one as well.

Edit: If you're talking about the Digital Fortress that I know, that's far more mainstream than sci-fi. I don't think its even classified as sci-fi.
What kind of history? Pure history or historical fiction or alternate histories or what?
 
Dragonlance and the Autumn series are my favorite. I really like warhammer fantasy and 40k. I also really like reading survival manuals and such. Im really into fantasy and such just because i like to day dream. I cant fight dragons in real life, so i have to go to the next best thing.
 
I read a lot of non-fiction; I love books on history, science and I occasionally pick up biographies too and books about maths (most of them with some historical context).

My favourite book from the last few years is probably Persian Fire by Tom Holland. I love all of his books, it's narrative history so it fills the gap for fiction I guess.

If I had to pick a highlight from childhood it would probably be Going Solo by Roald Dahl. I always prefered non-fiction to fiction from a young age! :p
 
Yeah pure history for me, particularly ones about Empires or fascinating cultures (sorry not interested in noobs :/)

Well if the Digital Fortress is too soft for your taste maybe you have something better to suggest? I'm deeply in love with Space Sci-Fi if that helps, thanks :)
 
I've never heard of warhammer fantasy. What exactly is it?

Non fiction is something I've never really even bothered to read until recently, and even now mostly scientific or psychological works are the ones I read. Do you have any other recommendations? I'd like to broaden my reading base a bit.

Pure history is pretty sweet, although I don't read it so much unless its attached to religious texts.
I honestly know very little about sci-fi, sadly, which I need to fix. However, one of the most famous sci-fi novels is Ender's Game. I think it takes place in space as well! Not sure if you've read it or not.
 
kittenmay said:
I love Ayn Rand, and her books. But I must say that the amount of hate she gets is somewhat credited. Her novels are not so much novels as a media to soapbox on.
A Clockwork Orange is a book on my to read list. I've heard that its quite annoying to read, due to the language?
The site you would be looking for is called Goodreads. Its pretty much exactly what you're describing, and you can link it to a blog if you have one as well.
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What you've heard about Orange is pretty much right. It's a challenging book to get into at first because it is written in a language/slang that Burgess made up specifically for the book which is a mixture of English, Slav, and rhyming techniques. The words are not too hard to figure out if you use context clues, but if you can't figure them out there are translations online that you can google for the book does get easier to understand as the book goes on due to sheer familiarization, so get all too distraught if you don't expect to struggle through the entire book. There are also two different versions of Orange (an American version and a British/World version), with the only difference being that the British version has an additional 21st chapter that was deemed not to be included by the American publisher.

Also, I don't know if you know this, but the book is extremely dark and disturbing, so be warned if you are not into that kind of thing.

And thank you for the website. Don't knowhow I never came across it. It looks perfect. :D
 
i purchased 4 books from amazon all relating to neurology, and their clinical tales.

unfortunately i am too addicted to video games lately to spend some time reading, but i really should finish the first book that i started!!!
 
kittenmay said:
Non fiction is something I've never really even bothered to read until recently, and even now mostly scientific or psychological works are the ones I read. Do you have any other recommendations? I'd like to broaden my reading base a bit.
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Hey if you're asking me then my top recommendation for science is probably Big Bang by Simon Singh. It is more of a history book detailing the discoveries that lead physicists to believe that our universe all came from a single event 14 billion years ago. It was a really enjoyable read and probably started my fascination with non-fiction because non-fiction can be quite tedious if you pick up the wrong text.

If you find yourself into physics then Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynmann is a must-read. It is gobsmackingly good in terms of explaining the world we live in and if you ever had an interest in Physics in school but always thought there was something funny with the way things were explained in the textbooks then this is the first book you need to read. All those little questions you wondered but always forgot to ask your teacher are pretty much all here.

Richard Dawkins is a good place to start if you're interested in animals and plants and stuff. The Ancestor's Tale and The Greatest Show On Earth were two that I really enjoyed mainly because they're sort of celebrating life and the diversity of it rather than the god-bashing he does in some of his other books.

If you kinda want all of them all rolled into one then Origins by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith is good. It covers the big bang all the way to life on earth and evolution.

When it comes to history books they can generally be quite tedious especially if they are scholarly texts. But if they aren't then you run the risk of reading sensationalist stuff that aren't researched and is just conjecture. I'd recommend Tom Holland's Rubicon or Persian Fire because I think they just about get the balance right. They are well researched but try to sensationalise everything it can to keep it interesting! :D

I hope what I suggested wasn't too boring :p
 
why is it that the internet is full of people who read rand...?

I love reading. I'm a huge bibliophile. On weekends you can find me nursing my hangover with a book and a cup of coffee. Or day for that matter. Anyway I'm taking two literature courses (modern japanese and russian lit) this semester so I'll just do highlights of those:

1) Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen
This is first because it's my favorite novel I've read this semester. Kitchen is a collection of two shorter stories about death and loss and love. They're very simple and straightforward but beautiful. The way Yoshimoto gets in to the heads of her characters and their reactions to grief are astounding.

2) Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
About as dense a novel as you can find. In short, the devil comes to Soviet atheist Moscow and causes havoc. There is just so much symbolism and religious and political imagery in here that you can spend a life time decoding it.

3) Yuri Olesha, Envy
Pre-Great Terror but post-revolution literature is some of the most creative stuff out there. This is no exception. The tale of a servant to a model Soviet citizen, Olesha tackles issues of humanity in the new Soviet state and the power of emotions, especially Envy, in a culture that represses them.

4) Daniil Kharms, Short Stories
Kharms' work was never published; they just found it in a drawer after his death. Reading them, you completely understand why. They are so absurd and off the map that some of them can barely even be considered stories. Surreal, absurd, and fiercely political these stories are shocking and hilarious and essential.

5) Jun'Ichiro Tanizaki, Naomi
It opens like a Japanese Lolita decades before Nabokov's classic. In reality, Naomi details a Japan struggling to find its place in the modern world and follows the titular Naomi, a very young girl, and her suitor, who raises her in the "modern fashion," and confronts issues like Japanese women's burgeoning sexuality and sado-masochism.

This is just a highlight reel. I could go on and on and on because i fucking love books omg.
 
oh man books !! the best thing. here come lots of words.

i read old things. last i read was the death of ivan ilych + other short stories by tolstoy, and now i'm reading the misfortunes of virtue + other short stories by the marquis de sade. i did the former because i loved war and peace (hi5 op) and the latter is to see if sade was really just bonkers (i think so). i've got a backlog of ~6 more books to read after this, and oddly enough nearly a half of them are old russian dudes.

fantasy is pretty cool too, but i stopped on that for a bit because i am embarrassed i missed all the misogyny/fetish/political stuff in the sword of truth series. i dunno, i am pretty oblivious sometimes :| though if you can ignore all that, it's pretty good ! i also read the magic the gathering books (cheaper than the cards, all the lore !!) which were pretty good up until lorwyn or however you spell it. my favourite there is arena, though that could just be nostalgia.

Chill Murray said:
You'll either think it's bullshit or the most extraordinary thing you've ever read,
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nope ! BOTH. i loved how the house just distorted time and space but fuck you book i don't want to read upside down one page then sideways another or whatever. i imagine that was part of the allure but it totally just frustrated me. then again, maybe i missed something here too, who knows.

More Cowbell said:
RHCP things
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have you considered reading white line fever, about lemmy from motorhead ? bit of a different era, but if you liked this one i think WLF might appeal to you
 
Oh no, I certainly wasn't talking about science. I know plenty of great books on science. Dawkins is also amazing. I was talking more about other subjects. I don't mind dry as well, non fiction is more to educate than entertain in my opinion.

Evan, I've never heard of any of those, although some sound really intriguing. Do you just read Japanese / Russian literature, or other things as well?

Heh, I didn't comment on Sword of Truth series due to my rules. Its not a great one!
 
kittenmay said:
I've heard a lot about Battle Royale lately, especially with the Hunger Games craze. A lot of people claim Suzanne Collins ripped of the concept of Battle Royale for her books. I've personally never read it, but I've heard great things about it.
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Collins claims that she never heard of Battle Royale before, but the books indeed show an awful lot of similarities. I don't know if you watched/read The Hunger Games, but Battle Royale is essentially the grown-up version of The Hunger Games, if you can put it that way.

Clicky Pen said:
have you considered reading white line fever, about lemmy from motorhead ? bit of a different era, but if you liked this one i think WLF might appeal to you
Click to expand...

Never been to big on Motorhead, but thanks for the suggestion. Will look into it!
 
I really don't read as much as I should. I used to read like mad when I was a nipper, but as I grew up I found videogaming, and such taking a much higher priority. That said, the only time I do get to read is when I'm travelling, and I usually take a Fiction and a non-fiction with me on every transatlantic flight.

My non-fiction selections always seem to be in the fields of science, maths and economics after studying it in school. I picked up Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely after being suggested it by an old form tutor. I had it in about one sitting, as the way he looks at the world around us was that gripping. I also enjoyed the Freakonics books, and if I'm stuck can usually resort to the New Scientist Q&A books. If these fields interest you, you'll not go wrong with these books.

If it's fiction, it's usually crime for me. Although I still enjoy the Sci-Fi and Fantasy my dad tried to get me into from a young age, I find the mystery more appealing. I couldn't fault the George Smiley books by John le Carre, and although only provoked to reading them after seeing Tinker Tailor, the sequels are even better. I also finally got round to reading Fight Club, and since then, I may as well not own the DVD, the pleasure of reading it completely outweighed the film.
 
There were only two titles that I actually enjoyed reading in my high school English class. Since we were an IB school, we got to focus partly on international literature, which really expanded our readings. The two books that I enjoyed the most were "Paradise of the Blind" by Duong Thu Huong, and "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin. They touch on some really interesting issues, the first with communism and the second with societal conformation. Really interesting reads.
 
We is so great! It's the novel Orwell (admittingly) ripped off for 1984. That's a great recommendation.

Also I don't just read Russian/Japanese literature but they're what I'm taking this semester. I do think Stalinist and after Russian literature is some of the most interesting out there though.
 
Been working my way through I-Hotel. It's a collection of novellas about the years 1968-1977 or a novella for each year of that decade. It follows Asian-American activism in the Bay Area. It integrates poetry, drama, and fiction and it's very hit or miss for me. Sometimes it's compelling, but other times it just feels like an idealization meant to invoke nostalgia in a baby-boomer...

I've also been re-working my way through the Leviathan by Hobbes, but I'm pretty lazy and it's pretty dense (though not so long) so it's also slow.

I recently wrapped up The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Trilogy. It is the best trashy fiction I've read in a long time. The writing is actually not utter shit, or even 50% shit, if you're looking for airport books I recommend these. Also if you read them you have to listen to Homogenic and The Great Crossover Potential while you read the books, otherwise you won't get the full experience.

I also have about 400 pages of internet articles that I want to read in order to be up to date on what people are saying about primate ethics and capitalism and feminism and I'm just way behind in general so after 4-20 and midterms I need to slog through those.

After I'm finished with all this shit it'll be summer and I'll be re-reading The Wheel of Time, so that's June out of the way. I have vague intentions towards reading the entire works of Murakami and then all of the Phoenix Manga by Tezuka, but I'll probably get side-tracked by something else by then.
 
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