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How many books do you guys read at a time? I normally just have one fiction and one non-fiction book on my bedside table. Lots of people will have a stack of stuff they are currently reading but I don't really get it, if they're all non-fiction it makes sense but to follow multiple narratives at once seems a bit funny to me.
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Sep 7, 2015 11:56
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I used to only read one book at a time but now I tend to have two going. I don't make any distinction for fiction/non-fiction for either, just whatever two I happen to be reading.
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Sep 7, 2015 15:47
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krampster2 posted:but to follow multiple narratives at once seems a bit funny to me. Do you watch only one TV show at a time until it has concluded?
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Sep 7, 2015 16:20
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Ceebees posted:Forget pretension about imagination and mental exercise, you read a book instead of twitter because 140 characters isn't enough space to say anything worth saying. People's "views and opinions"? You're lucky to get a less than one dimensional caricature of a real opinion. Advocate for facebook, for texts, for loving omegle, but twitter is irredeemable poo poo. It's the 'literary' equivalent of trying to communicate with notes tied to bricks - the absolute best case still leaves you with all your windows smashed. "Brevity is the soul of wit" - Jon @fart Hendren
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Sep 7, 2015 16:47
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Besides we all know what the true thinking man's medium is in these modern times.
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Sep 7, 2015 17:08
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blue squares posted:Do you watch only one TV show at a time until it has concluded? Not really I pretty much only watch Game of Thrones.
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Sep 8, 2015 01:32
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I read about six at any one time
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Sep 8, 2015 02:45
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I usually can manage 3-5. Right now I'm concurrently reading a short story collection (of SF/F/Weird Western stories), a non-fiction book (Bill Bryson), two SF novels that are sufficiently different so I don't get plots/characters mixed up (Aurora by KSR vs. Brightness Reef by Brin) and a fantasy novel (Robin Hobb). It's easy to manage them all, because the plots and writing styles are very different. The only problem is get so engrossed in 1-2 of them that I only pick up the others every couple of weeks. So some books I get through in like 10 days, others in a few months. Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Sep 8, 2015 |
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Sep 8, 2015 03:06
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Hedrigall posted:The only problem is get so engrossed in 1-2 of them that I only pick up the others every couple of weeks. Yeah that's why I don't read to many at once. I don't want to lose a plot and forget what's happening, then every time I pick up the book have to go over everything in my head before I begin reading.
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Sep 8, 2015 03:45
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I used to read more books in parallel but these days I read in series. I rarely have more than one book going at a time, maybe two if one is a "bathroom reader" type book, maybe one hardback and one book on kindle. This is largely because it's rare that a single book is going to last me more than a few hours anyway.
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Sep 8, 2015 03:56
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Considering most books take me 3-5 days I do not usually need to read more than one at a time I tried experimenting with it at one point but it never really clicked for me.
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Sep 8, 2015 04:23
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It's usually between 1-3 books for me. All different genres. It just depends on what mood I am in as to what I want to read at the moment. Somedays I don't feel like fantasy so I'll flip over to a sci fi book, or if that doesn't scratch the itch I'll swing over to a horror book or a comedy book. It varies, with no real pattern.
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Sep 8, 2015 05:32
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:It's usually between 1-3 books for me. I can see a pattern.
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Sep 8, 2015 11:26
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Any recommendations for books about/touching on bullfighting? After reading Death In The Afternoon I've become fascinated by the emotion the spectacle provokes, and by the connected psychology of the matador and the crowd. I did find A.L.Kennedy's On Bullfighting in my local bookstore, having previously read her novel Day (which was an excellent, numbingly emotional read). However, I had mixed feelings. While the book had sparks of brilliance and really very truthful writing, I found myself repelled by her self-pity. A writer can put themselves and their pain into their work without this kind of public wallowing...? It's a real shame, as it dampened for me an otherwise interesting, energetic read about an unusual topic.
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Sep 12, 2015 01:26
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The Sun Also Rises?
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Sep 12, 2015 17:04
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Is that the Hemingway story? The Sun Also Rises? I forgot the title but I read a really good story by Hemingway about a Toreador. Hemingway's documentary style works really well with things like that. Def recommended.
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Sep 13, 2015 02:59
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Behemuff posted:Any recommendations for books about/touching on bullfighting? After reading Death In The Afternoon I've become fascinated by the emotion the spectacle provokes, and by the connected psychology of the matador and the crowd. Oh, and this is the book I was trying to remember: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/442515.Or_I_ll_Dress_You_in_Mourning Haven't read it myself but I've always heard it well-recommended.
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Sep 13, 2015 04:04
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It's always weird when you buy used books and there's an inscription for someone else in there. One I got yesterday was dated 2010, jackass didn't even hang onto it for 5 years, if that long.
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Sep 13, 2015 22:49
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Casimir Radon posted:It's always weird when you buy used books and there's an inscription for someone else in there. One I got yesterday was dated 2010, jackass didn't even hang onto it for 5 years, if that long. To me those are a plus. Book's got provenance. Aunt Jan wishes you the best.
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Sep 13, 2015 22:52
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I started a collection of pictures that were left in books bought at a thrift store. They are surreal in the best way.
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Sep 13, 2015 23:01
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I buy a lot of used books, and one of the places I got them from consistently had handwritten recipe file cards put into them as bookmarks. Like they just put whatever reasonably sized paper in there, and for some reason they had a pile of recipes that some grandmother wrote down. It was fantastic. Sadly they appear to have run out, lately it's just been blank paper :/
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Sep 13, 2015 23:10
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Weirdest thing I've ever found was an (apparently unwanted?) love letter in a library book. It was in a still sealed envelope. Inside it was a card with a message signed with a girl's name saying she couldn't wait to see whomever it was written to. It even included a picture of her sat in a window.
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Sep 14, 2015 00:10
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh, and this is the book I was trying to remember: Ah this looks perfect! I've been thinking about reading more into the Spanish Civil War as well, so this should scratch two itches. I should have mentioned that I've already read everything by Hemingway  But thanks for the recommendations guys.
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Sep 14, 2015 00:48
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Since there's still no airport fiction thread... I'm reading Seven World Wonders by Reilly and it is pretty fun. I get the impression he's cracking himself up while writing, because sometimes he has a few too many exclamaition marks, as if he's holding the page up to a friend and going "Isn't this awesome!". I've no idea how realistic or accurate any of the egyptian technology is but it's fun to imagine it's just one step beyond what was real. That might make for a good followup book though, if anyone knows of a not too-dry nonfiction book about the bronze age technology and culture relations.
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Sep 15, 2015 05:52
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On the topic of trash reading, is there any kind of thread for Bernard Cornwell/Christian Cameron/Conn Iggulden type historical literature? You know, the sort that's theoretically about a historical event, but is mostly 200 pages of people getting killed by axes under slightly different circumstances? Could such a thread be made?
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Sep 15, 2015 07:21
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Yup, Ian Ross with Twilight of Empire series and David Gilman with Master of War series.
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Sep 15, 2015 09:57
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I just finished reading almost every Eric Ambler novel that I could find in print, though there are still a couple I'm missing. For an author as formulaic as he was, the quality was consistently very high, I was always entertained and interested and often surprised - especially with his post-war books. In fact the only book of his that I'd say doesn't really work is Send No More Roses (also called Siege of Villa Lipp) which is the only one I've read that doesn't follow his usual formula. If you haven't read Ambler and you enjoy John LeCarre or Len Deighton, definitely check him out as from what I understand, he pretty much invented that style. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Sep 15, 2015 |
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Sep 15, 2015 16:17
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I love authors who've nailed their formula so perfectly that, even though you can guess every beat of the story about 4 pages in, you still can't stop reading. Maclean does that for me.
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Sep 15, 2015 23:47
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Snowman_McK posted:I love authors who've nailed their formula so perfectly that, even though you can guess every beat of the story about 4 pages in, you still can't stop reading. Maclean does that for me. What? This sort of book... makes me conflicted.
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Sep 17, 2015 05:48
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Paper With Lines posted:What? This sort of book... makes me conflicted. It's trash, but the good kind.
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Sep 17, 2015 11:27
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The formulaic books I was talking about (Eric Ambler's) are not at all the kind where you can predict the whole plot from the beginning, I just meant that they all start out with the same kind of setup. Many of them are fairly unpredictable.
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Sep 18, 2015 09:06
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Oh, turns out I had nothing to contribute after all. Sorry, guys 
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Sep 19, 2015 08:03
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Amazon managed to break the Kindle Book Browser layout on their iPad app somehow, it's basically impossible to actually browse books from it now.
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Sep 19, 2015 21:54
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Jonathan Franzen is pretty fun and funny IRL. He read a section of purity that was hilarious and involved people loving while straddling a thermonuclear bomb. I asked him, during the Q&A, if that was in any way an homage to Tyrone Slothrop in Gravity's Rainbow. He said he doesn't do homages, talked up GR a bit, then said "Pynchon wasn't the first one to notice what a rocket looks like," which got a huge laugh.
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Sep 20, 2015 06:37
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Reminds me more of Dr Stranglelove. E: in typo veritas.
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Sep 20, 2015 08:53
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My parents have a couple of Solzhenitsyn books that have the same red covers with the titles written in pen on the spine. They look like and advance copies, but no-one knows anything about where they came from. Has anyone done across this sort is printing before? I'll try to get some pics next time I'm up there.
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Sep 22, 2015 11:21
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fliptophead posted:My parents have a couple of Solzhenitsyn books that have the same red covers with the titles written in pen on the spine. They look like and advance copies, but no-one knows anything about where they came from. Has anyone done across this sort is printing before? I'll try to get some pics next time I'm up there. In English or Russian?
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Sep 22, 2015 11:28
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Ras Het posted:In English or Russian? English
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Sep 22, 2015 12:02
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I moved to West Africa to do development work, and at least part of the time will be in rural areas where I don't have internet and don't want to wear down the batteries on my phone reading the Kindle app. So I'm encountering one of those increasingly-rare modern circumstances where cheap books on paper are suddenly really useful again. So what's the current good way to get a hold of a number of cheap new paperbacks in a compact format for classics? I've bought the Dover Thrift Editions frequently in the past for deployments, those are a little taller/wider than standard paperbacks but very slim, and run as low as $1 new on Amazon, so those are pretty cool. Is there any cheaper way to buy those in decent numbers other than just scouring Amazon for whichever ones are $1 today? Back in the 1990s when I did NGO work, there was some other relatively established publisher that had a number of books of classic short stories and poetry, in paperback books with relatively sturdy covers that were between the size of a deck of cards and a regular paperback and really slim, similar to the City Lights pocket poetry books but slightly smaller, really inexpensive though sturdy, with a yellow/cream cover framing the cover image. I really wish I could find just one of those somewhere in the house so I could figure out if they're still printed. Any overall suggestions on how best to get paperback books (but with sturdy covers) of classical stories/poems/plays of literally pocket-size, reasonably cheaply, and without having to scour eBay to buy used copies individually over time?
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Sep 23, 2015 20:04
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:I moved to West Africa to do development work, and at least part of the time will be in rural areas where I don't have internet and don't want to wear down the batteries on my phone reading the Kindle app. So I'm encountering one of those increasingly-rare modern circumstances where cheap books on paper are suddenly really useful again. So what's the current good way to get a hold of a number of cheap new paperbacks in a compact format for classics? Get an actual Kindle. The batteries last for weeks. You can get books instantly from the internet.
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Sep 23, 2015 20:18
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