What'cha Reading?

[Qlip]

I'm starting Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel (by Susanna Clarke) for the 3rd time. Hopefully, I'll read it to the end this time.

I really liked this book, how come you couldn't get through it? And who's forcing you to read it?

[Lark]

I'm reading K Pax, a book on exorcism called The Rite and another book called the Moveable Feast from Lonely Planet.

[Aquarelle]

I'm starting Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel (by Susanna Clarke) for the 3rd time. Hopefully, I'll read it to the end this time.

I really liked this book, how come you couldn't get through it? And who's forcing you to read it?

It took me a couple tries to get into that book as well, but once I did, I really liked it. It has kind of a slow start, I think, and it's a long book.


Last night I started reading Lady of Avalon, one of the prequels to The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (one of my favorite books ever), but I realized I need to read the other prequel, The Forest House first. So I have to go find that book somewhere. In the meantime, I'll probably read The Book of Mordred, even though I read some reviews that said it wasn't that great. It's young adult fiction, so I'll probably get through it quickly.

Just finished the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I did after the first book.

[Nicodemus]

I finally got around to reading Camus's L’Étranger.
I HATED everything about it.

Too apathetic? I like the scene with the priest at the end.

[Patches]

I went through the free books available for my kindle, and found a couple classics that I feel like I should have read by now. They include Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Farenheit 451, A Clockwork Orange... And some books that I haven't read in many, many years like The Scarlet Letter and The Picture of Dorian Gray. I think I'm going to start with Dorian Gray first... I do love Oscar Wilde.

[LEGERdeMAIN]

Farenheit was a quick read and anything involving mythology is fascinating to me <3333 I never read dorian grray

I'm reading several books on economics, art, interpersonal communication, ancient southern europe, islam and ancient cults. Some of these, I admit, are for classes but still interesting and the one about ancient cults is personal research. I plan on starting a cult one day that doesn't involve human sacrifice or sex with children. gross

[mmhmm]

in the mood for a play, re reading stairs to the roof.
am just a sucker for vignettes. and william's youthful imperfection
in his writing just makes me love it even more.

"he's blind with something--the same as i"

[NPcomplete]

I really liked this book, how come you couldn't get through it? And who's forcing you to read it?

It took me a couple tries to get into that book as well, but once I did, I really liked it. It has kind of a slow start, I think, and it's a long book.

Ha no one is forcing me to read it but the start is painfully slow and I can't find myself liking Mr Norrell. I guess I was too impatient for Jonathan Strange to show himself. He still hasn't and I've forgotten parts of what I had initially read a few months ago, so I have to go through the dreary parts again. As Aquarelle said, it's a long book which means it's huge so I don't carry it everywhere with me which makes it an even slower read. In a few weeks when assignments will start piling up, I'll probably pick it up and read from start to finish. I need enough incentives.

More on topic, I found a book called "The last house in the galaxy" by Andy Secombe last week. I may start it this evening. (I hope it's not a rip-off of the Hitchhiker's Guide.)

[KDude]

A Tale of the Malazan series by Steven Erikson

[Retmeishka]

I love the Harry Potter books and movies, and I've read them all twice (I've just started again and I think it will be the third time), and watched the movies many times over the years.

I've been trying to figure out why these books are so popular, and why I like them so much, and how they compare to other fantasy books I've read. The books meet some kind of need, giving me something I don't have in real life.

I love the idea of a school where you learn how to DO things, instead of just memorizing names and dates from a book. I made it partway through college and dropped out because I wasn't doing my homework and couldn't make myself believe that college had anything to do with the jobs I would have in the future.

I also love the huge number of warm, likeable characters. I've read some other books where there were few characters, and I didn't enjoy them as much. For instance I read the 'His Dark Materials' series and finished them, but I found them cold and depressing and didn't like the ending. The 'Twilight' series also felt cold and empty, and I didn't finish it. I like to be surrounded by dozens of friendly people in a community environment, because that's very different from how I feel in the real world. I have felt like an outsider for a very long time, always different from the people around me. So the Harry Potter books meet that need. And I enjoy the movies, even though they chopped out parts of the books, because I like to see the familiar faces.

('Azkaban' was different from all the other movies, a totally different universe, because it was directed by some other guy named Alfonso Cuaron, or something like that. That one is my favorite.)

I was reading on another website that said they thought JK Rowling was an NF. That's probably true. When I think about the Harry Potter world, I wonder about things like 'Why don't they make magical factories, and what would they produce?' 'Wouldn't there be a lot more magical programming - complex spells like computer programs?' She wrote the books without going into details about a lot of those things, and I am able to imagine 'spell programming' and 'magical factories,' but the books weren't about things like that. They are mostly about the interactions and relationships between various characters - lovable characters. That is why they are so interesting to me. And I think that is probably because she is an NF, a type of person who pays a lot of attention to human beings and their relationships with each other.

One reason why I want to know 'how she did it' is because I used to write fantasy stories when I was a teenager (but never finished them), and I might want to write fiction again someday. I would want to make my readers feel the way these books make me feel - comforted, entertained, amused, amazed by wonderful things that I don't see in the real world.