What Book Are You Reading? Volume 9

[sophie]

finished the Two Towers

logically the next book for me to read is:

J.R.R Tolkien - The Return of the King

 

[Azale]

About 80 pages into VALIS. I've read about 3 of Philip K. Dick's book, but even by his standards this one is WEIRD!

Also about 60 pages into The State of Africa (known as the Fate of Africa in the US for some odd reason) by Martin Meredith. Not alot of indepth analysis, but he is trying to cover an entire continent's last 50 years in a few hundred pages.

 

[GoodGame]

About 80 pages into VALIS. I've read about 3 of Philip K. Dick's book, but even by his standards this one is WEIRD!

Yeah it was pretty weird. My take on Dick was he was fighting mental illness later in life so a lot of his books around the end of his career really bizarre.

My fave of his is The Solar Lottery.



On top of my Stats textbooks, I'm reading miscellaneous dummies guide to C++, and Python for Absolute Beginners by Mike Dawson. The latter is pretty humorous with its sample programs.

 

[Babbler]

Finished two books:

Field Linguistics: An Introduction by Terry Crowley. Exactly what it says on the tin. Petty good.

Lexiology: A Short Introduction by M.A.K. Halliday & Colin Yallop. A really short book on how meaning is made.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

I am reading "A brief history of Medieval Warfare" by Peter Reid (not the former Liverpool player, a former British Army general).
After that I'll either read the second volume of Pieter Geyl's "History of the Netehrlands State", or Terry Pratchett's "Night Watch" (don't buy the American version, horrible cover).

 

[Dachs]

You should see about Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, 450-900 by Guy Halsall if you're interested in medieval warfare.

Michael Maas [ed.] - The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian

Michael Kulikowski - Late Roman Spain and its Cities

 

[Ulyaoth]

How do you guys read so much? I consider myself an average speed reader(a typical sized paperback I can read about 100 pages an hour if it's not something written annoyingly like Lovecraft which I've been struggling through reading for a few months now) but you guys seem like you're reading a few huge books a week. Besides do you buy these or get them from the library or something? Because books have gotten expensive.

 

[Dachs]

Nowadays I rely on library books with few exceptions.

 

[Cutlass]

How do you guys read so much? I consider myself an average speed reader(a typical sized paperback I can read about 100 pages an hour if it's not something written annoyingly like Lovecraft which I've been struggling through reading for a few months now) but you guys seem like you're reading a few huge books a week. Besides do you buy these or get them from the library or something? Because books have gotten expensive.

Don't spend your evenings watching tv or browsing the internet

 

[Ulyaoth]

Yeah, my problem is motivation, if I don't think I have a good stretch of free time uninterupted by loud noises and annoyances to read through a book within at most 3 days I don't want to even start a book.

 

[Integral]

My reading of Marlborough was stymied by a lack of a broader appreciation for the period. But to understand Louis XIV's absolutism it was necessary to go back to Westphalia. Which meant that it was necessary to go back to the 30 Year's War. And so on, until I finally settled on trying to find a guidebook for the entire 1450-1789 period. I hope to also find two good books for 1450-1648 and 1648-1789 soon.

What I found was Koenigsberger - Early Modern Europe: 1500-1789, which is perhaps not the best but it's one of the few narrative books (as opposed to collections of essays) in my local library on the period in question.

 

[Dachs]

Peter Wilson's The Thirty Years War is fantastic on 1555-1650, albeit mostly (but definitely not entirely) in Central Europe.

 

[cj7loop]

Just started reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

 

[Smellincoffee]

Still enjoying La Belle France. Also picked up Captive Queen by Alison Weir. So far it reads like a supermarket romance with a historical setting.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Peter Wilson's The Thirty Years War is fantastic on 1555-1650, albeit mostly (but definitely not entirely) in Central Europe.

Bought that book a few months back, I would concur. Alos thanks for the recommendations, will hunt them dow when I have the money, of if I see them 2nd hand.

 

[Godwynn]

Speak German! Warum Deutsch manchmal besser ist - Wolf Schneider
Speak German! Why German is sometimes better in German

 

[GoodGame]

Just picked up an anniversary edition of Shelby Foote's Civil War narrative. Actually just the third volume. Was at my local buy-outs dollar store.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Just started reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

I saw the '45 film a few days ago. You'll have to let me know if it measures up.

 

[Smellincoffee]

How do you guys read so much? I consider myself an average speed reader(a typical sized paperback I can read about 100 pages an hour if it's not something written annoyingly like Lovecraft which I've been struggling through reading for a few months now) but you guys seem like you're reading a few huge books a week. Besides do you buy these or get them from the library or something? Because books have gotten expensive.

I always sit down for an hour or two a day to read, so I go through three, four books a week. Most of them are from the library*, but if you use Amazon marketplace you can find books cheaply, often for pennies depending on how old the book is.

* Which is why my book comments are posted on a blog called "This Week at the Library".

 

[Brian Shanahan]

I always sit down for an hour or two a day to read, so I go through three, four books a week. Most of them are from the library*, but if you use Amazon marketplace you can find books cheaply, often for pennies depending on how old the book is.

* Which is why my book comments are posted on a blog called "This Week at the Library".

I'd do the library thing too except it charges €12.50 p.a. with a bad selection of books (don't mind the charge but for a horrible selection, no way).