A taste for reading

Discussions about hobbies, sports or anything else filling our lives time next to GeneRally.
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egamad
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A taste for reading

Post by egamad »

I really like reading books. I've read books for as long as I can remember, and reading has always been one of my favourite hobbies. I've read through many genres: children's books, crime, thriller, science and educational, humour, history, biography, western, religion, personal development, horror, fantasy,... It's a long list. :lol:

There are just too many individual books to list them all and I don't want to make any special order, like my favourite and second favourite and so on. A lot of books have made an impression and every one is a gem for itself, and I don't like to compare them (just like GR tracks - who can honestly say that he has an absolute favourite? :hide: ).

I don't want to bore you with my reading preferences, instead I would like you to write here any books that you have (recently or in the past) read and want to recommend. It is preferred that you include a very short description why you like that particular work, but please, no spoilers. :rage:


So, I'm currently finishing the "Game of Thrones" by George R. R. Martin. I believe many of you have head of it, some might have also read it.
The book is the first of the "Song of Ice and Fire" trilogy and a winner of many awards. I like epic fantasy stories (like the Lord of the Rings for example), but this one has left me breathless at the end of nearly every chapter. :shock: The story follows many characters at once, and what is at first only a tangled mess of characters, places and events, soon becomes one huge, head spinning story that sucks you in like a twister. :wow: I didn't quite finish it yet, still about a hundred pages to go (out of over 800 in slovene edition), but if it's that good now, imagine how awesome it must get towards the end... I can't wait to finish it. :D

What about you, do you guys have any good books to recommend?
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Mad Dan
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by Mad Dan »

interesting topic :D

last book I´ve read was the amazing well-known 1984 by George Orwell. I think almost everyone heard about it :) I love it, it´s really one of best books I´ve ever read :hide:. It´s cyberpunk story about guy who try to fight against totalitarian regime of the Party, there is Big Brother introduced and many other things. Matrix films were a bit inspired by it. So this book I would recomend to you :hattip:
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by dead14vii1640 »

I don't read very much but I enjoyed some compulsory books of a couple of years. Of Spanish literature, I recommend you "El caballero de Olmedo" ("Olmedo's knight"). It's a play written during the Golden century of Spanish literature. I had lots of fun when we read it all together in our little class (20 people), nearly everybody had its own part, we didn't really play it but we read it like if we were playing it. It was pretty cool.
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Alonsomania
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by Alonsomania »

I barely read, but I do enjoy reading motorsport-related books (I have a subscription for a classic car magazine, I collect Michel Vaillants and have a whole bunch of racing magazines).
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thegreatfalcon
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by thegreatfalcon »

Reading??? What do you mean??? Reading ingredients of what I eat I guess... :hide:



I liked going trough Angels & Demons (Dan Brown) and I enjoyed much some books:
French names but wiki link is english...
- Le Bizarre Incident du chien pendant la nuit (Mark Haddon) wiki
- Le Passage (Jean Reverzy) no wiki
- Le Passeur (Lois Lowry) wiki
- Le chevalier des Arbres (LAURENT GRIMON) no wiki

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Re: A taste for reading

Post by 1nsane »

I have to admit I'm not a big fan of books. Especially the kind of books that you have to read to learn something. ( :P )

The last book I read was propably something by Tom Clancy.

I enjoy reading magazines though. I've subscribed to two game magazines, a couple of magazines handling the general electronics and computers. Then there's the one for the union and last but definitely not the least, Computer Music. It is full of computer music related stuff, mostly tutorials and hints/tips, and software and hardware reviews.
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by thegreatfalcon »

1nsane wrote:I enjoy reading magazines though.
Thanks to remind me of magazines... I'm fan of both Popular Science and Popular Mechanic but actually only subscribed to PM :goodvibes: Do It Yourself section: :woohoo: :woohoo:
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OlafK
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by OlafK »

Good books are good. Good magazines are good. Mainly something that's funny and about PCs or science.
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by Herbal »

At books I'm kinda naturalistic. I mean I used to read books about one of natural sciences, not restricted only to geology/earth sciences, but even a little biology and a little experimental physics. Out of that, I used to read spiritual books (Nostradamus mainly), but also humorous romans, like the parody from H. Beard: The bored of the Rings. I think you can figure out what it figures out. :mrgreen:
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by Quklis »

I read almost every day at least half an hour before sleeping (though sometimes it goes to something like 1 or 2 am :P ).

There's many great books I've read, some of the greatest one I think are All Quiet on the Western Front, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -series and basically everything made by Terry Pratchett (I've read about over 20 books from him and just finished one last night). 1984 was nice book but I prefer Orwell's older books which tell about being poor in London and Paris. For Finnish readers I could suggest Juha Vuorinen, it's a bit lighter reading ;) .

Magazines are nice too, especially I like reading National Geographic, it has great stories and amazing pictures.
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by Sutinen »

I dont read books at all. I read books when im forced to read them. Theyre boring. I like doing sports much more. :nod:
EDIT: I read comics when I feel like reading, but not books. :mrgreen:
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by resir014 »

Currently reading a free e-book NASIONAL.IS.ME (nasionalisme=nationalism in English)

Download PDF
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egamad
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by egamad »

Quklis, I had 2 schoolmates in high school that have read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and we always laughed at some jokes that only the three of us understood. :) And the Discworld series is on my todo tist. :nod:
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Mad Dan
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by Mad Dan »

Hitchhiker´s guide is really funny :) I like it too
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by Buka »

I'd read a lot from age of 5 till summer 2008, but after than I read very few books.

What I can suggest, but most people won't like it, is David Copperfield by Charles Dickens which tells about David from his born to maturity when he becomes writer. It's typical novel of literary realism - 19th century, continuous story, everything very simple: good people are good, bad are bad. But this is so kind, so humanistic that I consider it as the best book I've ever read and when I die, I want it to be buried with me.
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by zsoltbartok »

I have just finished Stephen King's Under The Dome, and it is incredibly tense and action-packed. Not too much philosophy, but for escape-literature it is just perfect.

I like science fiction a lot. My favorites: Orson Scott Card (Ender series), Iain M Banks, Stanislaw Lem, William Gibson and such. I love reading. :coffee:
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The Noose
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by The Noose »

I've read all the Harry Potters and all the Eragon books what have come, and now I'm reading Ilkka Remes - Ruttokellot. :yummy:
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by Trigger Happy »

I never had much time for it, I'm happy, when I do 2-3 books per year. :sorry:

From books I remember to be great, I must mention Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (book about US pilots of bombard planes in Italy during WWII and absurdity of life in army). :clap: Then The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (detective story with middle age background, philosophy is included a bit too. Great book for imagination). And I had big pleasure when reading Confessiones by Aurelius Augustinus (st. Augustin of Hyppo), even if it didn't change my atheistic mind. :D And probably latest book I read is Juan Marsé's partially autobiographic book Lizards' tails. :scratch:

From Czech books I love most two delicate satires from middle war period - Men in offside (Muži v offsidu) by Karel Poláček (about lives of football fans of two Prague's clubs - Viktoria Žižkov and Slavia Praha) and Saturnin by Zdeněk Jirotka (story of young man and his strange servant Saturnin and change of young man's life related with srvant's coming to man's life). :up: :up:

All of them I can recommend. :flip:
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by The Noose »

Oh yeah and I'm ordering The Amazing Spider-Man comic book :shy: :D
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by Sutinen »

I like to read donald ducks and THE PHANTOM! (Mustanaamio) Well, to be honest I dont have my phantom series anymore, I have lost them somewhere... :D
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by CaLu »

Well I've been going through the Harry Potter series, the same with the Hannibal Lecter series and everything that Dan Brown has released up so far. A genre I do like is WWII stories. I've read a couple of them during my childhood. Another interesting book was 'Memoires of a Geisha', as I'm also interested in some of the Japanese culture.

Another quitte demanding piece of literature which I do have in my collection is 'The Art of War' originally written somewhere in the first millennium before Christ by a military commander named Sun Tzu. I know that's a broad era, but I can't say it more precise. think it gives a good lesson for life in some ways.

So, yes I do like reading but at the moment, I'm not reading anything.
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GeneRally Book Club (A Literary Odyssey)

Post by Doorslammer »

Can't believe we haven't got a thread like this, because we have some really clever people here (that includes the admins too. Sort of... :wave: ).

So this is the book thread, a place to recommend some good novels or maybe even a non-fiction book of your choosing. Or, if any come to mind, some you may like to read one day.

Here are my list of recommended reads I have read (some from high school, some not):

Goodnight Mr Tom (very recommended, it's about the evacuation of schoolchildren during WWII)
There Is A Happy Land (it's about a group of kids, can't recall much about it, but do remember there was a few shocking twists in the tale)
The Boggart (a mythical creature in a castle in Western Scotland ends up in Canada, somehow)
e (a book that is set in an advertising agency, the book is written in the style of emails sent through the company's server. Hilarious)
Day of the Triffids (great book, movie does spoil it somewhat)

That's the ones that spring to my mind just now. Apologies for not knowing the authors of each of the titles.

And one book I very much would like to read is this:

http://www.tworavenspress.com/TRP_Homecomings.html

An intriguing story about the travels of a man from Scotland (where else) who travels across the North American continent. It interests me a lot, because the author used to be a teacher at the high school I went to. He also wrote a play on the theme of the Highland Clearances (similar to the book, but more local in nature) which was, in my opinion, excellent.

So let's see what interests the rest of the GR forumites in their reading interests.
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by Trigger Happy »

Doorslammer wrote:Can't believe we haven't got a thread like this, because we have some really clever people here (that includes the admins too. Sort of... :wave: ).
Sorry, Dave, but I must say you bit underestimated us, we already have similar topic, so i merged both of them with duplicate topic. :bg:
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by Sutinen »

My teacher says that If I read the bible I get instant 10 from book thingy. :flip: Should read that, easier than 5 books. (except maybe longer to read)
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Re: A taste for reading

Post by The Noose »

Go ahead. :D
SPOILER! Jesus dies. :o
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