Books, are you reading any? Options

[gothictheysay]

Is it true?! I'm not the only person who's ever read parts of a dictionary?

I did that in fifth grade, and people still call me Miss Dictionary...

[Mata]

I don't go for whole chunks at a time, but I'm finding that having a huge dictionary to hand is incredibly useful and I use it far more than I ever thought I would. It's got so much interesting stuff in there. There are so many words that I use that I understand 90% of the meaning of and it's great to be able to find out _precisely_ what the word means. It gives me a lot more confidence in my writing.

I had a professor write on my thesis recently 'are you using this word correctly?' (I can't remember what word it was) It was great to be able to say to him, 'yes, I defnitely am' when he thought that I wasn't It's fun to know things that a professor doesn't!

[Hobbes]

Is it true?! I'm not the only person who's ever read parts of a dictionary?
I did that in fifth grade, and people still call me Miss Dictionary...

Hehe... people used to call me Mr. Encylopaedia for the exact-same reason.

It's fun to know things that a professor doesn't!

A friend and I used to love correcting our teachers' punctuation and spelling. In fact, now I think about it, we must have had a school full of illiterate teachers!

[Hobbes]

I should be spending a bit more time reading 'Dreams' by Carl Gustav Jung

Have you read Freud's Interpretation of Dreams? I enjoyed reading through that.

[the lil' pie...]

I'm reading...eeermm...*looks through piles*
Tom Holt the man is a GENIUS at original storytelling. I'm loving Faust Among Equals, and have loved Valhalla in the past. Any Holt readers out there?

[Polocrunch]

I just finished Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. It was fun to start with, with lots of imaginative stuff going on, but it ended pretty badly. The whole of the last five or six chapters was a bit of a mess, really, and it looked a lot like Huxley didn't know how to end the book.

The very last few paragraphs were a decent ending, but would've been better had the previous few chapters been constructed better. In any case, it was a very interesting read, and one that I don't regret.

[acid_rain_child]

I have 3 dictionaries in various locations around my room... just incase. There's one pocket sized, one that's so old the hard cover is worn to beige so I can't read it, and one giant Oxford. If I ever get bored, I'll flip to a random page. I'm glad I'm not alone.

When I read some of your lists, or see the same people posting new books like, 4 days in between, I feel stupid. I can't read books back to back like that. When I'm finshed one, I meditate on it for a while, and flip to bits that I'd like to reread. At my best, I can read maybe 6 books in 2 months.

I just got finished reading a book about Marilyn Manson, who basically told his story to an author and put his life into pretty words and readable pages. It's called *gag* 'The Long Hard Road Out of Hell', a title I thought was kinda melodramatic. Even if you don't like Marilyn Manson, I would recommend checking it out (it's NOT gonna be at your library). Mind you, it's not for everyone; it's filled with sex, animal sex, meat sex, drugs, lots and lots of drugs, vivid descriptions of death and STDs, people's morbid and somewhat depressing confessions, and what you might come to expect from a shock rocker's life.

After that, I moved on to 'On the Road' by Jack Kerouac for a school project, but it turns out I can't use it. It's too good to just give up though.

For light reading in between that I've got 'The Stranger' by Albert Camus. It's 153 pages with big type, so if you ever run across it, pick it up and read it over lunch.

And for the project, I'm stuck with 'Girl with a Pearl Earring', which isn't so bad so far. Basically, I'm just catching up with everyone else by reading some classics.

[Quoth(The Raven)]

Currently, I'm reading the Girl with the golden Bouffant, by Mabel Maney. It's a hilarious send up of the James Bond mythos.

When James Bond accidently sets his hair on fire, he's sent to the hospital, and his twin Lesbian Sister Jane is called in to (With appropriate padding, fake scars, prosthetic forehead, etc.) impersonate him at a convention of spies held in 1960's Las Vegas. while there, she is to retrieve a new spy device that is to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Unknown to MI5, however, Jane is now a double agent, having been recruited by G.E.O.R.G.I.E., a cadre of female spies, who also want the invention.

Along for the ride is a clueless semi retired spy, Sir Cedric Pumperknickle, who complicates Jane's attempts to secure the item for the girl's team, as well as two G.e.o.r.g.i.e. spies, one of whom is Jane's secret lover, and the other an incurable kleptomaniac. Along the way, Jane discovers that the world of international Spy conventions is really little different from the world of business conventions, and that her Brother, James, is even more of a cad and scoundrel than even she suspected... When the spies kick her out for James' excesses... And the police want the G.E.O.R.G.I.E. Girls for questioning... What's a girl to do?

Extract: '...She told them everything she knew about Marshmallow Fluff -- How it had started life as filler for bathtub cracks until the inventor accidently dropped a five pound bag of sugar into a vat of the compound, with delicious results.'

[Hobbes]

I've started reading Robert Rankin's "The Witches of Chiswick" again, because I never finished it (I got caught up in a few other book which I was borrowing, so needed to finish first).

Plus, I want to get started on his latest book ("Knees Up Mother Earth")- but I hate reading newer books before older books.

[lygophilia]

EDIT: Um...ignore this. I was writing stuff for another thread in Microsoft Word, and submitted it. I forgot I had switched threads.

[tptcow]

I'm currently reading Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol.

[Quoth(The Raven)]

I'm currently reading 'Cat in a neon nightmare' By Carole Nelson Douglas, a mystery featuring Midnight Louie a black Cat who talks like Sam Spade, but only to other animals. Midnight Louie is a self made cat... a private eye of the mean streets of Las Vegas, contending with friends and foes of both human and animal kinds... Great stuff...

[Fallen Element]

I'm reading: The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes and The Vindication of The Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft for Philosophy at the moment, along with Macbeth and The English Patient for English.

And. I'm reading the Sylvia Plath Anthology of Poems for fun when I'm not doing Uni work. I got a tad lonely one night in the Halls and I colour coded my Plath Anthology with pretty tab thingys. I feel *VERY* sad...

Never mind!

Lovely Book goodness!

Fal xXx

[Hobbes]

I'm reading: The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

Woohoo!

I'm reading 'On Writing' again, by Stephen King - because someone's Dark Tower thread reminded me of it. 'On Writing' is about the only King book I like.

Still reading Robert Rankin too.

[Ashbless]

Pharmacology textbooks. I've had to put reading for fun to the side for now.

[The.Wheezing.Gho...]

I'm reading "America (The Book)" which is a Daily Show book. I absoulutly love it. It's Glorious! I also finished reading the 11th book in the Series of unfortunate events...it's juvenille...but now that I started reading them I have to know what happens...I HAVE to....

[Ashbless]

I hear the movie is coming out. Jim Carrey as the uncle.

[The.Wheezing.Gho...]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it'll be bad...but perhaps not...the way they interpreted the houses and the clothing is pretty interesting, but Jim Carrey will probably begin to bug me after a while.

[arachnidoc17]

I'm reading Rainbow Six right now, and it gets very confusing. It is telling at least four different stories at once, and it is very difficult to remember what is happening when it transitions from Dr. Killgore to Popov or John Clark, or Chavez, or what have you.

[Hobbes]

Flanimals
by Ricky Gervais
and Rob Steen

It's reading in its briefest form.

[arachnidoc17]

EEEW! FLAN!

[Quoth(The Raven)]

I read this thread, and despair. You people are all WAY too deep. Well, except for that Flanimals thing... and that's even more disturbing...

[Quoth(The Raven)]

Anyone read The Eyre Affair, Lost in a good Book, or The Well of lost Plots? The first three books in this series are funny, and full of references to classic (And not so classic) literature, as well as cameo appearances by charachters from that literature. All revolving around action/adventure stories, with a very likable heroine, Thursday Next. Something for everyone...

[Hobbes]

I would recommend that everyone goes back and reads whatever books they were 'ordered' to read in English classes. Many of them you may have ended up reading anyway at some point in your life, and I think a vast majority of people have a book ruined for them by a teacher's constant over-analysis of hidden symbols. I say, go back to those books and read them for pleasure, rather than for high marks. It might surprise you how much you actually enjoy these books.

Doesn't work for Mansfield Park though, that book is awful however you read it.

[artist.unknown]

Anyone read The Eyre Affair, Lost in a good Book, or The Well of lost Plots?

I've been meaning to read them...but I keep forgetting. ^^;;

I'm reading Grendel by John Gardner, and a book on social anthropology. Mm, and Free Fall by William Golding. Grendel is very intriguing so far, and it's very interesting to read after I went to see a medieval scop scholar do Beowulf in the original Ango-Saxon.