Reading List Thread

[marduk1507]

Bookshelves??? Well, too many to mention. Boxes??? Well, too many to mention. So Ill just mention those on my bedside table:

Death of Yugoslavia
The Unfinest Hour
Graham Swift - The Sweetshop Owner
Chuck Palahniuk - Haunted
Ludwig Wittgenstein - Diaries

 

[hyena]

i just finished lionel shriver's we need to talk about kevin.

what a force-of-nature kind of novel. honestly.

it's a fictional collection of letters written by the mother of a teenage killer (involved in a school shooting) to her ex-husband. they follow the life of kevin from conception - detailing the feelings involved in choosing to have a child - until age 18, two years after he decides to kill nine classmates of his. i don't think it will go down in history, since it comes just shy of being literarily rounded up, but sure as hell it is highly emotional and touches upon a trillion of interesting themes related to parenting through the eyes of parents and children, communicating emotions, and (more than everything) feeling what one does rather than what one should. it sounds corny, but that's only because i'm a bad reviewer: actually, in a couple of occasions it suffused me with such agony that i wanted to put it down and not open it again. instead, i ended up staying awake past one o'clock on weeknights to finish it; now i would be dying for a sequel, although it would be cheap if there was one.

 

[La Rocque]

Just read these:

"Murder in Amsterdam" the Death of
Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance
by Ian Burma

"When You Read This, They will have Killed Me"
the Life and Redemption of Caryl Chessman,
Whose Execution Shook America
by Alan Bisbort

"The Looming Tower",
Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
by Lawrence Wright

"Lone Wolf", Eric Rudolph: Murder, Myth,
and the Pursuit of an American Outlaw
by Maryanne Vollers

Now reading:

"Murder at Golgotha"
Revisiting the Most Famous
Crime Scene in History
by Ian Wilson

 

[La Rocque]

"the Heebie - Jeebies at CBGB's"
a Secret History of Jewish Punk
by Steven Lee Beeber

 

[plintus]

Just got in the mail (took 2 days to get here instead of 7):

MCITP Self-Paced Training Kit (Exams 70-431, 70-443, 70-444): Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Database Administrator Core Requirements (Pro Certification) (Hardcover)

This one is next (not released yet :S):

 

[Dark_Silence]

i am currently reading "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith. It was a Christmas present, so far I like it.

 

[Blitzkrieg Pajo]

"Queremos tanto a Glenda" by Julio Cortázar. Christmas present from my sister.
It's in Spanish and I hope to learn more Spanish by reading this book. so far i like these little stories

 

[stardrowned]

Sophie's World. That's one of the best I've read in a very long time.

 

[marduk1507]

Birthday Letters from Ted Hughes. Just have gone through it once, and now its time for some serious dissection. Really heavy poetry, if youre familiar with the background of this collection of poems.

 

[DisplayofCharacter]

Right now I'm reading King's Dark Tower Series (I'm only on book one... I guess I'm behind the curve, lol) and whatever classic I may come upon. I had to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for my AP Literature class, and it was good....I love books.

 

[Kovenant84]

Dark Tower is good - gets kinda weird towards the end, though. Just a friendly warning.

Right now I'm on Dan Simmons' The Terror. Excellent author, pretty cool topic. Basically, set in the expansionist era of British history - pushes for the Northwest passage, discoveries in the arctic and antarctic. I'm not so keen on the actual 'villain' aspect of the story right now (though his other books haven't disappointed me in the end), but he nails the terror and awe any single person feels when faced with the harshest of environments.

~kov.

 

[DisplayofCharacter]

Dark Tower is good - gets kinda weird towards the end, though. Just a friendly warning.

Right now I'm on Dan Simmons' The Terror. Excellent author, pretty cool topic. Basically, set in the expansionist era of British history - pushes for the Northwest passage, discoveries in the arctic and antarctic. I'm not so keen on the actual 'villain' aspect of the story right now (though his other books haven't disappointed me in the end), but he nails the terror and awe any single person feels when faced with the harshest of environments.

~kov.

Kov - it sounds interesting. I enjoy history, and extremely cold temperatures, so I'll have to check it out. I've heard the Dark Tower series ends strangely - but King's endings have always been adequate at best. It comes to mind, as I love the first 1000 pages of that book, but the ending... uke: <---- at best.

 

[La Rocque]

"Dirty Little Secrets of the Record Business"
Why so much music you hear SUCKS
by Hank Bordowitz -

 

[marduk1507]

The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk

An excellent biography of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

 

[Kovenant84]

Wittgenstein was a crazy dude.

My fiancee read his treatises on math for a humanities class. It was a little too out there for me.

~kov.

 

[hyena]

I have a friend who always says that Wittgenstein changed his life radically. I will need to give him a crack (the philosopher, not my friend) sooner or later.

 

[La Rocque]

I'm probably treading on shaky ground(I not too knowledgeable on the subject)but wasn't Wittgenstein making fun of philosophers and philosophy with 'Tractatus Logico - Philosophicus' and writing in a round about way all philosophy was nothing but a bunch of bull shit???

 

[Kovenant84]

From everything I've read and heard on the subject, I can definitively say Kinda.

~kov.

 

[KitKat]

Reading American Vertigo by Bernard-Henri L&#233;vy. Some philosophical road book through USA... it is so good!!!!!!

 

[Dark_Silence]

Just got my christmas present, late due to a lack of money last month

3 books about minerals:
Titles in German (and english translation):

Das gro&#223;e Lexikon der Mineralien (Big lexicon of minerals)
Mineralien erkennen und bestimmen (recognising and identifying minerals)
Mineralien bestimmen leicht gemacht (easily identifying minerals)

These are books to help indentify minerals, it has lots of pictures and explain the main characteristics of each mineral, its cristal structure, where to find it, and in which stones you often find the mineral.