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What do you like to read?
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Spike
Memphis
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July 22, 2009 - 9:44 pm
Member Since: April 16, 2009
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Authors?  Genres?

Fiction:  I read a lot of mysteries.  Just a few of my favorites are Donna Leon, Michael Dibdin (R.I.P), although I'm saving his last, End Games.  I very much like Andrea Camilleri.  Also, Daniel Silva, Iain Pears,David Liss, Arturo Perez-Reverte (Have a couple of the Captain Alatriste, but haven't read them yet.  Loved The Flanders Panel.), Katherine Neville.  Janet Evanovich for a bit of fast, light, humorous escape.  There are lots of other mystery authors I like but these might be the top of the list.

Nonfiction:  history, especially of cities and technology.  Some bios.  Other stuff.

How about you?

"…you just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake."

Jen
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July 22, 2009 - 10:01 pm
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I like to read books [Image Can Not Be Found] Okay, okay... that was uncalled for! [Image Can Not Be Found]

I read about 99.9% fiction, heavily in the crime genre, the bloodier, the better [Image Can Not Be Found] Some favorite authors are John Sandford, Lee Child, Lisa Gardner, Michael Connolly, Stephen Hunter. But I will read just about anything besides Stephen King (okay, so...) and Harlequin romances. The last noncrime book I read was The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, a good read, and before that The Angel's Game, which was really great. Oh yeah, and Treasure Island, because it was a free download for my new Kindle! Yay for me! I got a Kindle DX! Woo hoo! Can you tell I love it? [Image Can Not Be Found]

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Toger
Somewhere, out there...
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July 22, 2009 - 10:15 pm
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I'll read just about anything. I'm another where the majority of the stuff I read is mystery/thriller:

Hammett, Chandler, Tami Hoag, Preston/Douglas (Pendergast Series), Jacqueline Winspear, Laurie R King (Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series) and a host of others that I can't remember. I'll also read Fantasy: Eddings (RIP) and G.R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. I used to read King, but he became so prolific and mundane that I stopped reading his books.

I love Jane Austen - and if you haven't read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies you haven't lived! It's brilliantly done. My copy is making the rounds of the more clever and twisted people in my office. [Image Can Not Be Found]

Nonfiction: I love History if it's written as a story, not just dry facts, some bios, some true crime. If it will hold still long enough for me to read it, I will.

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TimK
Boston, MA
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July 22, 2009 - 10:38 pm
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A wide variety (as you can see on my GoodReads page). Right now, I'm into Holly Lisle's The Ruby Key (intended for pre-teens, but I adore everything Holly writes). I started that to take a break from John Stossel's Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity, which I started to break up A Demon Awaits by C.J. West—sorry dude—which I in turn started in an attempt to make Nora Roberts's Northern Lights more interesting. (I've tried to get through Northern Lights 3 times before, and each time has ended quickly in failure.)

Other books I've read and ranked highly include Tales of Pirx the Pilot (Stanislaw Lem), Safe Harbour (Danielle Steel), Night Echoes and Hunting the Corrigan's Blood (both by Holly Lisle), A Certain Slant of Light (Laura Whitcomb). That's all in fiction. In non-fiction: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini), Ogilvy on Advertising (David Ogilvy), How to lift depression ...Fast and Dreaming Reality (both by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell), and Economics in One Lesson (Henry Hazlitt).

-TimK

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Spike
Memphis
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July 23, 2009 - 12:36 am
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Toger said:

Nonfiction: I love History if it's written as a story, not just dry facts, some bios, some true crime. If it will hold still long enough for me to read it, I will.


Either last summer, or the summer before (time flies) I started Cryptonomicon mostly for the Bletchley Park history.  About 100 pages in I got bored with the WWII actual war stuff and put the book down.  I picked it up again at the beginning of this year.  Fought through the war, and ended up enjoying all 1100 pages of it.  I found I liked the Waterhouse family enough that I bought the 3 books in the Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World (Waterhouse in the 17-18th centuries).  I loved them too.  The history was fascinating.  Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, Christopher Wren, the Rossignols.  Science, technology, architecture, cryptography, the beginnings of the standardization of British coinage (sounds boring, I know, but it isn't).  When one of the fictional characters died toward the end I cried.  I liked him alot.  I would like to have Neal Stephenson bring the centuries together with at least one more book in the series, but I bet that won't happen.  Altogether, about 3700 pages of enjoyment.  I don't think I'd want to invite Isaac Newton over for dinner.  From this book, and other bits I've read about him, I get the impression that he's just too damned weird for normal social discourse.

Tim, it looks as if we all have wide ranging tastes.  But then in your case, that's one of the things that makes for a good writer.

Jen, do you have an iPhone or iPod Touch?  There is a 99¢ app called Classics that gives you 25 and counting books that we all think we should have read, but haven't.  Maybe a couple, but not very many.  They are text, not audio, so you turn the pages.  And, OOH, you got the DX.  Color me green.[Image Can Not Be Found]  I've got the Kindle app for my iPod and I love it.  I've only bought 2 books for it so far, but the download speed over wi-fi is so fast that I'm amazed.  Only problem is that if I need to go back pages and pages to reread something it takes more time than it does with a physical book, but is easier than with an audio book.

"…you just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake."

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Toger
Somewhere, out there...
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July 23, 2009 - 9:54 am
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I must be one of the only people who didn't like Cryptonomicon. I slogged my way through the entire 1100 pages, but in the end I didn't really enjoy it. I liked the cryptography and the war parts (espionage ftw), but it was sooo hard to love.

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Pokey
California
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July 23, 2009 - 12:00 pm
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I used to read a lot of fiction, especially mysteries, but now I'd rather read non--fiction. I enjoy history, biographys and interesting books like Dana Sobel's Longitude, about the need for and invention of the chronometer.

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Spike
Memphis
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July 23, 2009 - 1:18 pm
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Pokey, I've had Sobel's book on my list.  It's amazing how much was made easier/possible with the invention of accurate time keeping.  And this search is mentioned many times in the Neal Stephenson books.

What I most enjoyed about the 4 Stephenson books I mentioned above is that they all took place at times when mankind was on the brink of great change.  In the case of The Baroque Cycle, the 100 years or so from roughly 1650-1750 saw the rise of science as a legitimate endeavor, replacing the superstitions of alchemy and other beliefs about the nature and working of the universe.  Science and technology were on the move.  In Cryptonomicon, the 2 eras in which the story takes place were also times of great change.  WWII brought so much new technology, some good, some not so.  So much that was new really took off after the war.  And the 1990's brought us information technology on a scale hardly imaginable  just a few years earlier.  This was also happening at the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th, centuries.  The concept of fin de siecle.  Electric lighting was still new, so was the telephone.  The beginning of motor cars.  X-rays.  Would these new technologies herald the end of human culture?  Or usher in a new era of great human achievement?  For some reason, the jury always seems to be out on those questions.  I think it's easiest to say that there's gonna be some not-so-good along with the very good.  Always.  How we decide to use new technology is the telling tale.

"…you just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake."

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