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1. you smoke dodo?
   

   P fan #1
   Joined: Jun '08
   Posts: 1,874

   Posted 12 years ago #

   So yeah, we've covered games, tv, movies, music, but not books yet i don't think. Seems like there's a few thinking cats on these forums, so what y'all reading at the moment? Any recommendations for life changing literature?
   
   Right now I'm reading some Terry Pratchett, cos I need some light relief. I need to read heavy academic ish for work, and read a lot to expand my knowledge too, so i need some easy stuff before i go to bed.
   
   Book that changed my life (for more than a couple of weeks ) probably, UBIK, by Phillip K Dick. It made me think more than any other book, and showed me books can be more exciting than the best thriller action movie...

2. Loudwon
   

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   Posted 12 years ago #

   I'm currently reading "The Island of sheep" by John Buchan.
   
   Which is from the 'Richard Hannay' series.
   
   "The Thirty-Nine Steps"
   "Greenmantle"
   "Mr Standfast"
   "The Three Hostages"
   "The Island of Sheep"
   
   Although I dont find enough time to read.
   But when I do I can end up reading for a few hours.
   
   Really enjoying these books and I can easily get lost in them.
   One day I "took" the day off work and went to the New Forest and had a smoke and sat on a tree reading the end of the Three Hostages for a few hours. I dont think I saw another person that whole time!
   
   I'm "a bit" of a geek and love those books with facts in and things like that and enjoy reading them learning things.

3. SactownConnection
   

   P fan #1
   Joined: Oct '08
   Posts: 3,255

   Posted 12 years ago #

   Loudwon said: I'm currently reading "The Island of sheep" by John Buchan.
   
   Which is from the 'Richard Hannay' series.
   
   "The Thirty-Nine Steps"
   "Greenmantle"
   "Mr Standfast"
   "The Three Hostages"
   "The Island of Sheep"
   
   Although I dont find enough time to read.
   But when I do I can end up reading for a few hours.
   
   Really enjoying these books and I can easily get lost in them.
   One day I "took" the day off work and went to the New Forest and had a smoke and sat on a tree reading the end of the Three Hostages for a few hours. I dont think I saw another person that whole time!
   
   I'm "a bit" of a geek and love those books with facts in and things like that and enjoy reading them learning things.

   I've always wanted to read that series... Alfred Hitchcock made The Thirty-Nine Steps into a bad-ass movie (well, "badass" for the 1930's, but still...) and he was always writing up treatments of Greenmantle (but it never went into production)...
   
   Yeah, I can never find the time either. I watch too many movies, listen to too much music, and play a bit of video/PC games, so that doesn't leave me time to exercise or read. My priorities are all f*cked up.
   
   My favorite authors growing up were David Eddings (fantasy novelist, like Pratchett) and Brian Jacques (REDWALL, motherf*cker... most bad-ass young reader series around... the first three books, anyway)...
   
   Later on, I really dug Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (not to be confused with the horror novel, this one was a social commentary), Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo made me want to be a writer...), and Dante Aligheri's Inferno (I also bought the Purgatorio & Paradiso, but I still haven't gotten to them yet). I wrote a huge essay on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness too. Favorite epic poem (besides Dante) is Kubla Khan by Coleridge.
   
   Also read a few Hardy Boys... they're aight.
   
   On a side note, anyone ever collect comic books? I never really did, but I did manage to pick up a few... I think I had the first 10 or so Ren & Stimpy comic books, haha. My girlfriend has translated a few Japanese manga novels for the American audiences, I saw her name in a book in Borders once.

4. you smoke dodo?
   

   P fan #1
   Joined: Jun '08
   Posts: 1,874

   Posted 12 years ago #

   What's the Richard Hannay series all about? I've heard of the 39 steps, but none of the others. I'm jealous as hell you're near the new forest. Lucky basted. You got red squirrels down there?

5. SactownConnection
   

   P fan #1
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   Posts: 3,255

   Posted 12 years ago #

   Oh, and I almost forgot, add The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises to my list of stuff above. Can't forget Fitzgerald and Hemingway.
   
   I wish someone would re-write The Last of the Mohicans in a newer form of English, 'cause the book SEEMED cool, but it's a difficult read. Kept having to re-read passages 'cause of that archaic language. The Scarlet Letter was similar (but not as bad).
   
   Anyone got a vote for worst book they ever read?
   Secret

6. you smoke dodo?
   

   P fan #1
   Joined: Jun '08
   Posts: 1,874

   Posted 12 years ago #

   man, i hate hemingway. he's such a goddam imperialist w@nker. personal opinion like.
   
   You into your classics then Sactown? To Kill a Mockingbird, Grapes of Wrath, Wuthering Heights etc?
   
   I've never read a bad book all the way through. Once tried reading a SAS type book, by that dude Andy whatever. It was sh!te. Only lasted about 20 pages. F*cking twilight is similarly pants, but never read it, just read passages on the internet which people have taken the p!ss out of.
   
   by the way, i read every single goddam Redwall book ever made, i thought they were so cool and brutal when i was a kid...

7. Loudwon
   

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   Posted 12 years ago #

   SactownConnection said:
   
   I've always wanted to read that series... Alfred Hitchcock made The Thirty-Nine Steps into a bad-ass movie (well, "badass" for the 1930's, but still...) and he was always writing up treatments of Greenmantle (but it never went into production)...
   
   Yeah, I can never find the time either. I watch too many movies, listen to too much music, and play a bit of video/PC games, so that doesn't leave me time to exercise or read. My priorities are all f*cked up.
   
   

   
   
   Yeah I've seen 3 versions of the 39 steps and the black and white one by Alfred Hitchcock is a bad ass movie!! The best by a long way
   Although there is no love interest in the book.
   
   I can let that go because its such an entertaining and enoyable adaptation.
   
   Know what you mean... I blame work tho... there it is 5 days a week eating up my precious precious time.
   
   
   

   you smoke dodo said: What's the Richard Hannay series all about? I've heard of the 39 steps, but none of the others. I'm jealous as hell you're near the new forest. Lucky basted. You got red squirrels down there?

   
   
   Its about a soldier who has a knack for using his instincts, brains, wit etc etc. The stories usually involve a group that manipulates things but on a grand grand scale. Like you'd have the German Army and they would be like spies above everyone else. Its hard to explain briefly.
   
   Things like East v West come in to it.
   
   These people exsist but dont exsist. It revolves around things that happened like the 1st world war.
   
   I've given this a bad explanation haha.
   
   Hannay gets promoted after many good deeds and takes charge of Soliders trying to hold off the Germans in France.
   
   He goes to a lot of different locations in the different books, Scotland, England, Africa, Germany, Turkey. So it always stays interesting.
   
   One of my favourite parts is when Hannay is on the run from the Germans during the war, being persued through the Black Forest and he suffers a bout of Malaria.
   
   Really descriptive writing (unlike mine haha) really takes you places.
   Sometimes its quite depressing when you put one of the books down and you're sat at your desk at work
   
   I recommend reading at least the 39 steps.
   
   Not many red squrriels I've seen no more than 10 in my life time.
   The New Forest is a really nice place. Where I live tho you just gotta walk like 5 minutes away from your house and you can be away from people and buildings and traffic etc.
   Private

8. SactownConnection
   

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   Posts: 3,255

   Posted 12 years ago #

   you smoke dodo? said: man, i hate hemingway. he's such a goddam imperialist w@nker. personal opinion like.
   
   You into your classics then Sactown? To Kill a Mockingbird, Grapes of Wrath, Wuthering Heights etc?
   
   I've never read a bad book all the way through. Once tried reading a SAS type book, by that dude Andy whatever. It was sh!te. Only lasted about 20 pages. F*cking twilight is similarly pants, but never read it, just read passages on the internet which people have taken the p!ss out of.
   
   by the way, i read every single goddam Redwall book ever made, i thought they were so cool and brutal when i was a kid...

   Not crazy about Hemingway the Man, but Hemingway the Novelist is so-so... there's just something about The Sun Also Rises that I really dug... it's been so long now, I can't remember exactly what it was...
   
   Yeah, The Color Purple, 1984, Grapes of Wrath, Flowers for Algernon, Farenheit 451, To Kill A Mockingbird... all of 'em were something special, but some were more special than others...
   
   I wish they'd quit f*cking around and make a CGI Redwall movie. A GOOD one, not a trimmed-down sh*tty one. The cartoons they've made are really bad.
   
   As far as the popular novels, I never tried the Twilight stuff. Harry Potter is very amateurishly written, but it's an interesting story line (I don't want to put it down just 'cause it was popular... it had it's good points... fun for the kiddies, you know?).
   
   Every time I tried to get started on JRR Tolkien or Michael Crichton, I'd always get distracted, so I can't say much there. Also never been crazy about Dean Koontz, but that "Phantoms" book was awesome (the movie with Ben Affleck is dismal though, don't even pick it up to look at it at Best Buy... if you do, put it back! and wash your hands!).
   
   And finally, as far as Stephen King goes... well... The Shining was dope, Gerald's Game sucked monkey balls, Insomnia was crazy but good, but I think my favorite was IT... IT is just an epic... the made-for-TV movie had promise (Tim Curry scared half the children in my neighborhood away from clowns for the rest of their childhoods), but that spider at the end was cheesy as f*ck.
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9. EarthTraveler
   

   P fan #1
   Joined: Oct '09
   Posts: 654

   Posted 12 years ago #

   I'm currently reading 1984 by George Orwell
   
   

   Loudwon said:
   Really enjoying these books and I can easily get lost in them.
   One day I "took" the day off work and went to the New Forest and had a smoke and sat on a tree reading the end of the Three Hostages for a few hours. I dont think I saw another person that whole time!
   

   
   
   Wow, just wow.
   That's deep, and I would love to do that smoke something and read a book in a forest, sounds awesome!

10. Psychedelicatessan
    

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    Joined: Jul '09
    Posts: 75

    Posted 12 years ago #

    it may seem a little funny on a forum devoted to hiphop,
    but i have been reading a shitpile of Louis L'Amour books...
    and trying to fill out my collection... i'd say i have about 80 of them.
    
    his books can get a tad formulaic at times, but some are some real gems,
    i think he's a great writer.

11. YoYoPo
    

    The Architect
    Joined: Feb '05
    Posts: 3,489

    Posted 12 years ago #

    word! (and words!)
    
    I've been reading a lot recently, after not reading for a long time, when you get the train to work every day it's the only thing to do!
    
    Recently read this book someone lent me - Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson - great storytelling; thriller under-the-surface racial tensions in post-WWII America.
    
    

    SactownConnection said: I wrote a huge essay on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness too.

    
    I'm reading this right now! Great writer - started on some of his other stories first (Youth: A Narrative and Karain: A Memory are immense). I would recommend the Oxford Classics edition of Heart of Darkness because it contains 3 others and has ill in-depth analysis.
    
    

    SactownConnection said: Favorite epic poem (besides Dante) is Kubla Khan by Coleridge.

    
    Also re-reading 'Invisible Cities' by Italo Calvino right now. Marco Polo talking to Kubla Khan, with hundreds of little descriptions of different imaginary (or are they?) cities. Really beautiful, great descriptions.
    
    Also started reading 'Letters to a Young Poet' by Rilke. Real deep, life-experience insights. Recommended.
    
    
    On my pile of what's next -
    - Daniel Dafoe / Journal of the Plague Year (descriptions of living in black death London and how to get around when half the streets are quarantined... !)
    - Saint Augustine / Confessions (more life-knowledge deep sh!t from an ancient scholar. not sure what to expect but I hear it's immense.)
    - The Qu'ran (bought a copy... why not? An Important book!)
    - someone lent me The Kite Runner too, will have to check it out.

12. EarthTraveler
    

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    Posts: 654

    Posted 12 years ago #

    The Snow Falling On Cedars book sounds real interesting, thanks for the heads up, I'm definitely going to check that out.

13. SactownConnection
    

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    Posts: 3,255

    Posted 12 years ago #

    YoYoPo said: - The Qu'ran (bought a copy... why not? An Important book!)

    Awesome. I love hearing people taking the time to study up on stuff like this. When I was a lot younger, I checked out some Buddhists writings, Four Noble Truths, Noble Eightfold Path and all that. Also looked into other Far Eastern stuff. Never had the opportunity to check the qu'ran out though.
    
    P*sses me off how many people quote the Bible for their own ends without understanding the context (or without reading it fully), and I hate it when people vilify other religions without ever trying to know them (by reading their texts, etc.). I'm not crazy about religion in general, but at least reading up on things helps. Knowledge Reigns Supreme. The more you know about everything, the more you can get into breaking it down, building it up, and sifting through it.

14. EarthTraveler
    

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    Posted 12 years ago #

    I've been thinking about reading the Qu'ran too, for quite some time now.
    Maybe it's time to do so.

15. SactownConnection
    

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    Posts: 3,255

    Posted 12 years ago #

    Just be careful where you're reading that and who you talk to about it, y'all. Not to be overly paranoid, but the Thought Police are everywhere. I'm not militant and never will be, but this world's getting psychotic about watching what people say and how people think.
    
    Funny how America jumped on the Middle East with the stated reason of ending violence, discrimination, and oppression in the name of religion, yet there are whole legions of people here that, while they may not have the violence thing going YET, they certainly know how to subtly (or not so subtly) oppress and discriminate like crazy.
    
    So yeah, I'd say "read up!", but just do like you do when you read the bible or the torah or whatever else... a grain of salt, y'all. Synthesize. Take what works in the modern age, and throw away what doesn't.

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