What are you reading?

[Sir Didier Drogba]

I'm definitely a sci-fi/fantasy nerd in my reading choices. Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Tolkein (all of which I've read multiple times), Terry Brooks etc. They're fun to read and not too heavy, so I can get into it while on the subway or sitting eating lunch. I read them on my phone or Kobo, so you can't see what books I'm reading, anyway.

Actually my least favourite genre, including romance

I dont even particularly care for dystopian classics like 1984 or Brave New World. Read a few from Huxley and hated them all. Only HG Wells I like is The Island of Dr Moreau and that is by far his least Sci Fi work.

 

[Mandieta6]

Scifi is pretty 'love it or hate it'. I'm not a fan but I enjoy the 'what would happen if' subgenre which is what Brave New World, 1984 and HG Wells especially were about.

Worst genre are Austen and Dickens' tripe IMO.

 

[Sir Didier Drogba]

Worst genre are Austen and Dickens' tripe IMO.

Haha yes! I fucking cant stand Victorian British novels. Awful, horrible stuff. Dickens, Bronte, Austen, Elliot, Hardy (who I do think is a very fine poet), Gaskell etc can all fuck right off. Only exceptions are George Gissing, who is great, and Oscar Wilde, who was tail end of Victorian period anyway.

 

[Mandieta6]

Yeah, I have a 19th c. Lit class this semester and it's just shit. Only good authors are turn of the century or non-English.

 

[ShiftyPowers]

Best writing in that century was coming out of Russia, which we've addressed in here.

 

[Sir Didier Drogba]

Best writing in that century was coming out of Russia, which we've addressed in here.

I would argue France has the slight edge.

 

[ShiftyPowers]

This makes me incredibly sexist, but I consider the end of Tess of the Dubbervilles to be a happy ending. Younger sister

 

[Sir Didier Drogba]

This makes me incredibly sexist, but I consider the end of Tess of the Dubbervilles to be a happy ending. Younger sister

Never even read it. Mayor of Casterbridge was stomachable (barely) but after Under the Greenwood Tree I never picked up Hardy again.

 

[ShiftyPowers]

The main character dies at like 20 years old after a terrible life that was almost redeemed. The man she feel in love with visits her grave with her younger, prettier sister, whom he married.

 

[Back Door Skip]

Make the younger chick Amber Heard if it gets made into a movie and I'll watch no matter how sappy it becomes.

 

[WinCool]

Where's Asterix?

 

[Bonehead1]

The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, Victor Pelevin

 

[ShiftyPowers]

Tess is actually a very naive and flighty young woman archetype which I really only see in English and American writing. Usually French and Russian young women are cultured or have skills or are intelligent. She reminds me of an ex of mine (who I actually hated when I had to deal with her on a day to day basis), so I always find those literary women to be kind of cute and endearing.

 

[Tosiek]

What's your way of reading books?

Do you read several books at once or you just stick to the one until you finish it and then pick up another? As for me, I'm reading a few books at once. I've never really liked reading one book at the time. When I get bored with reading one I can always jump to another that has already been started. And second question – how do you get books? Library, bookstores, antique fairs, online? I usually buy books at fairs because it's cheaper and you can find rare books that you wouldn't find anywhere else. Online shopping and bookstores are the other way I get my books. You can rarely meet me in the library because I only go there for books that are not worth buying, mostly retro detective stories.

I love to buy stuff in a place where salesman is not aware of value of things that he wants to get rid of.

 

[ShiftyPowers]

I haven't been reading much, but I usually just read one book at a time and check a few out from the library when I go.

 

[Tosiek]

Any particular type of literature you like? Journals and diaries are my thing. I've never been an enthusiast of fantasy novels but I have to admit that George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is awesome. The whole series was worth buying.

 

[ShiftyPowers]

Classic fiction mostly.

 

[Mandieta6]

I read books in succession unless I absolutely must read something for class and don't have time to finish the book I'm currently reading. It's the main reason why I've barely reading anything for the last 2 months because I got stuck reading Great Expectations for class and it s absolutely horrible. I had to finish it for an essay, though, so I just read it like a chapter a day because it was dreadfully boring. Charles Dickens is shit, like most of his compatriots in that century, I don't care how many people fawn about him. Simply awful, awful.

I'm very cheap, but the one thing I do spend my money on are books. If it's a book I think I'll like (mostly depending on the author), and I find an edition I like, I'll just buy it. I also tend to buy ones which I'll think will be of use in my (intended) academic career, mostly critical editions (I've bought lke 20 Norton Critical Editions in the past year since they're brilliant, some of them on authors who aren't particularly interesting but who I was going to study or write an essay about, like Wordsworth, Hawthorne, fucking Dickens, etc.).

Otherwise I just take them out of the library, but if I find one I like, I buy it anyway. I'm also trying to figure out how the library's security system works so that I can circumvent it since there are a bunch of great books that absolutely no one has read (I'm talking spanking brand new which have not even been touched). Whenever I'm at the city centre I go to the only 3 bookstores that sell fiction beyond Shifty Brown in English and see if they have anything worthwhile, they generally don't though. It was really painful going to London because there were a lot of great second-hand bookshops and that big bookstore chain had a lot of great stuff, like NCEs and a whole section of just drama.

I prefer 20th century fiction and drama, mostly.

 

[Sepak]

I like reading existentialist books, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Camus, Nietzsche, Sartre are my favourites. But Now that I can fully understand books in english, I have been (re)reading american classics.

There are great libraries here, so I usually get the books from there. But if I find them in a store at a good price, I usually buy them. I have a kindle too, but I mostly use it to read recently published books, Doctor Sleep was the last one.

 

[Tosiek]

. I have a kindle too, but I mostly use it to read recently published books, Doctor Sleep was the last one.

Do you enjoy it? I tried it once and I couldn't read more than one chapter. It makes my eyes feel tired. That's why I stick to paper books.