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I’m not really into reading many books. But I noticed our webmaster has a section about the books he read on his website.

So I’m a bit amazed that there hasn’t been any topic about books on this forum (or was there?).

One of the latest books I read was “Thief Of Time” by Terry Pratchett. I had much fun reading it and it’s one of the best books I read until now.

What was the last book you read. Or what book are you reading right now (well not exactly right now, because you are reading this message, but I think you grasp my point). And what’s your favorite book? I’m just curious about the answers.

Edit: grammar correction

At the moment I'm reading The smoke jumper, by Nicholas Evans, the author of The horsewhisperer. But this book is kinda boring, I'm at it for several weeks now. But yesterday I bought a new book by Stephen King, called Everything's Eventual,14 Dark Tales. Seems rather promising...
As I am a great fan of most of Stephen King's books, one of my favourites is called: The Stand. Strongly recommended... Or maybe Salems Lot,which is about vampires, makes you look under your bed before going to sleep.....
Oops.. almost forgot to mention I'm studying quite a lot in my whiskybooks on a regular basis!

Great Topic!

now I'm reading "The picture of Dorian Gray"... I'm reading in the english version, wich was a mistake, because I feel I would really enjoy reading it in portuguese, but in english I'm always stoping to check the dictionary, wich is really boring...

my favourite authors are: Lars Gustafsson (Sweden), Jacques Roubaud(France), Mário de Carvalho(Portugal), Rubem Fonseca (Brazil), Eça de Queirós (Portugal), Mia Couto (Mozambique).. not exactly in this order.. and these are just the ones I remember now..

Gabriel García Marquez(Colômbia) and Jorge Amado (Brazil) are also great writers.. Luís Sepúlveda from Chile isn't bad either.

there also some other authors from whom I only read one book, like the japanese Banana Yoshimoto or the hindi Arundhati Roy, that I would really enjoy reading more..

Reading now :
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (Great stuff ! fiction)

Liked very much :
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

All time classics :
Life According to Garp by John Irving

Best Dutch book :
De Procedure by Harry Mulish

Last read non-fiction :
Man, Beast & Zombie by Kenan Malik
(about Darwinism & question if a machine or computer could ever have a soul - Great stuff, but heavy)

Best (popular) science books :
The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking [Het Heelal]

Best antipoison for pseudo-science
Pyramides in de Cosmos VUB Press (3 autors ... forgot their names)
The book deals with a wide variety of pseudo-scientists, and is antipoison for various pseudo scientists ... but it also deals with rather fundamental questions like "Are we alone ?"

Best pseudo-science book :
The Mars Mystery by Hancock & Bauval
(especially last 100 pages, about probability of meteors striking the earth one day ... a bit fin-de-sciecle amageaddon stuff ... I very much enjoyed reading this book, but it is unscientific ... a lot of speculation without facts, and from time to time, that is amusing. But don't take these guys serious, please ... and read some antipoison too)

Well, my tastes have changed with time. I am quite eclectic in my readings. Some of my favorites are books by JKRowling (Harry potter!), Margaret Atwood, Armistead Maupin, Alexandre Jardin, Françoise Sagan and David Lodge.

I also read a book here and there that I really like.

For instance right now, I'm reading "Software for your mind". It's a book about practices you can apply that will improve the outcome of your work when you're working in a team to deliver a product . It's really interesting albeit I'm kind of wondering how to apply it in France (you can feel it's really based on American culture).

Other books I liked : one on hypnosis (really good at demystifying it), the book at the IMF by the nobel prize winner (can't remember the name).

I read quite a bit to satisfy my curiosity

I thought it was time to dig up this post out of the the dust that hid it.

Yesterday I finished Destiny’s road from Larry Niven. Once past the first chapters I enjoyed reading this science fiction book very much.

Well, I just finished :Batavia's graveyard, about the wrecking of the Batavia, an East India Company ship that was wrecked on her maiden voyage in the Houtman Abrolhos in the year 1629.

I'm reading The Darksteel Eye, by Jess Lebow. It's an alternate-world fantasy book and, although I'm not much into fantasy, I'm reading it since it's the background story of a game I play (Magic: The Gathering). I usually enjoy books by José Saramago, Virgílio Ferreira, Jacinto Lucas Pires (a fantastic Portuguese young writer) and António Lobo Antunes. In foreign literature, I like George Orwell, Boris Vian and Kafka (although I never got through America). I've also read a couple of books by Paulo Coelho and I ended up liking them more than I tought I would.

For last few days I have done nothing but read, read and read. For the whole year I haven't read almost anything fiction, and now when I'm on vacation at last, I'm enjoying something about a book per day.. Greedy book-eater I am.
Mostly fantasy because I didn't get any further in the library before my pile of books was bigger than I could carry home. The reading pause had obviously been too long, usually I have to wander long time between the shelves trying to find something I would like to read that I haven't read before.
Now I borrowed mostly books by authors I've read before (Terry Pratchett [one of my favourites!], Marja Luukkonen [she writes actually children's books, but they're absurd enough for me], Diana Wynne Jones, R.A. Salvatore and Anu Holopainen), but one new acquaintance went well with them and actually felt really fresh; the book was written with a quite different style from others. Lian Hearn's Satakielilattia ("Across the Nightingale Floor" in the original writing language) is situated in Japan's past and I really enjoyed the lingerig touch of telling a fantasy adventure. The author brought out the feelings, thoughts and motives –such as honour– of the characters very well, and still there was room for a net of cunning plots and conspiracies and some action, too.
Yeah, that's the latest book I've read, that's why I'm babbling so enthusiastically about it. Time shows, did the good reading experience leave a mark.

By the way, do anyone else than our webmaster and I write down the names and authors of read books? I find it very handy, because when I see a name of a book I've read, it's easier to remember what kind of a book it was and so it's easier to recommend books to others.

I try to keep track of the books I read, but I'm very sloppy at it.

Right now I'm reading The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, then I should be moving on to the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake, Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, The Tesseract by Alex Garland, The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington. I have all these books at home, waiting to be read.

And there are plenty of other books, such as the works of Oscar Wilde so far as I haven't read them yet, I want to read more stories by Saki, Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation, Woe to live on - I can't remember the author right now - Macchiavelli's Il Principe...

All of the works mentioned above have a common thread, which I'm not going to explain because you would consider me completely mad!

Then there are all the Alexander the Great-related books: Arrian, Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, Q. Curtius Rufus, other secondary/tertiary sources with smaller references, books about his campaigns and tactis.

Thén I have The Brothers Karamazov by Dostojevski waiting to be read, and I intend to some day finish Tolstoj's War and Peace. There are about three detective novels I haven't finished/started, and about the same amount of scifi/fantasy books (and I'm halfway through a series of twelve, so I suppose that's another six).

I love to read, but I can't keep up with everything I'd love to read!!!

I'm reading some books about Leonor from Aquitania.

The authors that I like to read:

- Ken Follet
- Anne Rice

Hey, I recently read The Lion in Winter, that's got Eleanor of Aquitaine in it - although it's hardly historical. The author is James Goldman.

This play has been filmed in 1968 with Peter O'Toole as King Henry II and Katherine Hepburn as Eleanor (Timothy Dalton was King Philip of France, Anthony Hopkins as Richard) and recently with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close (with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Philip and another, rather less well-known, Welshman Andrew Howard playing the Lionheart).

EDIT: I went to www.imdb.com and checked my facts.

Thanks Ganymede!!!! :):):):)

I'm gonna try to find the film and the book

Ganymede wrote:Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation

Read it for a university assignment. It's strangely beatiful. I strongly recommend to anyone who thinks they have been depressed.

Ganymede wrote:I love to read, but I can't keep up with everything I'd love to read!!!

Same problem here - and few € too

BogPoet wrote:

Ganymede wrote:I love to read, but I can't keep up with everything I'd love to read!!!

Same problem here

That is SO familiar to me too. Usually that feeling I-don't-have-enough-lifetime-left-to-read-what-I-want should probably occur when you're old, but I actually got that when I was 15, the time when I was beginning to be a bit too old to get excited of children's books -but I hadn't read all the promising fantasybooks for children they have in my nearest library! Shocking.
The world has too many good books which I wouldn't want to be forced to choose between.
*shouts* Hey ya all writers and all around the world! STOP WRITING for a moment so I can keep up with ya!

No, I don't really wish that. The truth that we all are forced to skip some truly great reading experions because of the limited length of a human life just makes me a bit frustrated sometimes. I wish really often that the day would have more hours than 24, so that there would be more time for various interests and hobbys. *sigh*