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What Books Are You Guys Reading?


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It's fun to look up that race and see how they all turned out.

I finally started reading Moneyball yesterday. I'm about halfway through and so far it's great. I'm really happy I'm finally reading it.   It's fun to insta lookup all the players they talk about

Done and done. Man, that was epic.

Notes From a Small Island, by Bill BrysonVery funny, nicely written.
What a piece-of-shit, awful sell-out book that was. I mean, I can't remember the last time someone wrote a book as a cash-grab in any genre, but to do it like this? I was horrified from cover-to-cover with the lies and bullshit that all come together just to get the almighty dollar. Pure. Fucking. Drek.
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What a piece-of-shit, awful sell-out book that was. I mean, I can't remember the last time someone wrote a book as a cash-grab in any genre, but to do it like this? I was horrified from cover-to-cover with the lies and bullshit that all come together just to get the almighty dollar. Pure. Fucking. Drek.
haha
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I decided that, starting Jan. 1 of this year, I was going to keep a list of books I'd read, just to have a record and an accurate count.

  1. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
  2. Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood
  3. Snowcrash, Neal Stephenson
  4. Curse of the Narrows, Laura MacDonald
  5. A Fellow of Infinite Jest, Yoseloff
  6. The Other Side of the Night, Butler
  7. The Bible, Karen Armstrong
  8. The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels
  9. God’s Problem, Bart Ehrman
  10. Too Many to Mourn, James Mahar
  11. Hooked, Kaza
  12. Awake, Dyja
  13. No Time to Lose, Chödrön
  14. Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne
  15. Hamlet Without Hamlet, Margreta de Grazia
  16. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Vol. VII, Geoffrey Bullough
  17. Who Wrote the Bible, Richard Elliott Friedman
  18. The Bible Unearthed, Israel Finkelstein
  19. The Beginnings of Heaven and Earth, Christal Whelan
  20. Bite-Size Einstein, Mayer
  21. Epitaphs to Remember, Janet Greene
  22. The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris
  23. Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames, Thich Nhat Hanh
  24. 50 Psychology Ideas You Really Need to Know, Adrian Furnham
  25. Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, Jan Ellen Lewis & Peter Onuf, Eds.
  26. Acedia & Me, Kathleen Norris
  27. Citizens, Simon Schama
  28. Mr. Jefferson’s Women, Jon Kukla
  29. Spook Country, William Gibson
  30. Certain Trumpets, Garry Wills
  31. The Burgermeister’s Daughter, Steven Ozment
  32. Voudou Visions, Sallie Ann Glassman
  33. The Greatest Stories Never Told, Rick Beyer
  34. Coming to Our Senses, Jon Kabat-Zinn
  35. A Distant Mirror, Barbara Tuchman
  36. Shakespeare’s Philosophy, Colin McGinn
  37. Infinite Life, Robert Thurman
  38. Japanese Death Poems, Yoel Hoffmann
  39. The World Without Us, Alan Weisman
  40. Goddess: Myths of the Female Divine, Leeming and Page
  41. The Goddess, Shahrukh Husain
  42. Dreams of Being Eaten Alive, David Rosenberg
  43. Basic Teachings of the Buddha, Glenn Wallis
  44. What If? 2, Robert Cowley, ed.
  45. Comfortably Numb, Charles Barber
  46. The Zuni Enigma, Nancy Yaw Davis
  47. The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, Leonard Shlain
  48. Lost Discoveries, Dick Teresi

This got me up to mid-June. I was, I'll admit, pretty proud of myself for being on track to read 100 books a year.Then I started grad school in June (teacher training over the summer session). Since then:

  1. 1000 Paths to Tranquility, David Baird (by choice)
  2. On Writing: A Process Reader, Wendy Bishop (for teacher training)
  3. Gender Trouble, Judith Butler (for a paper)
  4. Early Modern Prose Fiction, Naomi Conn Liebler, ed. (for a paper)
  5. How to Read Lacan, Slavoj Zizek (for class)
  6. Giving an Account of Oneself, Judith Butler (for a paper)
  7. Reading Shakespeare’s Poems in Early Modern England, Sasha Roberts (for a paper; great book)
  8. Tudor Books and Readers, John N. King, ed. (for a paper)

48 books before grad school, 8 books after. Sure, I've read innumerable chapters and journal articles (and, alas, student papers -- 1,000 pages' worth of freshman writing), but books? No.I think I was doing better as an autodidact.

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I decided that, starting Jan. 1 of this year, I was going to keep a list of books I'd read, just to have a record and an accurate count.
  1. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
  2. Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood
  3. Snowcrash, Neal Stephenson
  4. Curse of the Narrows, Laura MacDonald
  5. A Fellow of Infinite Jest, Yoseloff
  6. The Other Side of the Night, Butler
  7. The Bible, Karen Armstrong
  8. The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels
  9. God’s Problem, Bart Ehrman
  10. Too Many to Mourn, James Mahar
  11. Hooked, Kaza
  12. Awake, Dyja
  13. No Time to Lose, Chödrön
  14. Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne
  15. Hamlet Without Hamlet, Margreta de Grazia
  16. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Vol. VII, Geoffrey Bullough
  17. Who Wrote the Bible, Richard Elliott Friedman
  18. The Bible Unearthed, Israel Finkelstein
  19. The Beginnings of Heaven and Earth, Christal Whelan
  20. Bite-Size Einstein, Mayer
  21. Epitaphs to Remember, Janet Greene
  22. The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris
  23. Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames, Thich Nhat Hanh
  24. 50 Psychology Ideas You Really Need to Know, Adrian Furnham
  25. Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, Jan Ellen Lewis & Peter Onuf, Eds.
  26. Acedia & Me, Kathleen Norris
  27. Citizens, Simon Schama
  28. Mr. Jefferson’s Women, Jon Kukla
  29. Spook Country, William Gibson
  30. Certain Trumpets, Garry Wills
  31. The Burgermeister’s Daughter, Steven Ozment
  32. Voudou Visions, Sallie Ann Glassman
  33. The Greatest Stories Never Told, Rick Beyer
  34. Coming to Our Senses, Jon Kabat-Zinn
  35. A Distant Mirror, Barbara Tuchman
  36. Shakespeare’s Philosophy, Colin McGinn
  37. Infinite Life, Robert Thurman
  38. Japanese Death Poems, Yoel Hoffmann
  39. The World Without Us, Alan Weisman
  40. Goddess: Myths of the Female Divine, Leeming and Page
  41. The Goddess, Shahrukh Husain
  42. Dreams of Being Eaten Alive, David Rosenberg
  43. Basic Teachings of the Buddha, Glenn Wallis
  44. What If? 2, Robert Cowley, ed.
  45. Comfortably Numb, Charles Barber
  46. The Zuni Enigma, Nancy Yaw Davis
  47. The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, Leonard Shlain
  48. Lost Discoveries, Dick Teresi

This got me up to mid-June. I was, I'll admit, pretty proud of myself for being on track to read 100 books a year.Then I started grad school in June (teacher training over the summer session). Since then:

  1. 1000 Paths to Tranquility, David Baird (by choice)
  2. On Writing: A Process Reader, Wendy Bishop (for teacher training)
  3. Gender Trouble, Judith Butler (for a paper)
  4. Early Modern Prose Fiction, Naomi Conn Liebler, ed. (for a paper)
  5. How to Read Lacan, Slavoj Zizek (for class)
  6. Giving an Account of Oneself, Judith Butler (for a paper)
  7. Reading Shakespeare’s Poems in Early Modern England, Sasha Roberts (for a paper; great book)
  8. Tudor Books and Readers, John N. King, ed. (for a paper)

48 books before grad school, 8 books after. Sure, I've read innumerable chapters and journal articles (and, alas, student papers -- 1,000 pages' worth of freshman writing), but books? No.I think I was doing better as an autodidact.

Karen Armstrong wrote The Bible? Does Greatest I am know this?
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Karen Armstrong wrote The Bible? Does Greatest I am know this?
I always did think that was a very poorly-chosen title on her part. Same thing for Bart Ehrman's otherwise excellent textbook The New Testament.
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I decided that, starting Jan. 1 of this year, I was going to keep a list of books I'd read, just to have a record and an accurate count.48 books before grad school, 8 books after. Sure, I've read innumerable chapters and journal articles (and, alas, student papers -- 1,000 pages' worth of freshman writing), but books? No.I think I was doing better as an autodidact.
I don't get how people can read so many books. George W Bush claims to have read over 100 books in one year while he was President. How does the US President have that much free time, let alone a normal person?SB, how much time do you estimate you spend a day reading? Do you have some kind of speed reading technique? I am asking seriously.I also have been tracking how many books I read this year. I have completed 15 and am almost done on another 2. It is unclear whether I will fit any more in before Xmas. January: Age of Reason, Sweet ThursdayFebruary: -March: Giovanni's RoomApril: - (what happened here? I guess I was busy with college work)May: - (see above)June: - (and again)July: Pere Goriot, Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, Death of a Salesman, Exile and the Kingdom, The DriftersAugust: Jailbird, Travels With CharleySeptember: Sein Language, Get Happy: The Life of Judy GarlandOctober: Numbers in the Dark, Talking HeadsNovember: The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and Other StoriesDecember: Big Sur, Selected Stories by Chekov (both to be completed soon)
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SB, how much time do you estimate you spend a day reading? Do you have some kind of speed reading technique? I am asking seriously.
I've heard that there are MASSIVE differences between how fast people can read and how much of that they can retain. People who are strong readers can read more than 5 times as fast as people who rarely pick up a book, and can understand several times as much. Someone like SB who has probably been reading all of her life is probably a pretty gifted reader at this point. It's not too hard to find the time to read, one just has to put initial effort into it and must be willing to change one's habits. Unless you're an i-banker working 18 hours a day, one should be able to find 45 minutes a night to read, which means one can go through a reasonably sized book in about a week. That gives you 50 books a year right there. If you have more time and are a good reader, it's easy to see how one can get up to 100 a year. But it takes a lot of effort and willpower, at least initially. Habits are hard to change.I, on the other hand, know that I'm a pretty slow reader and I'm even worse at retention, so I have to read things slowly and carefully to understand them. Also, I like TV to much to really change my habits. Early in the year, I was very happy to be going through a book every two weeks or so, but my pace fell off dramatically when I moved to Europe. Hopefully I'll get back into the habit in 2011.
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What a piece-of-shit, awful sell-out book that was. I mean, I can't remember the last time someone wrote a book as a cash-grab in any genre, but to do it like this? I was horrified from cover-to-cover with the lies and bullshit that all come together just to get the almighty dollar. Pure. Fucking. Drek.
Go buy the Avatar BluRay. That'll make you feel better. Sheep. Baaaaaahhhhhh.
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I guess I can post my pathetic 2010 list of books read.Dark Tower Series Book 5 - KingDark Tower Series Book 6 - KingDark Tower Series Book 7 - KingDuma Key - KingHearts in Atlantis - KingUnder the Dome- KingThe Stand - KingHow to Be Good - HornbyJuliet, Naked - Hornby (in progress)But if my wife gets an iPad for her bday in Jan then I will get her kindle and then I shall most likely read more.

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I have ADD so I start a lot of books and am probably "reading" 5 or 6 at any given time, but I don't finish many.I will seriously attempt to read (from cover to cover) 12 books in 2011. One a month should be attainable.

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I don't get how people can read so many books. George W Bush claims to have read over 100 books in one year while he was President. How does the US President have that much free time, let alone a normal person?SB, how much time do you estimate you spend a day reading? Do you have some kind of speed reading technique? I am asking seriously.
I don't mean to make anyone feel inadequate. First off, I was unemployed. That right there is the main thing. If a lowly grad student doesn't have time to read, then the leader of the free world certainly shouldn't have had that much free time on his hands.I estimate that my reading speed is approximately 100 pages an hour for light reading and about 60 pages an hour for denser material. [Literary theory or philosophy are molasses -- about 30 pages an hour.] I don't know if that qualifies as speed reading or not, but I don't have any technique for it. I know I read faster than my husband, and, as LLY said, I also read more than him, so it's a feedback loop. But I don't have anyone else to compare myself to.I'm never in the TV sections of the forum because I don't watch TV anymore. I had it down to three shows that I followed, then when I came to school I left the TV at home and shut off the cable. So I would spend the bulk of every evening reading -- probably about five hours a night minimum, even stopping for an hour to watch one of my shows, and if I really got absorbed, I'd read all day and only take brief breaks for food and to rest my eyes by looking at something further away (like a walk around the block).
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I have ADD so I start a lot of books and am probably "reading" 5 or 6 at any given time, but I don't finish many.I will seriously attempt to read (from cover to cover) 12 books in 2011. One a month should be attainable.
Nothing wrong with simultaneous reading if that's what works best for you -- no reason to force yourself into a pattern that doesn't work for your brain.
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October: Numbers in the Dark, Talking Heads
Hello, what's this?
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One partial book I read for a class was outstanding, and even having read only three chapters, I'd recommend it:The Master Switch, Tim Wu <--- Amazon linkThe chapter I read and reported on for class concerned Apple's image of media (beautiful, but locked, based on Apple's exclusive deals with other corporations to provide service or content) vs. that of Google (messy, but totally open). Just that chapter alone, toward the end of the book, is worth the price. So is the introduction, which told of a banquet AT&T threw in 1916, for 800 of the most powerful men in the nation. Not only did they have a phone at the table of every dinner guest, but they called General Pershing at the Mexican border just to say hi, while a radio station in nearby Arlington piped in their playing of _The Star-Spangled Banner_ and a picture of the flag was projected on a movie screen (silent film technology) -- for a very early multimedia presentation.That's pretty quaintly cool, but then, Wu said, Bell's CEO brought out A. WIRELESS. PHONE. -- an extremely early version of a cell phone -- OF WHICH BELL HAD A WORKING PROTOTYPE IN 1916.

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Man, I really need to do this if for no other reason than to remember good authors and get thier other books.A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World — Tony HorwitzI am loving this book and it almost picks up where William Manchester's - World Lit Only by Fire, left off.It's written in a travelbook style where the author re-traces the history of the the discovery of America from the Norse to Columbus and on, written with humor and so much about the lost years between Columbus and the Mayflower that I had no clue about.

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I have it on very good authority that Balloon Guy is reading "Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot" by Al Franken.
I am having a slight problem with the darkened fingers after reading it, but I have confirmed my suspicions so far, Al Franken is in fact an idiot, and not as funny as he thinks.but he was smart enough to put Rush's name in the title to get the rabid to buy his book, so there's that.
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The Dream Manager.I have been having problems with turnover in one of our lowly paying departments and someone told me this book would be a good read. it has some interesting ideas and I may try one of them and see what happens.

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Man, I really need to do this if for no other reason than to remember good authors and get thier other books.A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World — Tony HorwitzI am loving this book and it almost picks up where William Manchester's - World Lit Only by Fire, left off.It's written in a travelbook style where the author re-traces the history of the the discovery of America from the Norse to Columbus and on, written with humor and so much about the lost years between Columbus and the Mayflower that I had no clue about.
Ooh, if it's as enjoyable as A World Lit Only by Fire, I'm in.
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I was always wondering how ppl could 'not' like to read... since mid July I have read the following books , while working a 40 - 50 hr weekThe Earth's Children series - Jean M AuelThe Pillars of the Earth - World Without End - Ken Folliet (voted #1 by me)Lucifers Hammer -Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (recommended by my local used book store owner) Janiceall the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child ( anyone can get thru those fairly quick but that guy sure is a badass)and The Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon (i finished first five and have just started A Breath of Snow and Ashes)was wanting to know if anyone has read or reading this series Southern?I thought Pillars was best book ever until i started this series , wow of course I thought Robert R. McCammon's BOY'S LIFE was pretty good

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Last book I finished was The Shock Doctrine. Great read but wish I knew more/understood economics before I read it. Started "Friends like these" by Danny Wallace. I definitely should have read Join me and Yes Man before reading this but I guess I will after. Friends like these is non-fiction about a guy who is turning 30 and freaking out about it. He finds an old address book with 12 names in it from his childhood and decides to track them down to see how they are dealing with it.He traveled a lot as a child so he has some distances to cover. So far he has met a restaurant manager who has solved time travel, a Fijian chief who has his own village, 2 architects and a famous German rapper. Its an entertaining read.

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