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[QUOTE=Luis Antonio]There aint nothing better to fill the void you open inside than that [/QUOTE]

ROFLMAO!!!

I'm never going to set foot in any of your houses!

What!?

My dad practises his Chinese on the toilet as well

[QUOTE=Asriel]What!?

My dad practises his Chinese on the toilet as well [/QUOTE]
Overshare.

[QUOTE=Arrylium]I'm not reading anything at the moment but my all time favourite book would have to be The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. Most people haven't heard of it.[/QUOTE]

I love that book! the description of the doldrums always fascinated me, as did the smallest giant in the world etc. if you've read it you'll understand)

- "Hobbit" by Tolkien ( although I still haven't read more than ten pages )
- Andreas Eschbach "Der Letzte seiner Art". A German author ( one of the best ones...). Great book.
- A book about the basics of journalism. Interesting.

I have read several good books here goes my long and windy list:
1) Exiles: the ruins of Ambrai
2) all the books by R.A. Salvatore
3) an excerpt from "the prince" by Machiavelli
4) an excerpt from "candide" by voltaire
this is all i have read in last 2 weeks, and now im too lazy to type rest of good books

[QUOTE=frogus23]
Also currently reading Crime & Punishment, although it will have to wait for me to cram some more academic stuff for my Cambridge interview[/QUOTE]

Oh, what are you applying to Cambridge for? I'm reading AJP Taylor's 'Origins of the Second World War', since I told Oxford that I already have... It seems the world is run by the foreign office...

I also just finished reading 'The Blind Assassin' by Margaret Atwood. A very leisurely book, with great characterisation. I'd recommend it for a holiday, or some other long stretch of free time.

I'm currently reading Winds of Fate by Mercedes Lackey. I've already read a number of her books, and I plan to read the books that take place after Winds of Fate. I'm trying to read them in chronological order, so yeah. Eventually I'm going to start reading the Shannara series by Terry Brooks again. I've already read a number of them as well, but I stopped when my cousin lent me her copies of the Mercedes Lackey books.

[QUOTE=Beowulf]Oh, what are you applying to Cambridge for? I'm reading AJP Taylor's 'Origins of the Second World War', since I told Oxford that I already have... It seems the world is run by the foreign office...

I also just finished reading 'The Blind Assassin' by Margaret Atwood. A very leisurely book, with great characterisation. I'd recommend it for a holiday, or some other long stretch of free time.[/QUOTE]I'm going for Philosophy at Pembroke, but I have already decided in my heart that Cambridge is far too small, boring and rah-rah for me. Don't worry, Oxford's (a little bit) better

I'm currently reading Umberto Eco's "Baudolini", so far it is excellent. The overt story is about a young country boy who are adopted by emperor Frederick Barbarossa (Frederick I), and we follow his life as Frederick's advisor until the invasion of Constantinopel 1204. At a metalevel, Eco discuss the relationship between truth, myth, stories and lies, and how man creates his own truth from falseness. As always with Eco, the novel is very well written, well researched and discuss general philosophical topics.

Yesterday I read his latest novel, "The mysterious flame of Queen Loana". The novel is a generation biography about a man who get a stroke and fall into coma. He awakes with retrograd amnesia, and cannot remember anything autobiographic (episodic memory), only facts (semantic memory) and motoric procedures (procedural or implicit memory). The first part of the book deals with his return to ordinary life, no longer a person but merely an encyclopedia of literature. The second part of the book is like a "Remembrance of things past", where the man is trying to recover himself by recovering his childhood. The third part is another search, but know within a new coma, where the man has found his episodic memory and thus himself, and is trying to capture the illusion of love he has unconciously been looking for all his life. Not as good as Eco's other novels, still well worth reading though.

I am also reading Romeo Dallaire's "Shake hands with the devil" about the war in Rwanda and everything the UN, US and Europe could and should have done but did not. A depressing but necessary account that I recommend anyone to read.

[QUOTE=Vicsun] I am the only person I know who genuinely likes Hamlet [/QUOTE]

Most people I know like it, I do too, although it is not my personal favorite by Shakespeare.

[quote="Frogus]Also currently reading Crime & Punishment"]

I am not a great fan of Dostoyevsky for style reasons, however, the content of the story and the character developement is masterful in C&P IMO. I wish my Russian was good enough to read the great Russian literture, because I think I would like it better in Russian. I find both Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy too wordy at occations, the descriptions are too tedious and lenghty and they don't vary densitiy and tempo enough for my taste - but if you have ever seen the orginial language volumes, you'll notice they are about half as thick as the English (or Swedish) translations. This was illustrated yesterday when I was out with some friends, one is from the former USSR and she recommended Dottie to read War & Peace if he wanted something short to read (Yes, it is fairly short in Russian, my friend was astonished when I told her it's usually 2 volumes in Swedish, the Idiot is usually 2 volumes, the Brothers Karmasov is sometimes 3 volumes )

I'm reading:
A Series of Unfortunate Events

By:
Lemony Snicket

i own books 1-9 but i've finished only the first 3. I hope i finish them all before the movie comes out

[QUOTE=C Elegans]I'm currently reading Umberto Eco's "Baudolini", so far it is excellent. The overt story is about a young country boy who are adopted by emperor Frederick Barbarossa (Frederick I), and we follow his life as Frederick's advisor until the invasion of Constantinopel 1204. At a metalevel, Eco discuss the relationship between truth, myth, stories and lies, and how man creates his own truth from falseness. As always with Eco, the novel is very well written, well researched and discuss general philosophical topics.
[/QUOTE]
This book is awesome! Really awesome! I read it last year... and I still think about Baudolino's struggle to make his way through his own truths and lies.


I've finished The fountains of paradise... now I'm heading to the second part of Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe". I had stopped it for a while, cause the concepts shown in the book were kind of overwhelming when sudying for my economics tests.

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.

[QUOTE=Luis Antonio]This book is awesome! Really awesome! I read it last year... and I still think about Baudolino's struggle to make his way through his own truths and lies.

[/QUOTE]

It's a wonderful story, and Eco illustrates so well how the human mind deceive itself and create its' own truths from what is known to be lies. Human life are so many illusions, we live in and for those illusions...However, I still regard Foucalt's Pendulum as his best novel, with The name of the Rose as close 2nd. I like the many-layer structure more than the more straight forward story of Baudolino...but it's an extremely good story, and I really recommend everybody on this forum to read it, especially all of you who have fling for medieval setting, crusades, mythology etc.

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, and after that I'll be reading Vita Nuova also by Dante. I really hate the fact that I'm a terribly slow reader, because there are so many books I want to read and forget to write down and subsequently forget aboout until I see them again. Anyway I highly recommend the Divine Comedy regardless of whether you're religious or not(and I'm not), because it's not only a classic it's just plain interesting.

[QUOTE=Floyd_theBarber]Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.[/QUOTE]

Another ACC fan, I guess? Childhood's End was one of the first I ever read... I specially like his "dragons"... lol

"Johnny Got His Gun" by Dalton Trumbo...very bleak and sad but well worth the time...

I am now also reading The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli

Thought I read it as preperation for when we reach the renessance in my history class.

The Prince is quite okay if you can follow all the historical names getting thrown around

The last book I finished was a retelling of Dantes "Commedy" - difficult book.
Currently - I'm reading through 2 programming books regarding ASP.NET and VB.NET
Also got a book on XML and another on VB.NET waiting.
After that I'll proberly pick up another book on ASP.NET and possible one on MS-SQL Servers
One track mind? I don't think so - that it at least 4 different topics


[QUOTE=Vicsun]I'm into plays at the moment. I'm re-reading Hamlet, The Glass Menagerie and Death of a Salesman. I am the only person I know who genuinely likes Hamlet [/QUOTE]

I've read Hamlet 3 or 4 times over the years and seen various interpretations as movies.
I much more prefere Much Ado about Nothing though, and have seen it as a modern interpretated play.
Have also read Romeo & Juliet, MacBeth, Othello and some others which names elude me....
I've always liked Shakespeare