What do Macheads read?

Rhisiart

Rhisiart

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To kick off, here are my favourite authors:

Bill Bryson (travel)
Stephen Hawking (science)
Henning Mankell (fiction)

Best book ever read: 'To Kill A Mockingbird' by Harper Lee
Worst book ever read: 'The Trigger' by Arthur C Clarke
Toughest book to get through: 'Moby Dick' by Herman Melville
Funniest book (i.e causing stress incontinence): 'A Walk in the Woods' by Bill Bryson
Currently reading: 'Frankie & Stankie' by Barbara Trapido
 
Hum… difficult… I read a lot of different things. I just don't read silly stuff, like Barbara Cartland and what's her name? Ah, Danielle Steal :p

I love Gore Vidal, specially the non-"historical" ones, like 'Kalki' and 'Duluth'.

As for favourite book… I have more than one, I guess.

All of Jorge Luis Borges short stories, specially Ficciones.

Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment', Capote's 'In Cold Blood', Bret Easton Ellis' 'American Psycho' – I see a pattern here ;)

Anything by Italo Calvino, specially 'If on Winter Night a Traveller'

Nabokov's 'Lolita'

José Saramago's 'All the names'

But also some lighter stuff like Harry Potter and David Lodge. ;)

Ah! And I HATE Dickens!
 
fryke said:
Douglas Adams, of course.
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ditto
also like sci-fi, read herbert's dune books, and liked them. also rama and space oddsey books by clarke. fave book is 'being of two minds', and i like the other books by her (pamela f. service)that i have read. also enjoy misteries, like sherlock holmes, and "the cat who..." series. also reading computer books about macs, and macaddict mag.
 
For the most part, I am just NOT into fiction. But I do love books that are intellectual, entertaining, or both... past reads in no particular order....

Stupid White Men by Michael Moore, Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them by Al Franken, The Know-It-All by A. J. Jacobs...

Curent reads

Getting Things Done by David Allen, The Complete A**hole's Guide to Handling Chicks by Dan Indante and Karl Marks
 
I like humorous fiction most of all, I guess. P.G. Wodehouse is my favorite. And Mark Twain, too. (Gotta love Project Gutenberg! Especially when you have Tofu.) I'm the only Mac user I know who HASN'T read anything by Douglas Adams, though. But he's on my "To Read" list.

Some miscellaneous good books I've read lately are Faster by James Gleick, All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot, and a new favorite of mine, First Kyu by Sung-Hwa Hong.
 
About all I read nowadays are magazines, books, and online articles about technology, be it computer or musical (as I also play keyboards and love to program on synths....trying to get back into that after a hiatus from it :rolleyes:).

My wife always harasses me about it, but that's me. :D
 
My reading really doesn't stay on one topic for too long; example: Just got done reading "Hunting Down Amanda" by Andrew Klavan, and before that, I read "Phantoms of the Brain" by VS Ramachandran. The nuerology/psychology novel was far more interesting to me than the fiction novel, however, I tend to lean towards fact more than fiction.

Although, The Notebook was quite good... :p
 
Some things I've liked

Non fiction:
Whatever random history I find. Recently:
Ataturk by Andrew Mango
Persian Fire by Tom Holland (on Persian wars)
Herotodus - The Histories (gives +2 to intellectual snobbishness :) , goes with one above)
Some pop-ish science, i really enjoyed Into the silent land by Paul Broks (looking at brain disorders from an experiential point of view).

Fiction:
Haruki Murakami, all of it :D (weird but wonderful japanese chap)
Umberto Eco (the reason I cannot stand Dan Brown)
Paul Auster (American weirdness)
Some Amitav Ghosh (he seems very inconsistent)

..plus a now departed youth of SF reading
I still like Neal Stephenson, but pre this Baroque stuff which really drags
Gibson, Douglas Adams, Dan Simmons, bits of Iain M Banks etc.

Short fiction:
Raymond Carver
Checkov
Zoran Zivkovic (Serbian, weird semi-fantastics stories)
(plus many SF shorts from my younger days, ex interzone subscriber)

Poetry:
Theodore Roethke (nostalgic american)
Don Paterson (interesting Scot)

Playwrights
Shakespeare (thankfully i went to see productions before i had to study it, Richard III still a huge favorite)
Ibsen


Some questions.
Is Borges really that good? Lots of people rave about him, and I love short fiction, but the one time i tried, rushed as I was, didn't quite get there. If I try again where shoudl I start?

Comments on Calvino? Again many mates like it but I know little about it. What style/where to start?
 
Well, I agree Borges is not for everyone. The short stories I've read are a bit weird or strange, to say the least. It's not the same as reading Raymond Carver's short stories. (I don't even know if I can call Borges' short fiction "short stories"…). You either like his style or you don't. It's almost like the twighlight zone, but better! :D
The ones I've read are Ficcions, The Aleph and The Book of Sand and they're all the same style, so… try maybe first The Aleph. I prefer Ficcions, but that's because it has more to do with my studies (Literature).

The same applies to Calvino. It's a universe of its own. The one I recommended before is a sort of a literary exercise, almost, so not many people will find it interesting. But try one of the stories like Cosmicomics, The baron in the trees or The cloven viscount.
 
Oh. Ray Bradbury. Almost forgot to mention him. He defines Science Fiction for me.
 
I don't read fiction, with the exception of Tolkien. Mostly history, military history and parrot psychology.

Although, having said that, I did have a good giggle recently at the DaVinci Code – just to see what all the fuss was about after a veritable rash of TV programmes and newspaper debates.
 
Wow, this is manna from heaven. I originally posted this thread out of simple curosity. Now I have a whole list of recommendations to try out!

adambyte said:
The Complete A**hole's Guide to Handling Chicks by Dan Indante and Karl Marks
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Where can I get this? Don't get me wrong, I have a lovely wife, but I really could do with a good hearty laugh right now.
 
Thanks Esquilinho! I'm off on holiday in a week or so and I need to grab some books. If they have either the calvino or the borges at the english bookstore, I'll grab them.

I"m interested in your literature studies, what's your area?

Rhisart; if you like pop-science (but not too pop) try that Paul Broks book I mentioned, It's kinda my area (the neuro and the writing side) and its beautifully poetic and one of my faves. Also try Genome by Mat Ridley, pop-sci but decent, beware his other books though.

I agree on Clarke by the way, amazing ideas but I just don't think the guy can write!
 
adambyte said:
Hope this amazon link works...
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Yes it did. Thanks. Only problem is ... well, since intially posting this message and actually having read the description on Amazon, its sounds a bit exploitive. Actually, it sounds very exploitive. Mind you, if it was written by a woman about getting dumb men laid, perhaps it would be seen as OK? Who knows? (BTW, I loved Stupid White Men).

ora said:
Rhisart; if you like pop-science (but not too pop) try that Paul Broks book I mentioned, It's kinda my area (the neuro and the writing side) and its beautifully poetic and one of my faves. Also try Genome by Mat Ridley, pop-sci but decent, beware his other books though.
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Will do. Grazie.
 
If you feel like a chuckle, rhisiart, Douglas Adams' books can be very good if you haven't already read them.

As for Calvino, I've only read one of his books ("Marcovaldo") so I can't judge his entire works, but I did find that one odd. It felt very "simple," I don't know how else to put it. I wondered more and more if it was a book aimed at teenagers, perhaps. It probably just isn't quite my sort of thing, but I'm not slagging it off, though.

If people don't mind a bit of heavier reading, I strongly recommend works by Primo Levi. I started with "If This is a Man" and was very much gripped. "The Truce" was a bit weaker in my view, but "The Drowned and the Saved" was very strong again. Primo Levi was an Italian who was sent to Auschwitz and survived until the late 1980s. He was a scientist (specifically, a chemist) by profession and wrote about his experiences in Auschwitz in a very analytical manner. He wrote with emotion and compassion, but seemingly without bitterness (quite a feat...). He learned a huge amount during his incarceration and his books are as much about the nature of life and the way human beings tick as they are about his specific experiences. I've also got "The Periodic Table," but have not read it yet.
 
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