What are you reading now - and then

[trish]

The best thing I read over the last six months is Galore by Michael Crummey. It's a kind of Newfoundland version of one hundred years of solitude. I highly recommend it.

Currently I'm about a fourth of the way into Luminarium by Alex Shaker. It was slow getting into but it's getting interesting. It's an excursion into cyber-Hindu-cosmology! Also in the middle of David bellos's Is That A Fish In Your Ear? An personal look at the philosophy of language translation. [Also thoroughly involved in Stability and Chaos in Celestial Mechanics by Alessandra Celletti, but it's not for everyone]

[trish]

Just finished "Reamde" by Neal Stephenson....

Got that on my Kindle but haven't opened it yet. Without spilling any beans can you recommend it? I loved his Cryptonomicon, couldn't get through Quicksilver. Couldn't even make myself start Anathem. I do love all his early cyberpunk stuff, especially Snow Crash.

[Stavros]

Trish do you now read most of your books on a kindle? It's odd because I read so much on the web on this screen, but can't imagine ever using a kindle to read a book -I wonder how many people use them--?

[Prospero]

I us a Kindle for novels - books that I figure I'll not read again. (But never for books I plan to keep) Saves cluttering the house and very portable. Great for reading on trains and planes (though they tell you to turn your book off during landing and take off. You don't have that problem with a paperback) Plus one drawback to a Kindle is you can't pass your book on to anyone else. And I've not cracked anyway to copy from a kindle to m computer so i can let someone else can have the book. But then they cost a third of the cost of the hardback.

[trish]

To be precise, I use the Kindle App on my iPad. The nearest bookstore really good book store is more than an hour away (I live in a rural college town). When I read a good review or hear an author being interviewed, the temptation to just download the book and not have to wait for next trip to my favorite bookstore is just too tempting. I can read professional books on the iPad. When reading math or science I need to stare and contemplate a page for what may be hours at a time. It's too much of a drain on the battery.

The big drawbacks of reading books on the iPad are:
1) you need an electric charge just to read a fucking book!!!!
2) you can't lend or give away your book (there is a limited loaning policy but it's so constraint it sucks royally).
3) you can't admire the cover whenever your book is just sitting on the counter or desktop. i tend to forget the titles and authors of minor works without those frequent reinforcements.

The pluses are:

1) you can take a whole library of books with you where ever you go and read whatever you're in the mood to read.
2) you can make notations no margin could ever hold and not have them clutter up the page.
3) at present, Kindle books are a tad cheaper than book books.

I think you mentioned all of the above pros and cons in one form or another.

Reading on the iPad is kinda new to me and so I'm a bit enamored by the experience. I'm sure it'll wear thin within a few more months.

[Stavros]

Hmmm....I see the point about storage, I sold 500 books about 10 years ago but I still have at least a thousand or more and I know from the last time I moved I am dreading the next move when it comes; but though I do like to sit in a room that looks like a library I wonder if I had to choose how many I would keep -then I could have them in hard copy and the rest on a kindle, only I have so many obscure books I doubt they exist electronically. And one of the trends in publishing I am getting quite grumpy about is the length of books -700-800 pages now seems normal for biographies and histories, it is beyond a joke. Soon people will have to have the foundations of their houses reinforced because of all that extra weight. And what can be said in 700 pages that can't be said in 200? One of the best books on colonialism, Kenneth Robinson's The Dilemmas of Trusteeship is 95 pages long -a lifetime of wisdom distilled into a pocket book that says more than most books five times as long. end of rant.

[runningdownthatdream]

The best thing I read over the last six months is Galore by Michael Crummey. It's a kind of Newfoundland version of one hundred years of solitude. I highly recommend it.

Currently I'm about a fourth of the way into Luminarium by Alex Shaker. It was slow getting into but it's getting interesting. It's an excursion into cyber-Hindu-cosmology! Also in the middle of David bellos's Is That A Fish In Your Ear? An personal look at the philosophy of language translation. [Also thoroughly involved in Stability and Chaos in Celestial Mechanics by Alessandra Celletti, but it's not for everyone]

So what you're saying is that you're into light reading?

[runningdownthatdream]

Hmmm....I see the point about storage, I sold 500 books about 10 years ago but I still have at least a thousand or more and I know from the last time I moved I am dreading the next move when it comes; but though I do like to sit in a room that looks like a library I wonder if I had to choose how many I would keep -then I could have them in hard copy and the rest on a kindle, only I have so many obscure books I doubt they exist electronically. And one of the trends in publishing I am getting quite grumpy about is the length of books -700-800 pages now seems normal for biographies and histories, it is beyond a joke. Soon people will have to have the foundations of their houses reinforced because of all that extra weight. And what can be said in 700 pages that can't be said in 200? One of the best books on colonialism, Kenneth Robinson's The Dilemmas of Trusteeship is 95 pages long -a lifetime of wisdom distilled into a pocket book that says more than most books five times as long. end of rant.

Agreed about these biographies....seems everybody these days feel the need to divulge the details of their sordid but banal lives and opt to take 'the more due to less' path wherein they substitute the lack of anything interesting with long rambling chapters filled with meaningless bullshit which is somehow meant to deceive the masses into thinking the thing is worth reading.....kinda like reality TV shows.

Books filled with extraneous words may have their roots in Gibbons' The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in which he carefully uses 100 words where 6 would have sufficed. So I lay some of the blame at the feet of the British.

If you need a home for your books.................I'd be happy to provide one!

[trish]

So what you're saying is that you're into light reading?

Well it might not sound like it, but the Luminarium is light reading...sorta science fictiony so far. Stability and Chaos...not so much.

[trish]

And one of the trends in publishing I am getting quite grumpy about is the length of books -700-800 pages now seems normal for biographies and histories, it is beyond a joke. Soon people will have to have the foundations of their houses reinforced because of all that extra weight.

Putting all that weight in the "cloud" doesn't sound quite right either. It must be a black, precipitous thunder cloud.

And what can be said in 700 pages that can't be said in 200? One of the best books on colonialism, Kenneth Robinson's The Dilemmas of Trusteeship is 95 pages long -a lifetime of wisdom distilled into a pocket book that says more than most books five times as long. end of rant.

I agree. For me the length of a book can be quite off-putting. I need to know I can read it within one lifespan.

Hmmm....I see the point about storage, I sold 500 books about 10 years ago but I still have at least a thousand or more and I know from the last time I moved I am dreading the next move when it comes; but though I do like to sit in a room that looks like a library I wonder if I had to choose how many I would keep -then I could have them in hard copy and the rest on a kindle, only I have so many obscure books I doubt they exist electronically.

There are a lot of books, even recent publications, that haven't made it to Kindle yet and may never be. Victor Pelevin's Hall of Singing Caryatids is on my list of books to buy at the book store, because it's not available in Kindle format.