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Thu 10 Oct, 2002 11:51 am
If you
could only read one type of book, what would it be? Biography? Fiction? Non-fiction? Self-help?
I am a Sci - Fi Fan.
Without the Writers of good "fiction", there would be no "fact".
I didn't
participate in the poll. Sorry jespah.
Anything. I'll read anything. If I'm not reading, I'm not a happy
girl.
Except romance novels.....Yuck!
I seem to be drawn
more to non-fiction than anything else these days - usually Science writing or History.
that is such a
difficult question, jespah. Since i started taking transit to work, i've been reading a lot more - poetry, food writing,
fiction, non-fiction, and best of all, historically based fiction. I just finished Cordelia Underwood and I've got to say I
was horribly upset to come to the end of it. I just wanted that book to go on forever! Another one i read recently is called
Manly Pursuits, fiction draped around Cecil Rhodes, Arthur Dodgson, Oscar Wilde and others of their time. A wonderful
read.
sorry - but i
couldn't resist a plug for a fine
digr
http://www.penguinputnam.com/static/rguides/us/cordelia_underwood.html
Van Reid's tale is a classic
story of generosity versus greed, honesty versus deception, good versus evil. But more than a captivating narrative, Cordelia
Underwood is a stylistic achievement that harkens back to the works of Charles Dickens. Like its Victorian antecedents, the
novel was originally serialized in a local newspaper, forcing the author to keep the action moving and the characters
memorable so that the readers would await the story's continuation with eager anticipation.
Beyond simply the
circumstances under which the story was originally published, Cordelia Underwood shares certain characteristics and plot
devices with many nineteenth-century novels. It's peopled with good-natured characters, eager to lend a hand at the first
sign of someone, preferably a complete stranger, in need. Even the villains seem to elicit the occasional sympathetic
response from the reader.
Digressive storytelling was prized in Victorian fictionenthusiasm for Maine's history.
The result is a novel that brings to vivid life an arcane and wonderful piece of Americana that
otherwise might have been forgotten.
I voted "fiction",
BUT, as others have said, I'd hate to be limited to one genre.
Ditto.
Just give me 'something' to read!!!!!
I will ready anything. But at the moment I'm in a quandary. I am trying to find the last three books written by AJ Quinnell (Man on Fire). Can you help? Many thanks.
Here are some titles. They link to Amazon but Amazon doesn't have the last books anymore. Are you looking for the name of the titles or a way to buy the books?
http://my.linkbaton.com/bibliography/Quinnell/A+J/
That might be a bit of a problem.
a) Amazon doesn't have them
b) I can't find a single place that does!
Here is a search for the ISBN number of one of the books. The only site that even lists it is one that points to dead links on Amazon.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=ISBN%3A+1857977483
So I'm outta answers. ;-(
Maybe they simply aren't available online.
Here are the book titles and ISBN numbers in case anyone else knows a good place to look.
Siege Of Silence
by ISBN: 0752802593 | Paperback |
In The Name Of The Father
by ISBN: 0752805800 | Paperback |
Man On Fire
by ISBN: 0752806343 | Paperback |
The Perfect Kill
by ISBN: 0752806351 | Paperback |
Blue Ring
by ISBN: 1857974190 | Paperback |
Black Horn
by ISBN: 1857977327 | Paperback |
The Mahdi
by ISBN: 1857977475 | Paperback |
Snap Shot
by ISBN: 1857977483 | Paperback |
I can't choose!!! I love them all!
Well - maybe not so much self-help - I generally only read them to see how useful they might be for work - ie lending out to clients - but the others, well, I could not do without them all - and other genres as well.
Sadly - I read less since being on the net more - maybe I should take up the talking books option for the long drive to work, but I tend to be in a bit of a trance when I drive - i do a lot of thinking then. Hmmmmmmmm.
Type of Books
I am playing with italics as I tell you I like to read about Italy...and that means history, politics, art, architecture, sociology, travel guides, magazines, garden descriptions, miscellaneous efforts by people who can write to make their trips deductible, fancy descriptions of remodelling in Tuscany, fiction set in Italy. Well, there, my most fun books are mysteries about art theft in Italy....have a little collection of them.
I like books that tell me about places other than where I live, which is in northern California. So I have devoured Nuala O'Faolain's memoir, and her novel, set in Ireland, and many mysteries set there and in the Netherlands, in France, in Sweden, and so on. I am interested in Asia too, and have a few books on my stack...
I read about urban design, urban matters in general, and with interest in particular on the writing of Jane Kramer as she looks at how immigrant populations deal in places where they are not very welcome, e.g., France.
Read a lot of travel material, have read Montaigne's Travel's, Goethe's, H. James, Steinbeck's, Paul and Peter Theroux, well, many.
On history, I like Barbara Tuchman, but frankly read more review of books
about history than the books themselves...or excerpts, pieces in Atlantic Monthly, etc.
I don't read econ, big failing, I don't care much about financial discussions,
and my wallet shows it.
I read more non fiction than fiction, if you include all my New Yorker and Harper's reading, but can go through fiction swaths when I get in a on-the-sofa-with-a-blanket mood.
A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Right now, I've got three or four things going:
"Gödel's Proof" by Ernest Nagel and James Newman (revised edition by Douglas Hofstadter)
A short treatise on symbolic logic by somebody whose name escapes me at the moment.
"Finders Keepers" by Seamus Heaney
"Under the Greenwood Tree" by Thomas Hardy
Fiction, without a doubt. In my younger years, I read everything, but now I read for enjoyment - stuff that requires little thought (I get enough of that during the day).
Trance Drives, the movie. Trance Drives, the book. No, no, the book would be first.
Driving in Trance, by Dlowan. Driving in France, by um, whom?
Driving in Trance, a set of short stories by the noted writer, D. Lowan, late of Adelaide, from her winter residence in [blanko]. Ms. Dlowan has recently won the Bookeroo Prize, the prestigious award from the Foundation for Digressive Arts, funded by the international bladybladyblah, which is yet another group trying to get creds by giving away money hard earned from raising canes.
The Travels Of Marco Polo is my latest in-between book. I can't just read it straight through. I think i need to get a c.d. of 12th century Chinese music to listen to, to help with the mood.