Which book are you reading currently? #5

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"A Pocket History of Gaelic Culture" by Alan Titley. This small book is informative... and funny too!

 

Didn't know it was translated. Of course I've read it several times still enjoying it.

Nowadays I read LotR for the umpteenth time...

 

Just started Children of Dune. So far, an excellent series. Only series I've encountered that matches the depth of LotR.
Before the Dune series I read Pratchett's Going Postal. I was tempted to make my user name "Moist!"

 

"Century Rain" by Alaistair Reynolds. I like half the book somewhat and dislike half the book somewhat all in all it isnt really like his other work.

 

Just finished the Liveship Traders trilogy. Fantastic stuff, and I can understand some of the Tawny Man better now.
I twigged 'Amber' a while ago. Made me bounce when I realised.

Now reading 'A Darkness at Sethanon', having just read the first two books of the Belgariad.

 

Just visited our local 2nd hand book shop.. 2 euros a book? I'll take 7 then, please!

Now reading Lord of Chaos, WOT6. ALso got books 7-9, Belgariad 3-5, Deadhouse Gates, and Stormlight, a book about Storm SIlverhand, which was great (by Ed Greenwood).

 

I've made it into the second book of the Gormenghast trilogy, appropriately named 'Gormenghast'. It's really damn hard to read (I can't help but suspect that the author made some of the words up - they're not in any of the dictionaries I have lying around...) - but brilliant regardless. However, I can't help but suspect that I would enjoy it more if that language wasn't quite so wanky and eye-glaze-inducing...

 

After a long travel related hiatus I am back and reading again. It looks like I won't be breaking the 100 book level this year - my annual tracking starts at the beginning of October and I am currently on only my 72nd book this year so my annual tally will probably end up at around 90.

I started Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card this morning. So far it has been pretty good.

 

100 books in a year!? I read every day and I would struggle to get through 10 books in a year. I guess it doesn't help that reading Erikson's bricks take about 8 weeks each.

 

I used to read 40 books in a month so it is possible...

these days? I donöt really read books that much, which sucks. i reazd all sorts of fun things online. Like Dracula. *is giving it a re-read of sorts'

I am reading Dracula in a LJ comm where all the leers, joriunal entries and so on are posted on their corresponding dates. it is quite the fascinating way to read an epistolary novel.

 

counting re-reads? 100 a year is definitely possible. if i've got the money for new stuff that i like, it becomes pretty easy.

 

I don't know how you can read that many books. I get a bit fed up after one or two, I can't read that many one after the other.

 

Well, of the 72 books that I have read so far this year 11 were books that I had read before and 61 are ones that I was reading for the first time. Amusingly, the average time for a re-read was 3 days while for new books has been 2.88 - but re-reading the first three books in A Song of Ice and Fire are largely reponsible for that. If I exclude those three the average time for a re-read falls to one day.

I really enjoyed Ender's Game. It is nice to see that it lives up to its reputation. I will be starting on Memories of Ice by Erikson on the train ride home so I will probably be stuck at 72 for a week or so.

Edit: Updated the above after I finished Ender's Game during lunch.

[ July 20, 2006, 18:44: Message edited by: JSBB ]

 

Sorry, but there is no way that it is humanly possible to read a Steven Erikson book in a day. If you can do that, you are officially a robot and will take over the world unless thwarted by Arnold Schwarzenegger and/or Keanu Reaves.

 

It's impossible to read ANY book in a day, unless you do nothing but that all day and even then you'll have a job on!

 

I didn't say that it would take me a day to read an Erikson novel, I said that it would probably take me a week. The first two books took me 13 and 10 days respectively to finish but that was with missing some reading days so I expect I can shave that down a little for Memories of Ice. Also, Erikson's writing style seems to be improving over time so I will probably have reduced reading time loss due to falling asleep this time around.

Reading Erikson is a bit slow going - I can only average around 50 pages/hour on his books which is around the bottom end of my reading speed range - if I am reading Ringo or Hamilton I tend to exceed 100 pages/hour.

That being said, it is quite possible for me to read a normal sized novel in a single day even if I only read during my lunch break and on the train ride to and from work.

Of the 72 books I have read so far this year, I have finished 13 of them on the same day that I started them and I finished another 23 books on the day after I started reading them.

 

As a literature major I used to hear that line at the start of every semester, as students looked over the required reading list for the class. Somehow we managed it, even with three or four other classes that would require heavy reading loads. Typically in a 16 week class there would be between 10- 15 titles, which would be mutiplied by 3 classes. That's about 40 books we had to read in a 16 week semester. To be honest, I hated it.

Now I read for pleasure, and I slowly savor my books for all the pleasure I can draw from them; sometimes going back and rereading lines and scenes that I especially liked before finishing a book in its entirety. In college I had to rush through too many good books that I should have lingered on; now I have the luxury of taking my time with my reading, and it's much more satisfyng.

Current book: The Blood Knight by Greg Keyes. And I intend to take my sweet time with this one....

[ July 22, 2006, 05:10: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

The books that you finished in a day must have been the size of pamphlets. I'm with Barmy on this one.

 

Depends how thick the book is, how good it is, and how much time you've got. The moment I start reading something by, say, Neil Gaiman or Agatha Christie, I can't do anything until I finish the book.

I finished the Hobbit and the LotR trilogy in 2 days.

 

I have been known to read around 200 pages in an hour - so you can imagine how long it takes to read the average book.