Reading

Hi all,

Do any of you like to read? Today I will read First Love by James Patterson. It is is latest. He usually writes mysteries. Some time he will write romance. When I first started reading I used Oprah and the New York Times as my guides. I read fiction, romance, mystery and biography. What genres do all of you read?

There's a what you reading thread lying around here somewhere we sometimes let each other know what we're into.

I love reading. It really is one of life's great pleasures and I'm glad I got back into it, I used to read a lot as a kid then stopped almost entirely until I was into my early 20s.

I'm currently reading Bit of a Blur - the autobiography of Alex James, Blur's bass player. I was always more into Oasis but this is a great read and I'm pretty sure it's more thoughtful and fascinating than anything the Gallagher brothers could write. Very interesting dude and its a breath of fresh air to read a rock autobiography where the person comes across as fairly embarrassed and ashamed of their drinking, drugging, cheating and generally piss poor behaviour instead of the usual "yeah band X are always known for their drugs but we done twice as much as them yo" kind of cock measuring.

As for what I read in general - usually non fiction. Once in a while I'll pick up a fiction book against my better judgement but it's very rare I'll find something I read and feel like I enjoyed it. Even fiction books that sound really interesting to me usually end up disappointing.

I turned one of my walk in wardrobes into a bookshelf and my library is semi organised:

Top shelf is history - Goes U.S., WW1, WW2, Scottish & Irish, bunch of random bits and bobs I've picked up and a bunch of stuff about the history of the Mafia right at the end.

2nd shelf - Sports, mainly cycling, boxing and football. Other end is music - mainly biographies, backgrounds of albums etc... and guitar theory and tab books.

Next shelf is my "dude" shelf which is full of cool stuff that inspires me in some way and doesn't really fit anywhere else. I've got everything on their from Ultramarathon Man and The Man Who Cycled the World to a biography about a real life supervillian Moriarty was supposedly based on.

Bottom shelf is stuff I've yet to read which just now is filled with a bunch of stuff about Irish paramilitary groups, a HUGE to the point I'm questioning why I bought it because it'll need to be really fecking good for me to finish it biography on Napoleon and a quirky look at modern economics.

Interesting to hear about your categories Jim. My bookshelves have always been rigorously organized (would you expect less from an engineer)? I have a poetry bookcase, a biography bookcase, and a fiction bookcase. Then there is the cookbook case near the kitchen (but not IN the kitchen to keep the books from getting greasy). Upstairs is an entire huge bookcase full of all the non-fiction books including all our engineering textbooks etc.

So yeah - lots of books. Recently as I have been able to collect ebook versions of books that I have, I have been getting rid of the hardcover versions. Not my technical texts, they stay forever but mostly the fiction and biography.

Last summer I dumped 29 boxes of books and I still have too damn many.

It's not super organised it just so happens that everything roughly falls into those categories.

Finished reading Alex James's book. Fantastic stuff, definitely one of the best rock bios I can think of that I've read. I shall need to hit up the Poundshops and pick up some old Blur CDs now

Started reading the Under Cover Economist Strikes Back last night. It sounded OK on the back but so far all it's doing is reminding me of a horrible year studying accountancy and economics at Paisley University before I got a grip of myself and dumped that shit. I'll give it a try but I'm not hopefully and it might end up being only the 3rd book I've ever not made it through.

I read a lot. And I read all sorts of stuff, from fiction to biographies to professional stuff. we have two lare bookcases in our living room and one more in our bedroom, and every one is filled with books. I also have some ebooks, not an extensive collection yet.

In fiction I really like Stephen King, although he has had some mishaps lately, maybe the worst one was the ending of Under The Dome. Loved the book, hated the ending. I also enjoy Lee Child's Reacher-books, although they're not what you'd call "high literature" as such. I also read a lot of "pulp" fiction, murder mysterys and such but also fantasy and historic novels. Biographies are fun to read, but I tend to try and read only ones that are written by the biographees themselves. These "unauthorized" bios just seem to sensational and commercial. Lots on music bios, but also people from other walks of life. Currently I'm in the middle of a stack of game design books, a Rob Lowe biography, Stephen King's Doctor Sleep and probably some others as well.

I read in Finnish or English, increasingly in English as the English books are cheaper, especially the ebooks.

Ice