Favourite books/authors

[Freakie]

Just downloaded iBooks on my iTouch, may never buy a hard copy again!

 

[Stocka]

Just about finished reading "Dirt Music" by Tim Winton. There were some parts earlier in the novel, that I was feeling somewhat disappointed by how things were turning out, but from that point onward it has been absolutely brilliant.

 

[Bobby Beecroft]

Martin Cruz Smith - Gorky Park (handy film also), Red Square, Stallion Gate, Polar Star, etc.
Stephen King - too many to mention.

Just recently finished -
James Freud autobiogarphy (I finished tragically a week before he killed himself - even more tragic was that it didn't stun me)
Ian Botham autobiography
The Betrayal - Sabin Willett - I had never heard of her & picked it up at a 2nd hand store. Really enjoyed it.
December 6 - Martin Cruz Smith - just brilliant as always. One of his better books IMO.

No longer working in the City so finding time to read again is a struggle, unfortunately.

 

[acuguy]

Just knocked over a few books

Matthew Hayden's Book- Great read but geez he is an arrogant bloke, i guess his belief he was better than most made him an exceptional cricketer, great content but arrogantly portrayed.

Andy Bichel's Book- The most arrogant read of all time, this bloke has rewritten history, the amount of times he refers to himself as an Australian sporting hero is laughable. My memories of Bichel are of him being a great Shield cricketer who was nothing more than serviceable at Test level, infact at times he was exposed at test level. I remember though that his world cup was unbelievable and it was great for him. I was a big Bichel fan but after reading his book i have less of an opinion of him.

Paul Kelly's Book- A must if you are a massive Paul Kelly fan or just someone who loves literature and the beauty that words can conjure!

Just started Ben Cousins book and to be honest after reading 60 odd pages i can understand why his team mates loved him. He is everything the average footballer loves about footy!

 

[Lehmo87]

Just downloaded iBooks on my iTouch, may never buy a hard copy again!

I could think of nothing worse than reading a book on a screen. Maybe it's because I read e-mails all day at work or because I read a lot of articles online, but I find there's nothing better than reading a book hard copy book.

 

[Hollow Knight]

I could think of nothing worse than reading a book on a screen. Maybe it's because I read e-mails all day at work or because I read a lot of articles online, but I find there's nothing better than reading a book hard copy book.

A few years ago I would have agreed, but some of the new displays are very easy on the eyes, especially the Amazon Kindle with it's digital ink screen and the iPhone4 with its retina display. None of that eye straining flicker.

Reading a hard copy is still the way to go, but the gap is closing.

 

[Stocka]

You can't beat the experience of having a great home library and the physical artifacts of books, in my opinion. I also enjoy the experience of just going to a book store and buying a book (although, apparently that is become a less lucrative economic prospect for book stores these days....).

A eReader type device could be good if you were traveling over a longer period of time, but even so, buying books when you're abroad (despite the extra luggage) adds a nice reminder of your trip when you have the book on your shelf when you return home.

I reckon the best use of an eReader is for text books for students. If you could harness a bit of interactivity to enable easy quotation of texts (highlighting desired texts, copy to a clipboard and then insert into your word document when connected to a computer, with automatic referencing), it would be an excellent study device.

 

[placebo]

Sorry to barge in here. But I was searching for other books and came across this topic and read it out of interest, and then I saw this and felt I should clear it up:

There are monologues in The Fountainhead that are literally over 100 pages long. It's just so inaccessable.

I'm not sure what you read or whom you heard that from, but that is completely false TBD.

 

[Hollow Knight]

I apologise unreservedly to the angry Objectivist foot soldier.

Thank you for your altruistic donation of your intellectual capital and I appreciate that the resources used in setting plebs like me straight ideally would have been spent advancing your own cause. I can only hope you attained a degree of positive utility in issuing the correction.

I'll end this facetious retort here and spare you a needlessly protracted and ultimately deceptively shallow Roarke-like introspection.

 

[Stocka]

I downloaded Kobo, Kindle and iBooks (as well as the Borders application, which is essentially Kobo with Borders packaging) for my iPhone, just to give them a go.

From a quick browse of the books for sale, they don't seem to be a all that much of a reduced price compared to the hard-copy versions. I guess there seemed to be plenty of very cheap texts, but not necessarily ones that would interest me all that greatly. Perhaps if there are special deals on certain authors or titles on a regular basis, purchases might be more appealing. Worryingly, on iBooks, the top selling book was a title about child abuse, which made me wonder if it was a certain twisted demographic that had caused large sales of the title.

Hopefully I'm wrong on that last point, though.

Apart from the fact that when reading in bed, you don't have to adjust your orientation of the page in front of you (like you do with a hard-copy), I think I would struggle to concentrate on following the text on the screen. This is possibly due to my tendency to "scan" screens, rather than read judiciously across every line (I think that "scanning" is a bit of an inherency when people read screens these days, largely due to the construction of webpages).

I suppose reading on an iPhone might not be as easy as using the same applications on a larger eReader, but then again, I've got a mate who is flying through the Philip K. Dick back-catalogue on his Android! I don't think I could do it.

 

[Stocka]

Hah. Well, this mate of mine who is doing all this reading on his Android is now just complaining about randomly seeing the letter "J" appearing everywhere... I say he's been reading too much stuff on his phone!

 

[dlanod]

Don't know if it's your mate's case, but "J" is what Outlook inserts as its "smiley". View it in other email clients or other document readers and you'll see a "J".

 

[Hollow Knight]

Are you On an iPhone 4 stocka? The retina display makes a world of difference over the iPhone3 range.

 

[Stocka]

Nah, just iPhone 3GS.

I just think it comes down to my propensity (or lack of it) to concentrate on a screen as much as I can on a page. As it is, I don't tend to read all that fast, due to often drifting off into thought or distraction during my reading of books anyway.

Speaking of which, I should actually be attempting to make a bit of progress on Peter Carey's "Theft - A Love Story" instead of being on here!

 

[PertRoosOsborne]

For me it is:

James Ellroy - pretty much have his complete works - this stuff is dark
Charles Bukowski - only ever read Notes of a Dirty Old Man but man that was good
Kinky Friedman
William S Burroughs

 

[placebo]

I apologise unreservedly to the angry Objectivist foot soldier.

Thank you for your altruistic donation of your intellectual capital and I appreciate that the resources used in setting plebs like me straight ideally would have been spent advancing your own cause. I can only hope you attained a degree of positive utility in issuing the correction.

I'll end this facetious retort here and spare you a needlessly protracted and ultimately deceptively shallow Roarke-like introspection.

Angry foot soldier? Nah TBD. Just thought I'd correct a blatant misrepresentation.

Peace.

 

[Stocka]

Has anyone read Shaun Micallef's book, 'Preincarnate'?

I'm thinking of getting a copy, but deciding between that and 'Super Sad True Love Story' by Gary Shteyngart.

I suppose I could get both....

 

[Stocka]

Was having a bit of a read of Marx and Engels' "Communist Manifesto" earlier today. It's interesting reading in light of the modern advancement of the internet, particularly in relation to how the internet might fit into the descriptions early in the book about the emergence of the bourgeois.

 

[Stocka]

No haven't read Atlas Shrugged but did a little bit of work on Ayn Rand at uni and had a crack at reading The Fountainhead.

She was a lunatic if you ask me. The Fountainhead (and from what I understand, Atlas Shrugged) are merely vehichles for spoutinmg her "Objectivist" philosophy. There are a large group of people who follow it, mostly extremist libertarians but I just find it to be pretty out of touch.

I bought 'Atlas Shrugged' a while ago, read a few parts of it, but mainly have read more about it on the internet at this stage.

Just out of interest (I don't have any fixed opinion myself), what is it about 'objectivism' that you find out of touch? Do you think it is too focused on selfishness and lacking in social concern? Or is it something else that you find out of touch? I agree that Ayn Rand certainly comes across as someone who was overly obsessed with her own importance and self-regard for her own philosophies - so, even if the novel is good, I reckon that will still sour it somewhat for me!

Just back on the post-apocalyptic genre, I bought a book called 'Lucifer's Hammer' the other day, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I've read that it's supposed to be one of the better novels in the genre. Keen to give it a go once I've gotten through a few other titles that must be read.

 

[Football Pope]

Bump!!...been reading My Journey- Jim Stynes... hard to put down.. sad read...I teared up a few times ..truly a moving life tale.

Strange.. that the 2 pioneers of the Irish experiment both died of cancer.

 

[John]

Well bumped my papist colleague. This thread needs more love.

Reading The Taste of War by Liz Collingham. $9.99 at QBD. Fascinating. Anyone heard of the Bengal Famine of 1943? No and nor had I. Anyone Know that 20 odd thousand Dutch Died of starvation as the Allies moved in for the kill? Again nor did I. I have read plenty of WW2 history but this one heads into a direction I had not read about before. As usual man's inhumanity to man never ceases to amaze.

 

[philthy05]

Going through a major Raymond Chandler phase at the minute. In short order have read The Big Sleep, The High Window and just about to start The Lady In The Lake. Really enjoying the whole 1940's Los Angeles crime thing.

Got hold of the film The Big Sleep, with Bogart playing Philip Marlowe. Classic movie.

love the chandler books. i reckon ive got 4 or 5 of them. just enjoyable prose, not pretentious in its mystery. great main character. i wish he wrote so much more. there might be some earlier examples but this is the guy that really has been copied so much in hollywood film since.

also a massive fan of the great gatsby. such a neat story.

i read atlas shrugged, loved some of it. not sure about objectivism it just ignores too much, in an ideal world but the modern world those ideals dont work. how does kim kardashian fit into her philosophy? success doesnt necessarily have anything to do with being the best at something. in fact i cant think of anything further than the truth.

 

[John]

Hunter S Thompson - Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas,

I ended up reading this a few weeks back and meant to let you know my opinion. I liked it without being drawn in too heavily. Very easy to read though. It came across as a book of it's time. That is the bleeding obvious I suppose you would reply. I will have another go at Hunter in the future and try the other Fear and Loathing and Hells Angles. Bit not yet. There are many books in my cupboard unread.

 

[Hollow Knight]

I ended up reading this a few weeks back and meant to let you know my opinion. I liked it without being drawn in too heavily. Very easy to read though. It came across as a book of it's time. That is the bleeding obvious I suppose you would reply. I will have another go at Hunter in the future and try the other Fear and Loathing and Hells Angles. Bit not yet. There are many books in my cupboard unread.

Highly recommend you read "The Great Shark Hunt" which is a collection of his best essays. So good.

Can understand not being drawn in too heavily. It's impossible to fully get in the mindset of Hunter. He is a strange beast at the best of times, let alone after him getting into his "two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls."

 

[pulpdriver]

Highly recommend you read "The Great Shark Hunt" which is a collection of his best essays. So good.

Can understand not being drawn in too heavily. It's impossible to fully get in the mindset of Hunter. He is a strange beast at the best of times, let alone after him getting into his "two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls."

The funniest thing is he really was there to write about that dirt bike race. Imagine his editor's face upon reading that line.