What Do you Read

talk shows on mute

Caduceus said:
Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

The Truth by Terry Pratchett.

there will be more

come one come all, into 1984....yeah 3 2 1, lights camera transaction.....

yeah, those are some really good books on your list, kudos!!!
 
Dr.Strangefate said:
ANYTHING by Douglas Adams

Interview With the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice (superb books, the rest of the Vamp Chronicles are hit and miss)

Agreed on these. Maybe the Witching Hour trilogy and the Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle tie-ins from Rice as well.
 
Title: Free Culture
Author: Lawrence Lessig

With Internet and other digital technologies changing the way we build and distribute culture, copyright law has become a hot topic. In this book, Lawrence Lessig discusses the current issues regarding copyright law and the future of intellectual property.

Lessig uses clear and uncluttered prose, taking readers through how copyright law has operated throughout history and how the efforts of corporations to redefine law and pass legal measures spun way out of control are conspiring to create an imbalance in the rights of intellectual property that may do greater harm to the common good of culture.
 
Title: Speaker for the Dead

Author: Orson Scott Card

Summary: Three thousand years after the events of Ender's Game, Ender Wiggin has long since disappeared. No one associates him with Andrew Wiggin, a Speaker for the Dead, who stays no longer than six months on any world, and who now appears to be a man in his mid-thirties.

Humans have exterminated the insect-like race known as Buggers. Now a second non-human intelligent race, the "Little Ones", called "piggies" because of their appearance, has been discovered on the planet Lusitania. Hoping to avoid the terrible misunderstandings that led to the Bugger War, the Starways Congress decrees that only one xenologist and one apprentice may study these new beings. No information about human culture may be passed on to the piggies.

Pipo, the present xenologist, and his son Libo have only limited contact with the piggies. They try to glean information from the natives' actions and conversations. They are assisted by Novinha, the daughter of two biologists who saved the Lusitania colony from a wide-spread plague, only to lose their own lives in the process. Novinha wishes to follow her parents' vocation, and some of her findings excite Pipo. He praises her and runs off to check his guesses with the piggies. He is found several hours later, murdered in what looks like a ritualistic sacrifice. Pipo and Libo had seen at least one member of the piggy community killed the same way.

Novinha realizes that she knows the secret of why Pipo was killed, and that she can never pass the knowledge on to anyone, especially Libo, because he will be killed as well. She attempts to destroy her work, but the computer won't allow it. So she encrypts her files and refuses to marry Libo, whom she loves, because as her husband he would have access to the data. But she also puts out a call for a Speaker for the Dead, someone who investigates the story of a person's life, and asks that he or she Speak for Pipo, which will allow the truth to come out.

Andrew Wiggins accepts the call, arriving many years after the request is made, only to discover that Novinha has changed her mind in the meantime. But two others in the Lusitania colony have called for Speakers also, and this gives Andrew the legal excuse he needs to investigate the mysteries of Lusitania. Why Novinha married an abusive husband. Why the piggies killed first Pipo, and later Libo. And why the horrifying plague that was stopped by Novinha's parents may not be as dead as everyone thinks.

Peronally, this was my favorite of Card's works. The characters are interesting, and the attempts to get inside and understand an alien mindset are fascinating. This is the sequel to Ender's Game, and won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for outstanding science fiction.
 
I love this book. I'm reading it again.

Title: The things they carried
Author: Tim O'Brien
Category: Post-Modernism

The book revolves around Tim O'Brien (yeah, he named the main character of the book after himself) in the Vietnam War. The book seems to be an autobiography at first, but has several different stories in it. The unique thing about this book is that you can't tell if it is an essay or a story. I really enjoy this book and I recommend it to all of you.

(I didn't want to give away any of the plot)
 
I don't read nearly as many novels as I do comics (with school, I don't have the time). I've read a lot of good books at school though: To Kill a Mockingbird (good and evil in a small southern town), A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (a smart girl grows up in an impoverished turn of the century Brooklyn), and The Giver (this kid in a creepy futuristic society begins inheriting memories of things most are denied: love, colors). Unless we're just counting novels, I'd like to mention America: The Book, by the fine people at the Daily Show. A truly hilarious guide to democracy in America> Warning: the book was banned from several stores for language and "questionable images" i.e. naked Supreme Court justices (trust me, its pretty sick).
 
Seldes Katne said:
Title: Speaker for the Dead

Author: Orson Scott Card

Summary: Three thousand years after the events of Ender's Game, Ender Wiggin has long since disappeared. No one associates him with Andrew Wiggin, a Speaker for the Dead, who stays no longer than six months on any world, and who now appears to be a man in his mid-thirties.

Humans have exterminated the insect-like race known as Buggers. Now a second non-human intelligent race, the "Little Ones", called "piggies" because of their appearance, has been discovered on the planet Lusitania. Hoping to avoid the terrible misunderstandings that led to the Bugger War, the Starways Congress decrees that only one xenologist and one apprentice may study these new beings. No information about human culture may be passed on to the piggies.

Pipo, the present xenologist, and his son Libo have only limited contact with the piggies. They try to glean information from the natives' actions and conversations. They are assisted by Novinha, the daughter of two biologists who saved the Lusitania colony from a wide-spread plague, only to lose their own lives in the process. Novinha wishes to follow her parents' vocation, and some of her findings excite Pipo. He praises her and runs off to check his guesses with the piggies. He is found several hours later, murdered in what looks like a ritualistic sacrifice. Pipo and Libo had seen at least one member of the piggy community killed the same way.

Novinha realizes that she knows the secret of why Pipo was killed, and that she can never pass the knowledge on to anyone, especially Libo, because he will be killed as well. She attempts to destroy her work, but the computer won't allow it. So she encrypts her files and refuses to marry Libo, whom she loves, because as her husband he would have access to the data. But she also puts out a call for a Speaker for the Dead, someone who investigates the story of a person's life, and asks that he or she Speak for Pipo, which will allow the truth to come out.

Andrew Wiggins accepts the call, arriving many years after the request is made, only to discover that Novinha has changed her mind in the meantime. But two others in the Lusitania colony have called for Speakers also, and this gives Andrew the legal excuse he needs to investigate the mysteries of Lusitania. Why Novinha married an abusive husband. Why the piggies killed first Pipo, and later Libo. And why the horrifying plague that was stopped by Novinha's parents may not be as dead as everyone thinks.

Peronally, this was my favorite of Card's works. The characters are interesting, and the attempts to get inside and understand an alien mindset are fascinating. This is the sequel to Ender's Game, and won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for outstanding science fiction.
Did you know he originally wrote this book wih Novinha having no children? Then changed it so that there were children but they were just background characters? Its just so different with them.
 
The Book Thread

I just read Power of One for a school project and thought it was pretty good. I have just started to read Mister Monday, part of the Keys of the Kingdom series. After seeing Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, I now want to read the book. So if I see it at my library I'll get it.
 
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I read between 5-10 non-comics-related books a week. The order would probably be non-fiction (science, history, economics, anthropology/archaeology, general social theory), science fiction, mystery and "general literature" (ie: everything else).

What I've read recently and would recommend:

Non fic:
Names of Things: Life, Language and Beginnings in the Egyptian Desert by Elizabeth Brind Morrow. This is an absolute beautiful book, though flawed in places.
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell - a look at the subconscious art of decision-making that everyone uses: how we make snap decisions, what we actually base them on.

I've been on a gruesome "pandemics" kick and have recently read and re-read:
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
The Great Influenza by John M. Barry
Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett
Plagues and Peoples by MacNeill (a classic!)

Sci-fi/fantasy:
Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
Lord of Light by Zelazny (about the 1,000,000th re-read)

General:
HMS Surprise by Patrick O'Brian (this is my waiting rooms/airport read - I've so many times it's an old friend)
 
I just finished reading The Katurran Odyssey, by Terryl Whitlach and David Michal Wieger. (Terryl Whitlach, by the way, has been a conceptual artist for the Star Wars movies and illustrated one of my all-time favorite books, The Wildlife of Star Wars.) The Katurran Odyssey looks like a children's picture book, but it's not, the same way Dinotopia isn't really a kids' book, either.

Katook is a young lemur living on the island of Bo-hibba. His people are suffering through a winter longer than any other in memory. Food is scarce, and what little there is left is being offered to Fossah, a lion-like being that the lemurs worship.

Katook and a friend follow the priests of Fossah to the Forbidden Trees, where they witness something they shouldn't have seen -- the priests, far from representing Fossah, take the lemurs' offerings of food for themselves. Chased by the priests and guards, Katook flees into an underground cave. There he finds a representation of Fossah and emerges with a sign from the deity -- his eyes have turned blue.

The priests banish Katook from Bo-Hibba, and with the help of a huge sea turtle, the lemur crosses from his island to the mainland in search of "others like me". He first finds the city of Acco, but falls in with a couple of thieves and flees the city, only to be picked up by a rather arrogant quagga named Quigga. And so Katook's odyssey truly begins.

The art alone is worth the price of admission for this book, but the story flows along from one group of animals to another, each of whom guides or teaches Katook and Quigga in some way, not all of them pleasant. All of the creatures inhabiting Katurra are either real or extinct aminals on Earth.

There is also a website: Katurran Odyssey. (Incidentally, for anyone not familiar with James Gurney's excellent Dinotopia books, there's a website for them, also: Dinotopia.
 
I've always loved Dinotopia, the two originals were and are still some of the best books I've ever read.
 
I just recently finsihed Balsac and the Little Chinses Seamstress. Excellent book, but definately for mature readers. It is awesome because it can be interpreted in many differant ways. Also, I just started Their Eyes wer Watching God. The book is an ehh for me.
 
I just read "The Chosen" in English class. It felt extremely boring until I finished it. Now that I'm done with it, for some reason, it seems a lot better. I also read a book called "Writing and Illustrating the Grapic Novel" Very helpful. I've been trying to read the Da Vinci Code for a while now, but havn't gotten around to it. Maybe over the summer.
 
Seldes' back sounds cool. I agree with you about Dinotopia, they're cool books. I booked Hitchhikers at my library so I should have it soon.
 
Right now I'm working on "The Left Behind Series" of books. I also get any magazine that has a extremely hot girl in it. :drooling:. Plus the Game Informer and Wizard.
 
Title: Dies the Fire
Author: S. M. Stirling

This is one of those novels that I probably shouldn't like, but I do. Profanity abounds, there are a number of "adult situations", and characters get killed rather violently, but given the time frame and story set-up, none of that is surprising. This is definitely an adult's book.

The time is the near past (the present when the book was being written). Pilot Mike Havel is flying a client and family to their ranch in Idaho. Singer Juniper MacKenzie is performing in a café run by a friend. Suddenly, all the lights go out. A minute before, reports were coming in of a strange storm off the coast of Massachusetts. At that moment, civilization crashes and burns, in many cases literally, as planes fall from the sky and car engines quit. Electricity no longer works; later in the novel, it's discovered that gunpowder won't burn and steam engines won't function. Something has altered fundamental principals of nature.

But explaining the cause of the Change takes a back seat to survival. A few quick thinkers, like MacKenzie and her Wiccan coveners, immediately gather up old faming equipment and seeds and head out into the countryside. Lucky individuals like Havel and the Larsson family manage to survive in the wilderness far from the cities. Most of the people remaining in the cities, or those who wait around for things to get back to normal, soon face starvation and death by violence.

Dies the Fire follows several groups as the struggle to survive, find and built centers of civilization, and adjust to the new world of the Post-Change U.S. Northwest. Combining 21st century know-how with medieval skills, Havel's group (the Bearkillers), MacKenzie's Clan, and an ambitious historian in Portland, Oregon are among the "tribes" and "kingdoms" that rise from the ashes of civilization. Cooperation seems essential, but the law now belongs to the strong, and "nice folks" aren't always the ones who survive.

I suspect a sequel may be planned, as two key questions go unanswered by the end of this novel, and there are plenty of plot points and character developments that could easily continue into a second volume.
 
Sounds very interesting. The only S.M Stirling stuff I've ever read was his collaboration with Anne McCaffery which was pretty good.
 
I've rekindled my love of reading books again since the sixth Harry Potter came out and now I'm just finishing The Da Vinci Code. I plan to read the original War of the Worlds and hopefully American Gods.

Any books you recommend for a person who likes mystery?
 

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