Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Spoilers What Book Are You Reading?
- Thread starter Huntn
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Just started Foundation, by Isaac Asimov. I read it decades ago, and picked it up on Kindle for a decent price.
It’s dated in technological terms (microfilm?), of course, but I think both the premise and the story line work quite well in the present.
I’m enjoying reading it.
It’s dated in technological terms (microfilm?), of course, but I think both the premise and the story line work quite well in the present.
I’m enjoying reading it.
One of my all time favourites, an absolute classic; I cried with laughter reading it, as a undergrad. Enjoy.
Just reading these latest posts then went into my kitchen and saw this book on the table. Have no idea where it’s come from? I guess my son? Anyway, I’ve never read the book but perhaps now I should!
Just reading these latest posts then went into my kitchen and saw this book on the table. Have no idea where it’s come from? I guess my son? Anyway, I’ve never read the book but perhaps now I should!
Again, one of my personal all time favourites; absolutely brilliant, and clever, and very, very witty. (And funny).
This looks interesting. I’m going to download a sample to my Kindle when I get home.
thanks for sharing.
Innocence, by Dean Koontz.
A quirky and unfortunately disfigured protagonist tells his story in a way that Koontz does so well.
A quirky and unfortunately disfigured protagonist tells his story in a way that Koontz does so well.
Re-reading a book I loved when I first read it, a decade ago: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
I remember this as being one of the last books my late wife read, although I could be wrong. She died in September 2005 and I think the book came out shortly before then? As I say, I could be wrong.
I read the book and I remember an odd thing sticking in my memory. That was the configuration of a MacBook Pro that Lisbeth Salander buys. Ha! Never mind the story, funny how your memory picks and chooses what you keep....
A fabulous trilogy, of which this is the first.
Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy on sale for £1.99 on Amazon Kindle today in the UK. A must buy!
The Regeneration Trilogy https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00C6PRXOS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_hk7wFbNTPXPBS
The Regeneration Trilogy https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00C6PRXOS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_hk7wFbNTPXPBS
A superb (and must read) trilogy; I cannot praise it highly enough.
I'm reading Sophy Roberts' The Lost Pianos of Siberia and staying up past my bedtime despite having plenty to do every morning as autumn approaches.
This amazing and to me "unputdownable" piece of nonfiction actually sprang from a single evening's conversation with some of the British author's friends in Mongolia, as her host fretted about the state of a modern piano upon which the talented Mongolian pianist Odgerel Sampilnorov (whose ancestors were from near Lake Baikal in Siberia) was wont to play at various social occasions.
Talk turned to the export of western culture --and especially music-- into Russia in the time of Catherine the Great, and then into the eventual uses that first Russia and then the Soviet Union had made of the great expanse of Siberia, and then to the obstinate insistence of immigrants and exiles alike upon taking with them to Siberia their pianos, and to Lenin even having decided that music like all else must be of all the people, and so to the opening of piano factories all over his domain including in Siberia... and then to the devastation during the revolution, to the export of arts and fine goods to the east, and so to the occasional odd instance of very fine pianos surviving to this day in little villages of Siberia.
And then the talk turned back to the prospect of finding a better piano for Sophy's friend Odgerel to perform on. Well as it happens, Sophy Roberts is a travel writer (and weekend columnist for the FT), and so after a season's thought about the whole matter of pianos and Siberia.... research for the hunt itself was on, and so were the underpinnings of this book.
Honestly the work is a wonderful example of an obsession pursued at once with scholarly diligence and pure unadulterated fascination not in the least unlike that of the hound on scent of a rabbit. The notes are half the worth of the book for their further references to novels, biographies, histories... and conversations with Siberian people in a vast landscape --one that takes up 9% of the planet's surface, encompasses all manner of flora, fauna and people, and yet for most of us is reduced to sad or frightful stereotypes, no matter how true the basis of those are as well.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough as something worth reading and re-reading. The notes alone will take me on my own hunt for more books about Siberia if I let that happen.
This amazing and to me "unputdownable" piece of nonfiction actually sprang from a single evening's conversation with some of the British author's friends in Mongolia, as her host fretted about the state of a modern piano upon which the talented Mongolian pianist Odgerel Sampilnorov (whose ancestors were from near Lake Baikal in Siberia) was wont to play at various social occasions.
Talk turned to the export of western culture --and especially music-- into Russia in the time of Catherine the Great, and then into the eventual uses that first Russia and then the Soviet Union had made of the great expanse of Siberia, and then to the obstinate insistence of immigrants and exiles alike upon taking with them to Siberia their pianos, and to Lenin even having decided that music like all else must be of all the people, and so to the opening of piano factories all over his domain including in Siberia... and then to the devastation during the revolution, to the export of arts and fine goods to the east, and so to the occasional odd instance of very fine pianos surviving to this day in little villages of Siberia.
And then the talk turned back to the prospect of finding a better piano for Sophy's friend Odgerel to perform on. Well as it happens, Sophy Roberts is a travel writer (and weekend columnist for the FT), and so after a season's thought about the whole matter of pianos and Siberia.... research for the hunt itself was on, and so were the underpinnings of this book.
Honestly the work is a wonderful example of an obsession pursued at once with scholarly diligence and pure unadulterated fascination not in the least unlike that of the hound on scent of a rabbit. The notes are half the worth of the book for their further references to novels, biographies, histories... and conversations with Siberian people in a vast landscape --one that takes up 9% of the planet's surface, encompasses all manner of flora, fauna and people, and yet for most of us is reduced to sad or frightful stereotypes, no matter how true the basis of those are as well.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough as something worth reading and re-reading. The notes alone will take me on my own hunt for more books about Siberia if I let that happen.
I finished Michael Crichton's A Case of Need, an excellent medical mystery, and worth reading. I started my next book and finished it in one read, Finding Gobi by Dion Leonard. It is about an ultramarathoner and a small dog who warmed her way into his heart and their adventures. If you are looking for a feel-good book, this is it. Having competed in ultramarathons myself, it was also interesting from the running perspective.
Just the description of Finding Gobi reminds me of that wonderful little dog Xiao Sa who ran with cyclists making a thousand mile and more trip from Sichuan province to Tibet, back in 2012. All it took was the offer of some chicken and she was up for the whole journey. She ran most of the way but not on the downhills because the bikes were too fast so she was given a ride.
(Yes I'm probably a candidate to pick up a copy of Finding Gobi, so thanks for that tip)
I’m just wrapping up Blowout by Rachel Maddow. Well written and it connects a lot of dots between Russia, Oil industry and American politics. It’s a must read, In my opinion.
I nabbed the audiobook (Maddow narrates it) and have been enjoying it. Some authors shouldn't narrate their work, but she does a great job, in my opinion. But then she's a presenter on TV anyway so it's not that surprising to find that she does a good job with the reading.
Reading one of the trailing edge bits of my summer's deep dive into translation issues this year: David Karashima's new book Who We're Reading When We're Reading Murakami that focuses on the works and rise to international acclaim of Haruki Murakami. In that process he delves deep into not only the art and science of translation, but into the hand played by editors, publishers and agents in bringing any writer's work into circulation in a different language, and so how the original work inevitably becomes something other than it once was for the author and originally assumed audience.
One sees in this interesting read the hand of fate as well, i.e. how a publisher comes to ask someone to translate a book into another language, why that particular translator happens to be at hand when the task comes up, how that person actually even ended up being a translator... after all, it's hardly the norm that someone shows up on a college campus determined to make a career of such endeavors. And as far as editing and publishing go, a reader of any translated piece of eventually popular fiction or nonfiction cannot escape pondering "brand management" as an author gains renown.
Got interested in this book through Jed Munson's interview of Karashima in Full Stop this month. Munson mentions rising awareness of differences in both editorial treatment and translation of Murakami's work in various cultures, in particular his characterizations of women, and explores that a bit with Karashima as well.
www.full-stop.net
One sees in this interesting read the hand of fate as well, i.e. how a publisher comes to ask someone to translate a book into another language, why that particular translator happens to be at hand when the task comes up, how that person actually even ended up being a translator... after all, it's hardly the norm that someone shows up on a college campus determined to make a career of such endeavors. And as far as editing and publishing go, a reader of any translated piece of eventually popular fiction or nonfiction cannot escape pondering "brand management" as an author gains renown.
Got interested in this book through Jed Munson's interview of Karashima in Full Stop this month. Munson mentions rising awareness of differences in both editorial treatment and translation of Murakami's work in various cultures, in particular his characterizations of women, and explores that a bit with Karashima as well.
David Karashima
But we are hopefully past the stage where the Anglophone world is only willing to provide space for three, four "big" writers per country/language at a time.
Love Murakami's stories with cats in them that I bump into in The New Yorker now and then.
