Shredder's comments (member since Feb 05, 2009)

Shredder's comments from the The Next Best Book Club group.

or is it difficult to concentrate on whatever you're reading?

If no, what album do you think is best suited to listen to while reading?

That everyone must read?

I'm a non native speaker, so I don't know what those "important" classics are.

But I have only read few of the classics, if any. (1984, The Catcher in the Rye)

What classics do you consider so profound and therefore a necessary reading?

Ok, You found one, LOTR. I'd doubt the other one counts.

Anyway, I found the rather obscure book called "Ficciones" having 4.79 average rating.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is rated 4.69/5, and has an average score of 4.72/5.

Can you find the book that overtakes Hunger games's record breaking goodreads average?

Conditions:

- The book Should have a minimum of 1000 votes.
- Can be either a fiction or a non fiction.

Question: when you say Paperbacks, do you mean just MM or Trade PBs also?

Ofcourse both. Probably shouldn't have mentioned paperback anyway. When we're specifically talking the work of fiction, I doubt if the number would go beyond 1000 per year.

Fiona wrote: "I like IMDB but there isn't really anywhere to discuss the movies (as you said it's more a database) - I mean I know they have message boards but they're flooded with trolls and moroninc imbeciles ..."

Sure, there are some trolls out there, but there certainly are many cool dudes you'd want to enjoy reading their reviews about movies.

Ed wrote: "In 2006, according to Wikipedia there were 378,000 books published in the U.S and U.K. alone. ..."

Really? I didn't know that.These could probably not qualify as paperback fiction. We're specifically talking about the work of fiction.

@Fiona, Thank you. :-)

>There are many, many listopia lists. But does it matter? >I mean, does the book/author win anything? Is there some >personal satisfaction knowing you voted for the most >popular book? That by having done so, you can actually >follow the crowd rather than reading to suit your own >tastes?

Well, having the main list is really useful. Think about the future generation. They'd instantly know which ones to read and which ones to neglect without having to do a lot of research.

In 2006's, I didn't know a lot of english films, because I was too young at the time, and I'm a non native speaker. I just referred to the list, rented a Dvd and watched them one by one.As simple as that.

With books and listopias, It makes me want to do a great deal of research to narrow down the list to choose something specifically.

@Fiona, I found the listopia to be rather vague and unclear. People just vote for their favourite or the one that is well known, and it almost always is a classic of some kind.

To be perfectly unbiased, One would have to make some sort of condition, like taking higher ratings/minimum 1400 votes/no-duplicate registration account etc in order to construct the top list.

Imdb has very effective policy when it comes down to a registration, they'd ask for confirmation via a credit card although they charge no money when granting you a registered account. So each and every vote is not duplicitous. I couldn't say the same thing about goodreads, amazon or librarything but still the ratings given for individual book around here is trustable.

If we had to take the goodreads ratings rather than a listopia, I'd think #1 would be The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, that stands out at 4.67/5 mark.

Whoops... I didn't know that there already exists something called Ibookdb.

To be honest, I haven't come across such a site, I used to be a frequent poster at Imdb.com, so therefore the thought occured to me to create a fantasy top 10 in a book site that is a parody of the Imdb and stands in parallel with it in everything else.

Sorry if you took my post as a kind of spam. I didn't intend to. I posted the same thing into the Imbd message board, and the thread is beginning to generate a lot of responses as if its the most sanest thing in the world. ;-)

Perhaps I'm kinda obsessed with the well known Top 250 Movies list, and the discussion centering around it. http://www.imdb.com/chart/top

Initial post wouldn't make much of a sense unless you're profoundly familiar with the Imdb Top 250 as linked above, and its famous voting/ranking system and think along the same line as to how a book database would look like.

Btw, I'm not a "she". I'm a he, funny how book people automatically assume that anyone using the nick around here could probably be a she, just because "she" reads a lot of books than a "he" in general. Feminist paradise. Just kidding! :)

Let's stipulate that there's going to be a creation of database site specifically for books in the distant future that looks exactly like IMDB... and the one that replaces many other alternatives such as goodreads.com, librarything.com etc.

With enough number of votes and activity in general that influences a lot of people to get into the habit of reading a lot of books even though they had never used to be a bookworm prior to the creation of this said site, how would the Top 10 in IBDB seemingly appear?

My guess is

1. Storm of Swords
2. To Kill a Mockingbird
3. Ender's Game
4. The Outlander
5. Harry Potter
6. Pride and Prejudice
7. Watchmen
8. Crime and Punishment
9. Catch - 22
10. The Book Thief

I noticed that there are about 4 or 5 different publishers for the classic "The Brothers Karamazov". I took a cursory look at the chapter titles and the words on the last page to see if two of the books match in translation content, but it seems not. They seem to have been translated by different persons.

So I wanted to ask which one I should buy:
which one is better translated.

Bantam Classics
Dover
Oxford
Vintage Classics
Classic Library (looks like a diary)

Besides, What do you think of the novel?

Thanks in advance for any help, much appreciated!

First of all, I'd like to thank all of you for participating in this threa!

Shadow Of the Wind:
Mysterious, Captivating and interesting imagery. The translation is near perfect. Recommended!

The Book Thief:
Such an haunting tale. Poweful, moving and remarkable.
His ability to create mood using words is special.

I had read "The Boy in the striped Pyjamas" the other day after watching the movie version, I highly recommend watching the movie first before reading the book! One of the rare movies that managed to drive me to tears.

Lori wrote: "Perhaps it would have been easier just to post a poll, Swaminathan. Btw, I see you posted this exact thread in the 1001 group......

Do you not trust our judgement, or are you just really curious?"

I don't know how to create a poll, I'm a newbie here. Any pointers?

Ofcourse I do trust your collective judgement, I've not actually counted the number of occurences...but I'm sure I did go by majority vote over choosing the 3 books...

perhaps the 3rd book could be Good Omens. Anything else that could overtake this one?

I read "Shutter Island" by Dennis Lehane.That twist ending was unpredictable.

THANKS All, I've decided to read "The Book Thief" and the "Shadow of the wind", unless someone can change my mind or prod me into reading the 3rd book whatever that is, then I could perhaps consider that too... I'll see if I can read all day to finish the two... before I take up the 3rd one, meanwhile you can keep adding your suggestion for the 3rd one :-)

Thanks for all the comments, keep 'em coming. I'd go by majority votes. So far It seems Shadow of the wind is the leader of the pack. (counting votes from other forums I've posted this same message into)

Hi All,

I will be busy from the next week onwards, I'll be doing a new software project that's painstakingly time consuming... and it'd probably take 12 hours a day. So I wanted to spend some of my time reading a book before the "busy schedule" begins the next week. Let's say I have about a week off and wanted to spend time reading atleast two books (that's provided I could manage).

I have these books (amongst hundred others) in the book shelves. Can you choose two books that are immediate Must-Read according to you?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* The Book Thief
* In Cold Blood
* The Remains of the day
* Cloud Atlas
* Replay
* A wind-up Bird Chronicle
* Shadow of the wind
* Boy's Life
* Good omens
* Bell Jar
* The Kite Runner
* Kavalier and Clay
* Battle Royale
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks a lot in advance!