What are you reading? Showing 5,001-5,050 of 28,901

[Lori, Super Mod]

btw, 109 posts on this thread alone in less than one day... EGads people.. Are you trying to kill the moderator??? ha ha...

So many great books being read right now. I love this group!

[Cynthia]

I had 99 to catch up with just now...ok for Gemma just to make you feel better I'm a librarian and I've never read the Harry Potter series and quite frankly have no interest in reading it (maybe when/if I have kids someday...but by then something else will be the cool new series).

[Emma]

Most likely.

Okay Cynthia, I feel much better now. :)

[Ann from S.C.]

I've never read HARRY POTTER.

I have wanted to read THE RUSSIAN CONCUPINE.

I just got over a bad migrain with a 4 hour nap... I'm going to be up for a while reading my book!!

[Kellie]

I have all but one of the HP's...have not cracked one open

[Catherine]

Lori: This is the first Lethem novel I've read, but I picked up The Disappointment Artist, which was a quick read, but a little, well, less than I'd hoped. Nothing compared to Motherless Brooklyn so far.

[Maureen]

Laura ~ I haven't heard of Barbara Pym, but I'm thinking I'm going to have to check out Excellent Women. I totally agree with you re: Guernsey. It's definitely the best book I've read this year!

[Atishay]

Since, the name of THE Harry Potter has come up, why is everyone so Ga-Ga over it? It was just a novel of good triumphing over evil. Nothing that makes it extraordinary (sorry, I know I'm gonna get killed for saying all this but I had to say it). Come on people, many fantasy books were way better written than HP. LOTR was written by a man more than 40 years back and its a million times more comprehensive and heroic than HP !
I'm not saying HP is bad or something. Its just that lets not give something so much hype that it goes overboard. (Sorry but please don't lash out at me)

[Atishay]

Love your name Anya. I believe in Roman Holiday, Audrey Hepburn called herself Anya?

[Catherine]

I'm just finishing up Motherless Brooklyn (for pleasure) and starting Netherland for my post-9/11 fiction class this week.

[Jeane]

Atishay, be careful what you say about Harry Potter (Fiona is around).


I had to go yesterday..... internet was going sooooo slow suddenly, soe very page took ages to reopen. I ahd to correct constantly what I wrote because I was making a bigger mess than normally and had to try to stay a bit sane. I went to sleep with my mind so active and full of TNBBC!!! Really, I went to sleep thinking about Fiona, Emma and Laura en woke up thinking about Fiona!!!!! that is getting a bit tooo....

[Jeane]

For me LOTR was so much better. It was incredible.

[Liz M]

Motherless Brooklyn is one of my favorite books. It is the only book in recent memory that made me laugh uncontrollably in inappropriate places, like on the subway. And then I'd try to suppress my laughter and it would leak out as snorts. Got a few funny looks, but only two or three people felt compelled to change seats.

[Jeane]

GREAT!!!!! not...I am trying to get (still)through Moby Dick and now they just start with and keep going on about mast-heads!!!!! Where is the exciting part, when does the part start that makes of this book such a loved classic book?????? And at which page am I???????

[Jeane]

The first thing I liked in Moby Dick:
For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner--for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.

[Atishay]

Fiona, whose is this new eye ? Looks kinda doll's ... I've read LOTR 5 times and there wasn't a single instant when I felt it had lost the track. Its just that JRR Tolkien has put in too much description.

[Rachelle]

What happened to the Blue eye? That was pretty too!

[Atishay]

Tom Bombadil was there to save Frodo and company when they were down. I believe that is where the beauty of Tolkien's writing lies. He never showed the hobbits to be heroic in the sense we know it. They always got help from kind people like Tom. It'd would've spoiled the start by showing them to be brave and independent right from the word go. I agree though it was slightly over descriptive, esp that part.

[[deleted user]]

I am reading too much but that's a good thing. Elantris, Clockwork Orange, Book of Illusions, Emma & Jane Eyre.

[JG (Introverted Reader)]

Just finished EL&IC and I'm now starting Two for the Dough.

I'm going to have to agree with Fiona on this one, Atishay. I got bogged down in the descriptions in LOTR and never finished them. I think part of what makes HP so great is how many kids started reading because of the books. I don't remember exactly what else Fiona wrote, but she said it well.

But isn't it great that we can agree to disagree? :-)

[Atishay]

Yeah, many people have told me that. They couldn't finish the book. My mom couldn't go beyond the part when they reach Rivendell. I guess it depends on personal tastes. I agree with you on HP. It really started children reading.
Agree to disagree... nice phrase JG.. i think that is what the point of discussions is, right?

[Jeane]

Whatever people think about Harry Potter, it is true JG...how children would wait at the shop to get the next book! That's great.

LOTR I read in English, one of the earlier versions and if I wouldn't had been working that period I would have finished it even sooner. It felt like I read it really fast but probably because I whished I ddn't had to put down the book to work, eat or sleep. I know that one day I am going to buy it, just to have it.

[Jeane]

Yahoo!!!! I found out at which page I am in Moby Dick!!! This might help me reading more of it.

[Catherine]

Jeane: I love, love, love Moby-Dick! I wrote my undergrad thesis on fate and free will in the novel, but I completely agree when they start talking about the anatomy of the whale for 25 pages, I'm out. The rest is worth it though, I think.

[Catherine]

Liz: Motherless Brooklyn has been pretty painfully funnny - I've been reading passages aloud to friends for the past few days. Also, the plot is compelling - a rare combination (good language and story).

[Jeane]

Am I really the only person who doesn't seem to think this is such a great book? Much the contrary...
Catherine, yes the anatomy of the whale was a bit over the top. I just past a very long descriptions of mast-heads too!!!!! Reading it on the computer doesn't help me at all of course...

[Atishay]

I tried to read Moby Dick sometime back. I don't know how i managed to finish it but it took a long time after that to muster enough courage to pick up a classic again.
Still , I liked the later parts of the novel. Carry on if you can.. :)

[Laura]

Wow, this thread moves. Jeane, I sometimes go to sleep (or wake up at 3AM) thinking of people here too. I thought it was so cool yesterday when 4 people from different countries were all here at once.

TNBBC = The Other Melting Pot

[Jeane]

Yes, Laura!! Nice you call it the oter melting pot..in some way it is really like this. Never found an online group like this..we keep coming here(or staying for some of us)

Oh, but did you see...Miss carot cake isn't on and I will have to stay up till late!!!!! Hmmmmm....

[Atishay]

This thread rolls and bounces Laura.. A rolling thread gathers no moss :)

[Laura]

Good one, Atishay!

Or as GEmma would say HAHAHAHAHAHAH

[silvia]

concerning HP

ok the writting isnt brilliant but the story is adtictive. offcourse the movies helped the books, I think the hype around HP incresead a lot when they started maing the books.

I read the first 3 books on a loan from my cousin after that I've started a all rital around harry potter. waiting for the books to come out... and reading them compulsively once I've got them. I never really had that ritual whit no other books. I think the expectation as part of the enchantement.

LOTR, I'm sorry fans but I always thougth it quite boring. One thing that always got me away from fantasie was al the songs and poetry and speaking in non exixting languagues.. like elfic.

[Laura]

Yeah I was surprised to see how many people haven't read HP.

I guess if you're not into fantasy, you're not, but if you are, I would think Hobbit, LotR and HP would be required reading.

I mean, you have to at least try it. And if you didn't like it, maybe pick it up in 10 years and try again.

[Jeane]

That's why for long I didn't read Harry Potter. I am not so much into fantasy.

[Atishay]

Nicely put Laura
Bnoir, I agree with u on the hype surrounding HP. Maybe you should pick up LOTR after 10 years and give it a try. It may work, as Laura said.

[Atishay]

I was out of it too Jeane, until LOTR happened to me. It changed the way I looked at fantasy.

[JG (Introverted Reader)]

Moby Dick...I was really, really lucky and my junior(?) high school English teacher didn't make us read it. She let us watch the movie version with Patrick Stewart as Captain Ahab. I've never had any desire to pick up the book.

[Atishay]

Well, you're not alone Jeane!

[JG (Introverted Reader)]

My mom loves sweet little romances (think Nicholas Sparks) and she fell in love with the LOTR movies and read all the books too! I'm the fantasy lover and she's the one who's finished LOTR! How weird is that! I do adore the movies though.

[JG (Introverted Reader)]

You're probably right, Fiona.

[Atishay]

You know Tokien had written LOTR for his grandchildren. He didn't even think about making it public. I think the idea was given by Christopher Tolkien.

[Atishay]

Wow! That's amazing facts! I loved the guy's imagination...

[Emily]

I'm reading Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger. I forgot how much I loved him.

[Jamie (The Perpetual Page-Turner)]

ooh JD salinger..good stuff! :)

[Lori, Super Mod]

Seth, i have got to crack open that Wodehouse that I stole.....I really must.

[Laura]

Seth - I started audio-ing one of those...now it may be the reader or it may be that you have to give it some time...but I'm not leaping up & down yet. Do you have to give him some time when you're new to him before you are wild crazy for him, or should I like him right off the reel?

[Catherine]

I just finished Motherless Brooklyn, which went amazingly quickly and just picked up The Historian - that should keep me occupied (apart from class) for now. More than 600 pages seems like an investment.

[Atishay]

Hi Seth, I've read only one Wodehouse book, 'The White Feather' was the name if i remember correctly. I have to appreciate the author's sense of humor.

[Jeane]

Fiona, because I was completely not interested in fantasy stories, I didn't even concider picking any of them up. I still have it a bit, so it takes longer for me to read a fantasy book, I mean deciding to takes longer.

[silvia]

I've read the first 2 books of LORT started the 3rd but didnt finished for some reason. I havent tried it again, I plan to, but other reads always get in the middle of that plan.

its not that I dint think LOTR is a great epic book, well written and etc.. its just a bit to long and boring, but I liked it I'm just not crazy about it.