What are you reading?

[Tristan]

Well I dont read much at all anymore, at least until the last couple years. Last year I started reading running books and currently half way through Maffetones TBBOER but havent read a page since spring. I'm also reading book about scenic places and things to do in Ohio, or at least I did on my last couple plane rides.

The few things I read from time to time are more non-fiction, instructional, or documentary type stuff. But I've found recently I just like to unwind with pure fantasy/fiction. Just gives me a break from real life which is often desperately needed lol.

Now this may bring to light my weird nerdy side but its me so no sense hiding that I'm into some Japanese Anime. And not the ones for kids but ones more for teen+/adult with deeper plots and story lines and more graphic, etc. Never thought I'd be into Manga too (thought 'comics' were kind of silly to be reading as an adult) but I ended up getting really involved in one series and the anime ended but the manga continues so I have been reading the manga for the series Claymore. After I got over my notions about comics, and learned how to read pages backwards (Japanese read from top right to bottom left) I am just amazed by the Claymore story, and its about the only thing I've read for entertainment in a decade+. If anyone has any interest in anime at all, more specifically a medieval - period fantasy, with some supernatural thrown in, and a vampire-hunter like twist, then give Claymore a try. Its totally awesome IMO and isnt your typical anime/manga in many unique ways. I dont know if manga really count for this thread but it is what I'm reading and in book like format.

Book #1 cover from the manga (left), and anime promo pic (right).

 

[BFwillie_g]

1) Post what you are reading right now, or what you've just read.

• 1. Dude De Ching - a Dudeist Interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, very well done!
• 2. Qigong for Total Wellness - from Baolin Wu, one of the best books on the subject but not for novices
• 3. Call of the Wild - Jack London, the perfect novel

2) Post books you've read more than once, or twice. Your all time favorites.

• The Great Gatsby
• Leaves of Grass
• Jeeves Omnibus (Wodehouse should be required reading for anyone claiming English as a native language, and especially anyone who wants to write in English).
• All the Discworld Novels
• Call of the Wild/White Fang, see above, lol
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Madness
• Moby Dick (I admit I've only ever read it all the way through once, but pick it up often and just look for cool passages - the dude could write!)
• boah ... way too many more to list, I tend to re-read more that I read, including German literature, but not real heavy stuff; Siddhartha but not Glasperlenspiel, for example.
• Ahhh .... The two Jim Knopf novels in the original German (from Michael Ende), better than any English-language book ever written for a youthful audience, and I'd put that claim to a challenge, really. I've read them a number of times, and not only outloud to my daughter

3) Post what you read on the throne.

• magazines - mainly "Welt der Wunder" and "Ökotest"

4) And of course, post whatever the double hockey sticks else you'd like.

• Beer

 

[clawhammer72]

1)

• Ahhh .... The two Jim Knopf novels in the original German (from Michael Ende), better than any English-language book ever written for a youthful audience, and I'd put that claim to a challenge, really. I've read them a number of times, and not only outloud to my daughter

Your post gives me a lot to think about....but you are the first reader I've met that gets Michael Ende. I haven't read the Jim Knopf novels, mainly because they're hard to find in English. But I read and reread the Neverending Story as a kid (If you've only seen the movie....sheesh...do I really have to finish?), and I've now read it to my class 12 times. I find something new in it each time. I don't really get why more people don't dig his stuff.

 

[clawhammer72]

Well I dont read much at all anymore, at least until the last couple years. Last year I started reading running books and currently half way through Maffetones TBBOER but havent read a page since spring. I'm also reading book about scenic places and things to do in Ohio, or at least I did on my last couple plane rides.

The few things I read from time to time are more non-fiction, instructional, or documentary type stuff. But I've found recently I just like to unwind with pure fantasy/fiction. Just gives me a break from real life which is often desperately needed lol.

Now this may bring to light my weird nerdy side but its me so no sense hiding that I'm into some Japanese Anime. And not the ones for kids but ones more for teen+/adult with deeper plots and story lines and more graphic, etc. Never thought I'd be into Manga too (thought 'comics' were kind of silly to be reading as an adult) but I ended up getting really involved in one series and the anime ended but the manga continues so I have been reading the manga for the series Claymore. After I got over my notions about comics, and learned how to read pages backwards (Japanese read from top right to bottom left) I am just amazed by the Claymore story, and its about the only thing I've read for entertainment in a decade+. If anyone has any interest in anime at all, more specifically a medieval - period fantasy, with some supernatural thrown in, and a vampire-hunter like twist, then give Claymore a try. Its totally awesome IMO and isnt your typical anime/manga in many unique ways. I dont know if manga really count for this thread but it is what I'm reading and in book like format.

Book #1 cover from the manga (left), and anime promo pic (right).

I haven't read a lot of manga, but enough to know that the stories are rich. I started Hikaru No Go, and would like to finish it once I got the cash to buy the books, since they aren't available at the library. I also read American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, which is totally awesome. I'll check out Clarmore if I can find it. My library has a decent collection of Manga, probably because we have a big Korean population in Fullerton.

 

[BFwillie_g]

I don't really get why more people don't dig his stuff.

Well, he only wrote four/five novels before dying, and two of them are less than enjoyable. Momo is creepy and the other one with the long title that I can't remember in German and don't know in English is kind of whacko. Die Unendliche Geschichte is literature. The Jim Knopf books are really great, much simpler than Neverending Story, but somehow even more exciting and imaginative, and not without deeper meaning. If you can find it, give it a shot. I know it's available in English. Of course, translations are always tricky and this particular book would be difficult to do in English. The language is one of the characters, if you get my meaning

 

[Bare Lee]

1.) A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka, by Bruce Kapferer; The Phenomenology of the Social World, by Alfred Schutz; The Syntax of Chichewa, by Sam Mchombo.
2.) Capital, Vol I, by Karl Marx (once in college, once in grad school); Lord of the Rings, by J. R. Tolkien (once in 11th grade, once in 12th grade). All time Favs: the 19th century classics (Hugo, Dickens, Dostoyevsky), Brothers Grimm, Raymond Chandler, Vonnegut, Anais Nin. Poetry: cummings, Blake, Neruda, Frost, Whitman, Stevens.
3.) The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce; my parents' old TIME magazines, mainly Joel Stein.
4.) Online: The Economist, The Monthly Review, Counterpunch, BRU, NFL stuff.

 

[BFwillie_g]

2.) Capital, Vol I, by Karl Marx (once in college, once in grad school).

you ever look at it voluntarily? Just curious ...

 

[Bare Lee]

you ever look at it voluntarily? Just curious ...

Yes . . . I know, I'm a nerd. I also read Volumes 2 & 3 and Grundrisse--well, skimmed a fair amount. My prof assigned that and Max Weber's retort to Marx, Economy & Society, one semester. Nothing like reading the original texts. So much that is assigned these days is secondary and tertiary readings of them. People end up discussing different schools of interpretation rather than the original ideas themselves. Unfortunately that is often the case for me too these days. Have you read them? Is your German good enough to read them in the original? That would be fantastic. I never trust translations completely.