Books discussion

[Sapient]

"Jesus" by Jon Kennedy - A 'Borders exclusive' book, abridged version of "The Ultimate Jesus Book." I got a gift card for Borders and spotted one in the PHX Airport. Basically, it tries to combine all four gospels along with historical knowledge and various traditional church perspectives into a single, well-organized overview of Jesus's life, teachings, etc. I find this a useful guide because merging all of that information into one document is harder than it may sound at first. I'm currently on page 31-- already spotted one mistake, though.

"Isaiah" - book of the Bible; currently halfway through chapter 52, NASB version, getting near some obviously messaianic parts. This has been a slow read for me because I often find myself wondering what exactly Isaiah is talking about at various points, and that typically bogs me down until I come up with something.

"Theives World: Turning Points" edited by Lynn Abbey - I saw it laying around and picked it up again because it is just that cool and so I will read it again for like the umpteenth time.

BTW, my favorite author is Robert Asprin but I'm waiting for him to get off his tail and write some more stuff.

[Rex Umbrarum]

I assume you're talking about the novelization of Nightfall. The original short story is probaly the greatest of all time, but streaching it out into a book made it lose some of the impact.

Oh, and I'm reading Brisingr by Christopher Paolini. Seems okay so far, and the plot is getting more original as compared to the fist two (barely)

[Thanatos]

At the moment I read Silvia Schopf: Wie der Tod in die Welt kam (How Death came to the world), which is a collection of myths and legends concerning the question "Why do humans have to die? Why does Death exist?" After that, another novel by Camus and then another anthology of poetic and philosophic short texts about Death are already scheduled for reading.

I have to add, that the book by Schopf is quiet interesting due to the similarities that occur between legends from all over the world. Sadly, most of the stories are very short.

While following this thread I really wondered about people reading German literature voluntarily. My deep respect for that. I wouldn't do so, if I wouldn't be a native German speaker.

/edit - Teacher's mode on

All that cannot (easily) write ä, ö or ü with their keyboards should know, that you can write those as ae, oe and ue to provide the same correct German spelling. Please do not just let the umlauts become normal vocals (ä becoming a, for example), for this can cause irritations.

[anakayub]

Answering the q:

Academic - Apley's System of Orthopaedics and Fractures, Last's Anatomy, Gray's Anatomy for Students
Non-Academic - Therapeutic Exercise for Musculoskeletal Injuries, lots of articles on t-nation.com, The Economist podcasts (they now read full selected articles, so it's kind of reading while driving the car), and of course, the Wesnoth forums.

Pretty uninspiring, I know. I was never the fiction kind of person.

[HomerJ]

I just finished a Preston/Child thriller which is a sequel to The Relic.
I'm starting HP - Goblet of Fire (German) and Melville's Moby Dick (English).
I'm a little disappointed, does nobody read pseudo-scientific (nonsense) action thrillers?

Greetz
HomerJ

[thespaceinvader]

Just finished three big Dan Abnett Warhammer 40k omnibusses (Eisenhorn, and the two Gaunt's Ghosts ones) and now dipping into Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson, which I expect to finish long before i get back to Cardiff.

[Thanatos]

I'm a little disappointed, does nobody read pseudo-scientific (nonsense) action thrillers?

I don't even know which books would fit in this category.

[HomerJ]

I'm a little disappointed, does nobody read pseudo-scientific (nonsense) action thrillers?

I don't even know which books would fit in this category.

Oh thats easy. So those are mostly about some special forces (US-Army) that use fancy weapons to get somewhere before the bad guys do. There is always a obviously immortal hero and oftentimes animals or monsters that get in the way. But its often quite logical in itself. And there are some ideas presented that just interest me, eg what would happen if people working in an ice station in the arctics would discover an "ufo". Well the book gives an answer that was kind of realistic to me: every big country send their best special forces squad to claim it, or destroy it before anyone else gets the technology.

Oh well, also you can count some Michael Crichton in, Dino Park or Prey for example.

Greetz
HomerJ

[Limabean]

I assume you're talking about the novelization of Nightfall. The original short story is probaly the greatest of all time, but streaching it out into a book made it lose some of the impact.

Oh, and I'm reading Brisingr by Christopher Paolini. Seems okay so far, and the plot is getting more original as compared to the fist two (barely)

that's right, I guess i'll have to check out the short story once i'm done with the novel

[Akkarin345]

I assume you're talking about the novelization of Nightfall. The original short story is probaly the greatest of all time, but streaching it out into a book made it lose some of the impact.

Oh, and I'm reading Brisingr by Christopher Paolini. Seems okay so far, and the plot is getting more original as compared to the fist two (barely)

I am half way through reading Brisingr. I really enjoyed the other two books and couldn't put them down. Then again that was before i discovered the great hordes of more adult fantasy than your teenage fantasy. The third book, i have put down and ended up forgetting about, i think that shows something

[turin]

I read the first page of Eragon once on a whim. I gagged in disgust and threw it down. It's so bad... *shudder*

I mean, really, there's actually decent children's/YA fantasy out there, why do people have to go around making the crap popular?

---

Anyway... yeah, so I'm probably going to start reading Grendel by Jonathan Gardner sometime this week, which is a retelling of Beowulf from the monster's POV. Should be interesting.

[Akkarin345]

It is good when you are 14 years old, i didn't realise what else it 'out there'. Not a lot of childern do at that age, if you look at it now then you'll have differnet knowledge to a 14 or younger kid.

[Maeglin Dubh]

I read those (Eragon and Eldest) when I was in school, and we had a half-hour to read anything we wanted, three days a week.

By that time, I had pretty much read anything worth reading in the school library. So I started borrowing books from other kids in school. That's how I read the Halo trilogy. And that's how I read those two terrible works of 'fantasy'.

In the second book, I found myself skimming past the "Mr. Miyagi" sequences with the decrepit old elf-dude to get back to the (marginally interesting) storyline of his brother evacuating the village.

And then, of course, the magical Elf-Belt at the end that made it all pointless.

Sucked.

[ElvenKing]

I haven't actually read any of the Eragon series myself; but two of my sisters read them so they could critique them properly. After hearing what they said about it I decided not to bother with it. From what my sisters said about the only good things about were the funny mistakes(well maybe not good, but they were entertaining: I'm still laughing at the vegan elves wearing leather, and the helmet wrought of amber and gold), and Murtagh.

[Limabean]

I'm still laughing at the vegan elves wearing leather

lol I never realized how wrong that was
Yeah, I read eragon a few years ago and couldn't put it down. When I was reading eldest I was starting to realize how horrible they were. Now I haven't picked up Brisingr (even though my brother bought it) and don't plan to.