What book is on your nightstand? Readers!

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bwarbiany said:
Just started the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Currently in book 3.

So far it's been really interesting, but I suspect that I'll need to get farther into it to get to the "payoff" of what it's all really about.
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I've read an awful lot of Stephen King, and it truly is the best thing he has ever written to me. By the 3rd book I was so hooked.

I really enjoyed reading through this thread. I read A LOT, I average 50-60 books per year. I could have replied to pretty much every post in this entire thread, so glad I found it. Lots of good books on my bucket list now.

I read a very wide variety of books, but about 20% of it is non fiction. The past few years I have been constantly reading books on computer programming, especially PHP and C.

Here are some that I've read as of late:

The Godfather
Texas (very long blaaah)
Welcome to the Universe
The Hitman's Guide to House Cleaning
Realm of the Elderlings Series
Sutree (not C. McCarthy's best but still good)
Spencer's Mountain (the book the Walton's was based on, I read it to my little girl at bedtime)
The Bourne Series

Here are a few that I think some of you might enjoy:
The Descendant's
Two By Two (if you've gone through a divorce especially)
12 Year's a Slave
The Memory of Running (especially if you like to ride a bicycle as I do)
Princes of Ireland
Great North Road (simply amazing Peter S. Hamilton book, almost wouldn't read because the publisher's description sounded bad)
At Lenigrad's Gates (great WWll memoir from a German Solider)
A Long Way Gone (another memoir, about a boy solider in Sierra Leone)
2 Years Before the Mast (another memoir, written by a sailor in the 1830s)
 
I'm just a few chapters into this one now, but it looks like it will be a good read. It's not a "cop-hater" book, but it covers the political and administrative forces that got us to the present-day system.

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bwarbiany said:
Just started the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Currently in book 3.

So far it's been really interesting, but I suspect that I'll need to get farther into it to get to the "payoff" of what it's all really about.
Click to expand...

Stick it out. That series does things to you... I’ve read it twice and thinking about tackling it again.
Ka is a wheel..
 
PMcGuen said:
Stick it out. That series does things to you... I’ve read it twice and thinking about tackling it again.
Ka is a wheel..
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You worded it better than me, it's one of the VERY few things that I would actually read twice, just planning to wait another 3-5 years before I start the "journey" again. The characters are BIG.
 
Just started "Eat the Apple." I get the impression that if you like the darkest of the dark humor in The Onion (which I do), you'll like this.
 
estricklin said:
You worded it better than me, it's one of the VERY few things that I would actually read twice, just planning to wait another 3-5 years before I start the "journey" again. The characters are BIG.
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I timed it perfectly the first time around. I didn’t discover the series until King was releasing the final three books. 2004 maybe? Went back last year when I heard about the movie. The movie does not do this series justice, so please don’t use it to decide whether you should read the books or not. Estricklin is right. Everything about the dark tower is Huge!!
 
PMcGuen said:
I timed it perfectly the first time around. I didn’t discover the series until King was releasing the final three books. 2004 maybe? Went back last year when I heard about the movie. The movie does not do this series justice, so please don’t use it to decide whether you should read the books or not. Estricklin is right. Everything about the dark tower is Huge!!
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I kept thinking when I was reading them, "I feel sorry for the poor bastards that had to read these as they were coming out" as I read them in 2012 I think. I think it took about 20 years for him to write them all. Since you read them in 04, did you read The Wind Through the Keyhole later?

I picked up some books on Audible's 30% off site wide sale a couple days ago, about half of what I read is in audio format since I can listen at work. Here is a list:

Rath's Gambit: The Janus Group Book 2
Mindstar Rising: The Greg Mandel Trilogy Book 1
Surviving Home: The Survivalist Series Book 2
Ready Player One
Oprhan Train
A Christmas Carol
Peter Pan
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
The Secret Garden
Little Women
Tom Sawyer
Huck Finn
A Dangerous Book for Dogs: Train Your Human with the Bandit Method
My Antonia
The Immortal Irishman
The Hidden Life of Trees
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
West Cork (free an Audible right now)

I'm most excited about these:
 

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estricklin said:
I kept thinking when I was reading them, "I feel sorry for the poor bastards that had to read these as they were coming out" as I read them in 2012 I think. I think it took about 20 years for him to write them all. Since you read them in 04, did you read The Wind Through the Keyhole later?

I picked up some books on Audible's 30% off site wide sale a couple days ago, about half of what I read is in audio format since I can listen at work. Here is a list:

Rath's Gambit: The Janus Group Book 2
Mindstar Rising: The Greg Mandel Trilogy Book 1
Surviving Home: The Survivalist Series Book 2
Ready Player One
Oprhan Train
A Christmas Carol
Peter Pan
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
The Secret Garden
Little Women
Tom Sawyer
Huck Finn
A Dangerous Book for Dogs: Train Your Human with the Bandit Method
My Antonia
The Immortal Irishman
The Hidden Life of Trees
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
West Cork (free an Audible right now)

I'm most excited about these:
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Keyhole was after. The whole book is a flashback, so I didn’t feel like reading it out of order was a big deal.

Ready player one is a good book. If you’re an 80’s child like myself, all the pop culture adds to it.

Might check out the immortal Irishman. Thanks for the recommendation

Currently reading-
Sapiens- super dense read. Not sure if I am going to finish it.

Would recommend-
Catch 22
Lamb
Slaughterhouse 5
Sandman slim series
 
I have had Hyperion (Cantos book 1) by Dan Simmons on my Kindle for almost 2 years but I am finally after several stops and restarts close to finished with it. It was a good read after all but I'm disappointed to find from reading Amazon reviews that I also need to read another 500 pages in The Fall of Hyperion for story closure.
 
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Read Slaughterhouse 5 last year, pretty good book. Ironically, I read MASH right around the same time and really enjoyed it, maybe I should check out Catch 22?

I added those Hyperion books to my wish list.

Here is a book I should have mentioned in my first post, one of the best books I read last year, the film "Slumdog Millionaire was based on this book:
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Absolutely hooked on it! Read over half of it in a day and a half and thinking about finishing it before Monday evening, SWMBO and I may go see the movie Monday night.

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estricklin said:
Absolutely hooked on it! Read over half of it in a day and a half and thinking about finishing it before Monday evening, SWMBO and I may go see the movie Monday night.

61atQvOnhkL._AA300_.jpg
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I'm perplexed by the reaction to the movie. I was overseas when it was released, and my wife hasn't read it yet, so I haven't seen the movie.

But basically all my social media feeds were full of people [nerds like me] who were psyched about the release of the movie. Anticipating it like Christmas morning.

And then it was released... And... Crickets. Nobody posting about how awesome it was; nobody posting that it sucked.

I found that odd. I really want to see the movie, but considering how rarely I actually go to the theaters, I don't want to be disappointed if it doesn't nearly live up to the book.
 
PMcGuen said:
Currently reading-
Sapiens- super dense read. Not sure if I am going to finish it.
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I liked Sapiens. However it definitely changed a lot as it shifted from the very early history to some of the more abstract portions of how human imagination/myth props up culture later in the book. So I can understand how it would be a bit of a slog if you're not into that side of things.
 
I must live under a rock, I didn't even know there was a movie until after I had bought the book and was telling my wife I was about to read it. I'm sure the movie won't do it justice, but the wife and I rarely have a night out so I'm looking forward to it.
 
Currently there are 3 books on my nightstand (which also get read during the day):

"Basic Health Physics" by Dr. Joseph Bevelacqua
"Introduction to Health Physics" by Dr. Herman Cember
"Radiation Detection and Measurement" by Dr. Glenn Knoll

I'm studying for the Certified Health Physicist exam (CHP), administered by the American Board of Health Physics. Two-part exam that happens in July.

Can't wait for it to get here and get gone.
 
I've been juggling lately.

Vineland, by Thomas Pynchon, has gotten far too little attention because I don't actually open a physical book nearly as much as I should thanks to the convenience of ebooks and the inconvenience of trying to light a book in bed without waking up my one year old son. I've been a hundred pages in for three months now.

The Dragon Reborn, by Robert Jordan, is the third book of his Wheel of Time series. I've got a bunch of them as ebooks on my phone. Not nonstop action but always intriguing, and the world building is solid, though I have yet to see the level of depth of Middle Earth which is the yardstick for these kinds of things. I started off going through them pretty quickly until I finally forced myself to get back into...

...The Three Body Problem Trilogy, by Liu Cixin, in the original Chinese. I bought the ebook a few months ago and worked my way to about the 5% mark before getting bogged down in a several chapters-long flashback to the Cultural Revolution that I was struggling to follow. I picked it up again a week or so ago and was delighted to find the dictionary in my ebook app was updated so I can get definitions for 95% of the problem words now, rather than about 35% before the update. Now, when I have some time to devote to reading something difficult, I push through a few pages of this, and when I don't have the opportunity to focus, a quick chapter or two in the Wheel of Time is good for something easier.
 
FatDragon said:
I've been juggling lately.

Vineland, by Thomas Pynchon, has gotten far too little attention because I don't actually open a physical book nearly as much as I should thanks to the convenience of ebooks and the inconvenience of trying to light a book in bed without waking up my one year old son. I've been a hundred pages in for three months now.

The Dragon Reborn, by Robert Jordan, is the third book of his Wheel of Time series. I've got a bunch of them as ebooks on my phone. Not nonstop action but always intriguing, and the world building is solid, though I have yet to see the level of depth of Middle Earth which is the yardstick for these kinds of things. I started off going through them pretty quickly until I finally forced myself to get back into...

...The Three Body Problem Trilogy, by Liu Cixin, in the original Chinese. I bought the ebook a few months ago and worked my way to about the 5% mark before getting bogged down in a several chapters-long flashback to the Cultural Revolution that I was struggling to follow. I picked it up again a week or so ago and was delighted to find the dictionary in my ebook app was updated so I can get definitions for 95% of the problem words now, rather than about 35% before the update. Now, when I have some time to devote to reading something difficult, I push through a few pages of this, and when I don't have the opportunity to focus, a quick chapter or two in the Wheel of Time is good for something easier.
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Ahhh Wheel of Time. Its a classic.
 
I just finished A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson. I bought the book 4 or 5 years ago and got stuck around page 650, in the middle of a 250 page chapter that was a never-ending battle. Now that I've finished it, I can see why he wrote it the way he did, but it was NOT fun at the time.

I read The Magicians trilogy not too long ago. I was hesitant at first because I hated the SyFy series, but the books were pretty good.
 
FatDragon said:
...The Three Body Problem Trilogy, by Liu Cixin, in the original Chinese. I bought the ebook a few months ago and worked my way to about the 5% mark before getting bogged down in a several chapters-long flashback to the Cultural Revolution that I was struggling to follow. I picked it up again a week or so ago and was delighted to find the dictionary in my ebook app was updated so I can get definitions for 95% of the problem words now, rather than about 35% before the update. Now, when I have some time to devote to reading something difficult, I push through a few pages of this, and when I don't have the opportunity to focus, a quick chapter or two in the Wheel of Time is good for something easier.
Click to expand...

I loved these books. I read the English translation, of course, but in general it was one of my favorite series in recent memory.

I've said it before in this thread, I think, but I also recommend the Kim Stanley Robinson "Red Mars" trilogy.
 
“Hatchet”

Gary Paulsen

Because when I was about 10, I read it and it changed my life forever - made me who I am today. I read it about 3-4 times a year to stay in touch.
 
Boomer said:
I bought a copy for each of my children and then re-read it once and underlined a few key sentences and paragraphs. They also each got a hatchet to go with it.
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Cool. IF I ever read it, I'll let you know what I thought. Maybe I need a hatchet too :) I've got so many books in my library I haven't read.

I'm an avid reader, and many books have formed what I am today. For my kids, I passed on a simple one: Desiderata. It's only one page long, a quick read. Anyone looking for truth will find it, no need to post links here.
 
Love of Hops, again. And The Perfectionist, read it many times now. The tragic story of Bernard Loiseau, chef, who took his life seemingly at the top of his game. Likely bi-polar, when it wasn't all that well understood. Like he danced on flames when we was "up," but his downs were very solitary, and very down, and they eventually killed him. If you love the life and/or understand the true costs of cooking at a high level, it's a fantastic read.

Haven't searched (sorry), but anyone into the Dune series? The books literally kept me going as a kid and no longer home, "on the road" (to put it one way) and needing some kind of nourishment. I got lost in these worlds. Hated the film.
 

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