What do Macheads read?

Another vote for Douglas Adams, the man was a genius. Also, Spike Milligan is an old favorite that i'd forgotten about until recently and am "rediscovering".
 
My fav books are "The Golden Hour", "The Opponent", "Pompeji" and "Anders". Though two of them are in German and I think only availabe in Austria. If you like action, mystery etc then The Opponent is a really good book for you to read.
 
ora said:
Thanks Esquilinho! I'm off on holiday in a week or so and I need to grab some books. If they have either the calvino or the borges at the english bookstore, I'll grab them.

I"m interested in your literature studies, what's your area?
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Back in the 90s, I studied Modern Languages and Literature – English and German (i.e., literature written in these 2 languages). But I didn't go much further than my college degree. It was just those 4 years and that was it. Now I only read! :)

So I studied a lot of different authors from different eras, like Shakespeare, Gore Vidal, Goethe, Thomas Bernhard, Melville, Dickens (iac!), Oscar Wilde, Virginia Wolf, Brecht, you name it! :D And also some authors that were not from those languages, in more general subjects that I had, like Calvino, Borges and Umberto Eco (his essays are great, BTW) in Literature Theory or Aristotle in Introduction to Literary Studies… Enough? :) I always feel like I talk to much! :D

bbloke said:
As for Calvino, I've only read one of his books ("Marcovaldo") so I can't judge his entire works, but I did find that one odd. It felt very "simple," I don't know how else to put it. I wondered more and more if it was a book aimed at teenagers, perhaps. It probably just isn't quite my sort of thing, but I'm not slagging it off, though.
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I didn't read that one :D But The Invisible Cities is not strange either. But the other ones I quoted are definately strange!
 
fryke said:
Oh. Ray Bradbury. Almost forgot to mention him.
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ditto. i lovehis stuff too. i like the older sci-fi stuff by the masters; ie bradbury, asimov, clarke, herbert... thats what i read of fun.
 
sinclair_tm said:
ditto. i lovehis stuff too. i like the older sci-fi stuff by the masters; ie bradbury, asimov, clarke, herbert... thats what i read of fun.
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They were great but the one that still seems freshest to me Alfred Bester. Genre or not, The Stars My Destination is in my top 3 all time reads.

Esquilinho: Wow, serious reading :) I was in biochem as an undergrad but hung out pretty much with philosophy and literature students, so I read a bit eclectically, but I's still catching up on a lot. If I had free time I'd love to dive into literature for a few years, these days i only manage to read on the bus. One of my good friends has some named Literature scholarship at Oxford and I love chatting with him about his ideas, he even sold me on some of the sillier seeming postmodern approaches to literature, no meat feat given i'm broadly sciencey!
 
rhisiart said:
Yes it did. Thanks. Only problem is ... well, since intially posting this message and actually having read the description on Amazon, its sounds a bit exploitive. Actually, it sounds very exploitive. Mind you, if it was written by a woman about getting dumb men laid, perhaps it would be seen as OK? Who knows? (BTW, I loved Stupid White Men).
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Nah. Women would then just hate the woman who wrote it. Basically, the book is based on the theory that, in order get a healthy dose of poon, you must be an a**hole, because women dig a**holes. (lol. Sad, but very often true.)

I, personally, am not an asshole. Nor do I intend to be one. I think the people who read this book and take it to heart (whether they be dumb men who think "this is how I should live life" or dumb women who think "how dare they teach men this?") are not the target audience. This book is meant to simply be entertainment.

It's in the "comedy" section of the bookstore. Anybody who doesn't treat it as such is taking life too seriously.

*steps down from soap box*
 
adambyte said:
I, personally, am not an asshole. Nor do I intend to be one. I think the people who read this book and take it to heart (whether they be dumb men who think "this is how I should live life" or dumb women who think "how dare they teach men this?") are not the target audience. This book is meant to simply be entertainment.
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Hey, I am sure you are not. And yes, anyone taking such a book seriously would be ... well quite frankly an a**hole. I just thought the book might be about really hopeless chat up lines (such as those I used in my pre-marriage bliss days).
 
Great thread! Of late I have enjoyed reading Dan Simmons (Illium and Olympos), Neal Stephenson (Baroque Cycle) and Piers Anthony (early Xanth stuff). For fun, I definitely recommend Terry Pratchett (Discworld)! For literature perhaps Monaldi & Sorti (Imprimatur, Secretum), Luther Blissett (Q) or Caldwell & Thomason (The rule of four).
 
Any history book, classic novels and funny cartoons. Hey, this answer could be on the Mac smug thread. Sorry.
 
It's OK to be smug, if you know your stuff. It's when you don't know what you don't know that everything goes down hill.
 
reed said:
I'm re-reading "The Proud Tower" by Barbara Tuchman, great book, great author.
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Totally, Guns of August is in my all time top 5 and Tuchman is a truly great writer. I just bought the Proud Tower to read on holiday a but my friend immediately stole it and didn't finish before i left. WIll have to get him to send it back to me.
 
I fancy weird fiction/science fiction, so HP Lovecraft and Philip K Dick are two of my faves.
In poetry, I especially like Rainer Maria Rilke, and Allen Ginsberg.
Conspiracy theories get my rocks off, so David Icke does it for me(uh oh, better duck; I sense a barrage of hostility hurling in my direction!).
Just finished The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, a fascinating tome putting forth an unusual theory of the nature of reality and consciousness drawn from the realm of quantum physics, and Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnostism by Kurt Rudolph....it's a really good overview of a major and fascinating heretical belief system. Gnostics believed that Gnosis, or spiritual knowledge, could only be obtained through direct spiritual experience and not through blindly accepting religious dogma. They were relentlessly hounded and attacked, and eventually wiped out by the Catholic Church. (I've got a soft spot for heretics; all power to the heretics, wherever they be!)
 
Hmmn, currently:
Representing and Intervening by Ian Hacking (Philosophy of Science)
Who Moved My Blackberry (Fun junk)
Collapse by Jared Diamond (a biogeographer on why societies collapse)
 
I'm readind Shalimar the Clown, by Salman Rushdie and it just goes to prove what I already knew since I started reading The Satanic Verses a couple of years ago: Salman Sucks!!
 
Mobius Rex said:
Just finished The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, a fascinating tome putting forth an unusual theory of the nature of reality and consciousness drawn from the realm of quantum physics.
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Never read this; is it purely based upon scientific explaination, or does it admit fault in realms such as love and premonition and blend the quantum physicality with human drama? You make it sound interesting nonetheless.

Ah yes, and I'm currently reading The Soul of Sex (by Thomas Moore). Just started, but it looks promisingly deep.
 
Here's a fun book, if you like Anthropology, as I do ... "Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches The Riddles of Culture" by Marvin Harris. Not heavy and easy to read unlike many Anthro. books.
 
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