catkid Posted March 25, 2019 Share Posted March 25, 2019 Currently reading The Birthday of the World by Ursula K. Le Guin. I borrowed it from the library 😄 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Hachiko Posted March 25, 2019 Share Posted March 25, 2019 In anticipation of the upcoming TV series i am rereading "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Foj Posted March 28, 2019 Share Posted March 28, 2019 I’m reading children’s picture books.  I loved Jacqueline Woodson’s The Day You Begin. And I’m reading a book about Calvin and Hobbes and the creator, which makes me want to reread the comics. 2 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TheWanderingDuck Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 The Martian. Pretty great so far. I'm getting close to the end. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Luftschlosseule Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 Finished The Golden Tresses of the Dead by Alan Bradley and started with The Magnificent Nine. It appears that I read through 2/3 of the book in one sitting because I liked it so much and only stopped as I was too tired. Looking forward to read on! 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Tintenfeder Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen for university. It's not as bad as I imagined, but I can't really relate to a lot of the stuff going on, so it's a bit diffficult for me to get myself to read it. Other than that, I'm rereading the Skulduggery Pleasant series by Derek Landy. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
AceyMacey Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. Only on page 20 but it's great so far!!! 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
akanesarumara Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 I'm reading "My Brilliant Friend" by Elena Ferrante (y'know, the one the HBO series got made about recently). Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Luftschlosseule Posted March 30, 2019 Share Posted March 30, 2019 And now Der Bücherdrache von Walter Moers, the new Zamonien installment. Hildegunst is really annoying me this time. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
everywhere and nowhere Posted March 30, 2019 Share Posted March 30, 2019 Currently: Joanna Lamparska - "The Gold Train. A short history of madness" Lamparska is a journalist, traveller and local historian of Lower Silesia (btw, I keep wondering if she's related to another Ms. Lamparska, my mathematics teacher from primary school) and the book is about the Nazi gold train, which supposedly left Breslau (Wrocław) for Waldenburg (Wałbrzych) shortly before the end of the war and never arrived at its destination. In 2015 a "gold train rush" gripped Poland after explorers claimed that they have proof of the train's existence and received support from authorities. I didn't really believe that the train will be found and I was right, Lamparska is quite sceptical as well. But it doesn't mean she wants to spoil people's fun - she still tells a captivating story and shows how, even if there is probably no Gold Train, the search was a boost to Wałbrzych and popularised the area worldwide. The book is divided into short chapters and each one has a motto, they are often really funny. Chapter 2: - Do you know why they can't find this Gold Train? Because it's covered with something, so that devices won't detect it. - How do you know it? - Because once, when people smuggled gold out of Russia, I have seen them wrap it in carbon paper, and later no detector would find it. I smuggled too a bit with my daughter, but we had carbon paper. I wrapped rings in it and gold was found on everyone on the train except my daughter. Gold is invisible under carbon paper. From a discussion with readers Chapter 4: Money and gold enjoy silence. Swiss saying Chapter 9: Where is Indiana Jones when he's needed? Daily Mail discussion board Chapter 11: The "Riese" complex in Owl Mountains is no longer an underground city, now it's a multi-level underground parking lot for Gold Trains. Public official from Wałbrzych Chapter 20: Who seeks, usually finds, unfortunately often not what he needs. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Hobbit Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Luftschlosseule Posted March 31, 2019 Share Posted March 31, 2019 And now the Cruel Prince so that I can read tomorrow for the O.W.L.s readathon The Wicked King. Or ... you know, sometimes starting from tomorrow. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
daveb Posted March 31, 2019 Share Posted March 31, 2019 On 3/29/2019 at 3:49 AM, Luftschlosseule said: started with The Magnificent Nine. It appears that I read through 2/3 of the book in one sitting because I liked it so much and only stopped as I was too tired. Looking forward to read on! I managed to pick it up yesterday. Not sure when I will get around to reading it. Maybe after I finish my current book (The Truth About Animals by Lucy Cooke - nonfiction science stuff). Quote Link to post Share on other sites
argar Posted March 31, 2019 Share Posted March 31, 2019 Wraith Knight by C.T. Phipps Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted April 2, 2019 Share Posted April 2, 2019 I'm waiting for the next page of Awful Hospital, a Web comic where the "player character" wakes up in a strange hospital dimension and has to find her son, who we suppose is terminally ill. The thing is, there have been a grand total of four humans in the nearly 900 page series so far. And one isn't human anymore. And another might be dead. My icon is actually the first doctor Miss Green encounters, Dr. H.M. Phage, T.E. Very grotesque, dark, and morbid, but if you can stomach it, it's a great read. I finished the whole thing in less than 4 days. So good. Very off-the-wall humor and iconic, memorable characters. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
daveb Posted April 2, 2019 Share Posted April 2, 2019 On 3/31/2019 at 9:13 AM, daveb said: On 3/29/2019 at 3:49 AM, Luftschlosseule said: started with The Magnificent Nine. It appears that I read through 2/3 of the book in one sitting because I liked it so much and only stopped as I was too tired. Looking forward to read on! I managed to pick it up yesterday. Not sure when I will get around to reading it. Maybe after I finish my current book (The Truth About Animals by Lucy Cooke - nonfiction science stuff). I just started it (about 1 page in  ) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Luftschlosseule Posted April 2, 2019 Share Posted April 2, 2019 6 hours ago, daveb said: I just started it (about 1 page in  ) Yay!  I am currently re-reading The Cruel Prince and will be starting the Wicked King in the near future. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Lunala Posted April 3, 2019 Share Posted April 3, 2019 Yesterday read this book about a bunch of animals but it was really predictable and I knew exactly what characters would probably die... and I was right - all the characters I predicted would die did die. Also all the characters kept making really dumb decisions (Eg: Older character: Hey baby lion, DON'T go anywhere near that forest! or you will probably die. Baby Lion: *decides to go to the forest and nearly dies*) so it was lowkey tiring to read but oh well. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
everywhere and nowhere Posted April 5, 2019 Share Posted April 5, 2019 John Vaillant - "The Tiger. A True Story of Vengeance and Survival" I have mentioned several times that I'm a tigermaniac since the age of 2, since I got my first plush tiger and my parents explained to me that this animal is called a tiger. (I remember that at the age of 4 I used to put a striped bathrobe belt in my pants, walk on all fours and pretend that the belt is my tail. At the age of 8 I've been to a museum of a practice which, in my current opinion, should be entirely banned and such a museum certainly shouldn't be open to children - the Hunting Museum in Warsaw's Royal Baths Park - and there was a tiger skin on a wall; I unwrapped a sandwich and put it into its mouth. The warden started screaming that I'm damaging the exhibit, and I said: "But he thanked me". ) The book is about a series of tiger attacks in Russian Far East in the 1990s. They were significant because they were unlike a typical tiger attack - the tiger seemed to target specific people who had turned to poaching after the collapse of Soviet economy. The book is amazing in its broad perspective - the author covers a wide range of topics, including the victims' life stories, Russian and Soviet history, diverse ecology of the Russian Primorye region (for which he proposes the "seemingly contradictory" term "boreal jungle"), or history of relations between humans and big cats. Contrary to the very male "hunting hypothesis", which claims that hunting had made Man into what he is now (in such a context the outdated and offensive use of the word "man" in the meaning "human" seems very appropriate...), proto-humans were probably rather gatherers and scavengers. Human communities living in primitive conditions - from prehistoric cave painters to tribes of the Kalahari desert, which had spent thousands of years in essentially unchanged conditions - were able to live in peace with dangerous predators and to use the little advantage which their large brains and simple tools gave them without upsetting the balance. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
everywhere and nowhere Posted April 9, 2019 Share Posted April 9, 2019 I have completed the previous one, completed "Manaraga" by Vladimir Sorokin (a somewhat grotesque novel about the future where people no longer read physical books, but an illegal practice of food grilled on books develops. I thought I'd enjoy it's "textocentrism", but I didn't like it very much), and now I'm reading a biography of the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenka - "Lukashenka. The unrealised Russian tsar". "Luka" indeed thought that he could repeat his success in Russia, thought that by reintegrating with Russia, he could make Yeltsin appoint him as a successor... This is why Lukashenka hates Putler: after Putler came into play, all his plans flew out the window. All that remains for him is Belarus, a country for which he never cared enough, and the real fear that it could actually get swallowed by Russia. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SpaceDustbin Posted April 9, 2019 Share Posted April 9, 2019 Lord of the Silver Bow by David Gemmell, part 1 of the Troy trilogy. I think I've read it about 6 times before, but it's still good  1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Jetsun Milarepa Posted April 9, 2019 Share Posted April 9, 2019 Noel Fitzpatrick's autobiography . Quote Link to post Share on other sites
AceyMacey Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 Nation by Terry Pratchett. So far so good! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Gazelle Posted April 11, 2019 Share Posted April 11, 2019 Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke, Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple and The Iron Wyrm Affair by Lilith Saintcrow Quote Link to post Share on other sites
daveb Posted April 11, 2019 Share Posted April 11, 2019 23 minutes ago, Gazelle said: The Iron Wyrm Affair by Lilith Saintcrow I like that series. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
everywhere and nowhere Posted April 19, 2019 Share Posted April 19, 2019 Currently: "Yakutsk" by Michał Książek. A very interesting ethnographic reportage, I would say, and it goes far beyond simply acknowledging the "exotics" of a faraway culture. The author is fascinated with the culture of native inhabitants of Yakutia, quotes several words with their complex meanings and shows a kind of peaceful culture clash. (Well, it was not always peaceful because of Russia's fondness for conquest and colonisation - but it was long ago, now the Yakuts both embrace their separate identity and have no desire to split off from Russia.) For example, how Yakutian language has several words for different semantic shades of the terms "path", "way", "track", "journey" - but still adopted the Russian улица as ulussaa because of how a nomadic culture has no equivalent for a term such as "street". By the way, a few words have made a long journey from Yakutian, through Russian, to Polish. For example balaghan was the term for a kind of tent. In Russian it came to mean "hovel" and later "mess" and entered Polish in the latter meaning. Some time ago, when reading the novel "They shall drown in their mothers' tears" by Johannes Anyuru (in which a young woman claims to come from the future, in which Sweden, after a terrorist attack, became an anti-Muslim totalitarian system), I learned that the same word was also adapted from Russian and/or Polish by Eastern European Jews. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
kiaroskuro Posted April 19, 2019 Share Posted April 19, 2019 1 hour ago, Nowhere Girl said: I learned that the same word was also adapted from Russian and/or Polish by Eastern European Jews. Actually, it's one of the most well-known or recognisable Hebrew words outside of Israel, or so it seems to me. It means 'mess' or 'chaos' or something along these lines. I always thought it was a Polish word that entered the Hebrew language via Yiddish, I didn't know about its Russian-Turkish roots. Interesting! 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Emily Dialga Watson Posted April 20, 2019 Share Posted April 20, 2019 I'm currently re-reading the Skulduggery Pleasant series by Derek Landy. I fell in love with it in high school and goddess knows how many times I have read it since then. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Forest Spirit Posted April 20, 2019 Share Posted April 20, 2019 Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I've read his other book, Homo Deus, before that and really like both of them. Usually I'm more into fantasy, sci-fi recently or old classics but they're well researched and make you think about a lot of stuff and see certain topics from different (new) perspectives. It doesn't divide everything into black and white either so it's still up to the reader what messages, ideas, ecc. they take with them. And I know it was very popular when it came out but I apparently live in a cave when in comes to 'what's popular at the moment'  Edit: I didn’t even know that they were making a series of Good Omens... I really live in a cave ^facepalm^ Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Urishir Posted April 20, 2019 Share Posted April 20, 2019 Went to pick up my parents from train station but train was late and i was early so ended up buying donald duck paperback to pass the time with, cant even remember the last time  Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Lady Constellation Posted April 20, 2019 Share Posted April 20, 2019 I'm working on The Book Thief right now. It's a classic, and very good from where I am. 3 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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