Thread: What are You Reading?

Couldn't tell you exactly when, but I was once a non fiction devotee, now it is primarily fiction with the occasional non fiction, the latest non fiction, about a month ago, was The Elephant Whisperer, My Life with the Herd in the African Wild by Lawrence Anthony with Graham Spence

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

I read 4 hrs a day at least,5 books per week.never fiction.

Heart of Darkness seemed to bypass some of my usual routes for understanding fiction....it was a disturbing short novel on a subconscious level.....Nabokov is another author who wrote in his second language (not his third) in an extraordinary way.

Originally Posted by diesel

I finished this yesterday and whilst it only took two sittings the house was rowdy and I had feared I was missing something which has prompted me to buy a cheap audio book from iTunes to listen to in the van to see if having it read to me changes my mind (Marlow's instant just add water relationship with Kurtz was causing me difficulty) . As a bonus it has a reading of "Youth" which is a great yarn and I am now inspired to read that and pretty much everything else he has written. So thanks WW243 for your post as he wasn't on my radar as a must read and who knows when I would have got around to him if ever.

Originally Posted by WW243

Heart of Darkness seemed to bypass some of my usual routes for understanding fiction....it was a disturbing short novel on a subconscious level.....Nabokov is another author who wrote in his second language (not his third) in an extraordinary way.

I had read that short story in University and wasn't taken with it, read it again several weeks ago and it still doesn't quite resonate with me.

My biggest surprise several weeks ago was reading Rudyard Kipling's, "The Man Who Would be King", another novella, wish it had never ended!

My wife reads nothing but Fiction is addicted to,Baldacchi (sp),I just finished a tome about Soviet prisoners in the death camps of Germany
Just started a book about the Ford family and Henry ford,would rather learn somthing factual than fiction,just my way.

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

My wife reads nothing but Fiction is addicted to,Baldacchi (sp),I just finished a tome about Soviet prisoners in the death camps of Germany
Just started a book about the Ford family and Henry ford,would rather learn somthing factual than fiction,just my way.

Book I finished awhile ago was one of he best reads I had in a long time, non-fiction, so you may have read it, Richard Rhodes, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". Was incredibly absorbing.

Originally Posted by Phrank

Book I finished awhile ago was one of he best reads I had in a long time, non-fiction, so you may have read it, Richard Rhodes, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". Was incredibly absorbing.

I did read it, great book

One does read factual things reading fiction, facts about the human condition. Facts are not the sole ownership of non fiction. Further, non fiction often is simply the view of one person and their interpretation of earlier 'facts' and so on......

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

My wife reads nothing but Fiction is addicted to,Baldacchi (sp),I just finished a tome about Soviet prisoners in the death camps of Germany
Just started a book about the Ford family and Henry ford,would rather learn somthing factual than fiction,just my way.

I just finished a short story called The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman. Very interesting and not what I expected.

Originally Posted by Leatherstockiings

I just finished a short story called The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman. Very interesting and not what I expected.

I like the "Very interesting and not what I expected."

That's always fun!

Originally Posted by WW243

One does read factual things reading fiction, facts about the human condition. Facts are not the sole ownership of non fiction. Further, non fiction often is simply the view of one person and their interpretation of earlier 'facts' and so on......

Reading is such an individual thing I believe it completely depends on the person doing the reading. I agree with you that when I read fiction I do a lot of thinking about what the author/book say about us as people and societies. But that's probably from my background as an historian and my experience wringing meaning out of all kinds of sources during periods when "factual" documents are absent. Others with different interests, backgrounds, experiences, and approaches to reading will get very different things from reading the same text. I like that. Life would be awfully boring if we saw everything in the same light.