The Book Thread

[potare]

The hitch hikers guide to the galaxy

[Caym]

Remembrance of Things Past  comes in at 1.5m words.  
Shakespeare's plays (his plays only, not including his sonnets) stands at 928,913.
Warand Peace stands proud at 560,000.
The Brothers Karamazov is a mere 366,653 .
Ulysses stands at a comparatively anemic 265,000.
Uncle Tom's Cabin is a measly 180,242.

This comes to a total word count of 3,800,808. This doesn't include any of Tom Stoppard's plays, or Plato or Kafka or John Fowles or "who knows what else".

The higher end reading speed for an English speaking adult is 250 words per minute (a higher speed is not possible for any length of time owing to impaired information acquisition). Assuming you were achieving this high end reading speed, and assuming you were locked in a room and were reading non-stop for 24 hours a day, without pause, without sleep, without food, those 3,800,808 words would have taken you 15,203 minutes, or 253 hours, or just under 11 days.


Yet you managed to do this while working, and while reading a lot else, in just 14 days. Amazing.

I think he meant to say he read the Cliff Notes. Or possibly the Cliff Notes' summaries.

[Jekkar]

Just a quick reminder to all the posters in this thread: this is the Hydlaa Plaza forum, the superpower skills your character possesses in order for them to read 4 million words in 2 weeks should not conflict with the real life matters we post here.

[Catlemur]

Buy and read any H.P.Lovecraft and E.A.Poe book you can find.
You are welcome.

[Jekkar]

Buy and read any H.P.Lovecraft and E.A.Poe book you can find.
You are welcome.

Seconded on Lovecraft.

[Mekora]

Fav. Kids books?

Black Beauty
Harry Potter
Dracula
Count of Monte Cristo (shorter edition)

[bilbous]

The Shockwave Rider
Stand On Zanzibar
Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch
A Scanner Darkly
Battle Circle Trilogy
Omnivore Trilogy
"The Stone God Awakens" and "The Wind Whales Of Ishmael" by Philip Jose Farmer

So many more....

[Sarras Volcae]

  pretty sure dracula isn't a kid's book

i liked the redwall series, his dark materials, harry potter, the hobbit, and those narnia books... that's all i recall.

[Dracaeon]

I feel somewhat in-between these epic classics and much younger books, but I stand proudly with Orson Scott Card, Isaac Asimov, Tolkien, Robin Hobb, and, of course, Terry Pratchett.

[Roled]

   Oh ye of little reading ability! Have ye no faith?   


No not cliff notes- I've actually never read cliff notes for anything I can remember....
and I admit I had read Brothrs K and W&P before, in high school, so those went pretty fast.. 
Stoppard is a page turner,     as are willie's plays, and since my previous job had been at a summer shakespeare theatre I skimmed through most of those except Troilus and Cresida, why anyone would want to read that, I have no idea, it's unintelligible to modern readers...

And
I make no claims for remembering anything really except Ulysses, probably because of the sex. 


RR
Hydlaa bookworm and rl nerd

[Marathal]

Hmm.  I keep a running list of the books I read and in going through it, I thought the following were pretty good:

Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Don't Lets Go To the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Harry Potter, LOTR and Chronicles of Narnia series.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon

There are others I think are good, but it would make this list too long.

[Elkarway]

Hmm.  I keep a running list of the books I read and in going through it, I thought the following were pretty good:

Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Don't Lets Go To the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Harry Potter, LOTR and Chronicles of Narnia series.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon

There are others I think are good, but it would make this list too long.

Anything by Ken Follett is amazing.  I'd read his puke

[echong]

the fountainhead
johnny got his gun
slaughterhouse five
siddhartha
catch-22
watership down
the divine comedy
for whom the bell tolls
einstein's dreams
out of the silent planet
a stranger in a strange land
metamorphoses
a brief history of time and the universe in a nutshell
the riftwar saga
the ender series

[Drey]

At last a decent thread is revived! Or reincarnated at least. Maybe a slightly bland list to some - but unless it's star wars (old republic) or swords and magic based I probably won't read it.

Already mentioned but simply the best fantasy author around, Steven Erikson... Seriously, people need to have read mbotf, (As well as Ian Cameron Esslemont's contributions). 

Brandon Sanderson, who as most that care will know is finishing up WoT, his Mistborn Trilogy is brilliant though

The Black Magician trilogy by Trudi Canavan, as well as it's prequel book and sequel series (I've heard good things about her Age of Five series too).

Scott Lynch, Over Christmas I read: The Lies of Locke Lamora + Red Seas Under Red Skies. Meant to be a 7 part series but he has 'issues', so we'll see. Shame if more don't come out though. Medieval type setting + con artists.

Brent Weeks' Night Angel trilogy, two thumbs up. Have not had the time for black prism yet.

Nathan Fillion fans should get hold of the Castle spin off books too!

Plus so many more I'm too lazy to right about.

As for hitchhikers I'd recommend the originals over the books.

I'm going on holiday on Sunday, I'll either be reading Sanderson's Way of Kings, Weeks' Black Pirsm or making a start on Joe Abercrombie's trilogy depending on what the book shops are willing to sell me.

[Koios]

I love to read. I've found good reads in many books and there's really nothing like being completely engulfed by the story of a great book.
Some of the books I can recommend (some others have as well, but worth re-mentioning):

C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia
Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy
Kafka's The Trial
Francesco Colonna's Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream (to spark curiosity if you're not sure you want to read it: The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason)
Jules Verne's Mathias Sandorf
J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels
John Grisham's The Innocent Man (his fiction novels are also great, but this nonfiction really got to me)
Jo Nesbø's The Harry Hole novels
Tom Egeland's Circle's End, Guardians of the Covenant & Gospel of Lucifer (unnamed novel series)

I could go on and on, but I'll leave it there for now