Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic 50 Book Challenge

Haha, Gosh I'm so slow...

I finally finished my first book. "Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment" It was a cute action/fantasy/mystery. There is a sequel out right now and indeed the book does end in a cliff hanger. I gave it a 3 1/2 out of 5. Just because it wasn't my favorite book ever but it was pretty decent. I recommend it. It is a very light read and very entertaining.

Next book on my list: Enders Game (maybe if I can get the book from the person who is letting me borrow it)

You'll love 'Ender's Game'! And don't miss the sequels. The style of the novels is very different, but they're good anyway. And, while you're at it, I'd recommend you to read 'Ender's Shadow' directly after 'Ender's Game'. It explains a lot of what's going on behind the scenes.

Ooh! Ender's Game is my absolute favorite! And I have the entire series too, including "First Meetings in the Ender-verse."

The girl I am borrowing it from hasn't gotten it to me yet, so instead I'm currently reading "Dragon Flight" by Anne McCaffery. I read it a long long time ago but had forgotten most of it. I think I'm going to take on her Pern series for part of the book challenge.

Yay! Pern! My dad has the whole series, and I recently read from Dragonsdawn straight through to The Skies of Pern--again.

I just finished this today. I don't know why my reading has fallen off so much in the last year. For the first 26 years of my life, I read voraciously. Then suddenly I just didn't want to so much anymore. It feels very odd.

I enjoyed this book a lot. It's really two stories, the first about the creation of the World's Fair in 1893, the second about a serial killer who was operating in Chicago at the time. For a history lover like me, it was a really fascinating read. Like Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit, it is a nonfiction book that reads like a work of fiction.

Yes, Pern is great! *sigh* Wish I owned them. I borrowed tham back then. But never, *never* try to play the game "Dragonriders of Pern". It's not worth its name.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=jojo_da_crow

To show my current progress. I'm on book #6.

It took me a while but once I discovered ebooks my reading has sped up quite a bit. Here is a nice site for those of you wanting to read a bit. Part of it is in Russian but there are a ton of english books on there:

http://fictionbook.ru/

I'm on book 4?

1. Eragon
2. Romance novel
3. Shorter romance novel.
4. A Hundred Orcs by RA Salvatore

At 3pm this afternoon, I finally finished my second book of the year: Anna Karenina.

It was so ridiculous--it took me two months to read it! That's the longest it's ever taken me to read ANYTHING. Before, the longest it had taken me to read a book was two WEEKS, and that was Little Women!

But wow . . . I finally finished it. Now I can read something else!

I think it's going to be something thinner, and more modern this time--then I won't have to think so much while I'm reading, just to be able to understand the plot and the characters' thoughts.

Two down . . . forty-eight to go.

I'm still on #7. Hahaha! I really need to get my butt in gear.

Really? Oh, wait, sorry. My mind went somewhere else. At least Jojo will understand that one.

JDG! Jojo's not the only one . . .

And while I'm still here, I might as well say that I put up a review of Anna Karenina in my library at LibraryThing. It's more of a rant than a review, but it's all I could think of to say about the book itself.

Whoow I really don't know how one would ever get to read 50 books in a year.. (I'm a very slow reader...)

I've read about 5 books now and about 3 of them were because I had to for university (we have to read literature in several languages, which I don't really like, so next year I´m only going to take dutch, english and latin classes instead of dutch, english, latin, greek, french AND german )

Ok, well, most of em aren't in english, but in case you might be interested;;

1. Want Dit Is Mijn Lichaam - Renate Dorrestein
2. Crazy - Benjamin Lebert
3. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
4. Het Gouden Ei - Tim Krabbé
5. Burnt Toast - Teri Hatcher (I finally bought it, started reading it yesterday )

Selinde

Selinde, could you translate those Dutch titles so that we could maybe get an idea what the books are about by the titles? That would be really interesting, I think.

I used to read tons. Not so much anymore. Now I work, and with travel time, I only have about 4 hours available on weekdays. And I have no library to go to (I'm not in school anymore, and I'm not going through the trouble of stopping somewhere).

Also, I've become pickier, I think, more willing to just put down and book and not pick it back up if I don't like it. I've always been the type to re-read books, and I still do, though not as much as I once did, because now I read less fanfic and fiction, and more message boards and the like.

I've probably read 14 books this year, some of them several times over. But all 14 were part of kids' series, so they probably don't count. I have an affinity for Australian kids' shows and I like kid's fantasy novels, too.

I read fiction. Fantasy, mostly - especially the swords & sorcery variety, but other types of fantasy, too. I like to watch science-fiction more than fantasy when it comes to movies and television, but prefer to read fantasy over sci-fi. I'm not a big fan of dark and gritty and people being mutilated (much). And I want the good guys to win. I want the heroes to be good, if flawed - I don't like anti-heroes. I do like romance in my books (though I'm perfectly fine without it), but I don't like triangles. It's hard to find fantasy I like for two reasons: firstly, the grittier stuff seems more popular, and secondly, I've gotten to where I'm afraid to buy a book, having bought several that I quit reading 30 pages in.

I like books where good people, heroes, are brave and strong and work hard and triumph over evil and save the innocents. And I like books where people who aren't so good learn to be and become better. And I like a bit of magic tossed in.

JDG:

I'm glad people are still doing this. I am honestly reading a lot of fanfiction lately. I should really start counting some of those as books since they are as long as a novel. *sigh*

~Jojo, who has a tendancy to go back and reread fics that she loves over and over again.

Wheeee I just typed a whole lot of stuff here and then it just kind of crashed and now I don't want to do it all over again

So I'll keep it really short;

"Want dit is mijn lichaam" ("Because this is my body"); about a disabled woman whose father remarries a woman (girl, rather) that is about as old as his grandson.

"Het Gouden Ei" ("The Golden Egg"); about a couple that goes on vacation and the woman disappears. Years later, her killer comes back and asks the man whether he wants to know how his girlfriend was killed. He kills him the same way. (kind of creepy, I know )

Btw, I'm looking for some new books to read. Are there any books that are really cool/interesting/beautiful/funny/whatever that really should be read? Please tell!

Ok and now I'm gonna ctrl+c this BEFORE I post it, so that if the pc crashes again I won't have to type it all over again

My recommendations:

Anything by Orson Scott Card that you can possibly get your hands on--he's my favorite author. He writes mostly fantasy/sci-fi, but he's also written bible/scripture/religion-based fiction.

Anything by Anne McCaffrey, especially the Dragonriders of Pern series. There are two orders in which you can read that series: 1) in chronological story order, starting with Dragonsdawn, or 2) in publication order, starting with Dragonflight.

I also like the Song of Ice and Fire cycle by George R. R. Martin and the King's Blades series by Dave Duncan.

The DragonLance series is also good, provided you don't get into the Fifth Age.

And since I just finished reading it, I might as well recommend Anna Karenina.

Also, Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip is good too.

Ah, what the hey, just look at my library . Any of the books/authors there that I haven't already mentioned which have either reviews, ratings, or both listed in my catalogue, are the ones I like the best.

Thanks, DSDrangon!
That'll keep me busy for a while