Life In 19x19

I've always read a lot of books. When I was a kid, I read a lot of Clifford The Big Red Dog, The Bearenstein Bears, and other childhood favorites. Then, this is the funny part, I started reading books by mature authors in middle school, like Stephen King, and Dean Koontz. And then in high school I switched back to teen novels. Seems backwards to me now that I think about it.

But some of my favorite books are:
1. Harry Potter
I've read the first five books 14 times apiece. Literally. And of course I've read the other two.

2. Percy Jackson
3. The Dark Tower series
4. Dragon Rider
5. The Green Mile

Currently I've rediscovered Jerry Spinelli and am reading Eggs.

I read extensively; mostly non-fiction. It's my only vice (although Go may yet move into that category).

While history and science in general are high on my list, for the past few years I have been focusing primarily on the Enlightenment era (circa 1640-1820), including the political science/philosophy of that period: Voltaire, John Locke, Thomas Paine, Leibniz, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Rousseau, etc.

I used to hate reading when I was a kid. Now, I love reading. I think it is all because of my kindle. I read about one fiction book a week or so now. I have been reading the books that I always wanted to read but never did. A lot of them are movies I saw and liked. I am kind of a fan of sci-fi, fantasy, and dystopian novels. I just finished the Running Man, and am now reading 2001. I read through all the Song of Ice and Fire series and am eagerly waiting the next book.

Jordus wrote:Can you believe that they closed the only big bookstore(Walden's) in town? It is like the city is encouraging illiteracy...

No offense, but it is Hemet, CA after all.

oh, this is a cool thread. Reading is great!

Fantasy is certainly one of my favs. I prefer the gritty so I'm a big fan of Martin, Erikson and Donaldson.
As far as classics, I constantly find myself going back to Yasunari Kawabata. Even in translation his genius is profound. If I were to learn japanese, he would probably be my number one reason. Also love short stories, Flannery O'connor blows my mind.
Oh and Lovecraft, great stuff, somewhere between classics and dark fantasy .

Nonfiction is great too. I used to read more philosophy, but a lot of it's kind of dry. Though a wicked sweet book I recommend is 'The Conscious Mind' by David Chalmers. It's pretty out there. I just, finally read 'Guns Germs and Steel.' That was an excellent book. And to bring up a conversation from 2010 (as I read through the thread), I like Richard Dawkins' first big book 'The Selfish Gene.' It's a really neat perspective and not too much 'fundamentalist atheist' stuff. It's really just a neat and clever science book.

And Go books. I'm pretty new to them actually, in fact I'm only on my first. It's Sakata Eio's 'Modern Joseki and Fuseki.' It's been really interesting to study and has helped my game a lot. Even though a lot of the fuseki's aren't seen as much these days, I've gotten a better idea of what kind of shapes and moyos to think about during my early moves.

So to answer your question, yes I regularly read non-go books

I read quite a lot. mostly fiction. My favorites are the Tolkien books. I've yet to read the Hobbit, but i've read Lord Of The Rings and the Silmarillion which is easily my favourite book. Recently I've been reading a lot of Robert Jordan. I'm currently trying to power through all 13 Wheel Of Time books before the final book comes out early next year....

I used to be heavily into fantasy novels (anything from Harry Potter to lesser known ones like Ursula K. Leguin's Earthsea series), although recently I've been reading a lot of non-fiction. The great thing about non-fiction is it strikes a good balance between coming out of it feeling accomplished and just kicking back.
I've started to miss fiction lately, though... Now that I think about it, it's been months since I read anything with a real plot development.

quote wrote:I used to be heavily into fantasy novels (anything from Harry Potter to lesser known ones like Ursula K. Leguin's Earthsea series), although recently I've been reading a lot of non-fiction. The great thing about non-fiction is it strikes a good balance between coming out of it feeling accomplished and just kicking back.
I've started to miss fiction lately, though... Now that I think about it, it's been months since I read anything with a real plot development.

For great plot development you need go no farther than the Malkovich games! Particularly since you are such a fan of fantasy...

Linokai wrote:I'm currently trying to power through all 13 Wheel Of Time books before the final book comes out early next year....

Haha, same here. Well, in my case it's more like "slowly meandering." I started at the beginning of this year (maybe as late as February), and am on book 8 now.

I can't wait for January 8! (Or whenever A Memory of Light comes out, if they change the date)

LocoRon wrote:Haha, same here. Well, in my case it's more like "slowly meandering." I started at the beginning of this year (maybe as late as February), and am on book 8 now.

I can't wait for January 8! (Or whenever A Memory of Light comes out, if they change the date)

nice to see other WOT fans here. i actually still have to read one or two last published books, but enjoyed the monumental series pretty much.

currently rereading Hobbit. maybe i'll go through the complete Tolkien, it's been some time since i'd read his books

I meander in my non-Go reading: SF … Crime … SF … Thriller … SF … general Novel … SF … contemporary Novel.

Go stuff I read parallel to these, and usually several books at a time since often I can’t continue with one b/c it seems so dry. But switching from one book to the other enables me to keep read reading Go stuff w/o getting bored.

Yes, I most certainly read non-go books! I love the Harry Potter series, I've read the whole series like seven or eight times now, they're awesome. The Ender series was amazing as well, but apparently I've only read a few of the books in the series...I didn't realize that there were so many books to read. I read Twilight and really liked it and I NEED to get started on the rest of the series. Alex Rider is great as well, I've read all of the books in that series. I love Maximum Ride, such an amazing series. The last book, Nevermore, is coming out in August and I'm so excited!!! Also, the Hunger Games series is really cool. Dan Brown is awesome as well. Yeah so I mostly read fiction haha.

I especially read non-go books. I'll read just about anything although I have a preference for fantasy genre books. I've recently enjoyed reading books written by the author Malcolm Gladwell.
My favorite one Was 'Outliers'.It examines how a person's environment, in conjunction with personal drive and motivation, affects his or her possibility and opportunity for success.

I go through spurts of reading. I probably spend about 3 months a year reading, but for those 3 months I go through a novel very few days. I read mostly Sci-fi, and a little fantasy. I just finished Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind. It took me 4 days to get through the 800 pages. I also read through The Lord of the Rings about once a year. There is so much depth in that book every time I read it I come away with something new.

I read more novels than Go books!

Lately I've averaged about one per week (iBooks really makes it easy to pick up exactly the kind of novel you're in the mood for). My preferred genres vary widely and change frequently. For a long while it was almost exclusively high fantasy and more recently it's been spy novels (stuff like Daniel Silva's books, in spite of the heavy stereotypes he likes to employ). May pick up something dealing with medieval/ancient warfare to augment a work project and brush up on my related vocabulary next.

I do not own a TV set, however!