Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
nutjob
Trad climber
Berkeley, CA
|
|
|
Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 8, 2010 - 01:20am PT
|
Post up yours....
I've got a bunch I picked up over the years from yard sales, thrift stores, library discards, a few as gifts, etc. It's not that I'm lazy (which may or may not be true depending on your perspective), but I like to have future reading to look forward to. Sometimes it takes years before I get there, but I generally get there. I read 800 pages of Atlas Shrugged before putting it down at "the speech" and picked it up a few years later and had to start over because I forgot the plot details (but I remembered the underlying philosophies). It took me about 3 years to get past the first 5 pages of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. I went so far as to use a notecard as a bookmark, and whenever I hit a word I didn't know, I looked it up in a fat dictionary and wrote it down on the notecard. Still took me a few years to get into it, but I'll never lose the opportunity to use "eleemosinary" in a sentence now. (Note to Supertopo staff: update your dictionary because it gives me the red quigglies for that one). Anyways, it just gives me pleasure to look at my bookshelf and say "oh yes my pretty, I'll get to you one day."
So here are some fav's from my list:
 Paradise Lost and Other Poems (John Milton)
The Iliad (Homer)
Beginnings of Modern Science (Boynton)
War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau
Letters from Hawaii (Mark Twain)
Chaos and Fractals: New Frontiers of Science (Peitgen, Jurgens, & Saupe)
A Brief History of Time (Stephen Hawking)
David Copperfield (Charles Dickens)
Chess Praxis (Nimzowitsch) - I need a chessboard to read this, can't do it in my head
The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli) - I've read 25% a few times, haven't finished yet
Inferno (Dante) - I don't have the whole Divine Comedy but will get there some day
In the mean time, I keep picking up my guilty pleasures of old Tom Clancy warmonger books, and now getting into the prolific adventure novelist Wilbur Smith. At some point I pushed myself a bit to read books I wasn't really committed to, sort of like taking medicine, but now I just wait til the urge strikes me or the need to procrastinate is large.
|
|
Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
|
|
Then there is the flip side: What about the books (some of which are pure trash) that you've read over and over again while all those literary masterpieces sit unread?
Talk about guilty pleasures.
|
|
ß Î Ø T Ç H
climber
|
|
A voyage for madmen, Peter Nichols (sailing non-fiction) I haven't read books for many years.
|
|
pocoloco1
Social climber
The Chihuahua Desert
|
|
critique of pure reason-kant
|
|
Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
|
|
As an arctic exploration buff I've recently come into possession of a first edition of
The United States Grinnell Expedition-In Search of Sir John Franklin by Elisha Kane, MD, USN 1857
The binding is a little worn and there is some light mold on the backs and borders
of some of the plates although the plates look pristine. It has many plates of stunning quality.
I am afraid to open it flat enough to read it. I should probably just buy the
paperback version to read and use mine to look at the plates.
|
|
Disaster Master
Social climber
Born in So-Cal, left my soul in far Nor-Cal.
|
|
JimThornburgs new climbing pic book, got itfrom him tonight!
|
|
Acer
Big Wall climber
AZ
|
|
Harry Potter - All
Lord of the Rings - All
I am safe now that the movies came out. ;)
|
|
Fletcher
Trad climber
from the place of breath
|
|
Too many to count... but I have three small kids as an excuse! Actually, I buy books and know that when their time is right for me to read them, I will. Maybe in a day, maybe in years. But their time usually does come.
Shite! This includes a few Tami books....!!!!! No need to be sent, I will go to the car right now! har har.
Eric
|
|
Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
|
|
Alan Greenspan's book
Poco, get the cliff notes. Way better read.
|
|
Fletcher
Trad climber
from the place of breath
|
|
I have read the Lord of the Rings Books as well as the Hobbit. The movies are well done, but the books are another experience altogether. Worth revisiting. My daughter has read the LoTR books several times and in her geekier moments could speak some Elvish.... but those days are past now!
Harry Potter... read the first one when same daughter insisted when she was about 10 or so (she also compelled me to read Tolkien). I am saving the other Harry Potter's to read them along with the three younger kids as they grow up and the books become age appropriate.
|
|
Fletcher
Trad climber
from the place of breath
|
|
Herodotus is awesome. He tells some odd tales, very strange and interesting stuff. I would have liked to try his Scotch. I'm guilty of only reading excerpts of him back when I was Classics major in college.
Eric
|
|
Bad Acronym
climber
Little Death Hollow
|
|
Whatever that last 1000-page Thomas Pynchon book was. I remember reading "Gravity's Rainbow" in my twenties, and realizing after 5 weeks that it was just a 800-something-page dick joke. On me.
|
|
Spider Savage
Mountain climber
SoCal
|
|
1001 Nights and a Night, Sir Richard Burton Translation
Old Testament, NIV, DONE (excellent if viewed as Sci-Fi)
New Testament, NIV
Koran (need a better copy with larger type)
Book of the Mormon
I'm just too busy reading Action Sci-Fi & Cowboy novels
Harry Potter was very GUD. The movies are only so-so.
Lord of the Rings, The movies are good, the books are only so-so.
|
|
Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
|
|
Also defeated by Gravity's Rainbow at about age 25. I remember thinking reading it was harder than reading a James Joyce novel. Which leads to my other remembered literary defeat: Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
|
|
nutjob
Trad climber
Berkeley, CA
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 8, 2010 - 11:23am PT
|
Ooh, full-on literary defeats... I didn't properly consider that:
Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky). I started about 16 years ago, didn't get into it, and lost track of the book.
Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky). I read the first half a year ago and really enjoyed it, but it was overdue to the library, and I didn't check it out again. Now I'll have to start over again some day when I think of it. Would be easier if I kept a copy around. We have Anna Karenina in the house, but it's in Italian and I'm not going to be ready for that in the next decade.
Russians 2, Nutjob 0. I'll catch up some day.
|
|
SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
|
|
Obama's War Woodward
Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant
Tasting Freedom Biddle and Dubin
Yellow Dirt Pasternak
Hiroshima in America Lifton and Mitchell and. . .
Climbing Tales of Terror, by Tami (get back in the car) Knight!!!!
|
|
Batrock
Trad climber
Burbank
|
|
By Motor to the Golden Gate by Emily Post
About here trip across the United States by automobile in 1915 with her son.
|
|
em kn0t
Trad climber
isle of wyde
|
|
How to Climb 5.12 by Eric Horst.
I'm saving that one for my dotage...
|
|
Mike Friedrichs
Sport climber
City of Salt
|
|
Naked Lunch. Tried three times and bailed.
Spider, really, Lord of the Rings is only so-so?
|
|
Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
|
|
I inherited hundreds of books plus I keep buying more.
I'll never catch up, but thats all part of loving books.
It is a shame so many libraries are hurting.
One of the hidden downsides of the internet.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!