Community PokeBeach "Book" Club - What Did You Read Today?

Professor Palutena

Professor Palutena

The Queen
Member
Hey everyone,

For those that don't know, I'm a librarian! And I've been talking with people on our Discord (which you should totally join) about what we read and what we like reading.

Reading is so beneficial to mental development regardless of age and regardless of what you read. Therefore, this thread is not specifically about books. Tell me about the cereal boxes you read, the chat rooms you read, the road signs you read, or really anything like that.

And often times, listening goes hand in hand with reading to develop comprehension. Tell us also what you listened to, whether it's some music, an audiobook, a podcast or, again, really anything.

Also be sure to give links to what you submit so that others curious can get other suggestions. I'll keep an index in the OP of everything that PB is reading/listening to.

Thanks friends!
 
This is actually a well-timed thread, because today my Summer homework was set. Next year I'm intending on taking the English Pre-U course at my 6th form level, which is a big step up from the GCSE level English I've just completed. For the non-brits out there, the difference is basically that at GCSE level the books I studied are Lord of the Flies and Frankenstein, both of which I really didn't like because I felt they're written badly. The homework over the Summer as a bridge between the GCSE-level books and the ones we're studying next year is one of the following list:
  • Great Expectations
  • Wuthering Heights
  • Far From the Madding Crowd
  • The Grapes of Wrath
  • The Handmaid's Idea
  • A Handful of Dust
I suppose the question I'm asking is which of these books I should actually read. I don't like Dickens and have started Wuthering Heights and got quite apathetic about it, but I've read Of Mice and Men and actually enjoyed it, so The Grapes of Wrath is a decent choice. But I know nothing about the other 3 books on the list, and was wondering if any of them are actually any good. Which book do you think I should read? :L
 
Lord of the Flies isn't written badly... but I guess that's taste.

Anyway, I don't know if you've read Hardy before (or Elliott), but if you're a fan of realist writers and have a taste for the Victorian, Far From the Madding Crowd is a good pick, albeit not what I'd personally select from the list. The Handmaid's Idea and Dustful I am unfamiliar with, and since you already said you dislike Dickens I'm not gonna point to that direction. I would, however, give Wuthering Heights a second chance. While I read pretty much anything and don't have specific likes or dislikes when it comes to genre, I do have a certain aversion towards romance, especially 19th century stuff, but Wuthering Heights is an exception there. Perhaps not the most realistic book on the subject, but many aren't anyway, and I really like Heathcliff's character, so that would be my own suggestion from your list if you wanna look into a genre you'd generally avoid. Otherwise, Grapes of Wrath has a lot of merits and would make a solid choice.

For my part, I read a lot, but as I'm currently low on cash and out of new material I'd say my "project" for now is Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series, which I pick one volume at a time whenever I have spare money. In general, exploring more abstract concepts of existence is something I'm greatly interested in, and the series as well as the pace I'm reading it (contrary to my usual rapid consumption of hundreds of pages a day) allows me to keep a touch on the subject while allowing me plenty of time to read a lot of different things in between. Being a comic too, and a well-drawn one at that, it also serves as visual enrichment and, at times, distraction.
 
Celever said:
This is actually a well-timed thread, because today my Summer homework was set. Next year I'm intending on taking the English Pre-U course at my 6th form level, which is a big step up from the GCSE level English I've just completed. For the non-brits out there, the difference is basically that at GCSE level the books I studied are Lord of the Flies and Frankenstein, both of which I really didn't like because I felt they're written badly. The homework over the Summer as a bridge between the GCSE-level books and the ones we're studying next year is one of the following list:
  • Great Expectations
  • Wuthering Heights
  • Far From the Madding Crowd
  • The Grapes of Wrath
  • The Handmaid's Idea
  • A Handful of Dust
I suppose the question I'm asking is which of these books I should actually read. I don't like Dickens and have started Wuthering Heights and got quite apathetic about it, but I've read Of Mice and Men and actually enjoyed it, so The Grapes of Wrath is a decent choice. But I know nothing about the other 3 books on the list, and was wondering if any of them are actually any good. Which book do you think I should read? :L
Click to expand...
I'm assuming you mean "The Handmaid's Tale?". Because, as far as I'm aware, The Handmaid's Idea doesn't exist.

But if that's the one you're talking about, yes yes yes pick that one!
 
Huh. Never did I expect something like this, but I'm glad it's here. My summer reading list is in. I've barely read anything I'm on vacation okay, but here's what I've got this summer.

  • The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (Willaim Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer)
  • I'll Give You the Sun (Jandy Nelson)
  • How It Went Down (Kekla Magoon)
  • Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel (Sara Farizan)
I've only gotten into that first one up to this point, so I'll talk about it. It's about a Malawian boy growing up in a small fvillage. Life seems peaceful for the most part. He has his family, cousins, friends, and meer until in 2000their rainy season is so unpredictable and insane that they cannot grow enough maize. This is also a time when their corrupt government had sold the extras in the surplus to try and get rid of some of their debt. As a result, the country was hit with a famine. This is as far as I've gotten.
 
Unfortunately, due mostly to my ADHD being untreated and my Depression making me somewhat apathetic, I haven't been reading nearly as much as I used to. That being said, since getting glasses, reading is a bit easier, and I've been forcing myself to read more.

Typically, I read Facebook, Tumblr posts, and the Discord chat, as well as random news articles. On a good day, I've been working on the Light Novel series Baccano!, which is the source material for my favourite anime. I'm currently on the third volume, called 1931 Express Chapter The Grand Punk Railroad. The fourth volume, 1932 Drugs & Dominos (misspelled on purpose) is available for purchase now, and the fifth is coming out soon, so I need to catch up.

A friend of mine is also writing a fan-fiction piece based on a few of the characters from the series. (It's a multi-chapter one, and it's not one of the "Adult" fanfics).

Oh, and I also read @PMJ's fic Mysteries of the Forgotten Island. Everyone should check it out. It's great. (And no, I wasn't asked to post this)
 
I'm a pretty voracious reader, and most of what I read is sci-fi/fantasy.

I'm currently reading through Malazan Book of the Fallen for the first time. It's a very long, complex, character-driven series (completed!) that is tough to start (it literally throws you into the middle of the action with no explanation) but incredibly rich and rewarding. I'm actually planning on rereading it again shortly after I finish, since apparently it's a very different series the second time around (since you understand everything a bit more fully).

I'm also super psyched to read Thrawn which I picked up in hardcover while in the US though haven't yet started (due to being in the middle of Malazan). I've been a huge fan of the Star Wars expanded universe since I was a young kid, and I was amazingly happy when Admiral Thrawn was re-canon-ized in the "new" SW universe. And to get a new novel from Zahn himself!

Also @Celever I definitely second Prof. P's suggestion to choose The Handmaid's Tale. It's one of my all-time favourite novels! Margaret Atwood is an amazing author. I really love her Oryx and Crake trilogy as well.
 
Athena said:
I'm a pretty voracious reader, and most of what I read is sci-fi/fantasy.
Click to expand...
Sf/f is my favorite! It's like 90% of what I read, and drives my family crazy, but hey. Sf/f is awesome. :D

... And you've also inspired me to make my first post in this thread! Here's some of what I can recall reading lately––

––At the moment, Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy. The first of five trilogies (fifteen books all told, which is quite a lot) set in the same world, the Farseer Trilogy encompasses Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin's Quest. If you look up the names of some of the other books in her bibliography, they're all very similar, and rather tricky to remember. I can't keep track of any beyond these three. :p Anywho, the Farseer Trilogy, as well as *looks it up* the Tawny Man Trilogy and the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy, is told from the point of view of FitzChivalry Farseer, the bastard son of the former heir to the throne. Without legitimacy, he has no claim to the crown, but he's still privy to all the court intrigues of the castle, and after a time is trained as the king's assassin (in secret, obvs).

––Previously, the first non-sf/f thing I'd read in a while: Joseph Heller's Catch-22. It somewhat disjointedly follows the plotline of John Yossarian, an American bombardier during World War II. It's written as a bit of a satire, and Heller's writing style isn't for everyone, but I found it very comedic. IMO the weirdest part of it is some screwing around with chronology that results in the twelfth chapter taking place at almost the same time as the first one, from almost the same viewpoint. By that point, though, the weird chronology makes enough sense that the reader doesn't feel totally lost.

––Recently-ish, Guy Gavriel Kay's works Tigana and The Summer Tree. I personally never really got into Kay's writing style––it's very much after the style of Tolkien, and while I love and respect his work for what it is, I always found his style of writing to be kinda slow and the characters hard to keep track of, almost like he was writing more for his own benefit than the reader's. Guy Kay is in a lot of ways Tolkien's successor––iirc he assisted in the editing of The Silmarillion––and writes fantasy very much like the legend himself. So, uh, if Tolkien is your thing, I'd totally recommend Guy Gavriel Kay! ^.^

I've also got quite a lot of stuff lined up to read in the near future, as I was rereading one of my favorite series ever starting last year (The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan) and accumulated rather a veritable mountain of stuff I meant to read but couldn't get around to. Wheel of Time, for reference, is a fourteen-volume series with a total word count of nearly 4.5M. :p It's a brilliantly written series, y'all should totally read it, I'd be more than happy to jabber at you for any length of time about it, and I really didn't mean for this paragraph to get onto this track. Mea culpa. So, here's what I've been meaning to read and will likely start once I've finished the Farseer Trilogy (in no particular order):
  • The Black Prism, Brent Weeks
  • Lord Foul's Bane, Stephen Donaldson
  • The Magic of Recluce, L.E. Modesitt
  • The Once and Future King, T.H. White
  • The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
  • The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester
  • The Furies of Calderon, Jim Butcher
I'm currently reading through Malazan Book of the Fallen for the first time. It's a very long, complex, character-driven series (completed!) that is tough to start (it literally throws you into the middle of the action with no explanation) but incredibly rich and rewarding. I'm actually planning on rereading it again shortly after I finish, since apparently it's a very different series the second time around (since you understand everything a bit more fully).
Click to expand...
I've heard a lot about this series! I keep meaning to take a closer look, but haven't found a copy of the book yet. I love books that are more rewarding the second time through; can't wait to hear how it goes. ^.^
Celever said:
I suppose the question I'm asking is which of these books I should actually read. I don't like Dickens and have started Wuthering Heights and got quite apathetic about it, but I've read Of Mice and Men and actually enjoyed it, so The Grapes of Wrath is a decent choice. But I know nothing about the other 3 books on the list, and was wondering if any of them are actually any good. Which book do you think I should read? :L
Click to expand...
I don't love John Steinbeck too much myself (I think a large part of it has to do with the fact that he just doesn't write happy endings ;~; ) but practically all my English teachers swear by him, so I guess I'd second Grapes of Wrath!
 
Jabberwock said:
  • The Once and Future King, T.H. White
Click to expand...

Definitely a good book, and my personal favourite version of the King Arthur mythos.

Jabberwock said:
I've heard a lot about this series! I keep meaning to take a closer look, but haven't found a copy of the book yet. I love books that are more rewarding the second time through; can't wait to hear how it goes. ^.^
Click to expand...

Well, the thing with Malazan is that it's long. Despite the single "book" in the title, there are 20 novels and some novellas. Wikipedia has a list of all of the books. The 10 book series by Erikson is kind of the "core" of the story I guess (and that's 3.3mil words on its own), and then, from what I understand, you want to read Esselmont's novels, and then the trilogies.

I've been reading for a few months and I'm only on book five, Midnight Tides. Overall, I'm highly impressed and each book has been a treat. I especially love that the book is so character-focused. If you're the kind of person who needs to understand everything, it might be frustrating, but the best course of action is simply to take everything in stride and read how things go, even if you can't necessarily keep everything straight or know exactly what's going on.

Personally, the thing that's most jarring to me is how the books kind of jump around. For example, book two, Deadhouse Gates, starts in a completely different area with completely new characters and it kind of threw me for a loop. What happened to the characters from the first book? This is a series, damnit! But, of course it does all connect in the end. Going from one book to the next isn't a linear thing; the story jumps around a bit between different areas and groups of people, and even sometimes to different time periods. As a result, it takes me a bit longer to get into each new book.

A popular opinion that I've seen about Malazan, and one that I'm coming to agree with, is that it's very polarizing; either you love it or you hate it. Some people just have a very difficult time with the style or writing, or can't get into it. Personally, I'm in the "loving it" category, and I'm already looking forward to rereading it! The general consensus is that you should read the first book (or at least halfway through it), and that's generally enough to tell you which category you fall into. Either you'll be absorbed and wanting more, or you'll be bored and frustrated and probably shouldn't bother continuing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top