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The 'Currently Reading' Thread.


Guest Refuse Matt M

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I can get on board with that.. I'll give it a go.

 

Currently reading Old Man's War. It's a really fun and well written action sci fi thing. Not my regular kind of book but picked it up on a recommendation. So whilst I'm not rushing to continue the series after this first book is finished, at the same time it is also damn good for what it is so I'd be surprised if I don't eventually come back to them.

 

I recently read Ready Player One and it was tremendous. I really think it would appeal to a lot of folk on here. Set in a near future where a global energy crisis has made the real world an intolerable shit hole, and everyone spends all their time in a VR video game world. The aspergers billionaire shut-in who made the VR game dies and leaves ownership of the simulation and all his money to whoever manages to find an Easter egg he has hidden in it. All the clues relate to 80s pop culture. The plucky underdog gamers race to find the egg before the hired goons of the evil corporation who want to ruin the VR world by monetizing it and filling it with advertising.

Edited by Chest Rockwell
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Old Man's War is such a brilliant book, as is Ready Player One - great choices, Chest.

 

I'd also recommend from a Sci-fi point of view the Expanse series - Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey - has recently been made into a TV series (that I am yet to watch).

 

Ender's Game is good as well. 

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I recently read Ready Player One and it was tremendous. I really think it would appeal to a lot of folk on here. Set in a near future where a global energy crisis has made the real world an intolerable shit hole, and everyone spends all their time in a VR video game world. The aspergers billionaire shut-in who made the VR game dies and leaves ownership of the simulation and all his money to whoever manages to find an Easter egg he has hidden in it. All the clues relate to 80s pop culture. The plucky underdog gamers race to find the egg before the hired goons of the evil corporation who want to ruin the VR world by monetizing it and filling it with advertising.

Read that earlier this year, it's good fun and I agree that a lot of people on here will enjoy it. I'm intrigued how they're going to turn it into a film.

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I really enjoyed it. Being a kids book, it was easy to read and even easier to get absorbed in. Recommend it for you or your kids. My daughter's ten. I think she's a bit young for it. Although she reads a lot of Jacqueline Wilson and they are pretty heavy themselves.

Well done for keeping her engaged with her reading, it's not easy nowadays with the abundance of other technologies.

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Finally got round to reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Enjoying it immensely; it's been holding my attention a lot more than other books I've read in recent years.

 

In all honesty, I'm a bit exasperated at myself; I've been reading so little recently, when it used to be almost all I'd do in my spare time in my younger years. Having a publisher for a father kind of makes it even worse. 

 

I strongly suspect it's down to all the social media I was reading while studying for a digital marketing diploma I was doing. The brain tends to re-structure its synapses and neurons to make regular tasks easier, and I think mine's gone and done just that to enable me to consume streams of small snippets of information - I've found I can't concentrate on long tracts of text for long enough to read properly. I'll find myself halfway through a paragraph, and, like a bloody magpie, I'll suddenly be distracted by something else.

 

I'm determined to get my ability to read properly back, as it's something I value highly, so I'm glad I've found a book that's actually gripping my imagination enough to help get me back on track.

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I've just finished reading the bell jar on my business trip (I've only ever read 3 proper books in my life and all have been on business trips in the last year or so).

 

It was an amazing book and I found it much more relatable in style and character and felt empathy and a connection with the character far more than catcher in the rye.

 

So anyway I've read The Bell Jar, A clockwork orange (both absolutely fantastic and very much enjoyed) and Catcher in the rye (which didn't do it for me).

On that, and with what may appear to be a theme I hadn't noticed untill i typed this up showing, can anyone recommend something for next time?

 

Edit: I would also be keen to get the bell jar as an audio book if anyone can hook it up for me.

Edited by Tommy!
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Not as modern, but I think you'd enjoy Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero Of Our Time. Generally considered to be the first Russian novel (until that point, pretty much all Russian literature had been poetry). One of my favourite books ever. The main character, Pechorin, is a young soldier who spends his time living the good life, and seducing and abandoning a string of women. It's basically a commentary on the generation of the time (i.e. the Napoleonic era) being comprised of young people who waste their energy and talent on frivolity.

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