Who all here doesnt read books?

[TecHNooB]

i havent read a book that wasnt a textbook in years.

 

[T9D]

I never ever read books. Ever. Not for fun.

I read a lot, but it's for knowledge and to learn. It's always personal research on the internet.

 

[Chocu1a]

I have a pretty short attention span.
In my College years I read quite a bit. I owned no tv, or car. So reading was my best outlet.
Now in my early 40's I think the last book I read cover to cover was "I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell". But that is a collection of short stories & essays. maybe that was the key.
That was over a year ago. My wife is constantly getting on me for not reading. She averages a book a week.

 

[Perknose]

I havent read a book since college but for some reason I have started being somewhat interested in reading but I have no clue what is good. I definitely do not want to ready something that has a show like Game of Thrones or a real super long read that is pretty dry. I would be interested in all kinds of books, what are some of the popular books/authors out now?

If you want some light reading that's engaging, well written, lol funny, and goes down easy, I heartily recommend just about anything by Carl Hiaasen.

An excerpt from a review of his latest, "Bad Monkey":

Happily, perhaps goaded by Tom Wolfe's decision to write what was in most respects except length a Carl Hiaasen novel – last year's dark Miami-set farce, Back to Blood – Hiaasen seems to have decided to show us and Wolfe how it should really be done.

From its opening page, there is a confidence, economy and enjoyability to Bad Monkey that give the impression of a writer back in love with his franchise. A couple on a honeymoon deep-sea fishing trip in the Florida Keys reel in a severed arm which, for reasons of policing logistics, comes to be kept in the freezer of Andrew Yancy, a former detective who has been downgraded to the post of restaurant inspector ("roach patrol") after sodomising his married lover's husband with a vacuum cleaner in a fit of passionate jealousy.

Seeing the line-caught arm as a possible leg-up back to the force, Yancy traces the connections to the Bahamas, where vivid characters include Eve Stripling, the widow of the presumed former owner of the shark-nibbled limb, and Neville, a voodoo-obsessed eccentric with a pet monkey which, in a typical Hiaasen flourish, he claims has appeared in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. This pet wrangler is the heir to a local homestead sold to property developers.

People and plot, however, are always secondary to the writer's jauntily barbed narrative voice. The dominant tone is an Amisian (Kingsley and Martin) laconic exaggeration, so that the victim of Yancy's assault "had required some specialised medical care but was more or less ambulatory within a week". The backstories of minor characters are nailed in a phrase: for example, someone who "had made such a killing in the commodities market that he remained revoltingly wealthy after losing two-thirds of his fortune in a divorce". Dialogue sounds screen-ready, with a suspected fraudster pleading: "I've got substance issues … this is not the arc I mapped out for my life."

But the greatest pleasure is the feeling that, through long residency and his journalistic beat, Hiaasen owns this location. Sentences seem to have escaped from an anti-guidebook to Florida. "The typical Key West murder is a drunken altercation over debts, dope or dance partners." Or: "The Miami-Dade morgue had been designed with a contingency for a worst-case airline crash." A condominium Yancy inspects has a "a polyp-shaped swimming pool with a slightly discoloured kiddie pond". Elsewhere, we learn why the cops regard born-again Christians as the most dangerous drivers and the "low-pirate" tricks of sports-fishing crews.

From another review of the same book:

The screaming monkey in a pirate hat on the cover of Carl Hiaasen’s new madcap whodunit makes “Bad Monkey” look like a box of Black Cat fireworks. And that’s entirely appropriate. Set in the “gummy, sucking heat” of south Florida and the Bahamas, the novel’s snappy plot and hysterical one-liners make it a perfect book to cram between herding kids and burning burgers this summer.

“Bad Monkey” opens with all the subtlety of an explosive: “On the hottest day of July, trolling in dead-calm waters near Key West, a tourist named James Mayberry reeled up a human arm. His wife flew to the bow of the boat and tossed her breakfast burritos.” The arm’s hand, by the way, is “contracted into a fist except for the middle digit, which was rigidly extended.”

Enter Andrew Yancy, a horny, wise-cracking cop who fantasizes about leveling the monster vacation home going up next door. He was forced to resign from the Miami Police after his drunken attempt to blow the whistle on a crooked superior went bad. Now living in the Keys, he’s suspended from the Monroe County force for defending his future ex-girlfriend’s honor by attacking her husband with a Hoover vacuum.

The Monroe County sheriff, who can’t afford bad publicity, asks Yancy to take the arm to Miami — “the floating-human-body-parts capital of America” — in hopes that it’ll be matched to a stiff outside his jurisdiction. But “unless it was paddling itself” against the currents, that arm is right where it belongs. And Yancy is about as likely to walk away from a murder as he is from a shot of Haitian rum.

"Bad Monkey" is his latest, but any of his novels are written at the same level of hilarious, sharp-eyed cynicism.

 

[trmiv]

I used to read two books a week when I was commuting by BART train when I lived in the Bay Area. It was so easy to do since I had an hour each way to kill, and it was before smartphones. I've only managed to read three books in the six years since I moved to NC now that I commute by car, and the last one was like five years ago.

 

[RedRooster]

I read every day. What else am I going to do while on the throne?

Advance in Angry Birds, like everyone else?

 

[KeithTalent]

I read all the time, though these days I have a bad habit of getting half-way through a book and then stopping and moving on to something else.

I recently started Syd Fields' Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. It's very interesting and gives me homework to do.

KT

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

I never ever read books. Ever. Not for fun.

I read a lot, but it's for knowledge and to learn. It's always personal research on the internet.

This.

I skim through text like butter to get the main point. However books just don't seem to please my appetite for entertainment.

On the other hand, my fiance loves reading - yet does so at about half the pace I do. If we are reading a page together I am done and she is halfway through. Maybe it has something to do with her English as (semi) second language. She read all the Harry Potters and plenty more fantasy type books. I made it through the first 1 or 2 Harry Potter and got annoyed.

Part of it is definitely the process of reading. I can read part of a forum thread and walk away and continue later. I can't do that with a book. You have to read long periods of time and do it often. I just don't have long periods of time to dedicate to a book.

 

[Murloc]

I read only when on holiday and I'm lying on the beach.

I read thrillers (cheap soft cover best sellers) plus some other popular stuff.

There are thrillers that are only 300 pages and stuff, you don't have to go for the 600 pages bricks since you've never read the rest anyway.

Michael Connelly, John Grisham if you like lawyers, and a bunch of other authors are all easy to read.

 

[Fingolfin269]

I clicked on this thread and now have an ad for the Grumpy Bookpeddler. Well played OP.

 

[Oyeve]

I read a book a week. Been reading books for 40+ years. Its the only way to learn IMO. Even if its an ebook its still reading a book. Everyone should read. Audio books dont count as you are not reading.

 

[Theb]

What kinds of books do you want to read?

For humor my favorite author is Christopher Moore. Lamb and A Dirty Job are particularly good. Year Zero by Rob Reid is good scifi/comedy and an easy read.

For nonfiction I like Jon Krakauer.

The Conan books are easy reads and page turners. Conan The Defiant is better than average and includes (minor spoiler)

Spoiler

a threesome with a zombie girl

 

[Raduque]

The most recent book series I read, if you're even the least bit into somewhat realistic "hard" Sci-Fi, is the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. The title character is a massive Mary Sue, though.

 

[Hugo L.]

I don't read books. I read enough when I was in law school, so I'm all read-out.

I only read magazines.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Do yourself a favor and pretend the series ends after book 3 and then pick it up again after book 9.



I can't wait until I spend enough time taking a shit that I can get in quality reading time...

FTFY

 

[angminas]

Newbery medal books
Ursula K. Le Guin
Jim Kjelgaard
Isaac Asimov

Easy to read yet not without substance.

 

[Soundmanred]

i haven't read a novel/story book since i was in highschool probably. the last book i "read" had to do with learning how to code for iOS, and it wasn't like i read it straight through. it was more of a work book, and i only made it like 1/3 the way through since that was all i needed for my app idea.

i'd much rather watch a movie than read a book. any movie version is better than the book version to me, since it can be finished in a much shorter amount of time and is just much more enjoyable to me. i just have trouble focusing when reading a book and i'm a slow reader. books just don't keep my attention.

oh nice, you are one of "those" people, who are too cool for books! not surprising though since most people on this forum are too.

 

[zinfamous]

I havent read a book since college but for some reason I have started being somewhat interested in reading but I have no clue what is good. I definitely do not want to ready something that has a show like Game of Thrones or a real super long read that is pretty dry. I would be interested in all kinds of books, what are some of the popular books/authors out now?

I tend to read Don DeLillo every once in a while. Probably my favorite living American writer, certainly one of the best in the English language, anywhere. Very, very dense stuff though. One has to truly love language to dig him.

Easiest approach is probably Libra.
This is a fanciful imagining of the JFK assassination, which follows the narrative through Oswald and Ruby. My favorite, though, is either White Noise or Mao II


More general recommendation: Haruki Murakami. Start with Wind-up Bird Chronicle. If you like that, you will likely dig some of his other stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libra_(novel)

 

[Perknose]

I tend to read Don DeLillo every once in a while. Probably my favorite living American writer, certainly one of the best in the English language, anywhere. Very, very dense stuff though. One has to truly love language to dig him.

Easiest approach is probably Libra.
This is a fanciful imagining of the JFK assassination, which follows the narrative through Oswald and Ruby. My favorite, though, is either White Noise or Mao II.

My favorite remains "White Noise" as well. It's short, OP, and not particularly 'dense stuff" at all, imho. It is hilarious!

 

[KeithTalent]

More general recommendation: Haruki Murakami. Start with Wind-up Bird Chronicle. If you like that, you will likely dig some of his other stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libra_(novel)

One of my all-time favourite books! :thumbsup:

KT

 

[zinfamous]

My favorite remains "White Noise" as well. It's short, OP, and not particularly 'dense stuff" at all, imho. It is hilarious!

agreed, I also think it's an easy enough read. I like to recommend Libra to general audiences because it is at least subject matter that most people will come in with good prior exposure.

I'm finishing up Great Jones Street right now--started it some years ago, never finished, but recently re-started due to plane rides. No idea why I stopped reading it as it's goddamn amazing. Also hilarious.

 

[FelixDeCat]

I dont have the patience nor time to read anything more than an article or pamphlet.

 

[zinfamous]

I dont have the patience nor time to read anything more than an article or pamphlet.

what, too many youtube videos to flag?

 

[FelixDeCat]

what, too many youtube videos to flag?

I thought I flagged them all already. :awe:

Did somebody post another "Sexy and I know it" vid?

 

[MustISO]

Can't even remember the last time I read a book. Probably high school. I read magazines and I read a ton online but I just can't understand why people read books. Just has no interest for me at all.