What do you read?

Does anyone else get time to read? If so, wondered what sort of stuff. I'm into anything swashbuckling, historical, fiction/non. Conn Iggulden, Bernard Cornwell & anything around Napolionic times. Nelson especially.

 

I read road-signs but often got bored half-way through.

 

[Looks for Big Envy icon] almost never, which, for someone who loves the printed word as much as I do, is a crime. I try to manage a couple of pages of something which has been well-written, like John Le Carre's books; currently I have 'The Secret Pilgrim' on the go. I'm shocked to realise that it isn't so much the story and the characters but the imaginative and crisp use of English which I find attractive. I therefore read it slowly, savouring each delicious sentence - in marked contrast to my business life where I speed-read technical and pompous marketing drivel. Yuk!

Why didn't Anthony Buckeridge have such popular success as Joanne Rowling's Harry Potter series? Take away the old-fashioned dialogue and attitudes and the stories could have been made into similar block-buster films! (They're better written too)...

 

I have time to read!........it helps me to switch my constantly thinking brain off at night time, just before sleep.
Preferred reading is horror, Stephen King, Koontz, Herbert etc., but I do believe I have probably read everything written by them....Terry Pratchett rocks! Did go through an Anne McAffery stage. Am now reduced to anything so long as it actually has a story to it.

 

Read in bed. Might if it wasn't (how I like it) a bloody icebox. Yep, horror stuff is ok for me too. Obviously you're travelling too fast Jay, if you can't read 'em all thru'.

 

not a big reader, but i have read every Danny King book in the last couple of years

 

I have a Horror section in my library too, including some from when Stephen King was writing under the Bachman pen name. Hard to believe he actually teaches English writing at the University of Maine! When I used to travel on trains a lot and the attractions of my computer and mobile faded, I'd sometimes pull out a Bill Bryson. Apart from his learned discourse on etymology, (which is slow going but well worth reading), all the other books manage to give me fits of giggles - made worse by the fact that you are not supposed to do that on a train! You are supposed to sit like a stuffed shirt reading your FT column by column.

 

Most of my absolute favourite books would be fantasy of some sort. I also love SF, horror, good crime (like Rankin, or Nesbo - there's a lot of crap out there, some of which got turned into very good TV).
Favourite authors include Stephen R Donaldson, Neil Gaiman, Guy Gavriel Kay, Fritz Leiber, Edmund Cooper, Philip K Dick, Stephen King, Clive Barker, and am currently really getting into Jo Nesbo.
I love to read, but never enough time to read everything I want (especially since the invention of the internet!)

 

You have a library? Flippin' Nora !
Giggling is a must on trains, planes and automobiles

 

Ian Rankin, Neil Gaiman, Isaac Asimov, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens to name a few.

I love to read and studied English Literature as a youngster - currently reading Great Expectations but have been known to kill a few hours with a chick flick, although I can't be doing with 95% of them as they're too poorly written.

 

Have you seen/read The Notebook - recommended if you like a good chick flick! English was my best subject at school but I hated most of the stuff they made us read, including Shakespeare and Dickens!

 

I agree with Pagan re Shakespeare/Dickens...that it was bloody hard going at school, though maybe if I tried it now, as an adult? Mmm

 

I haven't but I'll go look it up. Kindle is a wonderful thing!

 

Classics mostly, Shakespeare, Bronte, Dickens, Bible, Menus, internet forums, racing results, but I do enjoy those funnies they put above urinals in the better pubs.

 

Classics mostly, Shakespeare, Bronte, Dickens, Bible, Menus, internet forums, racing results, but I do enjoy those funnies they put above urinals in the better pubs.[/quote]
Wow, I'm impressed Alan. Not just 'zorst box intructions then?

 

Oh, and Carl Hiaasen and Nick Hornby.

 

You can see above a urinal?

 

Never read instructions Les. Just make it up as I go along.
I actually read thrillers mostly.