The Joy of Reading

August 14, 2004

Reading bookIf I’m not cod­ing a web site, I’m read­ing a book. Read­ing puts me in a tran­quil state of mind and for those few moments my imag­i­na­tion takes over, tak­ing me some­where I’ve never been and putting me in the shoes of a com­plete stranger. Ever since I was 4 years old I’ve never been reluc­tant to pick up a book that maybe I didn’t fully understand.

With book in hand, I could just scan the pages for words I rec­og­nized and maybe piece together the story. Also, ever since I enrolled in Children’s Lit­er­a­ture in col­lege it has sparked in me a new inter­est in read­ing children’s books, which at times feel more ener­getic than a run of the mill adult novel.

Nowa­days, I’ve been known to read around 4 or 5 books at a time. For some peo­ple this might seem like overkill, but for me, I can eas­ily divide my atten­tion to each story and every one of these books vary in genre. That said, I’m cur­rently reading:

What are you reading? 

10 comments

I’m in the mid­dle of three books right now, and all of them are non-fiction.

First is Learn­ing the bash Shell, because I’m going to be spend­ing a lot more time with linux in the com­ing months and know vir­tu­ally noth­ing about shell script­ing. Then, there’s Ver­sion Con­trol with Sub­ver­sion, which I want to learn so that I can use it for my upcom­ing senior design project.

Finally, for a Chi­nese Reli­gions class I’m tak­ing, I’m hav­ing to read The Analects. If it weren’t for the class, I wouldn’t bother read­ing it, but I find cer­tain parts inter­est­ing nonetheless.

by Greg on August 14, 2004 at 12:18 pm. Reply #

What about ‘Five peo­ple you meet in Heaven’???? that was a great book too.

Read on, I’m very proud of you.…
Dad

by Dad on August 15, 2004 at 1:39 am. Reply #

I’ve been try­ing to read Annals of the for­mer world by John McPhee for quite a while now, it’s pretty long. He trav­eled across the coun­try, mostly along the I-80 cor­ri­dor, with dif­fer­ent geol­o­gists and they lay out the geo­logic his­tory of the North Amer­i­can cra­ton for him. It’s good sto­ry­telling. But then again, I’m a geol­o­gist. I know some peo­ple would find it extremely boring.

by Chad on August 16, 2004 at 9:06 am. Reply #

Chad: Is it as bor­ing as quan­tum physics? I think any­thing can be inter­est­ing if you make it inter­est­ing. In high school I wasn’t par­tic­u­larly fond of read­ing The Scar­let Let­ter, but I got through it. The key to what seems like rathe bland mate­r­ial is to inter­ject your imagination.

Once you get passed the prose and dig your fin­gers into the sto­ry­line and char­ac­ters, any story (be it geo­log­i­cal or stan­dard drama) can be fun to read.

by kartooner on August 16, 2004 at 9:26 am. Reply #

No, noth­ing can be as bad as physics, that always put me to sleep. And find me some­one who, in high school, did enjoy read­ing the Scar­let Let­ter. :-)

While we’re at it, I think one of the best books I have ever read is “Where the red fern grows”…anybody else read that one??

by Chad on August 16, 2004 at 9:51 am. Reply #

I have a 45 minute train ride to and from work so I get a lot of read­ing (and I love it!). I just started Michael Chabon’s The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier and Clay. I like it so far.

I just fin­ished Dou­glas Pre­ston and Lin­coln Child’s The Cab­i­net of Curiosi­ties. They write very good thrillers.

I remem­ber read­ing Where the Red Fern Grows in ele­men­tary school but I couldn’t tell you any­thing about it right now.

by Todd on August 16, 2004 at 10:17 am. Reply #

Where the Red Fern Grows was one of my favorite books when I was a kid. I read it again a few years ago, and it was still won­der­ful. I also really liked A Sep­a­rate Peace, although I’ve heard a few peo­ple grum­ble about it.

I read Won­der Boys by Chabon, and thought it was fantastic.

I’ve been read­ing the 9/11 Report. I’m a junkie, but you don’t need to be. They put con­sid­er­able effort into mak­ing it read­able and to the point.

by Greg on August 16, 2004 at 10:50 am. Reply #

To tell you the truth, I don’t think I ever read Where the Red Fern Grows. I’ve also never read The Year­ling or Black Stal­lion, but then again I never was inter­ested in a book about horses. I take that back, Seabis­cuit was an excel­lent book and movie.

by kartooner on August 16, 2004 at 3:08 pm. Reply #

You have made me think of how long it has been since I’ve read a fic­tion book, at least two years. I decided to pick up a cou­ple to have on hand.

I just ordered Down and Out in the Magic King­dom by Cory Doc­torow, East­ern Stan­dard Tribe also by Cory Doc­torow, and Vec­tor Prime (Star Wars: The New Jedi Order, Book 1).

I love sci-fi and read the Star Wars book often, so I decided to catch up on The New Jedi Order series. I also remem­ber see­ing Cory Doc­torow on TechTV’s The Screen­savers, back when the chan­nel was actu­ally watch­able, his books look cool, and I look for­ward to read­ing them one at a time.

by Mike on August 17, 2004 at 9:00 am. Reply #

Con­verted To A Book­worm
Like sci­ence fic­tion? Not a full time reader? I’ve got a cou­ple of books that you should get you hands on. A cou­ple of weeks ago I saw Down and Out in the Magic King­dom in kartooner’s read­ing list…

by Graphically Speaking on August 30, 2004 at 2:27 pm. Reply #

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