Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Our old "What are you reading?" thread was getting extremely long and glitchy, so here is a shiny new one!

So, this topic is pretty straightforward:

What book are you currently reading? What do you think of it so far?

Hello new thread. I just finished and now I don't know what to read. I'm debating maybe starting

I'm reading The Princess Bride. I thought the movie was good, but it's not that great in comparison to the book. :)

@Naomi - I've always meant to read The Phantom Tollbooth! The author was once a professor at the college I went to, which is cool. Also I liked A Darker Shade of Magic ... I wasn't a huge fan of the sequel, though.

@Raevyn - That's one of my favorite movies, but I've never gotten around to reading the book! I should get around to doing that at some point.

Raevyn wrote: "I'm reading The Princess Bride. I thought the movie was good, but it's not that great in comparison to the book. :)"

The Princess Bride is literally my favorite book of all times. The movie is great too, but not nearly as good as the book. Brigid, you should really really really read it. Like right now.

Brigid *Flying Kick-a-pow!* wrote: "@Naomi - I've always meant to read The Phantom Tollbooth! The author was once a professor at the college I went to, which is cool. Also I liked A Darker Shade of Magic ... I wasn't a huge fan of th..."

I know, I had been meaning to read it forever and I had picked it up a few years ago but never really read it and then I randomly decided to give it a try and finished it so fast. It's a really cute and clever book.

Oh cool, I will have to read both those books then! :D

I'm currently reading Empire of The Ants by Bernard Werber. So far, so good!

Just finished the second volume of the Lumberjanes comic, which is just as cute and awesome as I remembered the first volume being.

I think I'm gonna start " The Last Nazi: The Life and Times of Dr. Joseph Mengele" cuz I need to do research for this next short story.

Stephanie wrote: "Just finished the second volume of the Lumberjanes comic, which is just as cute and awesome as I remembered the first volume being.

I think I'm gonna start " The Last Nazi: The Life and Times of ..."

I loved the first Lumberjanes book! I still need to read the second and third ones. :)

I finished last night and started today. Super good!

YASSSS COLBY YASSS. The Dream Thieves is my favorite, but yeah that whole series is amazing.

I've still gotta read Raven Boys too. It was a Christmas gift from years ago and I've just never got past the first couple of pages.

Colby wrote: "I finished last night and started today. Super good!"

HECK YEAH HECK YEAH FRICKING RIGHT

I'm reading and .

I also still have to read The Raven Boys. I started the first book a few months ago but wasn't pulled in and I never continued it. Though I've heard to much good stuff about it that I should probably try it again.

At least in my experience the first half is pretty slow and just okay and then suddenly you're sucked in and in love with the writing and the characters and you don't know what hit you. The rest of the books are also stellar.

I agree with what Alicia said! I remember not being initially blown away by the beginning of the first book, but I got more and more invested as it went along.

Ok, so I'll definitely have to give it another try.

Yes, do it! It's one of my favorite series in the world. :)

I had the exact same experience with the first book as Alicia and Brigid. At first it's just slow and alright, but then it gets really great. Pick it up!!!

Currently: (this last one I'm especially excited about, Mandelstam being one of my new favourites).

I'm also just about to start , which I'm really excited about because I loved loved loved the Gemma Doyle books but for some reason her stuff is really very hard to find over here - this is the first time, in the seven years since I finished The Sweet Far Thing, that I've ever come across one of her other books. I hope she's as good as I remember.

Tensi I read Beauty Queens recently and I loved it so much! It was hysterical!

Yes, Beauty Queens is hilarious! Really different from Gemma Doyle but very good. :D Also I highly recommend The Diviners if you ever manage to get your hands on it.

Omg yes! The Diviners was amazing! And creepy. But mostly amazing. I have yet to be disappointed by anything by Libba Bray

Almost done with which is amazing I love it so much.

Today I also started and read two short plays: and

Megan [I'm okay, I'm alright] wrote: "Almost done with which is amazing I love it so much.

Today I also started and read two short plays: [bookcover: t..."

Ahhhh I NEED the Hamilton book. So bad. But It's so expensive :( :(

Today I finished:



Ahhh it was so good! It was a lot more exciting than I thought it would be, and the illustrations were really cute. I already bought the second and third books and I'm really looking forward to reading them.

I also finished:



Which I thought would be really cool because it's about a female ninja––but it somehow was like, really boring?? Ah well.

Now I am re-reading:



I read this book way back in middle school and really didn't like it at the time ... but I'm giving it another try because it's a group read in another GR group I'm in, plus I feel like maybe I was a little too young for it when I read it the first time. So, we'll see how it goes.

Colby wrote: "Megan [I'm okay, I'm alright] wrote: "Almost done with which is amazing I love it so much.

Today I also started a..."

Ah I know, I had some extra money from dogsitting so I decided to treat myself. I got it on sale but it was still more than I would normally pay for any other book. It's so worth it, though. (Plus I have to do a book report for my theatre class and my teacher said I could do it on this so I felt a tiny bit more justified for buying it, ahahaha.)

I'm now reading Crookedstar's Promise. I think the idea for the Warriors series is good, though a little unrealistic (but it's fantasy so who cares). However, there are WAY too many characters. Most of the time, I can't even remember which are male and which are female, except in the case of the important ones.

When I actually get to a point in the week when I don't have ANY homework that I can do, I take this to work to read. So far, it's actually really good. I'm excited to see where it takes us. I'm over 100 pages in, but I know I'm far from finishing. Mainly because school controls my life, and I'm also taking summer classes :/

Jayda wrote: "

When I actually get to a point in the week when I don't have ANY homework that I can do, I take this to work to read. So far, it's actually really good. I'm exci..."

Oh man I feel you. I haven't read anything not school-related in ages. At least I'm not taking summer classes - but I'm probably working full-time this summer so that's pretty much the same. :P

Megan and Jayda- I feel the same way. School has taken over my life. Though I'm terrible and procrastinate from studying by reading. Which is probably not a good thing, but my mood turns mean if I don't read anything for fun in more than a week.
I also really want to read but I haven't seen it in a store yet where I live.

Megan [I'm okay, I'm alright] wrote: "Jayda wrote: "

When I actually get to a point in the week when I don't have ANY homework that I can do, I take this to work to read. So far, it's actually really ..."

I feel you there haha. I work full-time on top of full-time school. It's rough on my reading habits :(

Naomi wrote: "Megan and Jayda- I feel the same way. School has taken over my life. Though I'm terrible and procrastinate from studying by reading. Which is probably not a good thing, but my mood turns mean if I ..."

I know they sell it at target, and they might sell it at walmart? Not 100% sure about the latter. It's really good, so far!

@Jayda - Ugh I totally get that! I barely had any time to read when I was in college because I was too busy with schoolwork. I'm still on the fence about whether I'll read that book but I might give it a try eventually!

I finished re-reading:



As I mentioned, I didn't like this book the first time I read it––but it had been a really long time (like ... 10 years) since I first read it, and it was a group read in another group I'm in, so I decided to give it a second chance. And uhhh yeah, I felt the same way about it as I did when I was 13: aka I still didn't like it, unfortunately. :P I feel like it tries too hard to be ~hip and edgy~ and it just came off as annoying to me. Plus the relationships in it are kinda abusive so. Not really my thing.

Now I am re-reading:



Yay!! (I'm slowly trying to re-read the whole series by the end of the year.) This was my favorite one the first time I read the series, so hopefully I love it just as much this time around. :)

Jayda wrote: "Naomi wrote: "Megan and Jayda- I feel the same way. School has taken over my life. Though I'm terrible and procrastinate from studying by reading. Which is probably not a good thing, but my mood tu..."

Wish that was relevant, but I don't live in the US. If only books were as inexpensive here as they are at Target. I end up waiting ages for books to appear in stores, or to appear in paperback. And even paperbacks cost around 20 dollars.

Naomi wrote: "Jayda wrote: "Naomi wrote: "Megan and Jayda- I feel the same way. School has taken over my life. Though I'm terrible and procrastinate from studying by reading. Which is probably not a good thing, ..."

Ayyyy, that's tough. $20 is crazy. Can you order books online for cheaper? But then of course there's always shipping costs...

Megan [I'm okay, I'm alright] wrote: "Naomi wrote: "Jayda wrote: "Naomi wrote: "Megan and Jayda- I feel the same way. School has taken over my life. Though I'm terrible and procrastinate from studying by reading. Which is probably not ..."

Trying to get inexpensive books is literally my life struggle.

I'm sorry Naomi, that stinks. D:

I almost never buy brand-new books or else I'd be out of money, haha. I get most of my books from used bookstores or I buy them used online (usually from half.com or something). I also buy ebooks but usually only if they're on sale.

Brigid *Flying Kick-a-pow!* wrote: "I'm sorry Naomi, that stinks. D:

I almost never buy brand-new books or else I'd be out of money, haha. I get most of my books from used bookstores or I buy them used online (usually from half.com..."

The only books I get brand new are ones that I want to be pretty on my bookshelf, which are typically just books in my favorite series like TMI, TID, Harry Potter, Sky Chasers, etc. If I don't care about the book and I want to buy it I get paperback. If I don't want to buy it I go to the library haha

Haha yup, that's pretty much my same policy––if I buy a new hardcover, it's because it's one of my favorite books/series. Otherwise I usually buy paperbacks. And yeah like 90% of the books I read are library books. :D

I also mostly buy paperbacks. I like reading from them better, it's more comfortable. I like owning my books, which is a problem (and why I'm so broke, apart from the usual brokenness of being a student). When I want to read a book that I know I won't want to read again, I'll get it as an ebook, which is much less expensive and then it doesn't take up space. My bookshelves are so over packed that one shelf collapsed from the weight. :( There are a couple nice second hand English bookstores where I live that I like going to, which of course I go to before I try to get it new, because I don't mind if it's secondhand, but it's also limited. They normally don't have the new releases. Even more problematic than the cost is the fact that most book stores have only a few shelves of English books and they're normally classics and the recent bestsellers. Which isn't much.

Naomi wrote: "I also mostly buy paperbacks. I like reading from them better, it's more comfortable. I like owning my books, which is a problem (and why I'm so broke, apart from the usual brokenness of being a st..."

The struggle of getting English books in a non-English-speaking country is one I know well. I had an ebook reader (this was like 2008 but even then it was a super super old one) which I had been given second-hand but my mother accidentally broke it before I had much of a chance to use it :( - after that, as you say, I used to go to second-hand bookshops in the bigger cities where there was a large expatriate community (Spain, I remember, was especially good for this).

Out of curiosity, do you read in Hebrew often? I've been thinking about this because on my year abroad I'm probably going to end up going to literal Siberia so I'm presuming the English-language books will be few and far between and I'm going to have to really get my Russian together if I want to still read as much and as often as I do!

re: book acquisition etc - I did a lot of conversion of prices for this post which was fun.

One thing I've enjoyed since I've had my kindle is how many free books there are, esp free classics - I must have something like three hundred books on mine, and I haven't paid a penny for any of them.

I'm not fussed any more on owning books (unless it's an author I really love) & so I pretty much never buy books brand-new - the last time I did was for the new Sarah Waters, and even then I waited for the paperback. I'm lucky to be in a city with a lot of good libraries, so that's where most come from. Also nice is that people around the university always seem to be giving books away free?? In every common room there's a box or table where everyone leaves stuff for others, and they tend to be more academic but I've got some good fiction (usually things people have had to study and then got rid of).

When I do buy books, they tend to be from charity shops. Those vary; in the city, the range of books is excellent, but paperbacks are about $3.60. For a charity shop I consider this extortionate; I can get books at home from about 70c, though there is quite a big difference in quality!! and they always tend to be like...Fifty Shades and the Da Vinci Code. It seems I can either have good books or good value, but never both. My local libraries tend to sell their books often as the council has literally no money. You can get a paperback for as little as fifteen or thirty cents and a little more for hardcovers, or they let you fill a bag for $1.50-$3.

I read in Hebrew for school, but rarely for pleasure. I don't like reading books that are translated from English to Hebrew because I find that the writing is better in the original language. The novels I read in Hebrew are ones that are either originally Israeli or translated to Hebrew from languages other than English. Also, oddly, English books are a little less expensive than Hebrew books here, which is really weird but good for me. Though they're all expensive. But a big reason why I don't read more in Hebrew is because English is my first language and I read much faster and enjoy it more in English. Academic wise, half the stuff is English and half the stuff is Hebrew, depending on the course. My schools library also gives away books, but all academic outdated stuff.
I'd say that you have a good chance of finding books in English, though a very limited selection. I was in Poland last year and all the shops had a few rows of English books. I don't know how it'll be in Siberia, but I'm assuming similar.

Me Before You, Jojo Moyes!

Tesni wrote: "re: book acquisition etc - I did a lot of conversion of prices for this post which was fun.

One thing I've enjoyed since I've had my kindle is how many free books there are, esp free classics - I..."

I also love that so many classics are free on Kindle! I sometimes find it difficult to find (physical) classic books with print that isn't teeny-tiny––and I have very bad eyesight. :P So it's nice to be able to enlarge the font.

Also, recently I've started using OverDrive, which is really cool.

@naomi
(Because mobile doesn't have a reply button)

List of Israeli books to read in Hebrew please please please? I've been trying to find one in the US for forever, but they're always translated. And I totally agree that most books are better reads in their original language. I want to find a YA or similar type of novel because if I don't want the language to be too advanced for me-- I tried that, and looking up every other word completely ruins the reading experience, haha. Any suggestions?