Last book you read?

[fastbilly1]

At the end of last year I decided to try something very achievable this year:
Every month complete a book and learn a new game. I typically read six or seven books at once (depending on my mood and what kind of book they are) and love games of all types (boardgames in particular) so I figured this would be easily attainable – 12 games and 12 books in a year. I also decided that if I don’t reach this, its no big deal. Its not a New Years resolution, just something I thought would help me find time to do certain things I enjoy.

I started off with reading The Seuss, The Whole Seuss, and Nothing but the Seuss which, as you can imagine, is a biography of Ted Gesiel/Dr Seuss. It was soso. It repeated itself constantly and jumped through his timeline so much it got confusing. Others have stated that it reads like a text book, but it was fascinating taking a deeper look into his life.

This month I finished the Essential Groucho – which only took me a year…I kept getting distracted by other books (Hajii Baba comes to mind). Groucho has always been one of my favorite comedians and between this book and an Evening with Groucho Marx, I think Ive learned a lot about the man. His comedy was bar none fantastic, even if his life was terrible. But the part that really got me was when he said he didn’t blame his first wife for leaving him because if he was in a similar situation, he would have left. And how he describes that feeling just hit me like a sledgehammer.

Right now I am reading:
- Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women by Ricky Jay - A history of the carnival industry
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe – Which I try to read every few years
- The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick – No tech hacking
- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carre – One of the definitive spy novels and Ive actually never finished it
- IPv6 Essentials (O’Reilly book) – While almost a decade old, still interesting and no one questions me reading it at work.
- Shadowrun 4th Edition – RPG rulebook, my group is playing on Sundays, testing the GM’s campaigns for conventions this year.

But I am always up for reading a good book. I have a stack of books on masonry, historical fiction, and some Gibson Cyberpunk waiting for me when I finish these. You?

[puke_face]

The last two books I read were The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe and On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Both are excellent books. I'm not currently reading anything other than PHP/MySQL Development, and an eZ Publish handbook. Hopefully I can get those done before long and move on to a book that I can enjoy.

[Flake]

The Mauritius Command by Patrick O'Daniel. It's part of the Master and Commander series. Really good historical fiction.

[thetooth]

The Blue Nowhere by jeffery deaver... yes i am that nerdy

(this was back in 2006 mind you, other then instruction manuals I've not read paper in quite a long time)

[8-bit Legend]

Enders Game and all of its follow ups by Orson Scott Card are the best, especially if ou ar into sci-fi. My quote down below deals with Enders Game actually.

I can't wait until Shadows in Flight.......

[t0yrobo]

Sad to say, but I haven't read much in quite awhile now. A few months ago I read The laws of Simplicity by John Maeda, and Blankets by Craig Thompson. I haven't even started reading anything new since then, though I am rereading Emotional Design by Donald Norman. It is kinda fun to read more non fiction books though, for the longest time all I read was sci fi, fantasy, r mystery type books.

[emwearz]

Currently reading Love and War in the Apennines, its a great read about a British POW during WW2 and how the Italian people helped hide him from the Germans.

[Ack]

I just finished Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes. I'd heard a lot of criticism concerning the plot, but considering it was discovered as a manuscript and hadn't been submitted for publishing by the time of his death, well...I'm not going to be nearly so hard on him for it. In fact, I rather enjoyed it. Crichton has always been one of my absolute favorite authors, ad Pirate Latitudes was an enjoyable adventure to me, and fit in well with his other historical fiction. While I didn't enjoy it as much as Eaters of the Dead, I definitely preferred it to The Great Train Robbery.

I've actually read several other books so far this year. Besides Pirate Latitudes, here's what I've read since the start of January:

Arcade Mania: The Turbo-charged World of Japan's Game Centers, by Brian Ashcraft
The Searchers, by Alan Le May
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach

Currently I'm reading Timeline, also by Michael Crichton, and The Japanese, a textbook on Japanese culture written in the 1970s by Edwin O. Reischauer, PhD.

As for book tastes, I enjoy science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, history, and biographical works. I'll also occasionally delve into philosophical, religious, or culture texts, and from time to time I find myself reading textbooks. Yeah, I suppose I'm a bit odd.

I also have lists of books I read in 2008 and 2009. I started doing this after I read Louis L'Amour's autobiography in late 2007. Here's what I read in 2008:

The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori, by Mark Ravina
A Dreamer and a Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time, by S. T. Joshi
Gone South, by Robert R. McCammon
Myths, Mysteries, & Legends of Alabama, by Elaine Hobson Miller
CUT! Horror Writers On Horror Film, Edited by Christopher Golden
Cujo, by Stephen King
Intensity, by Dean Koontz
Coal Black Horse, by Robert Olmstead
Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tsu
The Analects, by Confucius
The Fighting Man of Japan: The Training and Exercises of the Samurai, by F. J. Norman
Japan: It's History and Culture, 4th Edition, by W. Scott Morton and J. Kenneth Olenik
Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1971-1984, by Van Burnham

And 2009's list(the handful of children's books were for class):

The Ultimate History of Video Games, By Steven L. Kent
Mishima's Sword, by Christopher Ross
The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies, by John Scalzi
The Rough Guide to Horror Movies, by Alan Jones
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts, by Isaac Asimov
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
Meatball Sundae, by Seth Godin
The Bloody Crown of Conan, By Robert E. Howard
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John le Carre
The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson
The Honourable Schoolboy, by John le Carre
In the Miso Soup, by Ryu Murakami
Ten Minute Stories, by Algernon Blackwood
Flotsam, by David Wiesner
The House in the Night, by Susan Marie Swanson
They Were Stong and Good, by Robert Lawson
Golem, by David Wisniewski
Anno's Alphabet, by Mitsumasa Anno
Ho, by David Halberstam
The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick
Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze, by Elizabeth Foreman Lewis
A Rumor of War, by Philip Caputo
The Magnificent Bastards, by Keith William Nolan
A Viet Cong Memoir, by Truong Nhu Tang
The Easter Offensive, by Col. G. H. Turley USMCR (Ret.)
The Tunnels of Cu Chi, by Tom Mangold and John Penycate
We Were Soldiers Once... And Young, by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (Ret.) and Joseph L. Galloway
The Coming of Conan, by Robert E. Howard
Dune, by Frank Herbert
The Quick and the Dead, by Louis L'Amour

[Inazuma]

Last book? I guess that would be "Playing to Win" by David Sirlin.
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-b ... ion/205476
Excellent book and highly recommended for those of you interested in games, and winning them. It may seem like common sense but I've noticed that the overwhelming majority of gamers don't know how to win and they could really benefit from reading this.

I think I read that book about 3 years ago. The second to last book I read was probably "To Kill a Mocking Bird" like 15+ years ago, seriously. That was because I had to read it in school or something. I grew up with the internet and movies so books always paled in comparison.

[Niode]

The Prestige by Christopher Priest. I don't read for pleasure that often but I'm currently reading Are You Dave Gorman?, by Dave Gorman & Danny Wallace.