^ I'm lucky -- one of the librarians at my branch knows me well enough that most of her suggestions are pretty good. The idea of an intimidating book is kind of weird, but I do have a couple books that I started and then lost interest in, so I'll tackle one of them. ETA: Okay, a textbook on some advanced subject that I know little about would intimidate me. Like, say, economics. Omg, does that bring back bad memories! Or a book in a language that I don't know. But I'm not planning to read either of those.
Actually, I did think of a book that I never finished. A Space Opera that was the sequel to another book-- I can't think of the title right now, but it's around here somewhere. That would definitely do it. I'm thinking strictly in terms of fiction, though. I can think of a lot of books that would turn me off, but not intimidate me. Unless you count intimidated by length, which could be anything by Neal Stephenson.
Currently reading The Long Mars by Baxter and Pratchett but also dipping in and out of Warhammer Dark Millennium, the 'History' of the 41st Millennium genning up for a short story submission!
I've finally caught up on Sanderson's Mistborn and Stormlight Archive series, so it's time to move on to something new. I've started reading Dan Simmons' Hyperion and I'm really enjoying it so far. I've heard that the sequels don't quite live up to the quality of the original book, so I'm not sure if I'll read them or not.
I've finished "Atonement" and started reading "Takedown". Well, technically I started reading it before, but didn't get that far into it.
What a Wonderful World: One Man's Attempt to Explain the Big Stuff by Marcus Chown. Lots of fascinating facts that, if regurgitated, will encourage people to move away from you on the bus. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Thaumaturgy as England's secret weapon against Napoleon.
Just finished Picking Up, an anthropologist's study of the New York Sanitation Department. It's about the lives of garabagemen.
AT THE moment I´m reading Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn Volume II. It's a collection of short stories of the kind you'd have read in the pulpy Sci-Fi magazines of yesteryear if you'd been alive in those decades: Archeological expeditions in the ruins of an extinct Martian civilization, colonists trying to make a living in the swamps of Venus, scientific problem solving while tryig to stay alive in a space ship that has had some kind of accident and it even has a couple of BEM's (Bug-Eyed Monsters) selling 'glass beads' to us hapless Earthlings and a sentient house... And, of course, a lot of 'atomics' in the stories from the late fourties and early fifties. Also reading (I rarely have only one book 'open' at any one time): Samuel R. Delany's Aye, and Gomorrah and have just started reading his The Mad Man and Mick Hume's Trigger Warning: Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?, John Preston's Mr. Benson, Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, B. R. Burg's Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Carribean. After having read only the first couple of pages in an earlier attempt, I read -and throughly enjoyed- Charles Stross' Saturn's Children which takes place in a post human civilization of sentient robots left to fend for themselves after our own extinction. Both funny and inventive! I've also recently read Dan Simmons' Hyperion. (Didn't like it very much, so it took me a couple of weeks to read it... but at least I now know what it's all about). I'd reccomend to stay away from the comicalization, and instead just pick up Alfred Besters The Stars My Destination -Which is also a recent read of mine. Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys, is a brilliant, dark old-school Sci-fi with with a secret moon base, a teleportation devise of sorts, an ancient alien artefact on the Moon and the value of human life. Kinda liked it Thinking I should try to read them instead of just watching countless filmic interpretations, I began a voyage through Sherlock Holmes... but, erhm, so far I've only read A Study in Scarlet. I surely will read some more, but it's not on top of my list. I've also finished Frederik Pohls Eschaton-trilogy. For Sci-Fi from the nineties it has a strange old-school-feel about it; even the characters read as if they were written in the fourties or fifties I had had my fill of it after the fouth novel, but at least I did read the first four of James P. Hogan's Giants novels. M. John Harrison's 'anti-space opera', The Centauri Device, turned out to not be so 'anti' that it wasn't readable... I think I picked it up after reading an interview with Iain M. Banks. I really liked the Reeves-Steven's Search: A Novel of Forbidden History. Tau Zero by Paul Anderson, was also one of those books it took me a pause to come past the first chapter of, but once I learned to skip the 'who's sleeping with whom'-parts it actually was a 'can't put it down till I'm finished'-read. Stephen Fry's The Hippopotamus was, of course -that man has humour, hilarious. Stephen Baxter's sequel to H. G. Wells The Time Machine, The Time Ships, I found to be a typical Baxter-yarn; quite enjoyable but a few hundred pages too long. I really should frequent this thread a little more often... As to the challenge: Sounds like a pretty normal year to me. Only, I don't have a librarian and Amazon usually recommends stuff I have already read or would never pick up (and I haven't been to a bookseller since I got my e-reader, which I purchased because my local booksellers never had the books I wanted and only could order them home as whatsitcalled? 'print on demand'. I'm a bit unsure what 'should have read in school' means, I read all I had to and a lot more... but I could probably find something that would have been nice to have read at that time. Books don't intimidate me -so I'm also a bit unsure about that part.
Well I know there were a lot of things I had little interest in reading at school, it would be nice (if I had the time) to go back and read some of the classics. I have tried on occasion, I think the trouble is that to my more experienced eye some don't quite seem so classic. I tried to read Dracula (admittedly on my phone, on the train so not the best environment) but it's so slow moving and turgid in places! I own far too many books I haven't read If I abandoned a book it was usually for a good reason, I think the only one that springs to mind is a book about the quantum physics of time travel, which frankly too much of went over my head, but I do regret not sticking with it. I'm not sure I've read many books in just one day. I remember reading The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe that quickly, and likely any re-read (and they are legion 'cos its fab) of Eric Frank Russell's Wasp is likely to be very quick. If novella's count it'd be remiss of me not to suggest [shameless plug] The Lazarus Conundrum [/shameless plug]
The only books I can think of that I've abandoned were Moby Dick - he kept calling whales fish! - and 1984, because the book literally fell apart. Pages were everywhere. Reading Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I just thought it might be fun to have the structure of a list for once. But I agree, it'll be a pretty normal year for me, too, and there's nothing that I should've read in school but didn't. I'm sure it'll be easy enough to come up with a substitute.
I was thinking The Satanic Verses would be useable as the 'should have read in school'-book. Even if I had been out of school for ~5 years by the time it came out.
Pandora's Star was the book I was trying to think of, that I abandoned. For some reason I lost interest about a quarter of the way through.
Reminds me: I've also read the 'Commonwealth Saga' recently (I think this was the first or second volume). Twas a very long read, but things that held my interrest kept popping up
Well, I fell in love with his writing while reading Midnight's Children -But just never got any further (in those days). Ooh, now there's a book I've already read once but would love to read again!!!
I read...? 1. Quite Early One Morning.--bringing the book to where I go today. but now listening to Dylan Thomas reading this -- to me. 2. I am looking into information concerning the wave aspects of neutrinos --- and well this is the net-search stuff.., 3. some of the net stuff is dull. but OK -- [yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BirV7uvZCTo[/yt] listening to this lead to === the poem.. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night and a lecture of this there of. ---