What book would you be reading if you weren't too lazy/shallow/thick?

[Johnny Canuck3]

Don Quixote. I got it for christmas. I started it. It might get to be pretty good - after all, it's considered one of the best novels that's been produced.

But it's also work. I think I'll need to be somewhere without distractions to really get into it. But it's on my list: I will do it, just not tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'll read an article in Esquire, or maybe Vanity Fair.

 

[QueenOfGoths]

Les Miserables - tried three times to read it and failed. Sadly I have also tried to avoid the musical but failed

Oh and "Cloud Atlas" - have had this on my bookshelf since it was released (4 or 5 years ago now?) and everytime I am bookless I think "Shall I..." and then I think "Nah, not in the mood"

 

[5t3IIa]

I keeping opening Watchmen...and closing it again. Never in the right mood.

 

[5t3IIa]

Les Miserables - tried three times to read it and failed. Sadly I have also tried to avoid the musical but failed

Oh and "Cloud Atlas" - have had this on my bookshelf since it was released (4 or 5 years ago now?) and everytime I am bookless I think "Shall I..." and then I think "Nah, not in the mood"

That's incredibly important isn't it? I wonder what the mechanics of it are? With films I often buy them and wait until I'm in the mood but I fall back on really shit stuff like The Day After Tomorrow becuase it's like brain candy. Then again something like Pitch Black I don't want to use up and wear out.

Are there academic studies on this?

 

[QueenOfGoths]

That's incredibly important isn't it? I wonder what the mechanics of it are? With films I often buy them and wait until I'm in the mood but I fall back on really shit stuff like The Day After Tomorrow becuase it's like brain candy. Then again something like Pitch Black I don't want to use up and wear out.

Are there academic studies on this?

There should be! Mood plays a lot in how I determine what I read or watch.

 

[5t3IIa]

There should be! Mood plays a lot in how I determine what I read or watch.

I suppose we subconciously factor in how much time we have that day, what else we should be doing and weather conditions. For instance - I have to go out in 5 hours so I won't start on this new bit of art cuz I don't have time to concentrate. OTOH this little morsel of pop culture will pass the time quite nicely.

 

[redsnapper]

Coming up for Air by George Orwell.

My sister bought me this book and when I was going thru books to get rid of yesterday I came across it having totally forgotten I even had it. She bought me it years ago and I've still not read it

 

[Flashman]

An Intimate History of Humanity - Zeldin.

Read 30 pages about 8 years ago, not touched it since.

 

[ada]

Oh and "Cloud Atlas" - have had this on my bookshelf since it was released (4 or 5 years ago now?) and everytime I am bookless I think "Shall I..." and then I think "Nah, not in the mood"

this was one of my shelf-sitters too - and even when i started it, took me a while to get into - but i'd recommend it, ended up really enjoying it.

 

[Roadkill]

A lot more philosophy than I do read.

And War and Peace, whcih I've had for ten years and barely dared open.

 

[HobgoblinMan]

Has anyone actually read War and Peace???

 

[Jon-of-arc]

some nietzsche shit about nihilism and ubermensches and ting. Not that there would be any point.

 

[Red Horse]

Don Quixote
A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu
Moby Dick and Gravity's Rainbow
I've only read Crime & Punishment and Notes From Underground but no more Dostoievsky

Same as on just about all those plus V which i put down after 50 pages.
Put Notes from the Underground after 2 pages, if want to listen to morbid depressives rambling on like that there are people in my family i can speak to

The Times had a good list of shit boring books you think you should probably read but are just dull. http://entertainment.timesonline.co...rticle4773601.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2
A lot of the books mentioned here are on it

I like the quote for A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu:

Yes, yes, he tasted a biscuit that made him think of childhood, we’ve all done that. If I want to remember my childhood I look at some photographs.

 

[Red Horse]

Has anyone actually read War and Peace???

Yeah my Dad's mate Pete, he thinks he's well cool for it as well

 

[Red Horse]

It's high time I tackled Anna Karenina, it's been sitting around in all its mahoosiveness and distorting the space-time continuum in the vicinity of my bookshelf for ages now.

I somehow got through that -think it took me about 3 months though- it was actually quite racy in parts, apart from his massive digressions about the intricacies of nineteenth century farm machinery, and detailling everything he did every day for a year when he lived in a cottage in the country.