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What are you reading? (November 2013)

Ratrat

Member
http://www.amazon.com/gp/gss/browse

Under Kindle, then Kindle Daily Deals.



Looks like the Black Friday deal is novels movies are based on

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.ht...rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1531758342&pf_rd_i=154606011

Nothing too exciting there for me. I would recommend John Dies At The End for $1.99 if you haven't read it.
Thanks. Got Let Me In as I love the original Swedish movie.
Also in most cases it's cheaper to buy kindle ebook > upgrade to audiobook than just buying the audiobook. Weird but awesome.
 

ThornDust

Neo Member
1Q84.jpg


brothers-karamazov.jpg


so far, so good
 

ShaneB

Member
i dont understand how people equate audio book to reading...

Agreed. It's simply semantics, but you're not reading! You're listening to a book. Don't say I 'read' this book and talk about the audiobook, simply say, I 'listened' to that book. =)

I finished 'Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile' last night, really liked it, and a terrific football book. 5/5 for a football book, and hilarious at times, but I gave it 4/5 just because I don't think it's something I'd recommend if you don't like football to begin with. Very much a man's man book.

I'm going to start this next.. if you're Canadian and like sports, you know this man. It should be hilarious!
Anchorboy - Jay Onrait
18757899.jpg
 

Error

Jealous of the Glory that is Johnny Depp

demon

I don't mean to alarm you but you have dogs on your face
Why? It's essentially the same thing. You're just receiving the text through a different medium.

I thought scienticians have shown that information is processed differently through reading than through listening? Maybe I'm wrong...
 

kswiston

Member
I thought scienticians have shown that information is processed differently through reading than through listening? Maybe I'm wrong...

Considering one is a visual stimulus and the other is an aural stimulus, that is not exactly surprising.

However the end result is the same. You experience the story in the book. You can discuss the book with others who either read of listened to it. Also, it's not like it's hard to go between the text version and audio version, beyond finding your page/track. Both have the same information.

At worst, the narrator colors your interpretation of the characters' voices and personalities a bit.
 
i dont understand how people equate audio book to reading...

What percentage reading versus listening would be an acceptable ratio to consider a book "read" in your mind?

See? Semantics. I get engrossed in a book I'm reading and continue listening when I'm in my car. I still count that as reading.
 

Wurst

Member
Player%2Bof%2BGames.jpg


Amazing. It was my first experience with the Culture and it was a good one. Love the cranky machines and Iain's world building.
Is it worth exploring the other Culture novels?

I'm on to The Last Unicorn
 
Considering one is a visual stimulus and the other is an aural stimulus, that is not exactly surprising.

However the end result is the same. You experience the story in the book. You can discuss the book with others who either read of listened to it. Also, it's not like it's hard to go between the text version and audio version, beyond finding your page/track. Both have the same information.

At worst, the narrator colors your interpretation of the characters' voices and personalities a bit.

there really is more to it than that. I dread mentioning 'power reading' here, but according to that book at least, 'reading' isn't a verbal abiltiy, despite the fact that most people do in fact read like a five-year old, which is reading by making it into voices. This isn't wrong or anything, it's just very slow and hardly efficient as a method of reading.

That type of reading is still very similar to the way it's been done for thousands of years (hearing a speech or tale), but silent reading is different because it depends on a different mechanism compared to the aural one. Silent reading, or 'speed reading' if you must, really is nothing more than shutting off the 'verbing' part of reading, allowing sets of symbols to be 'read' much faster than you could voice them.

Basically: reading consists of eye-movement. That sound wierd, but what is meant by it is that any written material is 'read' by moving the focuspoint of the eyes a bit and then focussing on a section of it. In any typical book, this would be about three to two 'stills' per line, depending on layout and font. While you might think that this means you're not 'reading', the strange part is that this is what reading actually delves down to. We read pictures, in a way, not so much representations of sounds.

A typical "speed reader" will use a pencil as a reference to where they are in the text and focus on 1/3, 1/2 and 2/3 of a line (on the paper, not per sentence) and have read it at that point and move to the next line.
It's not a hard technique to learn and will speed up things significantly while ironically increasing comprehension rates. There are a bunch of other benefits, like increased attention and focus, too.

I've gone out of practise a bit -not that I ever gained it as a natural ability, but I was sorta getting there for a while- and 'verbed' (I have no idea whether this a word) this whole post while typing, and probably done a shitty job explaining this anyway. If you are interested, I read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0960170618/?tag=neogaf0e-20
 

Mumei

Member
Just finished Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How And Why We Survived. It was pretty good, but a bit overly speculative for my tastes. I'd like to read something that feels more grounded.
 

Lumiere

Neo Member
The Kindle version of Steelheart by Sanderson is also currently $2.49 on Amazon (or at least Amazon US). Grabbed it since I was planning on reading it eventually. :)
 

Piecake

Member
The Kindle version of Steelheart by Sanderson is also currently $2.49 on Amazon (or at least Amazon US). Grabbed it since I was planning on reading it eventually. :)

I honestly wasnt a huge fan of that book. I mean, it was alright, but the dialogue felt very YAish for my tastes. I really don't know why Sanderson thought that making his dialogue crappier was a good idea.
 
There's a bunch of Ian Fleming books on sale for $1.99 as Kindle Daily Deals today.

Danke! I purchased the full set of 14 of them, to round out next year's 50/50 challenge.

My plan is to read all of those along with all 29 of Alistair MacLean's novels. I'll toss in a few other books that interest me to meet my goal.

I've been meaning to tackle both full sets and this will be a great motivator to knock them out. MacLean was always my dad's favorite growing up and I've never gone through the series before, so it should be a fun ride.

Speaking of old books, credit to the Fleming family for making his works available digitally, even if it's only a means of cashing in and collecting royalties. I don't understand why MacLean's family hasn't done the same thing. None of the major retailers have digital versions of his books which is frustrating. He wrote several major books, including Where Eagles Dare, The Guns of Navarone, HMS Ulysses, etc.

I bought a set of 20 or so MacLean paperbacks off Ebay several years ago, but I vastly prefer reading on my Kindle. The bulk of his novels were written in the 50s and 60s, with the latest printing coming in 1994. Those are available for a penny + shipping on Amazon, but I already own those copies and that doesn't do me any good.

Long story short: I did something I never do and acquired the full MacLean collection in mobi format. I don't feel bad about it, and would gladly double-dipped for them if they were available. If anyone else is interested in giving any of his stories a shot, shoot me a PM.
 
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