Idaho Falls Reads…
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This discussion thread is similar to our “Seen Any Good Movies Lately” thread, but on the topic of reading.
This month our Idaho Falls Public Library is doing another of their “Idaho Falls Reads” community readathons (or whatever you call them), and the selected book is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. You can get yourself the FREE book on the upper library floor, there is a stack of about 100 still there on the reference desk. I like the library’s version because it uses a retro cover art. Our library has a whole slew of discussion and movie activities related to the book, which you can find through that link. I wish I had time to participate in some of them, has anyone experienced them and what did you think?
I’ve read every single John Grisham and most of Stephen King’s books, but I am bigger on non-fiction than fiction books. I just finished reading All the Money in the World: How the Forbes 400 Make-and Spend-Their Fortunes, an interesting peek into how people work hard to earn their fortunes.
Is reading hardcopy books in vogue any more? When was the last time you read a book? Who are your favorite authors?
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Comments
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0 When I was a stay-at-home mother/housewife, I read 300+ books per year. These days I’m really lucky to read 50, but I do subscribe to a dozen magazines so I get my reading in, there.
My two grown daughters (and my grandchildren) are voracious readers. My stepsons, due to their learning disabilities, don’t read much as it’s more difficult for them. My stepdaughter is learning to love books and I couldn’t be happier.
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0 0 Read “The Historian” by Elizabeth Kostova….part historical fiction, part travelogue, part horror!, it is an incredible read! I read it in hardcover but it is softcover now…
Also, “The Corrections” wins my vote for the best book written in the last 10 years. It was a little too highbrow for my bookgroup (ha ha) but it is a wonderful, wonderful book.
Great idea for a topic, Joe!
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0 0 The Idaho Falls Public Library has “Shadow Divers” by Robert Kurson on audio CD, a really excellent story of divers finding a sunken German U-Boat off New Jersey. It’s a great story of the problems among the divers, one became an alcoholic and deteriorated, two were enemies for a long time, and a few divers got killed around the U-Boat. The story makes you realize how dangerous the diving is, and the exploration of those old wrecks.
It is also a true mystery because nobody knew what U-Boat it was. The historical documents could not account for the U-Boat, and the divers could not find anything onboard which identified the U-Boat. Really great story if you get the chance, even if you’ve never thought you would like that kind of story.
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0 0 I read that, also and it was incredible!!! Then I read “The Terrible Hours” by Peter Maas about an undersea rescue during WWII that was equally fascinating…
Am also reading “The Devil’s Teeth” right now about the Farallon Islands, off the coast of California (near S.F.); home to one of the largest population of Great White Sharks; story is more of a history of the barren wasteland of an island and the people who now go there a few times a year to study Great Whites….
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0 0 Can anyone recommend a good audio (CD) “book” from the library that would be interesting to the whole family (Mom, Dad and 3 teenagers)? We are going on a long driving trip during spring break and Joe’s mentioning of an audio book sounded like the perfect way to fill in some time. Joe, “Shadow Divers” sounds good but do you think the kids would like it?
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0 0 I’m sure they would, except there were a good number of f-words, not filled but probably ten or twenty. If you don’t mind or can get a clean version heck yes, it’s an awesome story and the whole thing on CD takes about five or six hours to listen.
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0 0 Guest in I.F., seriously, try The Historian!! It is a wonderful book, no sex, no swearing and filled with juicy stuff for teens(vampires!!)and travel and history for everyone else….
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0 0 I listen to a lot of books, rather than the radio which gets tiring, at my job so I’ve literally heard hundreds of books over the last few years. But I’m limited by the selection of the library which is increasingly becoming sparse on what I read. But it has motivated to go read some of the books not available to listen to by James Patterson, Robert Crais, and the like. And I’ve discovered some authors I’d probably never have discovered if not for the fact I was running out of interesting sounding books at the library. Harlan Coben for instance has become one of my favorite authors.
My personal library has hundreds of books but most are of the Horror / Sci / Fantasy genres.
My favorite book of all time is Hyperion by Dan Simmons. It is a sci-fi book that came out in the late 80’s and was followed up by 3 sequels. It was nominated for a lot of awards and is considered a modern classic. Its really hard to briefly describe but its sort of a Canterbury Tales of the future, without the hard to read Old English, set in the future. All the tales though are connected to an overarching plot and threat to mankind.
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0 0 Oh I am so glad to see so many others who like to read! I say something about reading to my coworkers and they look at me like I am from another planet!
I am a sci-fi fantasy person myself. I love the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and I hope that the final book in this series will be as good as the others now with someone else writing it.
I try and read everyday even if it only one or two pages. I have gotten my kids into reading too. I think teaching kids to read and enjy reading is one of the best gifts you could give them!
I am always on the lookout for new authors to try so any suggestions would be great!
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0 0 I also recently read Starbucked, a well-balanced analysis and history of the Starbucks corporation. I had a difficult time guessing if the author was pro-Starbucks or anti-Starbucks throughout the book. He was extremely balanced in presenting criticism and evaluating if the criticisms had merit or not. In the end his roots of the book are revealed and you see how he started, but I think he learned a lot in writing the book and did a well-balanced job.
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0 0 Thanks for the ideas. I reserved “Shadow Divers” but Babs your suggested book “The Historian” is only on cassette tape and unfortunatly my car only has a CD player.
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0 0 PassingThrough,
I think Brandon Sanderson will do fine finishing the Wheel of Time. Jim Rigley, Robert Jordan was a pseudonym, actually had part of the book written and because he knew he was dying he left a very detailed outline for the rest of the book including the ending. Sanderson has stated in interviews that he intends to change nothing that Rigley did manage to write, not a single word, and he’ll change none of the plot points that were outlined either.
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0 0 I’m looking forward to renting the Daniel Day Lewis movie “There will be blood”. Has anyone watched that one yet?
Also 21 that comes out this weekend about the MIT students who learned to count cards.
I watched the documentary on that story on the History Channel and it was really good. I’m looking forward to the movie though.
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0 0 A men’s mag we subscribe to mentioned ‘21′ this month, it also mentioned a basic way to ‘count’ cards at 21 that was much simpler than actually counting them, I guess. But it’s supposed to win you money.
I’m going to try the tip out (practice a lot with my stepkids and some poker chips) and see if it seems to work, at least with one deck, then maybe two decks. I think I’ve seen some casinos use lots of decks, so it might not be worth a darn in those situations.
But if it works I might be heading south this summer. Let me know what you think of ‘21′…I’m a Kevin Spacey fan. Keyser Soze, anyone?
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0 0 See, that’s where I’ve had the problem in counting cards in the past. Most casinos these days use 3-4 decks of cards. There are a few low bet tables that use just 2, but not too many and I don’t know of any that only use one deck. That’s why they were MIT grad students that did so well with this. (smarter than me at least!) 
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0 0 How ironic, I was just listening to a podcast where they talked about the same topic. They said nowadays the obstacle is that casinos use 5 decks, and they reshuffle only a quarter through it so you have a harder time counting.
Plus you sometimes have to sit there four hours before you recognize a charged deck. Plus the scam worked with one person counting and making small bets, then signaling cohorts to do the bigger bets when the counter recognizes the charged deck. Plus the casino watches for erratic betting changes like betting $25 all night then suddenly betting $2,500 for no apparent reason. Plus they said counting cards is not technically illegal, but the casinos have every right to throw you out on your keester if they suspect you are counting cards, thus wasting your hours of counting.
You can tell I thought the idea over, too 8^).
Kevin Mitnick’s book The Art of Intrusion is a great read (I think at the IFPL), one story describes four friends who bought an old slot machine and figured out how to predict when it would win.
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0 0 Did you read the story in today’s PR that says the library found this year’s campaign to be a bust?
Seems among other things, folks are not understanding that “Fahrenheit 451″ is NOT the same as Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9-11″. One student said her mom told her she was not allowed to read it (the presumption was that mom didn’t know the difference).
Parents have an obligation to monitor and direct the material that their children encounter, but I was always very liberal in that area…I wanted my teenage children to choose their own reading material and enjoy the heck out of it, and learn from it what they could, even if it just showed them a different aspect of the big picture.
Aargghh. I am a dying breed. [Okay, some of you should stop your cheering, I can hear you clear over here... ;-)]
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0 0 I am going crazy with a neighbors 3 dogs barking all the time. The 529-1200 phone number will not do anything (like knock on the door) if the dogs aren’t barking when they come over (if they even do). Isn’t this disturbance of the peace? Shouldn’t the neighbors be talked to? Whats up with that?
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0 0 …the barking dogs and this discussion on what people like to read are connected how?
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0 0 cut em some slack….their new! It’s not like we have a “disturbing of the peace” post. That might be a good one to start for those people that have loud neighbors, barking dogs, loud tenants in apartments, etc.
Why does the train conductor feel the need to lay on his horn for 25 minutes at a time at 3:30 in the morning as he passes through the downtown area parallel to Yellowstone Hwy? I mean seriously….how many people are really out driving at that time of night that he needs to do this? Yet it happens almost every night. And the fact that it doesn’t happen every night makes me think there’s one guy in particular who just likes to p iss people off.
I think that would be a good post to start if anybody is so inclined.
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whew, slow day, time to all start commenting again!
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Oh! I’m such a bibliophile.
I dislike hardcovers, I like to read while laying down or kicking back and the big unwieldy books with their slippery covers are not user friendly. I prefer paperbacks, so I tend to give up on being able to read a book right off the press (I made exceptions for the Harry Potter series, but if I re-read them I will buy paperbacks.)
My favorite genre is sci-fi, I loved Heinlein, Asimov, Orson Scott Card, Philip K Dick and Philip Jose Farmer, etc etc etc. I’m glad the library is targeting “Fahrenheit 451″, it’s my favorite Ray Bradbury book. I liked the trilogy “His Dark Materials” (”The Golden Compass” was the first in that series) by Philip Pullman. (I like a lot of Philips, don’t I??!!)
I always was a JRR Tolkien fan, every bit of it. And Stephen King, too (my favorite is “The Stand”).
In the 60s, I was really into the apocalyptic stories about survival after a nuclear war, etc. So my favorite book of all time is “Alas, Babylon” by Pat Frank. It’s a bit dated but still very good for that genre.
I also liked spy stories and murder mysteries when I was younger, things like the books by Agatha Christie, James Bond by Ian Fleming, Perry Mason by Erle Stanley Gardner, and Travis McGee by John D McDonald. More recently the Alex Delaware novels by Jonathan Kellerman, plus anything by James Patterson.
This week I’m re-reading The Brethren by John Grisham, and a Kay Scarpetta novel by Patricia Cornwell, etc.
I generally forsake all other activities and read straight through, and it takes me anywhere from a few hours to most of the day to finish a book.
I do read non fiction but not generally for entertainment. I also haven’t yet gotten into the audiobooks/books on tape.