So... what are you reading?

[gwynng]

You know I find audiobooks too expensive.

Being an artist for a living, I listen to a lot of audio books. For some reason I can paint or do photoshop and keep up with a novel perfectly. Ask me a question, give me a call or send me an email (or get me hooked on Xmarks) and I have to click it off. Must be a left brain right brain thing. Anyway the cure for pricey audio books for me has become the library. Yes, the LIBRARY, remember those? I had kind of forgot they exist until about 5 years ago when I started working for myself and budget and time caused a resurgence in my consciousness.

San Diego libraries have decent collections of audio books on CD and I always have one going. I never worry about due dates because if I'm not done with a book, I just load the unfinished CDs onto iTunes and finish it off there. Also is a great way to travel with them on your iPod or IPhone. Also some libraries now have audio books to download and you can request audio books to be sent from other libraries. So favorites that I highly recommend in the audio department:

"Lolita" by Vladmir Nabokov (read by the very creepy Jeremy Irons)
"Pillars of the Earth" and "World Without End" by Ken Follett (watch out, these are LOOOOONG)
"Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh (again read by Irons, but not in a creepy way)
Anything by PG Woodhouse as long as it is read by Jonathan Cecil. His voices are hilarious! Great for driving.
"Fight Club," "Tell All," "Haunted," "Diary," "Lullaby" and "Rant" by Chuck Palahniuk. For those with edgier literary tastes.
"Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" by Suzanna Clarke (spectacular exploration of "good English magic" set in the Napoleonic wars. It is long. About 26 CDs but so worth it)
"Last Night at Twisted River" by John Irving

All of these books are great stories and read in a way that transports you.

Oh yeah, right now the print on paper book I am reading is Colleen Atwood's "The Blind Assassin".

[adempsey10]

Being an artist for a living, I listen to a lot of audio books. For some reason I can paint or do photoshop and keep up with a novel perfectly. Ask me a question, give me a call or send me an email (or get me hooked on Xmarks) and I have to click it off. Must be a left brain right brain thing. Anyway the cure for pricey audio books for me has become the library. Yes, the LIBRARY, remember those? I had kind of forgot they exist until about 5 years ago when I started working for myself and budget and time caused a resurgence in my consciousness.

Another good resource is Librivox.org. It's all free public domain audiobooks. It's crowd sourced though, so you can get different readers for each chapter sometimes.

I find audiobooks are great while working, especially if it is a mundane task. They got me through a lot of boring days running a weed-whacker at a cemetery. But, like you said, I find bombarding my brain with good literature while doing something constructive or creative adds to the process.

[Silk]

That sounds facinating. I'll have to look for that one when I have a book budget again. (I spend to much on books and have been limited to $50 a year...)

Good lord, how on earth can you live on only $50/year for books? lollll I mean as a booklover, that would just do me in! Do check out all the FREE books available on Kindle! Many times, authors will put them on free for a limited time or 99 cents on release to get reviews, etc.! You could even try your hand at publishing a little Kindle book and then use the proceeds to fund your book habit.

silk

[Silk]

I do listen sometimes to audiobooks as part of a free app on my Ipod Touch but they are the older books. However, I love the old books (Austen is a favourite!) so it was nice to do. Problem is that I don't do a whole lot where audiobooks fit in... But they are nice from time to time.

[Hopper250]

Good lord, how on earth can you live on only $50/year for books? lollll I mean as a booklover, that would just do me in! Do check out all the FREE books available on Kindle! Many times, authors will put them on free for a limited time or 99 cents on release to get reviews, etc.! You could even try your hand at publishing a little Kindle book and then use the proceeds to fund your book habit.

silk

Oh, Its quite hard and I usually squeeze out $250 or more. I really do spend far to much on books according to the wife. However the Library is my dearest friend, and lets me read lots and lots of ebooks. I read through 50 or so books a year. Most are popcorn fiction that I don't worry about owning, but there are always some that I must buy. I read it and I must buy The Miseducation of Cameron Post. I also bought the entire Soldier Son Trilogy after I finished it.

I don't do audio books, I have a tendency to hyper-focus when reading/listening to books, and I would never be able to drive to work while listening (the only audio book time I have).

[Silk]

Oh, Its quite hard and I usually squeeze out $250 or more. I really do spend far to much on books according to the wife. However the Library is my dearest friend, and lets me read lots and lots of ebooks. I read through 50 or so books a year. Most are popcorn fiction that I don't worry about owning, but there are always some that I must buy. I read it and I must buy The Miseducation of Cameron Post. I also bought the entire Soldier Son Trilogy after I finished it.

I don't do audio books, I have a tendency to hyper-focus when reading/listening to books, and I would never be able to drive to work while listening (the only audio book time I have).

Myself I don't use the library I'm afraid because the late fees here are enormous. I once forgot that I had some books because I was in the process of moving furniture and had set them inside a cabinet so as not to get damaged. I didn't receive a call or email and nothing in the mail and it unfortunately slipped my mind until I received a collection notice that I owed $65! So that pretty much put me off the library. lol That and the difficulty of getting there when it's downtown and involves fees for parking and such. I feel I'm better served by using ebooks.

By the way everyone, I was just posting up a free Gaelic grammar book available on Kindle in the Gaelic thread and up popped a bunch of suggestions for books I might be interested in reading on Amazon... Check out one such suggestion. lol

51nmw8Uc0gL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA278_PIkin4,BottomRight.jpg


"Haunted by a past he cannot change, Drust MacCoinnach has made himself a willing sacrifice in his clan’s fight to keep the balance of Good and Evil. But instead of the heroic death he expected, he awoke to find himself saved by a woman who would turn his life inside out, and make him burn for her so fiercely that nothing can stop him from claiming her as his own.
Willa has her own demons to slay, and a narrowly-escaped past she dreams of putting behind her for good. But when she comes across a wounded stranger high in the mountains, she simply cannot leave him there to die, even though she is running for her own life. As she nurses him back to health, she realizes the crossing of their paths was no accident… if only she can convince the headstrong warrior to cede his body and his heart to her."

There's a whole bunch of books like that... there's another one called "Plaid and Passion"! lol The funny part is every single one of them features a well muscled, shirtless man in a kilt. ;)

Silk

[Hopper250]

Myself I don't use the library I'm afraid because the late fees here are enormous. I once forgot that I had some books because I was in the process of moving furniture and had set them inside a cabinet so as not to get damaged. I didn't receive a call or email and nothing in the mail and it unfortunately slipped my mind until I received a collection notice that I owed $65! So that pretty much put me off the library. lol That and the difficulty of getting there when it's downtown and involves fees for parking and such. I feel I'm better served by using ebooks.

By the way everyone, I was just posting up a free Gaelic grammar book available on Kindle in the Gaelic thread and up popped a bunch of suggestions for books I might be interested in reading on Amazon... Check out one such suggestion. lol

51nmw8Uc0gL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA278_PIkin4,BottomRight.jpg


"Haunted by a past he cannot change, Drust MacCoinnach has made himself a willing sacrifice in his clan’s fight to keep the balance of Good and Evil. But instead of the heroic death he expected, he awoke to find himself saved by a woman who would turn his life inside out, and make him burn for her so fiercely that nothing can stop him from claiming her as his own.
Willa has her own demons to slay, and a narrowly-escaped past she dreams of putting behind her for good. But when she comes across a wounded stranger high in the mountains, she simply cannot leave him there to die, even though she is running for her own life. As she nurses him back to health, she realizes the crossing of their paths was no accident… if only she can convince the headstrong warrior to cede his body and his heart to her."

There's a whole bunch of books like that... there's another one called "Plaid and Passion"! lol The funny part is every single one of them features a well muscled, shirtless man in a kilt. ;)

Silk

Well I never pay late fees for books as all I use are ebooks. The system automatically checks them out and returns them when the two weeks are up (I usually return them early but I can't ever be late). Otherwise I go to Gutenberg and get what I want for free and read that. You'd be surprised how many fairy tales nearly identical even though told in France and Russia. I can always redownload the book if needed. I can even get it onto my computer and print it. Gutenberg has all of the books I've downloaded formated for Epub and Kindle.

[gwynng]

Instead of a bodice-ripper, would this class of novel be called a tartan-ripper?

[adempsey10]

Instead of a bodice-ripper, would this class of novel be called a tartan-ripper?

Im still waiting for a kilted Fabio

[artificer]

I'm currently chewing through all of August Derleth's rather less than spectacular additions to HP Lovecraft's "Mythos".

It's been decades since I've read any of the secondary stuff, much preferring Lovecraft himself. Now I'm recalling just why that is.

ith: