“People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.”
—Saul Bellow

Preferably free like my first two picks but not necessarily on (LQish or my) topics like the second; just a thought from: alan_ri's, What Do You Listen Now?

A Methodology for Investigation of Bowed String Performance Through Measurement of Violin Bowing Technique
For any to the learning violinist+ this book is both awesome and tends to go way over head at times (here and there as it’s title suggests,) unless you love Physics as many violinists do

Free as in Freedom
Programmers and CEOs alike should care about this book but the world is not perfect

Last not least for the modern day philosopher, a book I have not been able to put down: Thinking It Through An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy

“I suspect it may be like the difference between a drinker and an alcoholic; the one merely reads books, the other needs books to make it through the day.”
—Gail Carriger

On topic e.g. could go: here or there if you don't mind cleaning out the dust and cobwebs? lol
Can't believe I almost missed this one being [Sticky:] and all...
Then there's Book Reviews in the sidebar➚: http://www.linuxquestions.org/reviews/index.php/cat/15

I read for both, so I checked both, but I doubt that contributes much. Perhaps a "both" option would be good.

Any book worth reading once is worth reading twice, to paraphrase John Morley.

The books I've read the most times are The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (all six novels and 54 short stories), The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham, and every Rex Stout mystery.

I've also read The Holy Bible (Jerusalem Translation) six times as a matter of self-discipline.

I read for both, sure.

I read a lot of books (specially in train, being a commuter).
I've got all Murakami's books and maybe the book I've read the most times is "Dance Dance Dance".
I like Philip Dick's books and just now I'm reading The Broken Bubble.
Often I read books about philosophy and scienze.

Just a small sampling of books that really stand out for me:

Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon (worth reading twice)

Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolf (first four books)

The Poems of Dylan Thomas

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot



I could easily list a hundred more.

Hi,

I do find reading for 'Information' fun!

eBooks are great!

Technical reading for diagnosis or interpretive purposes can sometimes be dry at times depending on the subject. I spend a lot of time online reading material for reference(s) related to LQ material. It is great to have online material to discern or understand a subject.

OT: My casual reading consists of either history or fictional material. My personal library is a broad selection of material. As a child, I started reading at the age of three, thanks to grandparents who were always reading therefore their interaction helped me to read. Now, as a grandparent the same interaction helped my grandchildren to achieve the same goal(s) at early ages.

It is sad that most parents use media(TV) to entertain or baby sit their child. In early childhood the development of the mind is conditioned by the child's environment. If they are surrounded by adults or others who just sit on the couch and are absorbed by a Magic box then that child will carry on the same trait(s) because of that conditioning environment. For new born horses or other animals we imprint things at birth so as to condition that animal to wanted traits. The same can be done for children.

I read for both information and fun, though since some time ago I've been reading mostly for information (news and technical topics).

Some of my favourite fictional books and writers:

• Hopscotch, by Julio Cortázar. A sort of surreal love story that you can read in any order you like.
• Jorge Luis Borges. (Love all of his short stories and essays).
• Edgar Allan Poe. (As above, I enjoy reading pretty much everything he wrote).
• One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez.

Well, I like gratuitous violence and action and plot so

Anything by Brian Lumley, is fine by me.

I started as a young buck though with E.E.Doc Smith which when I reread. Now looks kinda corny but for a kid was killer. I had the whole Lensman collection.

Great Stuff, Thanks.

Hadn't thought of the poll in these ways till now, a both would have been good? I figured it would be easy to tell but did not even consider I like reading both for fun. I guess my view could go the same as in What Do You Listen Now?s poll?
The first half of my life (although I did like Choose Your Own Adventures) I only read for info, mostly because I had to. Now I'm finding fiction, non and purely-informative all enjoyably. Currently :~) I am also rereading Lessons In Electric Circuits and Make: Electronics (Learning by Discovery) with my ten year old nephew. Who thanks to his grandfather, reading to him every day; loves reading on his own now, lots of Captain Underpants and Marvel Comics these days.

We are almost done with book one of the Suzuki method(Violin). Learning to read music rather than just play it (from memory now) is what takes up most of my time these days.

Other stuff I read in the past that will rock your boat for gratuitous entertainment is the Chung Kuo series by David Wingrove.

I've lately taken to lulling myself to sleep with audiobooks. I finally worked my way through Wilkie Collins's Moonstone, generally regarded as the first true English mystery novel, with the version from Librivox.org, which is sort of the audio equivalent of Project Gutenberg.

Wow talk about diversity, just a fraction from just a few LQ members and authors\books\styles...

Thanks frankbell (Librivox.org) sweet site, I love audiobooks and podcasts closing my eyes and using VLC to speed up most although for complex ideas I have slowed some down... I can remember as a kid an old AM radio station here in Milwaukee that played radio shows like The Shadow and The Green Hornet, wish audiobooks did stuff like that. Back in 2000 when I finally got my butt back to high school after a five year hiatus I bought TextAloud and made a bunch of MP3s to study while riding the bus. To get me into the school state of mind and because it interested me one was Sidelights on Relativity by Albert Einstein...

rokytnji parts of Chung Kuo remind me of a movie I just saw you may like ELYSIUM - Official Full Trailer - In Theaters 8/9...

The Aleph (short story collection) and others plus Jorge Luis Borges sound good; Poe is a must, I like Alfred Hitchcock short stories as well and Seven King(good article)...

eBooks!!!

Would have never guessed from the title Gravity's Rainbow until I knew...

Sci-Fi+++

I'm going about this all wrong I will have to just start reading and come back in months to years

"A World Without Time" is a quick and interesting read about the unusual friendship between Einstein and Kurt Gödel. One day (after Steven Hawkings dies and someone disproves black hole theory) everyone in the world will accept that they were both right... frame dragging is space being stretched making so-called "time" appear to slow down. Of course, space has to be made up of something faster than light that you can't observe but that exists none-the-less. So Schrödinger's cat was essentially dead when he closed the box. Your act of observing and measuring changes nothing, The particle was in both slits at the same time and there's nothing virtual about it. It was distributed through space under the principle of exact certainty in a bell curve and speed is irrelevant since time is an illusion.

There's a whole lot of science fiction passing as real physics these days. Maybe it was actually a bowling ball that fell on Netwon's head.

(Off-topic, slightly) Schrodinger's cat? No problem, you don't need to open the box. If you hear scratching - it's alive. If there's a foul smell - it's dead. Who needs quantum physics?
(On topic) Fun and/or information.
I've done quite a lot of reading, non-fiction and fiction. Non-fiction subjects: history, science (mostly physics), mythology, psychology, occult, computing, mainly.
Fiction: In general, anything that requires some effort thinking about, no waste-of-paper "best-sellers".

A World Without Time sounds interesting, I got into A Brief History of Time by Hawking good stuff. Schrodinger's cat brings to "mind" something I've just recently read about "Vacuous truth"
Many times it seems fiction and its thinking bring about philosophies and theory\educated-fiction?(tell me 'flip' phones didn't come from Star Trek+ ) I will only ever agree with the "truth" changes as do "minds\times"(more than likely back to "infinite" "matter").

Back in 1972, I decided to act on Dr Johnson's idea that a list of all ones reading would prove interesting. The list started in a notebook, was transferred to computer a decade later, and is still going strong with 3500+ entries (I've certainly missed a few). It's in classified order (which probably says as much about me as its contents does) from 'Fundamental questions of philosophy' (1974) to 'Zoo quest in Madagascar' (1979).

The titles added this month were
Age of innocence / Wharton
Essay on philosophical method / Collingwood
Waverly / Scott
Weapons and warfare in Renaissance Europe / Hall