Books: Reading, just read, thinking about reading, will never read

Here's a simple one. Answer these.
0) What are you reading right now:
Head First Java (K&B), Cien a�os de soledad (Gabriel Garc�a Marquez), Six Easy Pieces (Richard Feynman).
1) What have you just read and loved:
Cryptonomicon (Neil Stevenson), Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)
2) What have you just read and hated:
Tarzan of the Apes (Edgar Rice Burroughs)
3) What are you thinking about reading:
Salmon of doubt (Douglas Adams)

4) What have you tried to read but know you'll never finish:
The Art of Computer Programming (Donald Knuth)
5) All time favorite book:
G�del, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hofstadter)
[ October 13, 2003: Message edited by: Tim Allen ]

If you liked Godel, Escher, Bach then you should like Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language.
Reading right now: Constants of Nature.
Just read and loved: The Punic Wars
Thinking about reading: And If I Perish: Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II; Benjamin Franklin : An American Life
Tried to read... will never finish: Algorithms in Java, Third Edition (Parts 1-5)
All time favorite book: The Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Four Novels and Fifty-Six Short Stories Complete
[ October 13, 2003: Message edited by: Thomas Paul ]

Oh man, I totally forgot Sherlock Holmes. I have recently read Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the Memoirs. Both are available for the Palm (I use plucker) because they're public domain. What great reads! They're wee little things-- you can finish at least a story on the metro ride between Maragall and Passeig de Gr�cia.
Reading Sherlock Holmes is good for you because it makes you feel really smart. It's also surprising: lots of drugs, violence, shady wimmen... "Miami Vice" had nothing on this.

0) (last night, to get to sleep) Encyclopedia Brittanica 1979 edition, volume S..
1) The year in the death of Ricardo Reiss
2) Catch-22. Made it to about page 100 (by forcing myself to read it) I think the writting style is terrrible.
3) hmmn. not sure
4) see 0) and 2).
5) All time favorite? It's a bit like asking what's your favorite song. i.e. more about the memories of reading it than the content if you see what I mean.
The C++ language 3rd edition. reading that brings back some memories. As does Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling)

3.
On a list of recommended Russian (romantic

) reading:

Dmitri Bakin Read him in Dissonant Voices: The New Russian Fiction (Harvill). His story 'Lagopthalmos' is one of the best stories I have read in any language in the last twenty years
Valery Popov His style is that of the grotesque; he explores that stratum of fiction that includes the fantastical and the comic. A master of the moment when ordinary life tips into the absurd. His latest novel is called The Horror of Victory. Why is he not translated into English?
Julia Latynina A writer of bestselling police thrillers based on real-life experience: an archivist of Russia's current lawlessness. Not yet available in English.

Maybe the story to start with.
regards
[ October 13, 2003: Message edited by: HS Thomas ]

What are you reading right now?
Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
What have you just read and loved:
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (finished reading for the third time)
What have you just read and hated:
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
What are you thinking about reading:
Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language. (After seeing the post by Thomas)
What have you tried to read but know you'll never finish:
Holy Quran
All time favorite book:
Mahabharata

This makes more sense living in Bunkhouse Porch. I'll move it there.

0) What are you reading right now:
Catch 22
3) What are you thinking about reading:
Murder in the Name of Allah
4) What have you tried to read but know you'll never finish:
HTML: The Complete Reference
5) All time favorite book:
The Fountainhead

The Art of Computer Programming (Donald Knuth)

This is a book I wanted to read and become an expert but I was never able to read m,ore than few pages.

Originally posted by Tim Allen:
Here's a simple one. Answer these.
0) What are you reading right now:
Head First Java (K&B), Cien a�os de soledad (Gabriel Garc�a Marquez), Six Easy Pieces (Richard Feynman).

How are you liking cien a�os de soledad? you should have a very good spanish then..

If you liked Godel, Escher, Bach then you should like Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language.
Tim! If you like Godel, Escher, Bach, and you know a foreign language and you are interested in poetry, you have to read Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language. Tom recommended me this book and now he is my best friend.

Originally posted by Andres Gonzalez:

How are you liking cien a�os de soledad? you should have a very good spanish then..

I'm liking it quite a lot-- I had read it translated to English before, but I don't like the idea of reading translations.
My Spanish is pretty good-- despu�s de cuatro a�os en Espa�a (dos casado con una catalana) �debe serlo! Pero no es la primera vez que he intentado leer Cien a�os.... Las primeras veces me cost� mucho por algunos terminos que utiliza que no me son familiares. La verdad es que el castellano de aqu� es muy diferente a lo de Colombia. De todos modos, me va gustando.
�De d�nde eres t�, Andres?
Summary translation for everybody else : My Spanish is pretty good after four years in Spain. Cien a�os is difficult in some places because Columbian Spanish is different from Spanish Spanish. I still like it.

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
If you liked Godel, Escher, Bach then you should like Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language.
Tim! If you like Godel, Escher, Bach, and you know a foreign language and you are interested in poetry, you have to read Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language. Tom recommended me this book and now he is my best friend.

You've been reading my homepage (http://www.timallen.org)! Sounds like a direct hit. You're right, I find all of this stuff fascinating. Right now I'm living in Barcelona, where everyone is bilingual. Everyone speaks Catalan and Castilleon Spanish. Catalan is a language which has many of the same roots as Castilleon, but also shares roots with Proven�al.
It is very different in some places from Castilleon: You can call me tomorrow-> Castilleon: Me puedes llamar ma�ana. Catalan: Em pots trucar dem�. And in some places its a lot alike: There is a problem in the file system-> Castilleon: Hay un problema en el sistema de ficheros. Catalan: Hi ha un problema en el sistem de fitxers. (BTW: I'm only native in English, so it is probable that natives would say these phrases in other ways. This is how I say phrases like this at work.)
If I were a linguist, I think I'd like to study how languages like Catalan develop. I'd classify them as "trading point" languages. Catalunya has always been a big crossroads for trade because of where it's situated: at the crux of the Mediterranean and the Pyrrenese mountains between France and Spain, the European country that is physically closest to Morroco. A thousand years ago people from dozens of countries were here trading.
Forms of Catalan are spoken in Andorra, France, and Italy. They are mutually intelligible, but sound odd between native speakers. I would imagine an analogous situation of having a conversation between an English speaking Indian, a Jamaican, a Glasgowegian, and a Texan. And in Spain, Catalan has dialects in Valencia, Mallorca, and Menorca.
Wow, that got a way from me. Thanks for the book recommendation!
[ October 17, 2003: Message edited by: Tim Allen ]

TA: You've been reading my homepage!
Couldn't resist.

I liked your "Red Kayak" poem. Actually, I saved it, for it's so much safer on my computer.

When reading, I was thinking about this passage from Hofstader's "Metamagical themas":

... French people tend to translate them into their own frame of reference. This is of course true for all of us. If Mary tells Ann, "My brother died", and if Ann doesn't know Mary's brother, then how can she understand this statement? Surely projection is of the essence: Ann will imagine her own brother dying (if she has one -- and if not, then her sister, a good friend, possibly even a pet!). This alternate frame f reference allows Ann to empathize with Mary.

I do not have any similar experience with my father, neither do I have any unsimilar experience. But when I was already adult, I had a short kayak trip and it was one of the best moments in my life. This was enough to feel affinity with your poem.
Now we need ME to move this thread back to MD.

[ October 18, 2003: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]