NEW TO READING BOOKS

Hey book, ive never read a book all the way through, i only read magazines or the web. What would you suggest i read?

Something short that you'd be interested in. Maybe some famous stuff just to know what everyone's talking about: Dan Brown's stuff, Harry Potter, etc. If you even mention Twilight I will find and rape you.

i dont want to read any dan brown cos i saw the films same with harry potter.

>>3
Indeed, if those films weren't enough to warn you off you're beyond help.

if you like hard cop/vampire try the Anita Blake novels by Laurell K Hamilton.  good engaging read and the main character has a unique sense of humor.

are they very long books

>>2
oh yeah that other stuff you mentioned is totally better than twilight uh-huh

>>6
depends on what you think is long.. on average they are about 300/400 or so pages. i think.

that sounds too long for a first book, dont want to put me off for ever

read "Micah" then its about a 5 hour read.

ps  that is an average of over 17 books i think the first book is somewhere around the late 200's early 3's so its not to long.

ether that or try the "house of night"  series.  which is a much easier vamp novel to read..

Depends what you want to get into.  There are actually some good "teen fiction" novels that can appeal to older readers, and they're usually pretty short (The "Bartimaeus Trilogy" is very good).  Neil Gaiman's "Interworld" was really good (he co-wrote it with another author, but I can't remember who), and it's pretty short (only about 150-200 pages).  You could also try some books of short stories (Gaiman has several good ones, as do Stephen King and many other accomplished authors).

If you want something heavier and kind of dark, try Stephen Erikson's "The Malazan Book of the Fallen" series.  It's 8 books thus far, with two more to come, and each book averages around 1000-1500 pages.  There's also Ian C. Esslemont's "Tales of the Malazan Empire", which is on book 2 of 5 so far.  Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series is also good, and the books are about half the length of Erickson's.  I don't know much about non-fantasy series, though, as I'm not really that interested.  I also read Angels and Demons recently, and while it wasn't great, it was alright.

If you're looking at sci-fi, I'd recommend William Gibson's "Neuromancer" or Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game", which were both pretty good and not very long.

>>12

Wheel of Time is all right. Better than a fair amount of stuff I've read, but jeezus fucking christ does his incessant focus on meaningless idiosyncrasies and people's perceptions of the opposite sex piss me off. There's some pretty awesome stuff in there, but the flaws really do drag it down considerably.

I would also back the recommendation of Neil Gaiman. You'd probably want to start with Neverwhere.

>>13

I enjoyed Wheel of Time as long as I kept in mind that it's just one of those kitchy "boy from small village becomes KING OF UNIVERSE LOLHGIOEWHOW!!!" stories.  There are tons of them out there.  I'd read it again and buy the last of them when they come out.  If you'd like to check out a refreshingly different and totally epic fantasy series, though, check out the two Malazan series I mentioned in that post.

And I totally agree on Neverwhere.  I'm re-reading it right now, and I keep forgetting how awesome it is.  It is maybe a bit long, though, if OP feels that 300-400 pages is long.  Gaiman does have the ability to suck you in and make you go "WTFOMG<3", though.

>>1

You don't have to read a book cover-to-cover if you don't want to. Magazines and Websites are very capable of giving a person plenty to read. Since you are already comfortable reading on the internet and from magazines, just up the ante-- read MORE websites and magazines. For instance, you could choose a specific subject you're intrested in Wikipedia, allot all the related articles over a week or a month or a year, and read every single one.

woah guys, lots to take in here took me a while to read all that. By the sound of it i'll be best reading some of this neil gaiman or whatever so i'll try and find something by him probably.
oh and i will still read websites and stuff i just wanted to read at least one book so i didnt feel dumb

so which one should i read

I say start off slow and just read Go Dog Go.

not heard of that i'll ask in the library

>>15
Stumbling randomly through small snippets of barely-related text isn't really the same as reading a book.

you guys are dicks that dog book was a fuckin kids book the woman at the library looked at me like i was a fuckin pedo i bet you think your really clever if this is the sort of person reading turns you into then fuck it

>>21
That is a completely believable story.

>>20

It isn't stumbling, and it isn't random, and in the given example it's more than a snippet, and they aren't barely related to each other. But it is different than reading a book.

>>21
>this is the sort of person reading turns you into

HAHA

>>22
what you fuckin mean

Reading a lot usually makes people comprehend things better, and helps with reading and writing skills.

>>21 is what happens when you don't read books.

>>23
Its stumbling, it's random, the given example is Wikipedia articles which are always pretty short, and which are barely related to one another.

It's the same as reading a book though.

>>27

I see you are implicitly pointing out that I didn't really give an argument against >>20 . Point received; I didn't. but...

How is it random/stumbling if the subject matter is chosen, and the order in which they are to be read is allotted? I have done this before with Neuroscience & Psychology. I have saved 232 Wikipedia articles on this subject, and I have so much to read that I haven't finished them yet (I have pretty much abandoned the project, and most of the pages I've saved are just taking up space on my hard drive). Admittedly, it's hard to avoid tangents and detours because Wikipedia articles are practically link farms.

You do not even have to sift through all the articles related to a subject, you could just pick a featured article and make a goal to read every single article linked on the page. (Take Biology, for instance) You could read the entire article, then click on every single link starting from the top, and eventually read all of em'.

Doing this, and you will read A LOT, and learn A LOT. With some subjects-- even narrow ones-- you would probably do more reading than in a book. And as long as you don't stray too far from the original subject, every article you read will be  related to each other.

We've only been talking about Wikipedia. But you know there are plenty of sites perfect for reading, even better than books in many cases: "How Stuff Works", "The Rotten Library", "The Skeptics Dictionary", "Knol" (a new promising Google creation), "The SCP Foundation", "Talk Origins", ect ect ect ect ect

I just went to that wikipedia site its boring as fuck

Watership Down by Richard Adams

A great book and a safe choice when there's little to tell where your interests lie, and how skilled you are.

Catcher in the Rye

/thread

i told my mates down the pub i was reading a book by neil gaimen and they all laughed and went "what, a book by a gay man, you bender".
its fuckin weird theres loads of long words and satan is in it

>>32
why'd they laugh at that, aren't all brits gay

>>32

I dunno. I've always pronounced it "guy-man" or "guy-min."

I love sushi

>>33
fuck you all brits arent gay youre gay