What do you write?

My favorite novel of all is Heart of the Fire by Cerridwen Fallingstar. You may like that.

@JamieB Poetry, fiction, non-fiction... Lately it's mostly research papers and reports.

I try to keep a 2-book/week minimum too. Especially this month (Nov) with NaNoWriMo going on, I may only finish reading 2-3 short books per week, if I get much writing done, but I usually try to finish 5-7/week. I do like sci-fi, though. I particularly like all the ways writers imagine society to work with the addition of different technologies or different historical events, terrestrial or otherwise. I think of sci-fi as modeling different futures, and offering possible solutions or insight should those models prove similar to reality in coming generations. And they're fun to read.

Wow, sounds like a fun collection. I can sympathize with enjoying the convenience of ebooks. Someday I hope to live somewhere stable enough and big enough to house 11,000 physical books, all neatly lined up on shelves, but moving the books I do have requires a small army anymore, and I hate the house I live in now, so I am holding out some hope that I will indeed be moving again before I die. Till then I have about 1000 physical books, and pass on most of them once I finish reading them (my sisters and brother all read too, so they get most of the books I've read). I get a lot of my new books from the community free shelf at the public library.

Cool. I've reread the Wheel of Time series (yes, all of it) probably 8-10 times, even though in my sibling culture we do not get to count rereads towards our total books read for each year. I finished all of the Discworld series recently, and have been rereading those a lot lately, too (they're very good, if anyone is looking for a new series to obsess over, and the Science of Discworld books cover a lot of cool science and philosophy topics). I only made it through the first 3 Dune books so far, and the first 3 of the Song of Ice & Fire series (and the first 3 of the Outlander series, which I may not bother to finish). Too many books, not enough lifetime left to read them all, but I'm planning to finish most of the series I've started, eventually.

I couldn't get into Taipan, I think it was the attempt at writing as the characters spoke that just instantly turned me off (probably to my own loss). Picking up The Shantaram at a friend's suggestion felt like reading Shogun all over again in a new setting with new characters, it was magnificent! If I were an ambitious man I'd sit down and detail all the parallels, but as-is I'm just a lazy book-glutton, heh

OK, what exactly is a readathon?

Readathons are excuses to set everything else aside and just read and interact with fellow readers. Many of us who prioritize reading have too few people around in person to gush about books with, so during readathons we make to-be-read(TBR) stacks, and try to finish a certain number of pages, a certain number of books, or a certain number of hours of reading. We log our reading on a website, blog, etc., and the hosts keep discussions going on the readathon site(s) that participants join in when they are taking breaks from reading. When they are successful readathons do make it easier to finish tough books, finish more books, or just to actually focus on reading, for participants who have kids and spouses and too many distractions most days to just sit down and read a book(if the kids and spouse can be sent off to do their own things during the event, at least). I help run a casual monthly readathon group on facebook/goodreads, and also participate in the 'big' biannual and annual readathons like Dewey's and the 24in48 readathons.

It's a term and culture that grew out of the book blogging world. I was skeptical for the first few years I've seen it on social media, but it is fun, and you meet a lot of fellow book-lovers during them.

The readathon group I help run is Shadow Lounge Readathon Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/shadowloungereadathon/) btw. We host a readathon on the second weekend of each month, from 6pm Friday to 6pm Sunday, so our next one starts this coming weekend.

well, it sounds fun, but since I work every weekend, I wouldn't be able to participate.

Never heard of a read-a-thon but when I googled it, sure enough, lots of information. I think I'll check it out. Thanks for the info.

I used to participate in triathlons some 30 years ago and my favorite event is the marathon, so . . . . . . aaaaahhhh, what am I doing here?

Have you read any Tom Robbins books yet? He's another that in my head belongs in the same subgenre of fantasy as Pratchett and Gaiman, more or less.

JamieB... gosh, that is name I find familiar, but it took a Google search to find out why. I've read Skinny Legs and All. Thanks for the recommendation! I'll have to add him back onto my list.

Another Roadside Attraction was part of my journey! LOVE TOM.

Great choice!

Jane Eyre is next in my list!

If you're into short stories at all, I read a collection recently, Loosed Upon the World, edited by John Joseph Adams, that is climate change themed. The range of authors is great, and each story is pointedly science based, using different models as starting points for looking at the future once climate change has had a while to set in and change things.

Clive Cussler is another of my favorites. I liked the Isaac Bell books; the series I liked least so far has been the Fargo series. I like that the Fargos are a couple, so there is a female central character, but I don't actually like the central characters, either of them. Dirk Pitt is a sexist jerk a lot of the time, but he's tolerable in the same way as James Bond is tolerable. Have you read Cussler's nonfiction Sea Hunters books yet? I loved those, and the Sea Hunters TV series(which is/was on youtube).

I'll check out the Sea Hunters TV. But my issue with Isaac Bell is he's a Pinkerton Detective and I know too much about the Pinkerton to suspend disbelief to enjoy it

the dresden files was great.

When I find them on community free shelves I have been known to read Science and Nature journals cover to cover like that, looking up the words I don't know & all. I have 3 degrees (psychology, ecology and political theory) so I ought to know a lot of the jargon in a lot of those papers, but of course over time my vocabulary gets rusty, my math gets shakier, and science develops lots of new terms that didn't exist when I was in college for those subjects. So, knowing I'll never be able to really know everything, I still have to at least try not to lose what subjects I used to know.

I totally get what you are saying. I was fortunate in my early 20's to meet a woman who said why bother reading fiction where you might learn just one thing--the theme of the book when you can read non-fiction and learn something new in every paragraph. What an epiphany!

My parents did not believe a girl should go to college. My dad said that education was wasted on "girls" because all they did was get married and have babies. So, knowing that I could learn by reading non-fiction was a revelation and I never looked back. I have been on a life long quest for knowledge and I still find it thrilling.

I too have read books and magazine articles that were utterly incomprehensible to me hence the dictionary on my pillow. I usually persevere and eventually learn something. I also feel that I must keep trying to learn or grow old and die mentally. Not what I want from life. Cheers to another bibliophile. I see there are lots of them here but then that doesn't surprise me at all.

If you haven't read Good Omens yet (Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman), that's one you ought to try, before the film rendition comes out. The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende, is also lovely and has a lot of metaphysics worked into it that you may appreciate after reading Plato.

The Republic is the most boring Plato. My least favorite of his books. I liked Symposium, Apology, and Death of Socrates best.