# Do you like reading?



## Mephistopheles

I read in the Guardian that as few as 30% of young people read for enjoyment, so I thought I'd find out if Talk Classical fares any better! So do you read much? Do you read more or less than you listen to music? What do you read? Fiction? What kind? Non-fiction? What kind? Books about music at least?!

I personally read all sorts and never tire of it. Although, I just came across this quotation of Schopenhauer that I like: "It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents." I have far too many books, more than I can read, but I enjoy buying them just to have their inanimate intellectual company.


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## Taneyev

I read every day at least one hour, and never leave home without a book, no matter when I've to go or do. I read while waiting on a queue or traveling on a bus. I use any opportunity to read. But I only read in English.


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## Klavierspieler

Yes. I love reading, though I don't get to do as much of it as I would like (practicing takes up a lot of time). I prefer fiction, though I sometimes read non-fiction.


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## Sonata

First off, I'm 30, so I don't know if you'd classify me as "young" or not, but there ya go.

I love to read. Admittedly, I haven't done as much pleasure reading in the last year as I had previously. I used to always read more than I listened to music; or read while listening to music. There have been a couple of reasons why I haven't read very much lately however. Increased business at work and the home, especially now with a newborn to go with our toddler. Secondly, I find that more of my free time is consumed by music lately. Focused listening, posting here on Talk Classical, or reading about pieces or composers (ok, and adding recordings to my ever-growing wishlist!) Also, in just the past few weeks I have developed interest in the visual arts and have been looking up artists online.

That said, I hope to increase my reading again in the next few months, even if I set aside an evening once or twice a week to do so. I enjoy a variety of books: fantasy is a big genre for me. Mysteries or drama, even occasionally some well written young adult literature. I don't read a lot of non-fiction (though I guess reading up on artist or composers may apply). But I do have an interest in anthropology, and hope to increase my reading there sooner or later. I have a fascinating book called "Ishi: Last of His Tribe" which is a biographical book that I'm keen to dig into soon. And I am a medical practitioner, so I do medical reading to keep current.


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## jani

I am not a bookworm, i have only read few books. Like Kalevala( Book about Finnish mythology) and the three LOTR books.


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## Wandering

I have a problem staying focused much of the time. I can sometimes be only a few pages into something and begin getting figgity, it can even be something I'm very much enjoying and it still happens. I don't understand it. Often when watching a film I have to pause it for the same reason. Maybe I'm ADD or ADHD? But I still love reading anyways.


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## Cnote11

Yes, I do. Although through my life I've had to catch up on the fiction reading. When I was little I skipped straight to non-fiction and pretty much nothing but non-fiction until my teenage years. I have to do a lot of reading still due to university.


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## jalex

Mostly I read poetry, short stories and non-fiction (including music books). I live in a noisy house and I only read at night and in the library at weekends (don't understand how people can concentrate with noise around them). It's a pain during school term time since it cuts the available hours pretty short.


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## Meaghan

I read a lot of poetry and I read books about music, including composer biographies. I used to read novels constantly as a child, but not as much anymore, partly because in college I have much less time for unassigned reading. I read some novels this summer, though. It used to be that I could not read if there was noise, but then the people I shared an apartment with this past spring played music _all the time,_ so I had to adapt if I was to get anything done. So now I can read with music or noise in the background, I just read a bit slower.

I also love being read to.  Have since I was a baby, and still do at 21.


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## cwarchc

I read all the time.
In my lunchtime at work
In the evening, when my wife is watching tv
In the mornings at weekend.
I have found that TC has cut down my reading, as I'm on here more
I couldn't imagine a house with no books


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## Chrythes

Not as much as I used to. I finished only 2 books this summer. Mostly I read while driving home with the bus, or waiting for the next lecture. So most of my reading is done during the University. But I do enjoy reading, the last books that I read were non-fiction, but before that I used to read almost only fiction.


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## Ramako

I cannot get poetry yet, perhaps that will change.

I read a fair amount, but generally in bursts. Often I find that reading 'low' literature will get me into high literature, then I will phase out again. At the moment I am re-reading Harry Potter, so I expect I shall get on to something more substantial afterwards.

Of course I read a fair amount of music books, mostly technical, and will be reading many more over the years. Much of this I have to read, though others are interesting in their own right. I hate it when academic books are boring, when they don't have to be.

My favourite authors are Tolkein and Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment is my favourite book, and reading it was one of the most important events of my life.


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## MaestroViolinist

Awesome thread by the way.  

I read TOO much! Sometimes I read 300+ paged book in one sitting. So yes, I would say I read more than I listen to music. Without books my life would so boring and also stressful. Lately I have been reading books about music, but normally I read all fiction (mainly fantasy) books. 

That's terrible that only 30% of young people read for enjoyment. Though I must hang around different people because all of my friends read a lot like me.


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## Turangalîla

When I was eight I would read like one fiction novel per day. Now I have no time and have not finished a book in months. If I do read, I read non-fiction. My favourite book is Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. I hope that someone else here had read it—we could have a fun conversation


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## Huilunsoittaja

I've been into reading Russian classics these past few years. But now in college I lose the time to read for enjoyment, and I only read textbooks and stuff.


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## Cnote11

Russian literature is easily top classs


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## clavichorder

I've been supplementing my obsession with science fiction by also reading classics. Mostly, I'm only doing short stories these days in terms of classics.


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## Ondine

I love reading. 

I always have a book near me. 

When I buy a book, after that, I always go to the CD's shop to by a CD. 

I have to divide the time to read and to listen music. When I read, I just want to give myself completely to reading and when I listen to music I give myself completely to listen to music.

I like to read essays of any kind. From Physics to Psychology and Religion and from History to Anthropology and Music. What I must really enjoy is the way the essay is written. Brilliant ones are really inspiring and good tools so to keep imagination working.

The only problem is TIME. I wish I had more.


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## starthrower

Yessssssssssssssssssss!


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## aleazk

I used to read a lot of literature and a little of philosophy. Today, most of my readings are technical (on physics), since I'm in the stage of my career prior to the phd, where you must 'absorb' an incredibly huge quantity of material that I will need for the phd. Is very hard, books and books on mathematics and physics, it never ends!. There's a thing in General Relativity called the 'singularity theorems'. It's funny, you need to read hundreds of pages on hard differential topology (a really cumbersome topic) mixed with ordinary differential geometry, all that just to being able to understand the proof of the singularity theorems, which only takes one page!. (of course all the hard work has been made in those previous steps, it's just a way of organizing the material, but still is quite curious when you see it). Anyway, I hope that I will be able to resume my reading habits once all this is settled.


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## Crudblud

I enjoy reading, but I often find that other things, particularly music making/planning, take up my time. Among my favourite authors I count H.P. Lovecraft, Aldous Huxley and Stephen King (I love The Dark Tower and The Stand, not so much his straight horror fare), and I am currently very much enjoying trying to get my head around William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.

Authors I have an interest in reading in the future include James Joyce, Hunter S. Thompson, J.G. Ballard, Jorge Luis Borges and Goethe.


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## aleazk

Crudblud said:


> I enjoy reading, but I often find that other things, particularly music making/planning, take up my time. Among my favourite authors I count H.P. Lovecraft, Aldous Huxley and Stephen King (I love The Dark Tower and The Stand, not so much his straight horror fare), and I am currently very much enjoying trying to get my head around William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.
> 
> Authors I have an interest in reading in the future include James Joyce, Hunter S. Thompson, J.G. Ballard, Jorge Luis Borges and Goethe.


Two of my all time favorites.


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## Crudblud

One of my friends, who was born in Chile to English parents, was teaching me how to pronounce Borges' name properly. That was a fun conversation.


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## samurai

My two absolute favorite genres are Science-Fiction and History. Given that I was exposed at a very early age to the great sci-fi masters such as Verne and Wells and took my undergraduate degree in history, I guess these choices are hardly surprising. I have found that reading--along with listening to music--have been instrumental {no pun intended} in me keeping some semblance of sanity and hope for the past three months or so, during which I have been undergoing some health problems and been very uncomfortable physically and distraught emotionally.


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## Taneyev

I only read historical essays (mainly about IIWW) and on fiction, only Stephen King. I'm a King's fanatic, have more than 30 titles, and never tired of suffer with him. just for masochist. You know that English is not my mather language, but I gess that King's vocabulary should be of several thousends current words, plus others he create. His writing technique is absolutely extraordinary.


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## Crudblud

So today I did something I almost never do, I went shopping, shopping for books!

Picked up the following:

J.G. Ballard - The Atrocity Exhibition
James Joyce - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man / Ulysses
Franz Kafka - The Trial
Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
Edgar Allen Poe - Selected Short Stories including The Pit and the Pendulum and other famous stuff and whatever else
Cervantes - Don Quixote Part 1, with notes and all manner of other stuff, I later found the complete Don Quixote in another shop but decided to stick with my guns

Lastly, I bought a reference book worth £25, for 50p: The Gramophone Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2008. I don't know how much I'll actually use it, but I couldn't turn down a huge reference book in good condition for such a low price, now could I?


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## starthrower

I'm reading a telephone sized book of essays by Gore Vidal. I recommend him to fans of Mark Twain, Molly Ivins, or Frank Zappa. He's cynical, sarcastic, and funny too! And quintessentially American. Well... maybe not? He's highly intelligent, well read, and he knows his history.


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## Ravndal

I love reading all types of fiction. I'm very selective though.


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## cwarchc

CarterJohnsonPiano said:


> When I was eight I would read like one fiction novel per day. Now I have no time and have not finished a book in months. If I do read, I read non-fiction. My favourite book is Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. I hope that someone else here had read it-we could have a fun conversation


I have it in my bookcase.
A very entertaining read, and very true


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## cwarchc

Odnoposoff said:


> I only read historical essays (mainly about IIWW) and on fiction, only Stephen King. I'm a King's fanatic, have more than 30 titles, and never tired of suffer with him. just for masochist. You know that English is not my mather language, but I gess that King's vocabulary should be of several thousends current words, plus others he create. His writing technique is absolutely extraordinary.


On your historical WW11 books. Have you tried any of Norman Davies?
I find his to be very well written, he tends to specialise on the European conflict


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## Taneyev

Well, no, sorry. You see, I can't choose what to buy, because here in Buenos Aires, you get what few you can find. Only alternative is to buy for Internet, but as a retired unemployed mature guy, can't afford the costs. It took me almost 20 years to collect the nearly 30 books I've now.


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## Head_case

Cnote11 said:


> Russian literature is easily top classs


Not if they have as many spelling mistakes as the English newspapers lol


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## Head_case

Mephistopheles said:


> I read in the Guardian that as few as 30% of young people read for enjoyment, so I thought I'd find out if Talk Classical fares any better! So do you read much? Do you read more or less than you listen to music? What do you read? Fiction? What kind? Non-fiction? What kind? Books about music at least?!
> 
> I personally read all sorts and never tire of it. Although, I just came across this quotation of Schopenhauer that I like: "It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents." I have far too many books, more than I can read, but I enjoy buying them just to have their inanimate intellectual company.


I don't like accumulating objects, except plastic (plastic is forever! yessss!). Vinyl....and CDs. Besides I already have a book. Some of you have already seen it


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## Klavierspieler

Head_case said:


> I don't like accumulating objects, except plastic (plastic is forever! yessss!). Vinyl....and CDs. Besides I already have a book. Some of you have already seen it


My book is better:


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## Mephistopheles

Odnoposoff said:


> Well, no, sorry. You see, I can't choose what to buy, because here in Buenos Aires, you get what few you can find. Only alternative is to buy for Internet, but as a retired unemployed mature guy, can't afford the costs. It took me almost 20 years to collect the nearly 30 books I've now.


Would you not consider some of the thousands of out-of-copyright classics available electronically through Project Gutenberg and Google Books?


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## Taneyev

Well, out-of copyright books are dated 50 or more years ago, and in History, that's a very long time. It's like Medicine books. Anything older of 3 or 4 years is old-fashioned and probably wrong. All the time historians are finding unknown documents and files that prove or suggest that many things believed until that time, are incomplete or plainly wrong. You need the very last essay on any subject.


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## Mephistopheles

Odnoposoff said:


> Well, out-of copyright books are dated 50 or more years ago, and in History, that's a very long time. It's like Medicine books. Anything older of 3 or 4 years is old-fashioned and probably wrong. All the time historians are finding unknown documents and files that prove or suggest that many things believed until that time, are incomplete or plainly wrong. You need the very last essay on any subject.


But that's only regarding non-fiction. Surely you can't think the same of all the great fiction authors mentioned here...? Dickens, Poe, Joyce, Kafka, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and philosophers like Hume, Locke, Rousseau etc. You can't rule these out for being dead long ago, surely?!


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## Taneyev

Well, I'm a little close guy. As I said, I read only historical essays and Stephen King. Each maniac with his theme.


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## moody

Crudblud said:


> So today I did something I almost never do, I went shopping, shopping for books!
> 
> Picked up the following:
> 
> J.G. Ballard - The Atrocity Exhibition
> James Joyce - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man / Ulysses
> Franz Kafka - The Trial
> Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
> Edgar Allen Poe - Selected Short Stories including The Pit and the Pendulum and other famous stuff and whatever else
> Cervantes - Don Quixote Part 1, with notes and all manner of other stuff, I later found the complete Don Quixote in another shop but decided to stick with my guns
> 
> Lastly, I bought a reference book worth £25, for 50p: The Gramophone Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2008. I don't know how much I'll actually use it, but I couldn't turn down a huge reference book in good condition for such a low price, now could I?


My goodness! That lot should keep you going for a while.


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## Cnote11

A bunch of those are quite short, so if he reads frequently he shouldn't have a problem getting through the majority of them.


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## moody

I had never even contemplated life without reading, I devour books. 
I don't read much of great importance now but do read a lot about musicians and music, I think a number of people who post here should possibly do the same.


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## Head_case

Well okay I confess I do enjoy reading, but I dislike letting people know I am a bibliophile. It gets in the way of my fantastical hardcore rockstar persona.


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## MaestroViolinist

Head_case said:


> Well okay I confess I do enjoy reading, but I dislike letting people know I am a bibliophile. It gets in the way of my fantastical hardcore rockstar persona.


So just replace the ferret with a person and you're like this then?


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## aleazk

Cnote11 said:


> A bunch of those are quite short, so if he reads frequently he shouldn't have a problem getting through the majority of them.


Sure, Ulysses, The Brothers Karamazov, Don Quixote... You can read those in one afternoon. And you still will have time for the tea.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Klavierspieler said:


> My book is better:
> 
> View attachment 8092


Oh my god I actually love that book so much! AND YES THE HIPPOPOTAMUS!

(but not the armadillo )


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## Chris

I read for several hours a day. There are books and racks of magazines and journals all over the house. Nearly all of them fall into the categories of theology, Creation science, IT or natural history.

I have no intention of buying an e-reader. I have consistently found that when I have read something on the internet it doesn't _go in_ in the way reading a book does. There is something about holding a 3D book and physically turning pages that fixes what I have read in the memory. I'm not sure I can explain this. Something to do with the way we associate events with other events.


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## Mephistopheles

Chris said:


> I read for several hours a day. There are books and racks of magazines and journals all over the house. Nearly all of them fall into the categories of theology, Creation science, IT or natural history.
> 
> I have no intention of buying an e-reader. I have consistently found that when I have read something on the internet it doesn't _go in_ in the way reading a book does. There is something about holding a 3D book and physically turning pages that fixes what I have read in the memory. I'm not sure I can explain this. Something to do with the way we associate events with other events.


It wouldn't surprise me if that's true. I believe that information is better retained when we write it down, so perhaps it is something to do with the tactile experience.


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## Chris

Mephistopheles said:


> It wouldn't surprise me if that's true. I believe that information is better retained when we write it down, so perhaps it is something to do with the tactile experience.


It's going back a bit but I remember a university team doing a research project on office desks. They found that office workers whose desks were chaotic could retrieve items more quickly than those who neatly filed everything. They explained it by saying the human mind stored memories archaeologically, associating the memory with meta-information, like 'what was I doing at the time' or 'what did I have for lunch that day'. The untidy-desker would find things quickly by unconciously accessing these clues.


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## Head_case

MaestroViolinist said:


> So just replace the ferret with a person and you're like this then?


I want more stage presence than a mere ferret!!

Actually I need a pair of dark shades to complete my rockstar look.










It does make reading the precession of simulacra and simulation by Baudrillard rather difficult without an extra reading lamp...


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## Sonata

Just under halfway into Sophie's Choice. This is really a good book; William Styron knows how to write. I'm going to have some missed hours of sleep staying up to finish this one.


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## Taneyev

Michael H.Kater: "The Twisted Muse, Musicians and their music in the Third Reich". A must read standard work.


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## Ken B

Sonata said:


> Just under halfway into Sophie's Choice. This is really a good book; William Styron knows how to write. I'm going to have some missed hours of sleep staying up to finish this one.


Yes, that's a great one. I devoured it.

And yes, I read a lot.


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## brotagonist

Of course I enjoy reading!  I am reading far more non-fiction than I used to, deliberately, but I still read fiction regularly, too. When I'm not listening to music actively, I'm reading with it on—and I find it difficult to read with anything but classical, unless I turn the volume down very low.


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## Ingélou

Yes, I love reading & always have. Before I learned to read myself, I liked people reading to me.

However, I admit, I don't read as many books as I used to - watching Star Trek, doing crosswords, and playing my fiddle seem to take up a lot of time, as does messing about on the internet - as now.

Of course, I'm still *reading*, even if it's just our daily newspaper or other people's posts.

But I feel guilty about not doing the serious dedicated reading that I used to do. I hope one day to get back to it.

I always enjoy a good novel, but nowadays I enjoy biographies and histories more than I do fiction.


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## bestellen

I love reading books . . . and magazines . . . and newspapers . . . and stories on the Internet. Actually, I like reading everything I can — whether it's the stuff on a cereal box while I'm having breakfast or the brochures as I'm waiting at the dentist's office. Reading helps me develop my vocabulary, so even if my trusty dictionary isn't nearby, I can still guess the definition of unfamiliar words.


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## Piwikiwi

Yes a lot, I've read about 32 books this year including Midnight's Children(Rushdie), Satanic Verses(Rushdie), the Waves(Woolf), Infinite Jest(Foster Wallace), The Sound and the Fury(Faulkner) and I am currently about 2/3 in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.


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## TxllxT

One time I studied Architecture and there I learned 'reading' buildings. Reading is an aesthetic receptive activity of the human spirit, thanks to reading we are able to be open-minded. Alas, lots of people nowadays do not read.


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## Ingélou

What used to amaze me when I taught at a sixth-form college was how many students opted to take English Literature A-level, but basically did not enjoy reading. This was quite common. 

One would have thought that these students would have a very nuanced appreciation of video material, but I never found this was so, when we used to watch Shakespeare videos in class, and have discussions of each scene afterwards. 

So why did they choose Eng Lit A-level? I honestly do not know.


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## Strange Magic

I read about a book a week, most of them from our excellent county library system. The vast majority are non-fiction--Mark Twain said something about the difference between fiction and non-fiction was that fiction had to make an effort to be believable: Truth is indeed often stranger, and more interesting, than fiction, I've found.

History, biography, science..... But I do like the classic Russian authors of the 19th and early 2Oth centuries; also Tolkien, mid-century sci-fi, Robinson Jeffers' poetry, Patrick O'Brian, Le Carre's Smiley stories. So many books, so little time.


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## georgedelorean

I do enjoy reading. Though I must say that I read mostly manga. However there are plenty of other things I'll read: fan fiction, religion, music, among other things.


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