@Wynna - Anything involving cheese pirates is cool in my mind.

You've got me curious about that book now. It doesn't sound like the kind of thing I'd really be interested in, but it might be fun for a fluff read. I'll keep the title in mind next time I head off to the library.

@Krystyne - Anything you want to count can count, as long as you read it. Even magazines and newspapers can be listed, if you're getting to be that desperate for books. =)

Heh, okay...XD I only ask 'cause a lot of my time is monopolized by Spanish lab stuff, so not a lot of trips to the library for me...plus, I can't seem to find much that I like reading anymore that isn't comics/manga. >> <<

Ooh! I've never heard of this before, I'd like to participate! :D I'll aim for 50 books and 15.000 pages - I have no idea how many books I read per year to be honest, so I'm very interested in seeing how this goes.

ljosberinn's book list for 2008:

Novels

o1 Terry Pratchett - Equal Rites (283p)
o2 J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (223p)
o3 J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (251p)
o4 J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban (317p)
o5 J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (636p)
o6 J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (766p)
o7 J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (607p)
o8 Terry Pratchett - The Last Hero (160p)
o9-16 C. S. Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia (1412p)
17 Terry Pratchett - The Wee Free Men (400p)
18 Terry Pratchett - A Hat Full Of Sky (448p)
19 Banana Yoshimoto - N.P. (194p)
2o Catherine Webb - The extraordinary and unusual adventures of Horatio Lyle (320p)
21 F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (240p)
22 Terry Pratchett - The Colour Of Magic (283p)
23 Terry Pratchett - The Light Fantastic (216p)
24 Ólafur Gunnarsson - Gaga (64p)
25 Malorie Blackman - Noughts and Crosses (including the short story An Eye For An Eye)(479p)
26 Malorie Blackman - Knife Edge (364p)
27 Terry Pratchett - Mort (316p)
28 Terry Pratchett - Sourcery (270p)
29 boz4PM - Don't Panic! - fanfiction online (100p)

Total pages: 8,349

Graphic Novels

o1 Neil Gaiman - The Sandman library - Dream Country (112p)
o2-o3 Anike Hage - Gothic Sports vol. 1 & 2 (384p comb.)
o4 Hergé - Tintin in the land of the Soviets* (141p)
o5 Kelley Puckett, Warren Pleece - Kinetic* (186p)
o6 Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale - Haunted knight : the legends of the dark knight Halloween specials : three tales of Halloween in Gotham city* (190p)
o7 Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale - Dark Victory * (388p)
o8 Marjane Satrapi - Persepolis* (153p)
o9 Warren Ellis, Adi Granov - Iron Man Vol. 1: Extremis* (160p)
1o Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale - Batman: The Long Halloween* (370p)
11 Alan Moore, Brian Bolland - Batman: The Killing Joke + Innocent Guy* (56p)
12 Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee, Scott Williams - Batman: Hush (vol.2)* (192p)

Total pages: 2,332

Short stories

o1 Washington Irving - Rip Van Winkle (10p)
o2 Washington Irving - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (20p)
o3 P. Craig Russell - Isolation and Illusion - collection of graphic short stories (120p)
o4 Gabriel García Márquez - A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (5p)
o5 James Joyce - The Dead (30p)
o6 Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis (33p)
o7 Raymond Carver - Cathedral (11p)
o8 Raymond Carver - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (9p)
o9 Flannery O'Connor - Everything That Rises Must Converge (11p)
1o Flannery O'Connor - Good Country People (15p)
11 Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man Is Hard To Find (11p)
12 Various authors and artists - It Was A Dark And Silly Night - collection of graphic short stories (48p)

Total pages: 323

Other

o1 Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (ca. 15p) ; The Pains of Sleep (ca. 1p)
o2 Poems by George Gordon, Lord Byron - She walks in beauty (ca. 1p) ; When we two parted (1p)
o3 Poems by John Keats - The Eve of St. Agnes (10p)
o4 Bill Wattersson - Calvin and Hobbes 1: Thereby Hangs A Tale - comic strips (63p)
o5 Man Ray - pictures and text (73p)
o6 Grace Lau - Adults In Wonderland - pictures and text (119p)

Total pages: 283

Total: 59 titles, 11,287p




Currently reading: (I thought I'd have this here too, for me, because I tend to read a lot of books at the same time..)

Anne Rice - Interview with the vampire
Neil Gaiman - American Gods
Charlotte Brönte - Jane Eyre (the illustrated version, it's beautiful)
Desmon Morris - The Naked Ape

And then there are a few that aren't really novels, like two collections of fairy tales, a book with letters, interviews and all sorts of texts by Graham Chapman etc. that I haven't decided whether I should include in the list, because I've been reading them for a while.. but I might mark which page I'm on now and by the end of the year, so they'll count toward my page numbers.

Okay, done now! This is exciting! xD

I should look in here for some recommendations! I want to head over to the school library sometimes soon and look for some books to read ^^

^ If you post what genres you're interested in, and some of your favorite books, I'm sure we can scrounge up a few recommendations for you. =)

@ljosberinn - What Graham Chapman collection is it your reading? He may not be my favorite Flying Circus member, but I like the guy and wouldn't mind reading up on him.

Yeah, I'd be up for recommending books if I know any from the genre. ;]

Knerd, it's called Calcium Made Interesting and it's great. He's definitely my favourite Python. It includes this one hilarious letter I can remember (it's been a while since I read from it) from when some woman wrote to them and complained that there was a homosexual in the group and apparently thought he should be kicked from the group. Chapman wrote a really funny letter back, saying how he was awfully sorry for that mistake and said that the responsible individual had already been burned at the stake or something. Unfortunately, just after they sent the letter, John Cleese quit the group and they wondered what the woman thought of that. :lol:

I enjoy fantasy, science fiction and historical fiction in general. I'm also looking into some books that would be considered classics to read.

Oh this sounds like so much fun I really need to get back into reading more. This would be the perfect way to do that.

• 
  Classics.. like Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, stuff like that? I recommend both, although I haven't finished Jane Eyre I'm enjoying it a lot. I also read Dickens' Hard Times last semester for school, it's hilarious.
  
  Have you read Terry Pratchett? I just started reading the Discworld series and it looks great. All my friends love it too. It's really funny, fantasy stuff. And and and Neil Gaiman. Yes.
  I have no idea what you know and I have to go so I can't recommend more, those are just from the top of my head. xP
  

I read a fair amount of historical fiction, so you might like some of these authors:

Milan Kundera writes a lot of Czech fiction. Most of his novels are based around the Soviet invasion and the Communist era of Central Europe. My favorites of his are The Joke, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. His writing is rather dark and philosophical, so these aren't light reads.

Roddy Doyle writes a lot of Irish fiction. It's usually really fun and bouncy, no matter what the subject is. A Star Called Henry is my favorite of his. It's about an Irish boy growing up in the Irish Independence movement. I just suggest that you don't read the other books in this series, because they completely suck. But some other good novels by Doyle are The Woman Who Walked into Doors and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

Naguib Mahfouz is amazing, too. He's an Egyptian Nobel Prize winner. His work covers practically Egypt's entire history, as well as a lot of Biblical sideplots. Children of Gebelawi was the first book of his that I read, and Palace Walk, The Cairo Trilogy, and Chitchat on the Nile are also good.

And a few other random books:
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence
The Historian by Kostova
The Persian Boy Mary Renault

• 
  I really loved The Historian by Kostova. Absolutely my kind of book. I love novels that are all realistic apart from maybe one factor, like in The Historian. They make you believe them because they're so real and with real people, so that after reading them you end up all confused because you're not sure what to believe. Dracula by Stoker was like that too. (Maybe I'm just gullible, but at least it's fun!)
  
  I can also recommend The Thirteenth Tale by.. *Googles* Diane Setterfield. I loved it anyway. It's also one of those stories where there's some things that couldn't be true, but still you start believing them. And in many ways, it reminded me of some 18-19th century British literature, of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre inparticular. (Maybe because those are almost the only ones I've read, but hey..)
  

I recommended The Historian to my mother a while ago and she just finished reading it, so it's been on my mind lately.

I don't remember all the details of the book anymore, but I know that I was really impressed with the amount of history that Kostova managed to fit into her writing. It isn't too often that you really hear about that area of Europe. And it isn't like she was hyping it all up for the sake of making vampires seem so scary or monstrous, but she was giving real background to the story. It was one of the things that I really liked about the novel.

What is The Historian about?

It's based around the story of Dracula.
It revolves around the narrator's and her father's search for Vlad the Impaler. They're both convinced that he's still alive, and a lot of mystery surrounds those people who are studying him and his movements. Lots of people disappear, lots of people go in search of those missing people, and everyone does a lot of reading and research about Wallachia. If you like Central Europe, you'd probably like this.

You're right. I would like that. I'll look into it.

• 
  Yes, exactly! She managed to both handle vampires in her novel without it being all hyped up at all, it was just.. I don't know, realistic? And then she incorporated such a big amount of interesting history without it ever being far-fetched. It's been a while since I read it as well, but I remember it kept me locked to the book all the way through, and it's a moderately big book. Often when people try to explain backgrounds to their stories, especially historical ones, it just ends up being boring and long. She managed it perfectly. *Nods*
  

You are really making me want to read it. You have me hooked.

• 
  Haha! I hope you won't get your expectations too high though, then you may end up disappointed. >.<
  

Nope.

Man, I have a 600+ page book to read for English, then I have a 300+ page book for my Book Club, then I have all my homework. It may be a while.

I have a stack of books in the corner of my room calling my name...

Purple now? Anyways. I definitely recommend Magyk by Angie
Sage. Its packed full of adventure and magic. -updates
reading list-

@kk - I've been hearing alot about Magyk lately. Mostly from this here thread. I shall have to check it out too.

@Knerd - Read them! They want to be read!

You probably have been hearing it from me, nagging people
to read it :D ouchie, my lip just cracked. Books have feelings?
-pets book-

Yes, books have feelings. That is why we love and treasure them always.

Don't forget we brought them into this world :o