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I'm enjoying Guns, Germs, and Steel right now. It's interesting, and it makes me feel smarter because it gives me several novel ideas each page. I find it to be a highly readable book. The most interesting thing I learned so far is the idea of the continental axes, where that of Eurasia is...

I like to know I'm making reading progress, so I read for quantity, but... I only like to read "quality" books. Without getting into a treatise on art I can't define 'quality in writing', but I find a lot of popular fiction to be tedious and I find poorly written non-fiction to be mind numbing...

I read it just over ten years ago, and loved it, so I think it's time for a re-read for sure. Thanks.

Alistair MacLeod is awesome. I read As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories, and No Great Mischief. The story "To Every Thing There Is a Season" is so beautiful I almost cried. I also found James DeMille, who seems to be a second tier type of author, but whose books are apparently...

In the past, maybe 30-40. Last year, 107. This year - 58 so far. I now only read books I really want to read (sounds bizarre), but in the past I would stock my shelves with literature that I should read, and I wouldn't read much. Now I stock my shelves with carefully chosen literature and...

Very good to have an eyewitness account, and I'm glad to hear this wasn't just a publicity stunt by a poorly run business. I think for us on this forum the love of books is great enough that we would be willing to house most of the burned books even though libraries wouldn't, but we are a...

Although burning books is extreme, and I would rather that he did something else with them, or ran a more successful business, there are two segments from the article I found especially fascinating. First: "he couldn't even give away books to libraries or thrift shops, which said they were...

I've got this in my TBR pile somewhere among Common Sense, The Prince, Utopia and Discourse on the Method. I'm quite interested in non-fiction books that could be or are considered literature, but it appears I'm more interested in wanting to read them rather than actually reading them. I...

You can also try this from Canada's CBC: IQ Test the Nation. I think IQ tests are fun, and usually my scores on different tests fall within the same range, so they are fairly accurate. Accurate of what? My IQ-test-taking-ability at the very least.

You can't go wrong with Joseph Conrad. Although his sentences are thick and heavy at times, it is what makes his writing beautiful. His books are more philosophical than high adventure, but nevertheless worth reading. Lord Jim is especially comical due to the circumstances surrounding the...

I'm going to read Walden again soon (for the nth time), and also read Cape Cod for the first time. I read The Maine Woods recently, and found it highly readable, but started A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and only got halfway. It's the first book in like three years I couldn't...

We Were Not the Savages by Daniel N. Paul, which is an eye-opening look at the atrocities inflicted upon the Mi'kmaq of Nova Scotia by European, especially English, colonists and colonial governments.

I thought What Dreams May Come was really sad. I like to joke that I never cry, I just might have some dust in my eye or something. Anyway, someone really kicked sand in my face for this one.

Cool. I guess that considering I respect all the authors I would wish to quote from, it seems the easiest thing would be to ask for permission. It just seems like such a hassle since the non-fiction I'm used to writing is academic papers, where quoting is very frequent. The academic...

That's a good enough reason to click on an interesting one every now and then. My eye is trained not to see them, but this site deserves any revenue it gets from Google.

I'm in the research stage of writing a non-fiction book. Why am I writing it? Mainly for personal reasons and for a mentor of mine. I would like to publish it someday but probably just through a small publisher because it is mainly of local interest to my province of origin. Regardless of...

The setting?

I've read all three (having read "well-known" classics is not always a given considering the sheer numbers of them) and I like each of them. Sure the content is dated, and that comes as no surprise considering the original publication dates. A good reason to read literature is to experience...

I'm making a huge book list for my school's students. I'm at a school in Korea where the students' English ability is well above average. They're very much at the point where they are reading original texts. I have three levels on my list: intermediate, high, and advanced. Most areas are filled...

Okay, I realize this might qualify me as over-sensitive, but here it goes. How often do you find mistakes in books, and does it bother you? I guess it doesn't really bother me, except in certain situations. Usually I just pencil a correction and continue. If it bothers me, I pencil a...