Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[LMNO]

Found it.

"Determining a word's number is only the beginning of the fun... Turning to one of  our number texts we find that "31" has several entries.  The two most important , in my opinion, are AL (אל) which is the simplest way to say God in Hebrew, and LA (לא) which means "not".  This reminds us of the first two [principles of my Kaballah teachings]; All is One, and All is Nothing.  Say what you want about Islam, but Allah is a great name for God!"

That makes a lot of sense. Do you know if that's pretty well known to muslims in general?

I do not know the stats on how many Muslims also study Jewish Kaballah.  Offhand, I'd say "very few".

[Jasper]

Holy fucking shit.  I just got the latest Sony e-Reader, and it is so god damn excellent.

I already have a dozen or two of Roger's rants on it.

[Cainad (dec.)]

So the e-reader has good PDF support?

I may have to get one of these things.

[Jasper]

It does.  They're hard to read unformatted, but when you increase the magnification, the eReader just parses the text and displays it as magnified plaintext for you.  There are some instances where the word formatting doesn't work perfectly, so instead I can just use the zoom feature and get an actual closeup. 

So, yeah, it does PDFs pretty well.

[fomenter]

i have a Sony 505 and love it, it does have some problems with certain pdf's and i am still looking for the conversion tricks to fix them, but so far i have been able to read W/o converting or convert 98% of the books i have tried.

if you find a good solution for the small % that is tough to convert let me know...

this will convert most troublesome pdfs easily and make them readable http://btjunkie.org/torrent/pdflrfwin-0-99-PDF-to-LRF-Converter-for-Sony-Reader-pdflrf/448665a738cec7e413e4773deb94f5098b19787e58e7

[Richter]

I just got PDF viewing going on the iPod touch.  I could do with a slightly larger screen / device, but it's still good though.  

[Pariah]

The Gunslinger.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Someone just bought me a gift book

It's The Prankster and the Conspiracy, the biography of Kerry Thornley. I'm about 5 chapters in and I can say:

Kerry was bonkers.

(at least in some sense )

[Triple Zero]

i am still looking for a working pdf to text converter... so far the freeware i have tried doesn't work and the demo versions of commercial software either don't work or are so restricted it is impossible to tell if they work, if any body knows of a good program i would love to hear it, i am tired of seizing up my computer testing junk freeware and wasting my time testing commercial software that is to restricted to test..

this is what I did for two books to read on my mobile thingy:

- mailed the PDF to my gmail account
- "view attachment as HTML"
- saved the HTML
- transfer to device
- read with any kind of proper browser thing on the device

but, YMMV.

[-Kel-]

I'm actually only reading text books right now and could use some good ficton. Any suggestions?

[Kai]

Reading How to Watch Television News by Neil Postman and Steve Powers.

Cf. 4 Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander

[Corvidia]

Man in the High Castle--Philip K. Dick

[Kai]

Finished How to Watch TV News.

Synopsis: This book is about watching news in the same way that How to Read Comics is about reading comics. Its so much more than that. My earlier comparison to 4 Arguments was apt. This is the book Jerry Mander would have wrote, had he written it today, with a good sense of humor and satire, and with the understanding that television is not going away.

Conclusion: Read it, if not to be informed, then for its similarity to how people talk around here. Powers and Postman put the issue in a frame that discordian-leaning people can identify with.

[BADGE OF HONOR]

Just started Regenesis by CJ Cherryh and it's already fantastic.  I don't understand how nobody's heard of her, she's definitely the best sci fi writer I've ever read.

[Cain]

I'm reading The Runaway : The Chronicles of a Spy in Medieval Europe during the Reign of Louis XI of France by Thierry Bontoux.  Its research for my own fantasy deconstruction story I've mentioned before.  I only hope he put as much research into espionage as he seems to have of the political situation in France at the time.

Just started Regenesis by CJ Cherryh and it's already fantastic.  I don't understand how nobody's heard of her, she's definitely the best sci fi writer I've ever read.

Sounds like a recommendation to me.  A few of her books seem to be on Demonoid, though I cannot see Regenesis among them.  Either way, I'll certainly check her stuff out