/ot/ - Off Topic

The last fiction book I read was Larson's Penny Royal Academy book.

The last non-fiction book I read was Code: The Hidden Language of Hardware and Software. That can be found online rather easily in pdf form. I've read it before but it's such a fun nerdy read.

>>1027
As for current books, the only thing currently on my "to finish reading" list is Girl From The Stars by Henry Winterfeld. Except it's in Japanese. I picked it up for 105 yen in a used book store a while ago.

I'm only about two chapters in so far. It seems to be E.T. but the alien is a little girl named Mo with purple eyes. She's actually like 100 years old and doesn't seem to give a shit about danger. She's just curious about the world.

It was really obscure to me but was a children's chapter book so I thought it'd be a perfect learning experience. They teach her what a barn is and what a cow is so it's got lots of good vocabulary and makes things easier to guess when they explain things to her.

I most recently finished The Children of Húrin, and I started reading Smith of Wooton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham by the same a few weeks ago. I'm working through the works of Tolkien, if you can't already tell.
Smith and Farmer Giles etc. aren't part of his greater legendarium, by the way, just two individual fairy-tale stories that you could probably read to kids. The first is a strange story about a series of very ambitious cakes, an artifact called an 'elf-star,' the adventures of Smith in Færie, and the mysterious figure of Prentice, the Master Baker. I actually found a PDF, so I guess it's in the public domain if anybody else is interested. It's a very comfy tale.
http://www.tolkien.ro/text/JRR%20Tolkien%20-%20Smith%20of%20Wootton%20Major.pdf

I haven't finished Farmer Giles' story in the latter book yet because I lost the book.
it was due back at the library a week ago and I don't want to renew it because they'd probably look at me funny for renewing a book after 2 weeks that's only about 200 pages long tops but paying the fine is even worse
hold me

>>1027
>Code
A MAGNIFICENT book for the aspiring computer man. +1 recommendation.

As for me, I'm almost through reading Accidental Empires. History of the personal computer. Great book. Gonna do Mogworld next.

The last fiction book I finished was American Psycho (Ellis' best work, in my opinion).
As for non-fiction, if you don't count physics textbooks it'd be The Code Book by Simon Singh, it's pretty great if you're into the history of cryptography (and a bit of linguistics), but it's written for a broad audience, so it unfortunately has some sections that are boring if you know anything about math or CS.

What I'm reading right now besides fanfiction is Capital, Vol. 1, which is pretty dense and hard to read, but at least it's not fucking Wittgenstein, so it's got that going for it.

>>1029
Update: I found it, finished it, and most importantly, returned it! By which I mean I dropped it in the box and ran away. I'm sorry, librarians.
Farmer Giles's story was pretty great. It was definitely more whimsical than Smith etc., and it was very enjoyable.

Now, though, I'm reading this book for school, Purple Hibiscus. It's a humanitarian kind of book, by a Nigerian Igbo writer about a teenage Nigerian girl. It's not one that I would have decided to read on my own, but it's not too bad. It's doing a good job of portraying its characters sympathetically, which I can appreciate.

>>1031
>spoiler
Spill the details, Anon. What fics are you reading?

>>1041
The last two fics I read were http://www.fimfiction.net/story/54117/whom-the-princesses-would-destroy , which is honestly great and reminds me of my all-time favorite show, and Fo:E, which was surprisingly not awful
Other than that, I'm just reading new chapters for some fics whenever they come out

Is this thread /fanfiction/ too?
Because http://www.fimfiction.net/story/247031/the-mare-who-once-lived-on-the-moon is fucking great. Not because of the story or anything, but because of the writing. The story is good, but the horse words are better. Rich language, best fucking Rarity I've ever seen that fits Tabitha so damn well, emotional rollercoaster, unfinished *and* the author is nearly on his deathbed! What else could a good book need?