It was a joke. I've read more books than that, and obviously more other reading material on the Interweb. I said that so snobs like you could tell me how dumb I must be for not reading a book every 30 minutes. How many books you have read is meaningless. I know. The Joke was - yeah, but not a dictionary :smilielol5:
I do like text books. Especially old text books. You can find some gems at car-boot sales etc. The last one I read was 'Unit 6 and 7 The Economy: A social process' - It was a real page-turner, I can tell you.
Hello, I like old text books, too, mostly about radio and 'electronics' stuff like this one: It's 120 years old and the paper is still in good condition. Oh, and old travel literature is also great. Regards Gyro
Hello I've read a couple of books on electronics. But the equations are too much to take in. The thick technical manuals are a bit > < . I'm not THAT interested. I do like books on the history of electronics, though. That book looks very interesting I was just searching the forums (I had Déjà vu about this thread), and spotted a few threads you were in, with regards to books. In one you said something like: 'I like to buy books from Internet auction sites.' I was wondering if you meant ebay.
Hello, it is interesting . The math in that old books is usually not too complicated. I have modern books about radio astronomie and signal processing and the math in them is often way over my head . I also like instruction manuals for old machines. They are great and you can understand what's happening in the machine. Read the instruction manual for your cell phone and you understand nothing. Yupp, ebay mostly. And sometimes antiquarian bookshops that sell over the amazon plattform. We have this system called 'Buchpreisbindung' in Germany. That basically means that book shops aren't allowed to give a discount on most books. Books with a flaw like a printing or colour failure are usually not covered by 'Buchpreisbindung', so shops are allowed to give a discount on them. Now clever ebay sellers put a scratch on the cover or a draw some sharpie marks on perfectly new book to lever 'Buchpreisbindung' and sell the books cheaper on ebay . So it's a gray zone but I good way to buy cheap modern books. Regards Gyro PS: I forgot to mention http://www.en.zvab.com/index.do
It's good to atleast try and figure out the maths, I guess. I just prefer the human exploration of scientific endeavour. It's amazing what our little brains can do. Yeah, I like instruction manuals, too - it is great to know how things work In threads like this does it matter what the books are about, or if they are indeed 'books'? Can you include any form of reading material? If so I'm into the thousands by now. To be honest, I don't read a hell of a lot of fiction or books about the self. That doesn't interest me. I do read a lot of news articles/supplements, and have gathered together hundreds of them over the years. I'm like a cray hoarder who can't throw newspapers away http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#G2_and_other_supplements http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/dec/27/g2 I can't see any reason for 'Buchpreisbindung' - but I am glad there are ways around it.
Hello, looks like someone just discovered the like/not like function... Maybe dead trees AKA books are a bit overrated nowadays. We have lots of information sources that were not available 30 years ago. There's lot of important stuff available on-line. Because something is printed on a dead tree doesn't mean it's important or even free from error. I have seen really bad books, that made me sorry that a tree had been killed for them. I like books mostly because of their haptic perception, their smell and so on. Oh, and I don't have a computer terminal in my bathroom. So I can take a book with me for a sitting if I like . The basic idea is that best selling books are a little bit more expensive to give the book publisher some extra money so that they also print books that are commercially not very successful. On one hand that sounds like a good thing that one wants to have, on the other hand everyone has the instant feeling that it's just a lie. A book publisher usually don't want to print book, a publisher wants -like every other company- to earn money. To my shame I have to confess that I don't know what's true. I think the truth is somewhere between this two positions. Regards Gyro
I never got that...is it just me who is only on the toilet for a few minutes. Do people sit on the toilet at a set time knowing they will be having a poo approx 20 minutes later? Well, I suppose the German market has to also translate a certain amount of best-sellers from English to German - so they have other costs to incur that, say, the UK market doesn't have. A certain amount of 'price-fixing' might maintain profit margins...but I dunno, bro. What's the best book you have read? Mine is...http://www.amazon.co.uk/User-Illusion-Cutting-Consciousness-Penguin/dp/0140230122"]The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size Penguin Press Science: Amazon.co.uk: Tor Norretranders: Books "Finally, a book that really does explain consciousness." This groundbreaking work by Denmark's leading science writer draws on psychology, evolutionary biology, information theory, and other disciplines to argue its revolutionary point: that consciousness represents only an infinitesimal fraction of our ability to process information. Although we are unaware of it, our brains sift through and discard billions of pieces of data in order to allow us to understand the world around us. In fact, most of what we call thought is actually the unconscious discarding of information. What our consciousness rejects constitutes the most valuable part of ourselves, the "Me" that the "I" draws on for most of our actions--fluent speech, riding a bicycle, anything involving expertise. No wonder that, in this age of information, so many of us feel empty and dissatisfied. As engaging as it is insightful, this important book encourages us to rely more on what our instincts and our senses tell us so that we can better appreciate the richness of human life.
Good morning, All I know about this topic is knowledge I learned from Al Bundy . I have a colleague who acts like AB. He comes out of his office with a newspaper under his arm and headed straight to the toilettes where he spend the next 15 to 30 minutes. It's just funny. Somehow. Of course, a lot of books have to be translated. But quite often the translated books are of poor quality, esp. when it comes to text books. You are better off if you have some command of the English language and then buy the book in English . The best book I've read, phew that is a hard question. Maybe 'Spaziergang nach Syrakus im Jahre 1802' written by Johann Gottfried Seume. It's about a hike that Seume did around 1802. He walked from Germany down to Syrakus. The interesting thing is that Seume described his journey from a social and policitcal view. He compared the living conditions, how they are treated by their masteries, etc. of the people he met. He had very interesting insights for a man of his time. I have many more books I like very much: the four Barkhausen Electron Tube Books, the book about the guy who hiked through Afghanistan shortly after the war, the Lions book about the Unix kernel (which was (is?) highly illegal and it feels like you had a little orgasm if you finally can obtain a handmade copy of it from a strange guy in a dark corner of an empty storage building ;-)). There are a few books I regret spending money on. Allen's Getting Things Done for instance, it's way overrated. Better spend your money on a good brew . Regards Gyro
Might be less than 50, might be less than 100. I can't really remember the number of books I've read. I know I have pretty much the entire collection of Goosebumps books from my childhood and I'm almost sure I've read the vast majority of them, so that'd put my numbers up there. Then there's the various books I read along my time in school. Post-school, I haven't really read much until lately.
