From My Armchair: 4 August 2012

At the BookShelf

I am into my last days of annual leave, so it is doubtful I’ll be able to read anywhere near as much as I have this last week. I’ll probably have the Kindle out at lunch for a bit, so I’ll still be getting some reading in even while I’m at work. The Kindle has certainly made it a lot easier to have good reading material available no matter where I am. Loving the Kindle.

 

Social Networks, Web Applications & Other Tools

Not a lot has happened with the social networks in the book/reading niche over this last week, except that I have been updating Goodreads on a regular basis as to what I am reading, progress and cataloguing the books as I go.

I did do a quick addition to Quotista, which has a lot of potential but doesn’t appear to be being developed any further, which is…

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Reading: The Bourne Identity

Today had been quite unpleasant outside. It has been pouring with rain at times, then not. When it hasn’t been it has been blowing a gale and it is also quite cold. It’s bucketing down yet again. So very little has been able to be accomplished outside today. No great outdoors for me on this wet and miserable day.

I have been spending a bit of time, as a consequence of the weather, reading ‘The Bourne Identity,’ by Robert Ludlum. I haven’t read the Bourne series of books before, but have seen the movies many times. I’m a big fan of the Jason Bourne movies. However, having seen the movies it has been difficult to some degree reading the book. The book is very different to the movie, more so than what ‘The Hunt for Red October’ was to the film version. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still enjoying the book and will try and work my way through the other nine books (I believe there are now 10 books in the series).

So I’m making good progress through the first book and as I said, enjoying the read. I’m hoping to complete it before the end of the week, which I think I can achieve relatively easily. I’m approaching halfway through now – on the Kindle. I was only 10% through it a couple of days ago, so progress is going very well.

Reading: The Hunt for Red October and Jason Bourne

I am a big fan of Tom Clancy novels and in particular the Jack Ryan series. A number of years ago I read all of the novels published in the series up until the time I moved house and so for the last 5 years I haven’t read any new ones. When I moved I decided I needed to clean out some of my books (and I have a huge library), so I figured the majority of my fiction books could be cleaned out. I always regretted moving the Tom Clancy novels along, though I figured that at some point I could reclaim them as ebooks, which I am now beginning to do.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to start reading the series again – right from the beginning. I hesitated as to what order I should read them, given that Patriot Games really was set before The Hunt for the Red October, but then settled on the order of the novel release order – so Patriot Games will be next. So I purchased a copy of The Hunt for Red October from Amazon. Of course I decided I might as well watch the movie again, as something of a comparison/contrast. That sort of thing intrigues me you see. I own a Kindle, so I purchased the Kindle version (which can be purchased via the link above).

So having read the first few chapters of the novel I decided to watch the DVD movie (which I have watched a number of times since purchasing the DVD some years ago) again. Now have refreshed my mind by re-reading the entire novel, it is not so much a comparison as a contrast. Certainly there are common threads and similar plots, but there are a large number of differences between the book and the movie. Still, both are quite good in their own right.

So Patriot Games was going to be the next book in the Jack Ryan series and this was to be read next. However, having read something about the 10th book in the Jason Bourne series of novels I thought I must read those also. So to break up the Tom Clancy books I’m going to be reading the Jason Bourne novels also. In fact I have just started the first in the series (again, quite different to the movie), The Bourne Identity (by Robert Ludlum).