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Book Suggestions (1 Viewer)

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Timequake

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Help!

I am in serious need of a good book! Any suggestions?
 
What kinda book are you looking for?
 
I'm open to anything, big fan of Kurt Vonnegut... hence the name "Timequake". Just finished Viktor E. Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning and periodically thumbing through Bernard Goldberg's 100 People Who are Screwing up America

Love Orson Scott Card and Jane Austin. Never thought you'd see those two in the same sentence did you?

I have a very broad range of interest so anything goes!
 
Timequake said:
I'm open to anything, big fan of Kurt Vonnegut... hence the name "Timequake". Just finished Viktor E. Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning and periodically thumbing through Bernard Goldberg's 100 People Who are Screwing up America

Love Orson Scott Card and Jane Austin. Never thought you'd see those two in the same sentence did you?

I have a very broad range of interest so anything goes!
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Ahh Jane Austin. Pride and Prejudice was so very good. Emma is next on my list from her.

Personally, I recommend Confessions of an Economic Hitman

But than I think corporations are the devil :)twisted: ) so that might just be me.
 
Kelzie said:
Ahh Jane Austin. Pride and Prejudice was so very good. Emma is next on my list from her.

Personally, I recommend Confessions of an Economic Hitman

But than I think corporations are the devil :)twisted: ) so that might just be me.
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:smile: Emma is #1 on my list then Mansfield Park! I'm likely to name my son Knightly... poor thing!

I'll look into that book, ever since Enron who doesn't?
 
try Georg Orwell animal farm are 1984, both great books. also, and i know this sounds silly, try harry potter i thought they where kids books before i started reading them but their really good and heard to put down.
 
skabanger13 said:
try Georg Orwell animal farm are 1984, both great books. also, and i know this sounds silly, try harry potter i thought they where kids books before i started reading them but their really good and heard to put down.
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i've actually read all those!!! Animal Farm is a classic, one of my favorites! Any other suggestions?
 
well i useto read alto of horror books dean Koontz-phantoms had me scared to go in the basement, and i could list a hole slew of Steven king books, pretty much every thing from him before he got off the coke was good, especially eyes of the dragon, talesman, insomnia, and the stand where my favorite's.
 
oh ye almost forgot clive barker, thef of allways, i couldent putt it down.
 
J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye (one of my favorites but you've probably read that already but if you liked it and haven't read his short stories you should check them out). Douglas Adams, Hitchickers Guide to the Galaxy the trilogy (actualy 5 books) he is my favorite writer of humor, also check out Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul. William Peter Blatey, Legion (he did the exorcist books) Vonnegut, Sloughter House Five (if you haven't read it yet). I like Koontz as well for a quick read some of my favorites where Dragon Tears, Lightning and Phantoms.

Hope that helps.
 
gdalton said:
J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye (one of my favorites but you've probably read that already but if you liked it and haven't read his short stories you should check them out). Douglas Adams, Hitchickers Guide to the Galaxy the trilogy (actualy 5 books) he is my favorite writer of humor, also check out Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul. William Peter Blatey, Legion (he did the exorcist books) Vonnegut, Sloughter House Five (if you haven't read it yet). I like Koontz as well for a quick read some of my favorites where Dragon Tears, Lightning and Phantoms.

Hope that helps.
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Actually i have never read Cather in the Rye, it's a classic i know so i guess i should get on that! Is Hitchhikers anything like the movie?
 
Timequake said:
Actually i have never read Cather in the Rye, it's a classic i know so i guess i should get on that! Is Hitchhikers anything like the movie?
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Hitchhiker the movie is like the cliff notes of the book; it's got the idea but its missing most of the substance. If you read the books then watch the movie it makes the movie a lot funnier. The way Adams writes is just some of the funniest stuff I have ever seen, but then again my humor is slightly skewed from the norm, but I believe he is a true genius. Some people find him a bit confusing, though I have to admit I sometimes have to re-read a page or two just to make sure I understand what is going on.
Catcher in the Rye is absolutely one of my favorite books, you have got to read it if you haven't yet.
 
gdalton said:
Hitchhiker the movie is like the cliff notes of the book; it's got the idea but its missing most of the substance. If you read the books then watch the movie it makes the movie a lot funnier. The way Adams writes is just some of the funniest stuff I have ever seen, but then again my humor is slightly skewed from the norm, but I believe he is a true genius. Some people find him a bit confusing, though I have to admit I sometimes have to re-read a page or two just to make sure I understand what is going on.
Catcher in the Rye is absolutely one of my favorite books, you have got to read it if you haven't yet.
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Really? Holden struck me as very whiney. I was yelling at him to suck it up the whole book. Maybe I'm just a bee-otch though. :mrgreen:
 
Here are some of my favorites:

Alice Munro is very good - she writes incredible short stories, simple but profoundly beautiful. Always about girls or women and the things we do - very real. She is one of the most repected writers around today, but not a lot of people have heard of her. The Love of a Good Woman, Friend of My Youth - there are many others but I can't think of their titles right now. I just love her. There have been times I have ended one of her stories and literally had to hold my hand to my heart they are so moving - but without a lot of drama. Its amazing how she can do that.

David Sedaris is hilarious - Me Talk Pretty One Day, Naked, Barrel Fever, Holidays on Ice - all of them great. He and his sister (from the old Comedy Central Show Strangers with Candy) narrate the audiobooks, too. The stories are semi-autobiographical, but he admits to elaboration.

F. Scott Fitzgerald - just recently read The Great Gatsby (waited way too long) and was totally blown away. I will get around to reading his other books soon.

John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden and basically anything else he wrote.

If you can stomach bizarreness and grotesquerie on an epic scale for some really incredible writing, try Geek Love by Katharine Dunn. The strangest book I've ever read and one of the best.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I know his other books are supposed to be good as well but this is the only one I've read and it's incredible writing. Very funny and yet very disturbing at the same time. It has a very unique quality. Nothing like the movie - as much as I like Stanley Kubrick's films I don't think he made much of Lolita. It stands well on its own but is not a very true interpretation of the book is what I guess I mean.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Beautiful story about an Indian family. Very real and at the same time, kind of ethereal. One of my very favorite books, but it is her only. I am hoping she will write another soon.

There's the guy who wrote Louisiana Power and Light and Love Warps the Mind a Little. Can't remember his name. French name. Very funny. Just looked it up - John Dufresne. Great writer and hilarious.

Michael Chabon. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Excellent. Wrote The Wonder Boys which the movie with Michael Caine was based on - but I haven't read that one yet.

And last but certainly not least, The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I should have read these as a teenager, but I've never really been a fan of fantasy. After seeing the movies, though, I was really intrigued by the themes so I bought the books. I loved the movies but found the books to be ever so much more lovable. And frankly, the movies take some liberties I wouldn't have approved of if I had read the books first. Again, though, they are great films on their own.

I really, really love books. I could go on and on and on....

:2wave:
 
teacher said:
Fox in Sox. by Dr. Suess.

If you can get through the one about flying fleas without a mishap, I'll buy you a drink.
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And I am now on my third go around with the venerable Dr. There is not a fox in socks nor a wocket in my pocket that can take me down. It's all in the technique. Patience. Be calm. Let your eyes gently float over the words...without getting ahead of your mouth. It works. I'm completely serious. I have developed a technique over years of practice - and humiliation - by the pretzel-tongued prose of Mr. Theodore Geisel. Tricky bastard.
 
I adore Stainbeck.
Try "East of Eden".
The book I've just finished was "Bread Upon the Waters" by I. Shaw. But it was not good enough.
 
The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell. That book is just plain magnificent. It Its a more historical accurate version of the Arthurian Legend and its probably the best since Malory though T.H.White and his Once and Future King comes at a very very very close second.It is a brilliant little tale that has a memorable ending. I loved especially the battle scenes and the political confrontations between the pagans and the chrisitans.


I also really really really enjoyed 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, which are both Dystopian fiction.

Books 3-6 of the Harry Potter series I am absolutely a fanatic about though 1 and 2 just didn't get me very interested when I first read them.
 
The Leviathan by Locke, The Prince by Machiavelli, any thing by Hobbes or Kant as well as the classical philisophical works of the Ancient Greeks Socrates, Aristotle, etc. etc., The Illiad and The Odyssey, The Just War Doctrine by St. Augustine, The Communist Manifesto by Marx, Mein Kompf, The Art of War by Syn Tzu, The Baghda Vida (good luck getting through this one) anything by Hunter S. Thompson The Great Shark Hunt, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, etc, etc. A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1984 by Orwell.
 
Anything by Carl Sagan
 
Other random suggestions:

Early Clive Barker. Forgot him. Bee-zar. Don't read that sort of thing anymore, but he was very important in my "formative" reading years.

Alan Watts - The Wisdom of Insecurity

Mark Twain - anything - but especially Letters from the Earth

Tom Friedman - From Beirut to Jerusalem, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, The World is Flat

Anybody here read Freakonomics, yet? I would like to.
 
Anything by Greg Illes
Pre-Prey Crichton
Anything by Orson Scott Card
Anthem, Ayn Rand (I know she's a pretentious bitch, but Anthem was good)
The Prince, Machiavelli (Two reasons: 1) So you can say you did; 2) It's rather funny, funnier when you realize he just wrote it so he could get back in Florence)
The "Operation Chickenshit" part of Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot, by Al Franken (and the sequel in Lies and the lying liars who tell them)
Red Storm Rising, By Tom Clancy
Anything by Terry Prachett
Anything by Douglas Adams

and of course the Harry Potter series.
 
1) ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE-Gabriel Garcia Marquez-best book I have ever read. Nobel Winner from Columbia, his book is a compression of Columbiah history/mythology into the eyes of three generations. Hauntingly beautiful book


2) ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST-Ken Kesey. The move won a ton of awards-the book is better.

3) Long out of Print but my favorite book as a teenager was called DEFENSE OF THE CASTLE-can't remember the author, he was a friend of my grandfather (who died when I was very young). its a story about a young german prince who is wronged by the crown and has to defend his estate against a siege with the help of a ferocious pagan warrior. IT had a rather stunning amount of accurate depiction of how the legal system worked at that time in feudal continental Europe.


4) A BRIGHT SHINING LIE-Sheehan. The story of John Paul Vann which was a story of the failure of the Vietnam war. Fitzgerald's FIRE IN THE LAKE is another good one in this vein.

5) COPS by Mark Baker-a "documentary" style book -Baker interviewed hundreds of cops and included dozens of accounts in this book He did the same thing with the military in NAM.

6) MARINE SNIPER-the story about sniping legend, the late Carlos Hathcock, the deadliest sniper in the Marines. A testament to what one man with an incredible drive can do. His exploits have inspired scenes in both Tom Berengers "Sniper" and scene in Saving Private Ryan where the us soldier shoots the Nazi sniper through the scope on his Mauser
 
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