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Book Suggestions

Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

and Turtledude, 100 Years of Solitude....incredible book. Love in the Time of Cholera was beautiful, too. He has a new one coming out, Memories of My Melancholy Whores - he's probably the only writer who could make the word "whore" sound so poetic, lol. And from what I understand of the plot, he is the only one who could write it.

Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show & Texasville, many, many more

Tom Wolfe - Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full, still have yet to read his latest one - waiting on my sister's copy after she reads it. He has some great non-fiction, too. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test most infamously, but I enjoyed his ones about the art scene most especially. Very funny.

The only poetry I really dig, Pablo Neruda. Absolutely swoon-ful. Beautiful. Goose bumps and all.

Talking about books is nice.....
 
Timequake said:
i've actually read all those!!! Animal Farm is a classic, one of my favorites! Any other suggestions?
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If you like Orwell 1984 and Comeing up for Air are good.
 
If you want...

Horror - Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons (It explains everything from going postal to Mark David Chapman; from Reagan back through the fall of the third Reich. Fascinating.)

Historic Fiction - The Crook Factory by Dan Simmons (Hanging out with Hemingway in Cuba and helping his group of spies capture a Nazi submarine. Strangest thing being, it's all actually happened!)

Science Fiction - Can't go wrong with a classic: Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlien.

And if you have time for a series, the best I have read in years Is the 4 books of the Otherland series by Tad Williams. Science fiction set in the not-too-distant future. Incredibly well written, excellent characters, powerful imagination. You don't have to be in to SF to love them.:smile:
 
Look what mommy wants for Christmas.....

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/06...103-3567411-3005434?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
"One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit," Harry G. Frankfurt writes, in what must surely be the most eyebrow-raising opener in modern philosophical prose. "Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted." This compact little book, as pungent as the phenomenon it explores, attempts to articulate a theory of this contemporary scourge--what it is, what it does, and why there's so much of it. The result is entertaining and enlightening in almost equal measure. It can't be denied; part of the book's charm is the puerile pleasure of reading classic academic discourse punctuated at regular intervals by the word "bullshit." More pertinent is Frankfurt's focus on intentions--the practice of bullshit, rather than its end result. Bull********, as he notes, is not exactly lying, and bullshit remains bullshit whether it's true or false. The difference lies in the bullshitter's complete disregard for whether what he's saying corresponds to facts in the physical world: he "does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."
This may sound all too familiar to those of use who still live in the "reality-based community" and must deal with a world convulsed by those who do not. But Frankfurt leaves such political implications to his readers. Instead, he points to one source of bullshit's unprecedented expansion in recent years, the postmodern skepticism of objective truth in favor of sincerity, or as he defines it, staying true to subjective experience. But what makes us think that anything in our nature is more stable or inherent than what lies outside it? Thus, Frankfurt concludes, with an observation as tiny and perfect as the rest of this exquisite book, "sincerity itself is bullshit." --Mary Park
 
http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php

And I thought I'd share this site with anyone who reads a lot of books. It's where I found the one I posted above, but I was too late to snag it...put it on my wish list, though.
 
Trajan Octavian Titus said:
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.
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Good list, but the Leviathan is Hobbes isnt it?

Personaly i would like to ad J.S Mill, primary "utilitarianism" and "on libery" "chapters of socialism" is also a short but good read, sadly they were never finished.
 
I would recommend the "Prince of Nothing" series by R. Scott Bakker if you like fantasy (not crappy castles and knights fantasy though).

Anything by Stephen King is good, especially "The Dark Tower" series. His short stories are also really good.
 
Just your average 7-foot black millionaire living next door by Wilt Chaimberlain
 
Everyone should read Transmetropolitan by warren ellis. Its a smart, in your face society satire. Stealing the words of Garth Ennis; this might not bea good thing for the advancement of humanity as a race of cosmic star-beings walking hand-in hand to take their place in a bold new dawn of universal and spiritual unity; but bollocks to that.
 
Sorry if someone already mentioned this and I missed it....but I'd recommend anything by Dan Brown. We've all heard the hype over The Da Vinci Code, but his other books are just as good, though I found Angels and Demons a bit slow for my liking.

And hey, there's always Harry Potter. Those'll keep you entertained for quite awhile :2razz:
 
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No One Here Gets Out Alive (story of Jim Morrison)
 
Billo_Really said:
No One Here Gets Out Alive (story of Jim Morrison)
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I read that book when I was 15. It is a good one.

Right now, I am reading my first Annie Proulx book, Accordion Crimes. It is telling the story of an accordion - made by a Sicilian who emigrates to America - which, through most often tragic turns of event, is passed around to other immigrant families telling the story of different groups of American immigrants through American history - late 19th through 20th century - and the ensuing xenophobia that impacts their lives as new Americans. It is a marvel of storytelling invention and drop-dead gorgeous writing. I think this woman will become one of my favorites. I believe she wrote Brokeback Mountain.
 
Originally posted by mixedmedia:
I read that book when I was 15. It is a good one
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Everyone I know that read that book immediately went on a three day bender after finishing.
 
Here's another book suggestion:

"The Knight in Rusty Armor"
 
mixedmedia said:
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.
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I'll second those (except Barrel Fever didn't really do it for me). The audiobooks are much better than the books as his timing is perfect to really drive the humor home.

The Lemony Snickett series is quite awesome. It's a multi-layered book where it can easily read as young adult's fare, but at the same time, a lot of humor and references are quite highbrow. Here's a link that explains a lot of the stuff (spoilers).

For an awesome and humorous libertarian primer, I'd recommend Peter McWilliams Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do : The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country

One of my favorite books about physics is written by Nobel prize laureate Leon Lederman. The God Particle : If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? It's about his search for the Higgs Boson particle.
 
Clan of the Cavebear

A speculative historical fiction book on the times of prehistoric man. researched very well. Extremely readable. Also, politically, a great look into the progression of a scoiety.
 
Were all doing time by Bo Lozoff
 
Here are some of my favorite political books from the past few years.

Amy Goodman - The Exception To The Rulers
Bill Moyers - Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times
Reason - Robert Reich
The Republican Noise Machine - David Brock
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - Joe Trippi
You Have The Power - Howard Dean
The Republican War On Science - Chris Mooney
Winning Back America - Howard Dean
Don't Think Of An Elephant - George Lakoff
The Truth - With Jokes - Al Franken (get the Audible Version from audible.com)
Lies and The Lying Liars Who Tell Them - Al Franken
What's The Matter With Kansas? - Thomas Frank
Hegemony or Survival - Noam Chomsky
The Great Unraveling - Paul Krugman
Bushwhacked - Molly Ivans
Had Enough? - James Carville
New Rules - Bill Maher (Audio)
When You Ride Alone, You Ride With BinLaden - Bill Maher (Audio)
Outfoxed- Ruport Murdoch's War On Journalism
Unconstitutional - The War on Our Civil Liberties
Understanding Power - Noam Chomsky
50 Ways to Love Your Country - Moveon.org
Politics the Wellstone Way : How to Elect Progressive Candidates and Win on Issues - Bill Lofy

http://www.takeyourcountryback.com/DFABOOKCLUB/
 
Freakanomics......ever wonder why crack dealers live with their mom? What teachers and sumo wrestlers have in commen? WHy crime went down in the 90's? Great stuff.

Either that or the complete Calvin and Hobbes edition in hardback. I love that stuffed tiger.
 
Allright I've just started reading a great book by Hunter S. Thompson called: "Better than Sex, confessions of a political junky," about the ''92 Clinton campaign trail, here's a short passage from it, it's the funniest thing I've heard since . . . well, since the last HST book I read:


H.S.T. that miserable degenerate pig fuc*er said:
. . . No wonder the poor bastards from generation X have lost their sense of humor about politics. Some things are not funny to the doomed, especially when they've just elected a President with no sense of humor at all. The joke is over when even victory is a downhill run into hardship, disappointment and a queasy sense of betrayal. If you can laugh in the face of these things, you are probably ready for a staff job with a serious presidential candidate. The humor of the campaign trail is relentlessly cruel and brutal. If you think you like jokes, try hanging around the cooler after midnight with hired killers like James Carville or the late Lee Atwater, whose death by cancer in 1991 was a fatal loss to the Bush reelection effort. Atwater could say, without rancor, that he wanted to castrate Michael Dukakis and dump him on the Boston Common with his nuts stuffed down his throat. Atwater said a lot of things that made people cringe, but he usually smiled when he said them, and people tried to laugh.

It was deep background stuff, they figured; of course he didn't mean it. Hell in some states you could go to prison for making conspiracy to commit murder and/or felony assault with intent to commit great bodily harm, minium fifty years in Arkansas and Texas, also kidnapping (death), rape, sodomy, malicious disfigurement, treason, perjury, gross sexual imposition, aggravated conspiracy to commit all of the above (600 years minimum). . . and all of this without anybody ever doing anything. Ho, ho. How's that for the wheels of justice, Bubba? Six hundred fify-two years, just for downing a few gin-bucks at lunch and trading jokes among warriors . . .

Richard Nixon was not a Crook. Ho, ho.

George Bush was innocent. Ho, ho.

Ed Rollins bribed every Negro preacher in New Jersey to hold down the black vote for the Governor in ''93. Hee-haw.

James Carville set Hamilton Jordan's heart on fire and then refused to p!ss down his throat to save his life. Ho, ho.,

That is the kind of humor that campaign junkies admire and will tell to their children-for the same perverse reasons that make me confess to my son, over breakfast, that I blew John Kennedy's head off in Dallas.

You have to be very mean to get a laugh on the campaign trail. There is no such thing as paranoia.
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"And that kids is the moral of the story, don't lean on the weird, cuz they'll chop off your ****ing head and perverts will eat your brains."-HST
 
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galenrox said:
Right now I'm reading "God's Politics, Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It" by Jim Wallis, and it's really good.
But be careful, he probably doesn't agree with you, so don't expect him too (plus he likes to toot his own horn a tad), but yeah, it's a really thoughtful book.
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Il have to guy that one a try. Didnt think you would agree with wallis as he seamed very left-leaning. I read faithworks by the same guy, cant say i noticed much horn tooting but the book was more about social action rather than politics although politics is mentioned quite a bit. Its all very inspiring on the whole and really makes you think. If your into that sort of theology it might be an idea to get into some of martin luther kings books
 
galenrox said:
Right now I'm reading "God's Politics, Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It" by Jim Wallis, and it's really good.
But be careful, he probably doesn't agree with you, so don't expect him too (plus he likes to toot his own horn a tad), but yeah, it's a really thoughtful book.
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My next read was either going to by God's Politics or The End of Faith by Sam Harris.

I like the work that Wallace does with Sojouners. The End Of Faith looks like a whole book full of Jon Stewart's "This Week In God" - I could use a chuckle....
 
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