Books?

[Jerome Scuggs]

what are some good books you've read in the past? And by good, i mean like changed-your-life-somehow good, or just witty/humorous

I was reading joyce's "portrait of the artist as a young man", it was pretty cool, but halfway through it i lost the book, and ive read every book at my house, and I'm too lazy to go try other books from barnes and noble.

[Volcs]

what are some good books you've read in the past? And by good, i mean like changed-your-life-somehow good, or just witty/humorous

I was reading joyce's "portrait of the artist as a young man", it was pretty cool, but halfway through it i lost the book, and ive read every book at my house, and I'm too lazy to go try other books from barnes and noble.

never read any "change-your-life" books...

but I just finished reading the Da Vinci code... and I'd never really been interested in that shit before. The end kinda sucked though, and the pyramid shit was ultra gay... but aside from that, good book.

[Dabram]

I've read mainly Dutch books in my life so far. But lately I'm a lot more interested in English (foreign) books, since they tend to be a lot more interesting than most Dutch books are.

On the top of my list is Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. I also enjoyed Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut a lot, and am currently reading and enjoying Closing Time by Joseph Heller.

The best Dutch writer in my eyes has to be Willem Frederik Hermans.

[Melufa]

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is good. Me, I like Bradbury and Huxley. Brave New World 4 best book!

[za gophar]

The Stand, by Stephen King.

its extremely long, but thats one of the things i like about it. it gives a lot of room for character development, and the story is awesome. i read like 300 pages in one sitting while finishing it. i almost never read in my free time, by the way.

it starts out with a government project gone awry (released a supervirus) that kills 99.4 percent of earth's population in less than 2 weeks. the rest of the book is filled with adventure, fight of good vs. evil, pyromania, insane behaviour, and sex.

btw get the unabrigded version

[iLDuce]

I REALLY like the books dealing with negative utopias and such:

Brave New World
1984
Fahrenheit 451

Check them out :up:

[Puppet Master]

1984 is really good, one of my favorites
the grapes of wrath

[Material Girl]

I REALLY like the books dealing with negative utopias and such:

Brave New World
1984
Fahrenheit 451

Check them out :up:

Oh DUDE - in grade 11 we read those three plus Ann Rand's Anthem. I hated them at the time but I re-read 1984 a few months ago and it seemed slightly more relevant to what I've experienced since grade 11..... The latest book I'm reading is actually by George Orwell called Shooting an Elephant and it's a collection of his essays. It's full of references where I draw a blank but it's nice to have little tiny stories to fill a spacious twenty minutes, you know. :up:

And although it's one of the most sick-to-your-stomach depressing stories ever recommended to me, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevski(SP!) is one I just finished. I DON'T RECOMMEND IT THOUGH.

[bloodzombie]

vonnegut is the man...

cat's cradle -vonnegut
slaughterhouse 5 - vonnegut
still life with woodpecker - tom robbins
the tetherballs of boughainville (forget the author's name, but rogermexico suggested it, and it's easily the funniest book I've ever read)
sirens of titan - vonnegut

[Louis XV]

Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky

[Jerome Scuggs]

theres no damn cat, and no damn cradle

I've read every single vonnegut book ever. EVER. He's great I even cut a debate argument from his book Galapagos, dealing with man's obsession with technology. And I hear there's a movie out somewhere that used his Ice-9 as part of the plot (some spy movie i THINK).

I like brave new world. Love Grapes of Wrath.

I haven't read crime and punishment or catch 22...

I'll check out the stephen king book. but after reading It, i take his shit with a grain of salt. And i'll also read the tetherballs of boughainville, if it's pallie-approved it can't go wrong.

edit: btw, sirens of titan = weird shit.

[GoldenPlums]

Catch 22 is good. I thought zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance was very good at the time but it was a while ago now, can't remember much of it. I don't read much. Good Omens was probably the last thing I read.

[wadi]

I'm a hardboiled fiction fan so let me drop a few names:
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiel Hammet:
The first, quintessential work in hardboiled fiction. Hammet isn't shakespeare, but the gritty no-nonsese writing style set the tone for the entire genera. The Sam Spade character keeps cropping up in modern cinema.

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler:
My absolute favorite novel from the genera. Set in LA, mobsters, dames, fallmen, hitmen, it has everything. The film adaptation with Humphrey Bogart is likewise excellent.

LA Confidential by James Ellroy:
Set in the 1950s, another book to have an excellent film adaptation made form it. If you thought the movie was a mind fuck, the twists in this are going to drive you insane.

Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley:
Mosley has a thing about naming his books aftrer colors, but this is easily the best. As much about the color barrier in 1950s LA as it is about the mystery.

The Killing of the Saints by Alex Abella:
I can't recommend this book enough, even though it's out of print. Sainteria sprititualism meets hardboiled fiction meets Latin magical realism. Books never creep me out, but this one did. The entire genera's pretty gorey, but this one is especially bad.

Blade Runner by Philip K. Dick:
Yes yes, I know it's a sci-fi book, but try reading it as a hardboiled fiction novel. It's quite good.

Books I will always recommend at a recommendation thread:

The Things They Carried by Tim O'brien
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (The third big distopia/anti-utopia book, along with BNW, and 1984)
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (black ninja haxxor pizza delivery boy saves the world? WHY YES!)
Zodiac by neal Stephenson
Poems by Catullus (I can't think of a good translation off the top of my head, but who doesn't like raunchy Roman poetry?)


I'll post more if I think of anything

[Cylor]

Catcher in the Rye

[THE PUSHER]

still life with woodpecker - tom robbins

I often wonder what happened to that book.. I gave it to my brother, he in turn gave it to a friend of his after reading it.

Read this book kids.