[MtGrizzly]

As a fairly voracious reader, I though that I would create a thread for any book recommendations anyone might have.

I just broke down and got a Kindle2. I had to have some reading material, so I went with one fiction and one non-fiction selection.

On the fiction side, I bought Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". Holy can't-put-the-kindle-down reading, Batman! It's a dark, post-aplocalyptic novel about a father and son, travelling south on back roads trying to find a warmer climate. An intense, well written novel. Can't believe I haven't read it before now. McCarthy is the author of about ten novels, two of which have been made into movies - No Country for Old Men and All the Pretty Horses. The Road is being done too and is in post-production. Stars Viggo Mortenson as the father - might be some Oscar fodder for him here. After Eastern Promises and Appaloosa, I think he's due.


On the non-fiction side, I bought Guy Kawasaki's "Reality Check". Kawasaki is the original Apple/Mac evangalist, author, blogger and managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, a silicon valley VC outfit. Reality Check is really just a cobbled together book loosely organized around lessons learned and how to succeed in a high-tech startup environment. Very interesting to me, since I'm in the soup of a stage three startup now. Probably not a book for everyone but the book's forward will let you know if you are his target audience:

Quote

If the two most popular words in your company are “partner” and “strategic,” and “partner” has become a verb, and “strategic” is used to describe decisions and activities that don’t make sense, it’s time for a reality check.

Anyway, that's what I'm reading right now. What you all got?

[Sandy - Raleigh]

Recently finished "Zero Limits", by Joe Vitale, a new offering by one of the many self-help gurus out there. (It was actually a book study in my church).

Before that - "Predictably Irrational", by Dan Ariely. Some really nice pysche studies on how humans behave perfectly reasonable in most cases -- but then throw logic out the window in response to some specific catalysts.

Before that - "The Not So Big Life", by Sarah Susanka -- another self-help offering, (also came my way by dint of church-led book study).

[MtGrizzly]

BTW - I'm one week into my Kindle2 ownership. Yikes, what a device. I absolutely love it.

[phredmojo]

MtGrizzly, on Mar 12 2009, 08:57 AM, said:

As a fairly voracious reader, I though that I would create a thread for any book recommendations anyone might have.

I just broke down and got a Kindle2. I had to have some reading material, so I went with one fiction and one non-fiction selection.





Anyway, that's what I'm reading right now. What you all got?

not enough room to post them all. my library consists of 4000 (give or take a few) books lol.

[Tom2000]

Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets by John J. Murphy

For my guilty pleasures, spare time reading, anything by Stuart Woods.

And, with the baseball season coming up, I'm reading How to Build a Winning Ball Club by Bill Bavasi. 2008, Harcourt Brace, 412 pages, all blank.

[MtGrizzly]

phredmojo, on Mar 13 2009, 01:26 AM, said:

not enough room to post them all. my library consists of 4000 (give or take a few) books lol.

Yeah, but what are you reading now?

[wufners]

Glad to finally see a topic like this. Thanks Grizz!

I finished The Road last November. I wrote a little bit about my response to it in the Dark Knight thread. I think I waited about two weeks before starting another book just to let it soak in.

I finally followed The Road with the last Harry Potter book. I had put that one off for a long time. Not because I didn't want the series to end, but because the previous two books had annoyed me so. At this point the series was something I felt compelled to finish out of obligation, not enjoyment. The first 100 pages were more of the same. Harry feeling sorry for himself and accomplishing tasks through luck and author cheats. But after finally getting through all of the dreadful wedding crap, the book finally engaged me in a way the series hadn't since the Goblet of Fire (a book which was not only the last one I enjoyed, but the one that finally fed me up with all of the whining and deus ex machina.) I could have done without the epilogue, but what the hell. I enjoyed it and am glad I finally read it.

I followed that one up with Let The Right One In. I kind of wish I had seen the movie first, but oh well. I liked this one too. To the detriment of its atmosphere, I think it explained away a few too many of its mysteries and could have used a little more editing (what the hell did the Russian sub have to do with anything?) I enjoyed it, though not enough to keep in my library. I still haven't seen the movie (I'm a wuss with gore,) but hope to soon.

I'm between books right now. I was planning on reading Kavalier and Clay next, which I'm really excited about, and The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Don Quixote to follow. But a little project at work has redirected my attention to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's a book I've long meant to read, but for whatever reasons have always been distracted away from after the first chapter. I'll rev it up again this weekend.

[MtGrizzly]

wufners, on Mar 13 2009, 01:44 PM, said:

But a little project at work has redirected my attention to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's a book I've long meant to read, but for whatever reasons have always been distracted away from after the first chapter. I'll rev it up again this weekend.

I love that book. The sequels don't quite manage to stack up to the first one but in the Hitchiker's Guide he really manages to straddle a strange line between comedic absurd and serious story telling.

Jitterbug Perfume is on my re-read list and has a similar level of whackness. From the wiki entry:

Quote

The major themes of the book include the striving for immortality, the meaning behind the sense of smell, individual expression, self-reliance, sex, love, and religion. Beets and the god Pan figure prominently.

[JFromSeattle]

That's funny, Jitterbug Perfume is probably a book I'm going to read pretty soon here. I'm on break now, so I'm going to try to get some reading done while I have the time. A Confederacy of Dunces is first up on my list [speaking of which, whatever happened to our old pal, IggyReilly?]. After that, probably Jitterbug Perfume. I also bought Borges collected fictions, Wallace Stevens complete poetry and prose, and The Watchmen off a street vendor a month or so ago (for $20, with two other throw-ins), so I may jump into those pretty soon. I also have the collected plays of George Buchner that I was going through, and I think I may eventually slog through the rest of Tropic of Cancer, but it's not really my cup of tea.

My reading list and my book collection is forever growing, and my ability to get through it is rather limited. It's fun, but awful at the same time because the job I'm working right now, part of the work involves me collecting and going through various book reviews, and so I see that there are new translations coming out of Chaos and Night (De Montherlant), Memories of the Future (Krzhizhanovsky), and Alien Hearts (De Maupassant) and I want all of them... I've also been getting the itch to read Pedro Paramo again, but I loaned that to a friend over the summer. And then I'm in literature and writing courses and pick up names and books constantly, or hear something from someone else.

I read The Road last year for one of my courses (we also had Heart of Darkness, Call It Sleep, Lolita, Eva Luna, and The Remains of the Day, so it was quite the reading list). I enjoyed it thoroughly, but I'm having trouble seeing how they'd work a movie out of it. Cormac McCarthy would probably be one of the few contemporary authors that I think is really on the ball. Ever since I saw No Country for Old Men, I've been meaning to read that as well. Blood Meridian too. Best other thing I've read in recent memory... probably Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald. Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee is not bad at all either.

I don't think I could ever buy a Kindle though. I was talking with my old mentor about it and she said that she doesn't see the appeal because she feels like the circuit is more complete, with the tactile experience, if she has the weight of the pages and the smell and everything else that you can only get with the paper books. Plus, we're both the type of readers to be constantly scribbling in the margins and making notes of things for later critical reflections, and I would think that contributes a great deal. I don't expect everything I want to read to be on it either, as I tend to seek out rather obscure stuff, if that wasn't already evident. I'm lucky if what I'm looking for is even in print.

[MtGrizzly]

A really underrated piece of fiction that I recommend is Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin. Very haunting, well written and different than anything else he's written. A completely different and unexpected take on the vampire novel. Twilight or Anne Rice it ain't.

[wufners]

JFromSeattle, on Mar 13 2009, 07:28 PM, said:

I read The Road last year for one of my courses (we also had Heart of Darkness, Call It Sleep, Lolita, Eva Luna, and The Remains of the Day, so it was quite the reading list). I enjoyed it thoroughly, but I'm having trouble seeing how they'd work a movie out of it. Cormac McCarthy would probably be one of the few contemporary authors that I think is really on the ball. Ever since I saw No Country for Old Men, I've been meaning to read that as well. Blood Meridian too. Best other thing I've read in recent memory... probably Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald. Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee is not bad at all either.

Blood Meridian is also a book I really want to read. From what I hear, McCarthy's style was quite a bit different then--much more dense, but equally as brilliant. The Road really was an amazing use of the language. I'll probably also take a shot at No Country For Old Men. As much as I loved The Road, I'm not sure I'm eager to revisit it in movie form. We'll see.

What did you think of Heart of Darkness? It's been sitting on my shelf for about 3 years now and is no where near my top priority, but one day I'll give it a go. I've been warned that it could be a bit of a slog. (One person I talked to thought it was the most difficult, dense book he ever had to read. The second? Blood Meridian.)

I've never read Remains of the Day, but damn. A great movie. Anthony Hopkins is incredible as always. A beautiful, heartbreaking movie.

[JFromSeattle]

Heart of Darkness is among my favorite books. Dense, certainly, but rich, and there's often as much significance in what isn't being shown as what is. It has a very distinct mood to it, and I think that it's incredible that Conrad was able to render it and his characters and the plot so completely in what was his fourth language. It doesn't take all that much time to get through, but it's not easy on you.

The most difficult thing I've ever had to read... heh, I wonder if certain philosophers count? I'm one of the millions of people who got one page into Ulysses and then put it aside for a while. Gravity's Rainbow, I got fifty pages into before deciding I needed more time for it (speaking of which, I could probably wrap up The Crying of Lot 49 on break too). I'm usually all for the punishing literature, but I really want the time to put into it and I can never seem to find that.

Remains of the Day is a very solid book, but it's a little deceptive at times because the narrator can be a little monotonous and it takes some getting used to the idea that there's a reason for it. Anthony Hopkins is a terrific actor, to be certain, but I don't think I'd go through the movie version of it because I hear that they took some of the edge off of the ending.

This post has been edited by JFromSeattle: 13 March 2009 - 10:29 PM

[MtGrizzly]

Loved Heart of Darkness - good example of a book that I think is actually better on the second reading.

Sometimes a Great Notion by Kesey is a book that is similarly better the second time though, IMHO. Not so much because it's dense but because that narrative can be tough to follow at times. Tremendous book.

[phredmojo]

MtGrizzly, on Mar 13 2009, 11:04 AM, said:

Yeah, but what are you reading now?

this week it's easy light hearted reading

star trek destiny1: gods of night, star trek destiny 2:mere mortals, startrek destiny 3: lost sould by david mack and startrek:tng death in winter by michael jan friedman. tomorrow i don't know. maybe deus irae by roger zelazny and phillip k dick or confessor by terry goodkind or crossroads of twilight by robert jordan or brisngr by christopher paolini...or variable star by robert a heinlein finished by spider robinson. i have a hard time deciding lol

[Sancho Panza]

Imagine travelling for one year from Prince George through Yukon to Alaska, by horseback at first, then by dog sled. With your wife and girl of less than two at the start. Nicolas Vanier did it in 1995 and wrote about it in The Wild ( original: L'Efant des neiges ) which I just finished reading. Otchum, his Siberian husky, twice saved their lives. Some time after the adventure, the family dines at a restaurant. Fish is served. Montaine, the little girl: "Who caught it?"

A few months ago I read Full Tilt, Dervla Murphy’s account of her solo journey in the 60s by bicycle from Dunkirk to India.

Another true adventure that I read years ago is West with the Night by Beryl Markham. Hemingway wrote that Markham "who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade bitch, can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers."

[Leo Gomez]

The last "book" I read was Ethan Frome. It's a short, solid, tragedy. It likely doesn't hold the entertainment value of some of the stuff mentioned above, but it's one of those "American Classics" when it come to fiction so it's worth taking a look at. Especially because you can read it in one or two sittings.

I just finished, for the third (or fourth...) time a book called Bootstraps by Victor Villanueva. It's more of an academic book, but you'd be surprised how it can suck you in. It's really a great work, I think.

Plus I'm pretty sure you can get both on GoogleScholar.

This post has been edited by Leo Gomez: 28 March 2009 - 01:14 PM

[JFromSeattle]

Leo Gomez, on Mar 28 2009, 01:13 PM, said:

The last "book" I read was Ethan Frome. It's a short, solid, tragedy. It likely doesn't hold the entertainment value of some of the stuff mentioned above, but it's one of those "American Classics" when it come to fiction so it's worth taking a look at. Especially because you can read it in one or two sittings.

I read Ethan Frome in high school. I think I should go back to some of those old books one of these days... Thérèse Raquin... Dubliners... I don't think I quite appreciated them at the time, or not as much as I would now, but man... that's just a few more to add to the stack...

[DannyCore]

Just finished the sword of truth series by Terry Goodkind.


SO MANY PAGES. I am done reading forever. Though I did really like the series.

[jj-malaysia]

The best book ever written for me is....

Illusions ' The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah' - By Richard Bach

i must have a copy with me everywhere i am

This post has been edited by jj-malaysia: 29 March 2009 - 05:01 AM

[phredmojo]

DannyCore, on Mar 29 2009, 02:36 AM, said:

Just finished the sword of truth series by Terry Goodkind.


SO MANY PAGES. I am done reading forever. Though I did really like the series.

nah, thats not a lot of pages. you want a lot of pages then you need to read robert jordans wheel of time