I was perusing the favorite books thread, but just felt too constrained in going for all-time faves. This is a thread for what's been tickling your fancy lately in the world of literature...

David Sedaris: I recently read Naked, Barrel Fever, and Some Day Me Talk Pretty.
Sedaris is an incredibly funny author. It is unusual for me to laugh out loud while reading, but some of te essays in Naked had me busting a gut every few sentences.

Stephen R. Donaldson: I just re-read both Thomas Covenant series, as well as the Real Story series. He's a great character author. His protagonists are always deeply though out, flawed often to the point of incapacity, and are put through very complex dances to find honesty or grace.

Noam Chomsky: I always have Chomsky on hand. Right now it's Understanding Power.

J. Krishnamurti: again, always one nearby. The name makes it sound like some swami stuff, but I guarantee you it's not. Impossible to describe, he was one of the deepest thinkers in history.

Kurt Vonnegut, I just read Welcome to the Monkey House. Great stories.

I admit, I'm the kind of guy with a book in every room, so no matter where I am, I can read something. I think I may have a reading disorder; I read way too much. I come from a very book-oriented family, in which we were taught by example that you read at every available moment... the sign of a true book addict: I often read in the shower.

And though I am surely branded here as some sort of pinko lefty pacifist, I assure you I have read every novel Tom Clancy ever wrote, more than once. Debt of Honor is one of my favorites.

I tend to be more author oriented than genre. For example, I read a lot of SF, but centered around particular authors, not hack genre work. For SF (science fiction) my favorites are:

Asimov
Donaldson
Orson Scott Card
Jack Chalker
Nancy Kress
Arthur C. Clark
Philip K. Dick

Other athors I enjoy

Stephen King
Jonathon Kellerman
Jorge Louis Borges
Philip Pullman
J.R.R. Tolkien
C.S. Lewis

argh, this is a post I'll be kicking myself for, as every day I'll be haunted by authors I forgot to include.

Ack! No Neal Stephenson, Quarkie???

Quarkhead, three was pretty limiting, wasn't it?

Books that have been tickling my fancy recently:

The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri - I'm about halfway through this book, which is an incredibly well-written novel about a man called Vishnu who is dying on the stairs of an apartment building in Bombay. It is about his remembrances and also about the other people who live in the building. Very much a novel about human-nature.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte - I am not normally a fan of victorian era literature, but I enjoyed this novel, particularly the way in which the main character was presented.

White Oleander by Janet Fitch - I adored this novel. The writing style is lovely. I haven't seen the movie yet, and I'm a bit afraid to for fear that it will be a huge disappointment in comparison to the book.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan - This was a beautiful novel about asian culture and the relationship between mothers and daughters. Amy Tan is such an amazing story-teller.

I can't say that I'm hooked on any certain genre, but I do tend to read a lot of books that take place in different countries and/or historical settings. I also like some sci-fi and fantasy, particularly if it has some politics thrown into the mix. My absolute favorite sci-fi/fantasy novel is Dune, and I really like the works of Marion Zimmer Bradley and Neil Gaiman. For Dark fantasy, I like Poppy Z. Brite, Caitlan Keirnan, Storm Constantine, and some Anne Rice.

As far as contemporary authors go, I like Barbara Kingsolver, Julia Alvarez, Nahid Rachlin, Chuck Palahniuk, Jeffrey Eugenides, Banana Yoshimoto, Sijie Dai, Douglas Coupland...

I'm usually in the midst of about four or five books at a time. Right now, I'm trying to make headway into Stephen Jay Gould's massive The Structure of Evolutionary Theory and have nearly completed Umberto Eco's Baudolino. I just finished Gore Vidal's Washington, D.C. - I've been re-reading his entire American Chronicle before embarking on the final volume of the seven-novel series, The Golden Age, which was published two years ago. I was finally about to start it last night, but got distracted by Peter Weiss' play, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, which I'm now about half-way through. I've also, in honor of Jaime and Mike, been thumbing back through Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.


In general, fiction writers whom I can always read or re-read would include (alphabetically) James Baldwin, J.G. Ballard, Italo Calvino, Charles Dickens, John DosPassos, Umberto Eco, William Gibson, Carey Harrison, Joseph Heller, James Joyce, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carson McCullers, Ian McEwan, Flannery O'Connor, Joe Orton, Mervyn Peake, Arthur Rimbaud, William Shakespeare, G.B. Shaw, Neal Stephenson, Rex Stout, Gore Vidal, Nathaniel West, Walt Whitman, and W.B. Yeats.

Non-fictionwriters that I find of particular interest would include (again, alphabetically) James Agee, Jacques Barzun, Madame Blavatsky, Vincent Bugliosi, Joseph Campbell, Noam Chomsky, Susan Faludi, Orianna Falacci, Stephen Jay Gould, Arthur Koestler, Terence McKenna, Thomas Merton, Oliver Sachs, Carl Sagan, Edward Said, G.B. Shaw, Susan Sontag, Barbara Tuchman, Gore Vidal, Marina Warner, Colin Wilson, and Howard Zinn.


I would definitely add William Gibson to your sci-fi reading list, Quarkhead, as well as Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and - though it's not exactly science fiction, it is my current nominee for "best book on earth" - Necronomicon.

And, Cyan, for dark fantasy, have you ever read Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan or Gormenghast? Also, for books that take place in different countries and/or historical settings, I would highly recommend Gore Vidal's brilliant Creation (about a Greek-born Persian ambassador who travels to India and China during the "golden age" of Pericles and includes such characters as Herodotus, Xerxes, Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, and Lao-Tse) which encompasses history, religion, philosophy, geography, and sociology - and is also very funny- or the excellent Julian about the apostate Roman Emperor.

Editied to include additional plug for Gore Vidal. :)

Right now I am reading Michael Korda's "Another Life" and I just finished reading his "Charmed Lives." Both are interesting, but not life altering.

I enjoy reading history a great deal, especially American History, the colonial experience as well as Constitution writing. But any history can claim my interest. One of my favorite characters in history is President George Washington - of whom the more I read, the more I enjoy.

"Diaspora" by Werner Keller, changed my life.

As for fiction, well, I find few modern authors that hold my eye. The form of the writing is just about as important to me as the storyline. If it is not well written I put it away. A malformed sentence rattles my teeth, whereas a balanced sentence will stop me as I sigh with pleasure.

In that vein I love Tolkien (he's almost biblical in his prose), M.M. Kaye, Edison Marshall (he is eglaic), Austin, The Brontés, Maugham, Patrick O'Brian, Sir Walter Scott, Jack London, certainly Shakespeare - he is operatic.

I seem to prefer British authors, I don't know why.

I just started reading Snow Crash, and I'm loving it...

i know this is off topic cyan, but your Avatar Pic is cool as hell, did you make that yourself in photoshop? and is that you?

Sleeper

It's Chiana from the series Farscape, but yes, I edited it in photoshop to make it a bit more patriotic. Thanks for your nice comment.

I loved these two as well. Amy Tan is one of my favorite fictional authors. I also like Memoirs of a Geisha which I finished recently. I can't remember who the author was.

I read very little fiction though. I prefer the true crime genre. Don't ask me why.

Ok, I loved this book and highley recommend this

"the words we live by"
Linda Monk

http://catalog.clevnet.org/web2/tramp2.exe...item_source=cpl

I read all kinds of Books

I've kinda gotten hooked on this Left Behind series thing by Tim Lahaye & Jerry Jenkins.

Also, my favorite history-type book on American Foreign policy Rise To Globalism by Stephen Ambrose.

I also like Tom Clancy's Op-Center series

Thats a good book

I have read many books that I enjoyed, but the best, so far, is Catch 22 by Heller.

Also among my favorites: Any book by James Michener, Ayn Rand (of course), Stephen King....the list goes on, but that's a start

I just started White Oleander, because of Cyan's post. So far, it's very good, but as a mother, it kind of makes me weepy.

For some reason, a lot of us seem to have books on their mind today. How cool. Anyway, I have merged a few new threads that were started today by various members regarding books/good authors, etc into this one.

Enjoy!

Which one?

mrspigpen Posted on Jun 5 2003, 03:51 PM



The only Stephen King book i like is The Stand

I really liked the Stand, but my favorite was IT. I also like Stephen King's short stories.

Jaime..Sorry, I didn't see this thread. I wonder how I missed it.

Have you finished - and, if so, what was your verdict?




Have you also read Picture This, mrs p (also by Joseph Heller)? It's probably his most neglected work, but I feel it's his best (though, granted, Catch 22 is pretty close - and Something Happened isn't bad either, if desperately depressing). What Catch 22 does with war and the military, Picture This does with art, commerce, and philosophy (as well as war and the military!) - and it's much shorter.

I will read it Wertz, thanks!
As much as I liked Catch 22, I've never read anything else by Heller. I don't know why. His intimate knowledge about the inner workings of the military was uncanny...at once satirical and sadly realistic. I just loved it.

When it comes to books, I usually read Tom Clancy. However, I also tend to read books like A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan, and other books like that. I

I much prefer science fiction over most any other type of book so I may be a bit lob sided with regards to my tastes...

My favourite book is; War of the Worlds by HG Wells. Not because it is good sci fi mind, but because I like the atmosphere it conjures up in my mind.

Some other favourites are;

The twenty book series by Patrick O'Brian which chronicles the experiences of Captain Jack Aubrey.

The Drowned World by JG Ballard.
Perdido Street Station by China Miéville.
Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein.
Arc of the dream by AA Atanasio.
Frøken Smilla's fornemelse for sne by Peter Høgh.
Shiva 3000 by Jan Lars Jensen.
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien.
Fup the Duck by Jim Dodge.
The ages of Lulu by Almudena Grandes.
The Snow Queen by Joan De Vinge.
Orlando by Virginia Woolf.
The White Company by AC Doyle.

My last good book was Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein. An older book but I've just now gotten around to reading it. I loved it, an real interesting set of concepts to wrap one's mind around.
I also enjoy Asimov (my favorite from him is Foundation Edge for the characters) and whatever SF/Fantasy is suggested by friends for most of my reading Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan,etc.

So far, my 'core' library is non-fiction and consists of Daniel Boorstin, James Loewen, Howard Zinn, John Romer, Bill Moyers, J. Bronowski, James Burke, Joseph Campbell, Ayn Rand, Allan Bloom, Mark Twain, and A.O. Lovejoy. There are others but most of them are not as well known. Just got a CD set by Noah Chomskey (Propaganda and control of the American mind) that I will listen to on the next road trip.
Lovejoy is a hard read, his book 'Essays in the History of Ideas' needs a translator, from high level collegiate to ordinary English. There are many more authors that I want, but have to wait til they show up at Thrift Stores, otherwise I could easily spend a small fortune on books. Lucky for me, those stores are common around my area.
And there isn't much sense in collecting them faster than I can read them.
Used to read science fiction a lot, especially Heinlein, but his later books had less science fiction and more sex than I wanted to read. I haven't found any modern fiction that interests me.

Another SF fan here. Some random favorites:

The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. Pyrotechnic literary style and wild imagination in these two lightning-paced futuristic psychological melodramas.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. Warm, gentle, funny, sad, thoughtful, and very human tale of the Catholic Church centuries after World War Three.

Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner. Vivid and detailed picture of the early 21st century in this 1970 novel, with a great deal of literary experimentation.

Camp Concentration and On Wings of Song by Thomas M. Disch. Unusually literate and intelligent near-future novels with complex and unique backgrounds and stories. (For a treat of another kind, try the charming "bedtime story for small appliances" The Brave Little Toaster by the same author, far superior to the animated film adapted from it.)

Rendevous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. Remarkably believable story about an alien probe that enters the solar system.

Neuromancer by William Gibson. The original cyberpunk novel; often imitated, never matched.

The Female Man by Joanna Russ. Groundbreaking feminist SF.

Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison. Taboo-shattering New Wave collections that changed the genre forever. I've been waiting for The Last Dangerous Visions, promised by Ellison, for more than three decades.

Last and First Men and The Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon. No works have had the sheer sweep of vision as these two books from the 1930's.

More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon. Beautifully written, emotional story of a group of misfits who bind together to form a new form of life.

The Time Machine, The Invisble Man, and The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. Modern science fiction begins with these classics, still great reads after more than a century.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and 1984 by George Orwell. The two great dystopias.

Ooh! Someone else that likes the Thomas Covenant books, Quarkie!

I first read them in my teens, and every couple of years I re-read them. I've ALWAYS wanted to ask an American this question, since Donaldson is himself American. Is is just me, or are they an allegory for the US Constitution?

All that stuff in the first triolgy about the Law (i.e the Constitution) being a fantastically clever idea brought about ages ago by giants among men, but one that is maybe too old and dusty, through years of never challenging it or testing its limits, to be useful. Then it gets hijacked by evil (bad men using their constitutional rights to evade justice), and its only the wild magic that operates outside Law that can put things right, and they can only defeat evil by removing Law altogether and just making things up as they go along.

Then, in the second trilogy, the consequences of no Law (or Constitution) at all are evident, so they have to go all around the world to find the bits they need to forge a new, living Staff of Law, based on the being Vain, that will grow and shrink over time as is necessary at a particular moment, not being afraid to discard pieces of Law that have outlived their usefulness).

Is Donaldson really saying that the Constitution needs a pretty radical overhaul, as it has almost been turned on its head by some people, who are using it for their protection, when actually it was intended to protect other from them?

I'd love to know if that's something that's always been obvious to his US readers since the books were first published, or if I've stumbled onto something most people miss, or if I'm just plain wrong?

Most of the other books I've recently read are non-fiction - things like The World We're In by Will Hutton, Fast Food Nation - although a few months ago I did enjoy Filth by Irvine Welsh (author of Trainspotting.

First off, a confession:

I'm one of those oddball readers who cracks a book in 1990 and finishes it in 2000, so at any one time I have a bunch of books in the process. Somehow the stories/expositions stay in flow.

Every once in a while a page turner comes my way, and most recently it's been Carl Hiaasen who did this evil deed to me. Hiaasen is a hoot! Check him out if you like murder/mystery with a lot of humor. You might not like him if Florida and environmentalism make your skin crawl. Try Tourist Season as a primer.

I'm darn close to finishing Poul Anderson's Harvest of Stars, a 1993 effort. This guy was first published in 1947--and he is definately tech/political savvy with an eye to the future. The handling of dialog is very interesting--I like his way of adding colorization with a single word, like this: "Hold my hand," breathlessly. The only thing that bothers me is that a major war goes on, and only a couple of pages are dedicated to its description. Huh? Okay, whatever. Great characters, concepts, and as mentioned, dialog.

A classic: Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy, highly recommended if you want to get the overall picture. Currently cracked for business, but it's easy reading on big ideas nevertheless. First published in 1945--still relevant today.

I like Dale Brown. He does War/Military techno-thrillers

Umm...I'm not finished yet. The Sci-Fi channel released a couple of films recently that I was scrambling to finish the books for, particularly the Dune series.

At your reminder, I picked Snow Crash back up yesterday, and I'll let you know more detail when I'm done with it. I'm about a third of the way through. I will tell you that I find Neal Stephenson's vision of the near future to be quite amusing and frightening at the same time, especially the relationship between the various racial mafias and gangs. Heh....and the pizza boy thing is pretty amusing, also.

and not all that unlikely, either.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::

In a totally different vein, I just finished At Swim Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill, a relatively new Irish author - and it was wonderful. It's a sort of gay coming of age story set in Ireland at the time of the 1916 rising - which may not sound like it has much mass appeal, but it's apparently doing pretty well here in terms of sales and the critics loved it (any novelist who gets repeated comparisons to James Joyce and Oscar Wilde has to be doing something right). More than anything I've read recently, much of the prose has stayed with me, as well ("a yearning for magnificence, but a spirit unwinged"). It's beautifully written, often funny, deeply moving, well researched, well observed - and it made me terribly, terribly homesick for Dublin.

After nileriver started the thread What is Satan? I downloaded a copy of Dante's The Divine Comedy. For being so short, I am finding it hard to get through. Maybe I'll go read some Milton instead

I know cyan has mentioned this site before but it's worth the extra plug: Project Gutenberg. Lots of great free reading and VERY useful for primary source referencing.

I also like sci-fi books a lot. My favorite sci-fi author is probably Orson Scott Card, because his Ender's Game series is absolutely an amazing series.

I'm in summer reading mode. I think I am unintentionally catching up on classic adventure stories. I just finished reading Robert Lewis Stevenson's Treasure Island.

Last night, I began Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. I'm not sure where I'll go next, maybe Don Quixote (depends if it's at The Gutenberg Project or not).

I'm open to suggestions if anyone has some

Classic adventure stories? If you have not read it already, I would suggest Moby Dick by Herman Melville. My favorite "classic" novel of all time.

On a slightly less "literary" level, it's impossible to beat the Horatio Hornblower novels of C. S. Forester for intelligent adventure fiction.

Moby Dick was good. If you want a nice long read, try David Copperfield. I'm going to re-read that actually, because the first time I read it, i had to do it in about 2 weeks, and 1,001 pages of Dickens essentially reciting memorable parts of his life a hard to be enjoyed in that time frame.

You couldn't pay me enough to read Dickens

My take on a good, long read is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

The whole Harry Potter series is just plain entertaining, and it's a welcome break from Rule by Secrecy.

Of course, Tolkien is the master when it comes to fantasy.

The library recently called. The book I requested, Bush's Brain, is in!
More fantasy--I love it!

Gah! Dickens is brilliant! You really should give him another chance - you probably had him wrecked for you by some frightful English teacher at an impressionable age. Seriously - I'd recommend Barnaby Rudge (as it's one of his two works of historical ficiton - and quite an interesting period) or, since you're in the legal profession, Bleak House.

I like Dickens, too!
A great book that I recently read was The Hours, by Cunningham. He is a master of liquid prose. It's also a fast read.

Since we are on the classics:

Crime and Punishment-- Dostoyevsky
Les Miserables--Hugo
Tortilla Flat--Steinbeck

Other books I have read lately:

Red China Blues-- Jane Wong
Dear Theo-- Irving Stone

I ordered Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi today for something to read while on vacation.

Gonna miss me?

Where are ya going, Bela?

I'm reading Turn of the Screw by Henry James. I've been in the mood for good Victorian ghost stories.

I am reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi and I HIGHLY recommend it.

Mrs. Nafisi is a professor at John Hopkins University. She won a fellowship from Oxford and taught English literature at the University if Tehran, the Free Islamic University and Allameh Tabatabai University in Iran. She was expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the veil and left Iran for America in 1997.

A critic of the book from Amazon:

bela - that books sounds great. I'm adding it to my very long and growing list. I was actually thinking of a book I wanted to recommend to you before your vacation, but forgot

It's Herman Wouk's Don't Stop the Carnival. It is absolutely hilarious and is a very good way to keep you from running away to a tropical island.

For the record, I couldn't get through Connecticut Yankee, it was rather dull.

My current read is The Thousand and One Nights, also referred to as Thousand and One Arabian Nights. I'm only a few stories in, but the flow is amazing. There is a lot of violence and misogyny, but that speaks of the era in which it was written.

The direction of the writing is the interesting part. One story really just 'flows' into another. It starts with one story and in that story the main character tells a story that contains a main character that tells a story... (you see how this works). This makes it rather difficult to stop reading

Celebration - Harry Crews
Stormy Weather - Carl Hiaasen
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez





One of my all-time favorite reads is Great Expectations.

That was kinda Shahrizad's objective, wasn't it?

That's what happened to me and I'm forever scarred, LOL! I read David Copperfield in 4th grade (yes 4th grade - I was in the "gifted"/"accelerated" programs all throughout school and this was one of our choices for my 4th grade class. It was the biggest book, so I chose it (I LOVED to read). Bad idea. I understood it but didn't appreciate it, KWIM? Ever since I've been hesitant to read Dickens for some strange reason.

I am not a big fiction fan. I prefer non-fiction in areas that are of interest to me.

Black Notebooks by Toi Derricotte is among my favorites

What I'm reading these days is...

No More Diapers (lol, Sesame Street book about using the potty), Ten Little Ladybugs, My First Phonics Book, and Finding Nemo I actually would love to be a children's book author, so I would be reading this even if I didn't have a 2 year old

I've been reading Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham, and it's quite good.

Amazon's decscription of the book:



This is actually a very fluid reading experience, and it's profound in certain parts...a bit depressing though...

I also recently read, upon the recommendation of Victoria Silverwolf, Hell House by Richard Matheson, and it was a fantastic ghost story, and because I liked it so much, I also read I am Legend by the same author. I am Legend was a unique story about vampires, but it wasn't really my cup of tea.

If you really want to hear some keerazy (and often sickening) war stories read Nam, by Mark Baker.

If you want to hear an exciting tale about a member of a U.S. paramilitary team in South America that gets his whole squad betrayed by none other than the U.S. government, read Spooky 8 by Bob King (an alias; he claims this whole thing really happened to him ).

There are other books I know of but I can't remember any more.

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN by Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward

Recently read:
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire. It was actually quite good, but I just couldn't get past the Lifetime: Television for Women vibe...
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. It was fascinating non-fiction for anyone with the slightest bit of a morbid nature.

Favorite novels of the last five years:
Cruddy by Lynda Barry. The most insanely surreal, funny, depressing and downright crazy book. Brilliant, but not for the faint of heart.
At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill. I see that Wertz beat me to the punch on this one, so I'll just second the recommendation.

My two favorite books of all time are To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, which is the book that turned just about every serious reader I've ever known onto the joys of reading, and Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal, which is just damned funny.