OT: Favorite Non-Baseball Books
by John Sickels on Mar 6, 2009 6:25 PM EST
Email
PrintLifting this from the AQA thread....
Some of my favorite non-baseball works....
William Blake The Marraige of Heaven and Hell
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World and The Doors of Perception
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
more to come...
What about you guys?
97 comments
|
2 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
Steinbeck and Chabon
Steinbeck’s little novels—Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row, and Sweet Thursday.
Chabon—especially the Amazing Advenures of Kavalier & Clay and Mysteries of Pittsburgh.
by aap212 on Mar 6, 2009 7:03 PM EST reply actions 1 recs
Some of my favorites
The Bible
Frank Herbert – Dune
Stephen King – The Stand
Truman Capote – In Cold Blood
Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged
Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse Five
Kahlil Gibran – The Prophet
Graham Grisham – The Summons
Rand
Admittedly Rand is an acquired taste. She was mandatory reading for one of my philosophy classes back in the mid-70s.
There's a surprise
TheSouthWing.com - A Magazine of essays, prose and poems
+1
The Count of Monte Cristo is awesome. A really fast, fun read.
Fabulous mix of history, romance, adventure
wrapped in a story of innocence and deception, vengeance and perseverance. Read it when I was about 13 and have re-read it several times since then.
Jayhawk baseball - a tradition since Steve Jeltz
Mine
The Count of Monte Cristo
Catch-22
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Gone With the Wind
Love the Suspense books
Michael Crichton – Disclosure
Stephen King -It
Dan Brown – The DaVinci Code
Heller – Catch-22
Lewis – Liar’s Poker
Ellison – Invisible Man
Dick – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
King – The Stand
Grogan – Marley and Me
OK, not really the last one, but I’m man enough to admit it made me cry. The movie looks awful though.
Vogt early, Vogt often.
i think Dick's Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said was better
but i loved just about everything he did.
My millions are unconventional!
by Charlie Scrabbles on Mar 6, 2009 9:02 PM EST up reply actions
Enjoyed some Conrad and Orwell in my impressionable teen years
Animal Farm, Secret Sharer, Heart of Darkness…
Then I got romantic and enjoyed some Fitzgerald….Tender is the Night, Gatsby….picked up some Hemingway (and felt an urge to move to Cuba and punch people) and remember how Old Man and the Sea made me feel as I read it.
My father, being a former naval officer and lover of most things mariner-esque, enjoyed some Herman Wouk – so I emulated his tastes for a while, of which, Caine Mutiny, or War and Remembrandce are favorites.
Now that I have kids, I love passing on some of my childhood faves on to them. Seuss, of course, Sendak, other cerebral yet whimsical authors. Always makes my kids curious when I tell them that I read ‘this book when I was a little boy’
Jayhawk baseball - a tradition since Steve Jeltz
some books . . .
fiction:
William Faulkner, Absalom! Absalom!
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping, Gilead
Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son, Tree of Smoke
Leonard Gardner, Fat City
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Nathaneal West, Miss Lonelyhearts
Jim Harrison, Legends of the Fall
poetry:
Emily Dickinson’s complete poems
Wallace Stevens, collected poems
William Carlos Williams, Spring & All
Allen Grossman, How to Do Things With Tears
Robert Penn Warren, Audubon: a Vision
Jack Spicer, After Lorca
Frank Stanford, Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You
nonfiction:
Susan Howe, My Emily Dickinson
Charles Olson, Call Me Ishmael
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience
Geography of the Imagination, Guy Davenport
Too many to name
The ones that stand out in my mind…
Ulysses – James Joyce
Dubliners – Joyce
Invitation to a Beheading – Vladimir Nabokov
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
The Baroque Cycle – Neal Stephenson
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
1601: A Tudor Fireside Conversation – Mark Twain
V for Vendetta – Alan Moore/David Lloyd
Guards! Guards! – Terry Pratchett
I'm Matt (expletive) Bush!
Reading Guards! Guards! right now
I love Douglas Adams, I’m just getting into Pratchet. “Guards!” is my fifth Discworld book. I’ve read “The Fifth Elephant” (a title that’s much better spoken than written), “Small Gods,” “The Truth,” and “Interesting Times”. So far “Guards!” has been a bit easier to really get into, but it may just be that I finally really feel comfortable with the writing style.
As an side HHG is great, but my favorite of the series is “Life, the Universe, and Everything”.
by Mark Himmelstein on Mar 6, 2009 10:29 PM EST up reply actions
Pratchett and Adams
I was just getting into Pratchett last autumn myself. I decided to read most of Rincewind’s arc before venturing elsewhere in Discworld, so I’ve read “Color of Magic,” “The Light Fantastic,” “Sourcery,” and “Eric,” as well as “Mort” and “Guards!” For me “Guards!” was the funniest, and I liked his take on authority, though of course they’re all quite good.
Since you like the books, I must say “The Light Fantastic” is a must-read just for Cohen the Barbarian.
As for Adams, I meant the whole series (even 4 and 5, which a lot of people seem to dislike). I’m not sure I can pick out a favorite :)
I'm Matt (expletive) Bush!
my top 2
Heller – Catch 22
Brown – Angels and Demons
The 2008 Rogelio Moret League Fantasy Baseball Champions!
by The Congo Hammer on Mar 6, 2009 9:03 PM EST reply actions
Angels & Demons?
Starts off great… but the last half is so convulated and has so many preposterous and unnecessary plot twist that I just wanted to get off the ride. Great idea, but he got too cute with the ending and ruined it.
Sort of like ‘Bad Boys 2." That GD movie is an hour too long – and that extra hour is completely unattached from the rest of the story. Its like they had a regular movie’s length of material and went into editing and decided “not enough explosions!” So they had them go to Cuba and blow up a bunch of s*** for an extra 45 minutes of my life that I will never, ever get back.
Angels & Demons is the kind of book I typically enjoy – and its not a bad book, but it would have been a better book without the last ten plot twists. My neck hurts just thinking about it.
Slaughterhouse Five ive read more times than i can recall
Mailer’s “The Naked and the Dead”
Murakami’s “A Wild Sheep Chase”
Tolstoy’s “Death of Ivan Illych” had me damn near inconsolable. i still mist up just thinking about it.
ditto that for 1984
Toole’s “A Confederacy of Dunces”
as for nonfiction, William Manchester’s “A World Lit Only by Fire” was top-notch. i was a history major and the poor quality in history writing was half the reason i didnt pursue it in grad school. this book single-handedly made me second guess myself.
My millions are unconventional!
by Charlie Scrabbles on Mar 6, 2009 9:11 PM EST reply actions
+1 for Confederacy of Dunces
I wondered whether someone would list it, or whether I’d have to add it myself. By far my favorite book ever. After fighting through 100-200 pages, it got really easy to read and I ended up staying awake for 2 days straight to finish it. It strikes me as a modern day Don Quixote (which was also pretty good).
I guess that I could also add several here.
1) The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Kundera
2) Survivor, Choke (WAY better than the movie), and Fight Club by Palanhiuk (spelling?)
3) The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway
4) The Importance of Being Earnest by Wilde (Sequel to Earnest goes to summer camp)
5) There and Back Again (or The Hobbit) by Tolkien (MUCH better than the LOTR stuff, and not as overhyped like a certain freaking Peter Jackson trilogy)
6) Cats Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, and at least 5-10 more by Vonnegut
I could keep going, but I can’t really remember much more off of the top of my head.
Manchester wasn'
TheSouthWing.com - A Magazine of essays, prose and poems
by OldProspects on Mar 10, 2009 10:11 AM EDT up reply actions
Manchester wasn't an academic
That’s how he knew how to write
TheSouthWing.com - A Magazine of essays, prose and poems
by OldProspects on Mar 10, 2009 10:12 AM EDT up reply actions
x
Tolkein, LOTR
Robert Jordan, Wheel of Time series
Glen Cook, some of the Black Company series
Norman Davies, Europe, a History
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Man in the High Castle
G G G E-flat_______ F F F D__________....
My List
At the risk of seeming mainstream, Gatsby was just sublimely written.
At the risk of seeming nerdy, LOTR (fantasy, action and romance — what can I say?)
Funniest books: Foucault’s Pendulum by Eco and Confederacy of Dunces by Toole.
Biggest emotional impact on me: Les Miserables (I’m an unabashed sentimentalist) and Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment
Favorite book I tried to avoid as a English major: Moby Dick (so glad I had to read it my last semester)
Historic Adventure (a favorite genre): the Richard Sharpe novels by Cornwell and the Francis Crawford novels by Dorothy Dunnet
A few miscellaneous: The River Why, PD James mysteries, Epic of Evolution
Nerd Alert
Anybody like reading Dragonlance books? I’ve only read the Chronicles and Legends (I think those are the first six) but I really liked them.
The Count of Monte Cristo – Dumas
The Great Gatsby/Tender is the Night – Fitzgerald
The Natural – Malamud (i know, it’s baseball)
Yo! Millard Fillmore! – Cleveland/Alvarez
Possible Spoilers?
I read Chronicles and Legends, as well as “The Soulforge” (possibly the best individual book in the series that I’ve read), Dwarven Nations, and a couple others. I loved Legends… I mean, the plot revolves around a guy who travels back in time to attempt to break into the afterlife, kill the Goddess of Death, and take her place. It begs the question, how much more epic can you get?
And the answer is none. None more epic.
I'm Matt (expletive) Bush!
Read Malamud's short stories
And the Assistant. The guy is one of the best writers of the century, and nobody seems to read him.
TheSouthWing.com - A Magazine of essays, prose and poems
by OldProspects on Mar 8, 2009 11:41 AM EDT up reply actions
My faves
The Stand – King
The Dark Tower, #’s 1 and 4 – King
The Camera – Ansel Adams
The Negative – Adams
The Print – Adams
The Lords of Discipline – Pat Conroy
The Water is Wide – Conroy
Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions – John Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes
Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
The Once And Future King – T.H. White
The Pearl – Steinbeck
The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
The Great Big Burger Book – Jane Murphy and Liz Yeh Singh
Soul of a Chef – Michael Ruhlman
The B&H Catalog
+1
On Wizard and Glass. I have only read the first four books in the Dark Tower series though since the spacing between the fourth and then the fifth, sixth, and seventh meant I forgot of the storylines… and frankly, I hated the third book so much I couldn’t bring myself to read them all again to refresh my memory before reading the last three.
"My mom always taught me it's better to laugh at yourself than to laugh at others. She was so wrong. ;)" -Pedrophile
I agree on the third one
Didn’t care for the second one either. The last three aren’t bad, but not as good as 1 and 4, IMO. I mostly read them just to get the whole story. Once I start reading something, I have to finish, even if it’s bad. It’s a compulsion.
Rainbow Six- Tom Clancy
‘Nuff said. Catch-22 seems very popular; I’m going to have to check it out sometime.
Say something funny.
Catch-22
Check out the movie sometime as well – it is hilarious.
Not as funny as the book
Movie is OK, but it’s one of those books that would have needed a 5 hour movie to do it true justice…
Vogt early, Vogt often.
Not as intellectual...
I don’t care much for most non-fiction and biographies and stuff, also I avoided reading most of the required reading in high school and college, so my favorites are a little less “scholarly”.
Mario Puzo – The Godfather
Almost anything by Stephen King, but I really enjoy many of his short stories.
Bill Waterson – All the Calvin and Hobbes books.
Brian Lumley – The whole Necroscope series, and even the Vampire World trilogy that followed.
Doyle Brunson – Super System (Poker)
Phil Gordon – Little Green Book (Poker)
Bissinger – Friday Night Lights
And I know it’s cliche, but I also like Poe.
"My mom always taught me it's better to laugh at yourself than to laugh at others. She was so wrong. ;)" -Pedrophile
+1 to Calvin and Hobbes
The man has a lot more to say about humanity than just about anyone else I’ve come across.
calvin and hobbes
A priest in my church quotes Calvin and Hobbes all the time, usually referencing them as “the world’s greatest philosophers”
by El Duq of Hurl on Mar 7, 2009 10:51 AM EST up reply actions
Faves
Barbara Tuchman – The Guns of August
Eric Eych – Bismarck and the German Empire
Thompson – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
Stephen King – Skeleton Crew
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
I enjoyed Verne’s vivid descriptions, down to every minute detail. Opinions on Verne very polar – either you love the very precise detailed imagery or you’re bored because the time he spends using so many details slows the story.
Pat Conroy...
Saw someone listed some of his works, can’t resist putting up My Losing Season. Talk about delving into the soul of man – or more importantly the soul of a college kid becoming a man at The Citadel.
Haven't read that one yet
But I’ve really liked everything of his that I’ve read. He has some great stories in his cookbook as well, espcially the one about going to the Georgia football game.
faves
Sun Also Rises (Hemingway)
On The Road (Kerouac)
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Wolfe) – if you liked Fear and Loathing
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)
Metamorphosis (Kafka) – if you can even call this a book at 45 pages or whatever it is
The Stranger (Camus)
All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque)
Anything by F. Scott Fitzgerald – I know Gatsby is cliche, but he’s a very good writer and I like pretty much all of his novels
Never apologize for Gatsby
The story line has become a bit trite since its publication (probably because of its publication), but this book is as well written as any book ever.
+1 for All Quiet
I forgot about that one, haven’t read it in over 20 years, but I loved it at the time.
Terry Pratchett
Douglass Adams
Richard Dawkins
Orson Scott Card
J.R.R. Tolkein
I can't recommend Orson Scott Card
I’ve read about 5 books by him. Loved Ender’s game and I highly recommend it, but I got progressively sick of his style after that.
Clavell is king
Clavell: Shogun,Taipan,Noble House
Ayne Rand: Atlas Shrugged
Leon Uris: Trinity is a must read.
"The key to winning baseball games is pitching, fundamentals, and three run homers."
A few that immediately come to mind...
Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami
The Time of our Singing, by Richard Powers
The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
Dune, obviously.
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut
Notes from the Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
McEwan?
Anything and everything by Ian McEwan is right at the top of my list . . .I’m somewhat surprised he hasn’t been mentioned yet.
+1 on Faulkner and Confederacy
I also love Evelyn Waugh, especially Vile Bodies and Brideshead Revisited. Other faves include The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, The Commitments by Roddy Doyle … and in nonfiction, any number of things by David Simon, P.J. O’Rourke and Michael Kelly.
East of Eden
by John Steinbeck. If you haven’t read it, read it. Great book for men. I’ve given it to 4 or 5 friends at a certain point in their lives and they’ve all said it not only was the best book they ever read but the message changed or affected their lives.
Steinbeck’s best. Not just my opinion but Steinbeck’s editor as well. Great novel. I have never seen the movie, nor will I.
A few of mine...
Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens (I’m surprised noone’s mentioned it. One of the greatest stories I’ve ever heard of.)
The Covenant – James Michener (I could have picked any of several Michener books)
The Aztec – Gary Jennings (Can you tell I like historical novels?)
A Separate Reality – Carlos Casteneda
Pimp: The Story of My Life – An Autobiography by Iceberg Slim (Betcha noone here has read it. Fascinating slice of the dark side)
Thanx to all for their responses. You’ve got me interested in “Catch 22” and “Les Miz”. I’ve seen the movies of both, and I like reading the books that well-known movies are based on.
If I had to pick one...
There are too many greay books to pick one as the best. But if I had to pick one to recommend, it would be Les Miserables.
Isn't that just a little sadistic?
That’s like recommending Underworld by Delillo. Great books (though frankly I like the latter much more than the former), but not something you recommend – without apologizing first
TheSouthWing.com - A Magazine of essays, prose and poems
by OldProspects on Mar 8, 2009 11:40 AM EDT up reply actions
coool
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Watchmen, Alan Moore
Flasfhforward, Robert Sawyer
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
Freakonomics (forgot authors)
Supreme Courtship, Chris Buckley
Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
Audacity of Hope, President Barack Obama
Can’t stand Ayne Rand.
Re: Rand
I’m sure President Obama can’t stand her either – she would be way too pro-capitalist for his taste.
Fiction: Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
Best nonfiction is probably Stephen Sears’s book on Chancellorsville. Takes a position, backs it up with strong evidence.
Many years from now, when his name's recalled
Everyone will say, "He should have passed the ball"
-- Al Stewart, "Football Hero"
+1 on Stephenson add The Diamond Age
WIlliam Gibson Neuromancer Trilogy
Also +1 on The Historian, The Sparrow
Patrick O’Brien Aubrey/Maturin of Master and Commander fame. Books waay better than the movie, which was good.
+1 on Confederacy of Dunces
Cannery Row by Steinbeck
Steppenwolf and Siddartha by Hesse
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez
White Noise by DeLillo
Ender’s Game
Non-fiction
Buddism anything by Pema Chadron
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Susuki
My Top Ten Best Reading Experiences
(not to be confused with my top ten books)
1. Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
2. Master & Magarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
3. The Wooden Sea by Jonathan Carroll
4. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
5. Bag of Bones by Stephen King
6. Some Danger Involved by Will Thomas
7. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
8. The Haunting of L by Howard Norman
9. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
10. A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane
Honorable Mentions: Blood Work by Michael Connelly, Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Relic by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan, The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman, The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley.
i thought Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was the weakest of Murakami's works
it was fine, i guess, but i thought it was too long and self-conscious. i love his style of existentialism in his other works, but in Wind Up Bird it just seemed to languish. i much prefer “Wild Sheep Chase”, “Dance, Dance, Dance”, and “Norwegian Wood”. “Wind Up Bird” was still good though.
My millions are unconventional!
by Charlie Scrabbles on Mar 9, 2009 1:00 AM EDT up reply actions
A lot depends on the order
Murakami was the historical favorite at the bookstore I used to run. We tended to recommend that people read Murakami in order, from Wild Sheep Chase through (at the time) WUBC. The staff, ever-changing in employee makeup, taste and passion, generally agreed that WUBC was his best work, but that it tasted better after seeing Murakami experiment with the five or six different themes he ran through in WSC, Dance Dance Dance, Hard-Boiled Wonderland, Norwegian Wood and Sputnik Sweetheart. He sort of combines them all in WUBC, some to great effect and some that are left to sway in the wind. All-in-all, that culminating aspect of his career arc was, at that point, incredibly satisfying to me as a reader.
by ToddyBaseball on Mar 9, 2009 6:15 PM EDT up reply actions
Science Fiction/Fantasy guy here
Got started early with Heinlein – John mentioned Stranger in A Strange Land. Fantastic book – in the late 80s/early 90s there was some talk of a movie with Tom Hanks, but never came to pass.
Also Starship Troopers – the first Heinlein I ever read and still go back and reread it occasionally.
LOTR, of course – so much of today’s fantasy fiction borrows indirectly (or sometimes flat out steals from) Tolkein that you need to read the original.
Jordan’s Wheel of Time series was great for the first five or six books, then it really bogged down for me. I know he was having health problems, but he was also just overwriting a lot of the stuff.
The first couple of books from the Song of Fire And Ice series (George RR Martin) were fantastic; now we’re falling into the Jordan style of too long between books.
Newer fantasy I really enjoy:
Scott Lynch- “The Lies of Locke Lamora” and “Red Seas Under Red Skies”. My wife even likes these, and she only ever reads legal and medical fiction (Baldacci, etc.). Lynch combines a little of that aspect with high fantasy and action – plus the character is huge smartass.
Patrick Rothfuss – “The Name Of The Wind” Terrific book, nice twists on the typical fantasy style.
Joe Abercrombie – The First Law series lost me at the very end but up until that point (2.8 books or so) it was engaging and exciting.
robert Jordan
Agree with those comments, seems to have peaked with Shadow Rising then wallowed in his own world in too many details, too many characters, too many subplots. Of course, I’ll still buy the finale immediately and go nearly sleepless until I finish it, even if it will be completed by a different author.
G G G E-flat_______ F F F D__________....
+1
Just recently got into these in the last year.
Shadow Rising was phenomenal. I think Crossroads of Twilight and Knife of Dreams were excellent, though. The storyline really picked up speed again… for books 6-9 it all sort of dragged and moved too slowly.
Gravity's Rainbow
Sotweed Factor
Great Gatsby
Look Homeward Angel
Cash Nexus
Black Swan
Stumbling on Happiness
Low Life
Loose Balls
An Army at Dawn
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
Pilgrim – Timothy Findley
Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
The Way Through The Woods – Colin Dexter
The Foundation series + Foundation & Earth – Isaac Asimov
No Logo – Naomi Klein
A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life – Craig Venter
Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
"I think an eating contest is really just the beginning of a shitting contest."
- Demetri Martin
re: mine are:
the Adventures of Huckelberry Finn,
Tom Sawyer,
the Story of My Life by Helen Keller
Tuesday’s With Morrie, Mitch Albom
Diary of Anne Frank
Charlotte’s Web,
LOTR,
The Hobbit,
Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends (yes fantasy geek here)
Ender’s Game
Marley and Me
Guns, Germs and Steel,
River Town, Peter Hessler.
though there are a lot more :). heh, does Calvin and Hobbes or Charlie Schultz count as books?
"Fantasy, reality, science Fiction. Which is which? Who can tell?"
HATE Tuesdays with Morrie
But I can definitely see what people like about it. I just felt like Albom was manipulating this dying old guy so that he could sell books. It was a bit cold.
books
Catch-22
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
It’s not great literature by any means, but I really enjoy John Grisham’s books.
i love reading
many of my favorites have already been said.. here’s my short list
fiction
a confederacy of dunces (i love this book so much i bought 10 copies and gave them to friends)
the count of monte cristo (dumas…and his crew of ghost writers…was brilliant)
the three musketeers
watership down
til we have faces
the manuscript found in saragossa
one hundred years of solitude
non-fiction
a testament of hope
divided by faith
alienable rights
mere christianity
the color of water
god’s politics
http://www.simdynasty.com/index.jsp?refer=mychiefs58
My favorites
The Brother Karamazov – Dostoevsky
Crime and Punishment – Dostoevsky
Notes from Underground – Dostoevsky
The Idiot – Dostoevsky
Perfect Everything – J. Rufus Moseley
Catcher in the Rye – Salinger
Fight Club – Palahniuk
Blue Like Jazz – Miller
To Own a Dragon – Miller
What else have you read by Palahniuk?
Fight Club is pretty good, but I’d have to say I preferred Choke (though not the movie) and Survivor.
Surprised
That nobody mentioned Cormac McCarthy. I love pretty much all of his books: The Road, Child of God, All the Pretty Horses, No Country For Old Men, Blood Meridian, etc…
I like the Dark Tower series also. Didn’t expect some of the stuff but really like the whole series overall.
I liked that I saw Ender’s Game on somebody’s list. I haven’t read that in years but it was fun to remember that one. Used to love it.
Mine -
100 years of solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
crime and punishment – Dostoevsky
East of Eden – Steinbeck
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Good Earth – Pearl Buck
Searching for God Knows What – Donald Miller
Ender’s Game – Card
Calvin and Hobbes still rocks.
Most of my favorites have already been mentioned
Towing Jehovah and This is the Way the World Ends by James Morrow are two lesser know titles. I dont think anyone has mentioned To Kill a Mockingbird. Or Twain, Orwell & Conrad for that matter. I also often enjoy going back and re-reading adventures and children’s stories like Treasure Island as well. I mix in histories and biographies, too… love reading about the ancient world.
My favorite is definitely Hemingway, and among his works Old Man and the Sea stays with me the most. So short, enjoyable and amazing… its perfect. The simplest of allegories put in modern terms. Hemingway and Tolkein are almost exhausting to read… in a good way. I feel physically drained because of the descriptions of the characters and their perceptions. Good stuff.
Late to the show
But I’ll throw in three- Life of Pi by Yann Martel is one of my favorite books- it’s a great book about survival and spirituality. I’d also recommend anything by Michael Crichton. My personal favorites are Rising Sun, State of Fear and Airframe. The third is FA Hayek’s Road to Serfdom- it’s dense, hard to read and fantastic political thought. If you are looking for political stuff, anything by Kathleen Hall Jamison is pretty good as well.
Odd mix
To kill a mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Casebook of Forensic Science, Colin Evans
Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton
Zodiac, Robert Graysmith
The Codex, Douglas Preson
The Testament, John Grisham
Journey to the center of the Earth, Jules Verne
Paradise Lost, John Milton
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (and subsequent works), Douglas Adams
Any of the Scudder or Burglar books by Lawrence Block
(link is to my profile of Block)
And of course another shout out for Calvin and Hobbes
The Casual Observer - BlogTastic since 2009
correction
erg. That’s actually “The casebook of forensic detection” and I forgot that I actually reviewed it in my blog
The Casual Observer - BlogTastic since 2009
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Certain photos copyright © 2012 by Associated Press or Getty Images. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of Associated Press and Getty Images is strictly prohibited.
