Books!!!!

[JediKnight707]

Now I know this may seem odd coming from a teenager, but I love to READ!!!!!!!!!! Anyway, I was wondering what some books that you guys would reccomend? Here are some that I would:

 

LOTR Trilogy

Eragon/Eldest

The Artemis Fowl Series

Speak

Catalyst

Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas/Sam's Letters to Jennifer (actually all of James Patterson's books)

Jurrasic Park/Lost World

State of Fear

Prey

 

More to come!!!

[El Sitherino]

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Lord of the Flies.

 

For some reason those are the two books I read the most.

[spinkle]

London Fields by Martin Amis. I reread it every year around this time. Absolutely insane, set around the [most-recent] turn of the millenium...a literary, sexy, twisted novel of murder and lies.

 

Fear And Loathing is tremendous, and so much better than the disgraceful movie that completely lost the point of the book while retaining all of the drug use. (not to say that it wasn't an entertaining watch)

 

If you're into fantasy, look for the Riddle Master Of Hed series from Patricia McKilip...all three books were fantastic and last time i checked (2000?) it was being published in a one-volume edition after being out of print for a decade.

 

if you haven't read The Chronicles of Narnia, do so now before they get bastardized into movies...and read the Lemony Snicket books even though they already have =)

 

more later.

[El Sitherino]

Fear And Loathing is tremendous, and so much better than the disgraceful movie that completely lost the point of the book while retaining all of the drug use. (not to say that it wasn't an entertaining watch)

Seems you didn't really get the point of the movie...

[spinkle]

Seems you didn't really get the point of the movie...

 

No, I really didn't. I thought Benicio Del Toro and Johnny Depp were both great (Depp especially, a near-perfect depiction of HST that gives Bill Murray's turn in Where The Buffalo Roam a run for its money), and I really like Terry Gilliam, but I was extremely displeased with that adaptation. I felt like it covered about 2/3 of the book, and none of what I would consider the most crucial, intelligent aspects of the book. They nailed the "gonzo," they missed the journalism, imo. Though as I said, it was entertaining.

[Kensai]

"Da Vinci Code", if not for its literacy prowess but for it's complete and utter lies and tripe that it spouts as truth. Good read, but don't believe it.

 

For some Non-Fiction, Anthony Beevor comes in handy with his biopics "Stalingrad" and "Berlin". Fantastic insights into the latter and pivotal parts of WWII

 

"Rainbow Six", Before the game, there was a book, and guess what, it's awesome...

[El Sitherino]

The heart of the story doesn't lie in the journalism though, it's in these guys relationship and adventures. It's a tale of their journey into the American wasteland, living the American Dream.

 

Anyway, we'll leave that for another thread or something.

 

Another good book you can check out is Dune.

[90SK]

Anyone ever read "The Color of Magic", by Terry Pratchett? All of his books are good, that one especially. A really fabulous read.

[spinkle]

Absolutely agree on Dune.

 

Many of Robert Heinlein's books are great, too. Stranger In A Strange Land is a good place to start with his stuff, can't remember the titles of the Lazarus Long (a prominent and recurring Heinlein character) novels I really liked off the top of my head.

[The Doctor]

1984. Amazing book by George Orwell.

Any of John Wyndham's Books. He's the best Sci-Fi writer EVAR!!!

I like the Thrawn trilogy, even though it's post ROTJ. It was well written and had a good story.

[spinkle]

Skinny Legs And All from Tom Robbins. Jitterbug Perfume from Tom Robbins .Or really, any Tom Robbins. (though i never did finish Even Cowgirls Get the Blues...)

 

The Crying of Lot 49 from Thomas Pynchon is great, but tripped out and insane. I wouldn't recommend trying to get into Pynchon by starting with any of his other books as they're all pretty dense and long except this one. (which is just dense)

[Jeff]

Lord of the Flies

I didn't like this book that much. It was OK I guess, and I tend to like books less when the teachers force us to read them

 

Some books I enjoy reading include, but are not limited to, Harry Potter series, LotR, Chronicles of Narnia, and I also enjoyed reading Romeo and Juliet and Taming of the Shrew at school, along with To Kill a Mockingbird.

[The Doctor]

^ To Kill a Mockingbird was an amazong book. I love it. It and the Chrysalids are the only books I've read for school that I've liked.

[MdKnightR]

"Aftermath" by Levar Burton

 

Any of the Dragonlance novels if they were written by Weis and Hickman

 

"Don't Stand Too Close To A Naked Man" by Tim Allen (not a literary great, but it is downright funny!)

 

"Interview with the Vampire" by Anne Rice

 

"Why I Am Not A Christian" by Bertrand Russell

 

I'm sure there are others, but that is all that comes to mind at the moment.

[spinkle]

A Wrinkle In Time, A Wind At The Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, all by Madeleine L'Engle. Preferably read on a VERY dark and VERY stormy night.

[Vladimir-Vlada]

"The Idiot", "The Gambler", "A Scandal Book" (a bit short but still good) by Fiodor Michailovich Dostoyevsky. "Lord of the Rings" (who wouldn't recommned that).

 

Also "Da Vinchies Code" by Dan Brown (better not read if you're not an atheist).

[Darth_Terros]

Anything by my favourite author kurt vonnegut

 

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

 

amazon.com

 

Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.

 

Don't let the ease of reading fool you--Vonnegut's isn't a conventional, or simple, novel. He writes, "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters..." Slaughterhouse-Five (taken from the name of the building where the POWs were held) is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is as important as any written since 1945. Like Catch- 22, it fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy--and humor.

 

 

Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Amazon.com

 

"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane." So reads the tombstone of downtrodden writer Kilgore Trout, but we have no doubt who's really talking: his alter ego Kurt Vonnegut. Health versus sickness, humanity versus inhumanity--both sets of ideas bounce through this challenging and funny book. As with the rest of Vonnegut's pure fantasy, it lacks the shimmering, fact-fueled rage that illuminates Slaughterhouse-Five. At the same time, that makes this book perhaps more enjoyable to read.

 

Breakfast of Champions is a slippery, lucid, bleakly humorous jaunt through (sick? inhumane?) America circa 1973, with Vonnegut acting as our Virgil-like companion. The book follows its main character, auto-dealing solid-citizen Dwayne Hoover, down into madness, a condition brought on by the work of the aforementioned Kilgore Trout. As Dwayne cracks, then crumbles, Breakfast of Champions coolly shows the effects his dementia has on the web of characters surrounding him. It's not much of a plot, but it's enough for Vonnegut to air unique opinions on America, sex, war, love, and all of his other pet topics--you know, the only ones that really count.

[Darth Smaug]

I like some books :

All Harry Potters

The Hobbit

Books of the Wizards

Any King Arthur book

Any Fantasy book,...

[Darth_Terros]

Ooh and how can i forget the drunken genius of bukowski

 

Women by Charles Bukowski

 

A Review from Amazon.com

 

First off, this book will offend people. It will probably offend you. You need to be offended. You need to be shaken out of your complacency. You need to be smacked upside the head with the crude and vulgar beauty of Bukowski's life and prose. You should get an injection of his drunken, debauched lifestyle. You should read this book.

 

This is the first Bukowski novel that I have read, on a recommendation from a friend. The man has a way with words. A true Hemingway in the way he gives insightful and penetrating descriptions of people, but never actually tells you what they are thinking. He is able to paint a deep character profile of all the many women in his life with a little dialogue and some crazy actions. Some may find it degrading towards women, but I don't feel that it is. Sure, he is sometimes crude, sometimes angry, sometimes insulting towards women, but he is equally so towards himself. If anything, I feel he shows the tragic sexual immaturity of both women and men. While his lifestyle may be on the extreme, and something that most of us have never even gotten close to, he demonstrates things that anyone who has been in a relationship can identify with.

 

All in all, I don't think Bukowski was writing a book about relationships that people would identify with. That is far too cheesy and mid '90s flaky for him. I think this was more just a painful self-evisceration. I think he was tearing himself open, and laughing about it, and proudly showing off his darkest, and also his most beautiful, thoughts, actions, and emotions.

[Darth_Terros]

Damn it i keep thinking of more to recommend! If you enjoyed the movie/book fight club you'll most likely get a kick out of this

 

Choke by Chuck Palahniuk

 

Amazon.com

 

Victor Mancini is a ruthless con artist. Victor Mancini is a med-school dropout who's taken a job playing an Irish indentured servant in a colonial-era theme park in order to help care for his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. Victor Mancini is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ. All of these statements about the protagonist of Choke are more or less true. Welcome, once again, to the world of Chuck Palahniuk.

 

"Art never comes from happiness." So says Mancini's mother only a few pages into the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting, you would think that her son's life would be chock-full of nothing but art. Alas, that's not the case. In the fine tradition of Oedipus, Stephen Dedalus, and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasn't quite reconciled his issues with his mother. Instead, he's trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetings for dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments of attention. Longing for a hug, in other words, he's settling for the Heimlich.

[stingerhs]

i'd recommend any book written by Tom Clancy. definately one of the best storytellers of our time, especially if you like things that deal with espionage and the military in the modern world.

 

i'd also recommend the 'Dune' series by Frank Herbert if your into sci-fi/fantasy.

 

a couple of very good authors that i would also recommend: Clive Cussler, Micheal Crichton, and Steven King.

[RobQel-Droma]

Lord of the Rings

Chronicles of Narnia (hope they don't butcher it in the movie)

Robert A. Heinlein's Books (I am just looking at them on my bookshelf right now, I have 8 of them : Starship Troopers, Citizen of the Galaxy, Have Space Suit- Will Travel, Tunnel in the Sky, Between Planets, etc. GREAT books)

Some of Isaac Asimov's stuff (I have almost all of the Lucky Starr series, and I have the Foundation series)

The Trilogy by C. J. Cherryh: The Pride of Chanur, Chanur's Venture, The Kif Strike Back, and Chanur's Homecoming. (I like S-F )

 

And a ton more, I have a lot of books.

[The Doctor]

I'm going to get yelled at for this, but here it goes:

I like the Magic: The Gathering books in the Mirrodin cycle, called "The Moons of Mirrodin", "The Darksteel Eye", adn "The Fifth Dawn". It was a well written trilogy.

[Hallucination]

No Card fans around here? You have to read Ender's Game +series and the tales of Alvin Maker, all by Orson Scott Card.

[JediKnight707]

I've read a few of those books on ur guys' lists (I forgot to put on the Harry Potter series). A few I forgot to put on:

 

We were Soldiers Once.....And Young

The Journal of Scott Pendeltin Collins/Patrick Flatherty (forgot how to spell their names their something like that)

Wrinkle in Time (I LOVE THAT BOOK!)

The Blue Nowhere (Thats probably my favorite book)

Garden of Beasts (It was pretty damn good)