Book Recommendations

inky · **Joined:** Nov 2006 **Posts:** 4025 **Location:**

Any good reads you want to share with the rest of the SRF (OTL) community?

When I'm not busy with school textbooks, I do a little bit of personal reading on the side. I have a long list of favorites that some of you might have read before. Therefore, let's try to limit it to a maximum of three books per post.

I'll start with:

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter-House-Five

Wikipedia wrote:

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969) is a science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut about World War II experiences and journeys through time of a soldier called Billy Pilgrim.

Spoiler!

Jack Kerouac's On The Road

Wikipedia wrote:

On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of the postwar Beat Generation that was inspired by jazz, poetry, and drug experiences. While many of the names and details of Kerouac's experiences are changed for the novel, hundreds of references in On the Road have real-world counterparts.

Spoiler!

Finally, the one I'm currently reading:

Sun Tzu's The Art of War

Spoiler!

cpinney · **Posted:** Tue Feb 08, 2011 3:45 am

Spoiler!

derp

McLovin1t · **Joined:** Apr 2008 **Posts:** 1825 **Location:**

Animal Farm, Catch 22, 1984 are good reads (if you are into that sort of thing).

.AWAKE. · **Joined:** Jun 2007 **Posts:** 2070 **Location:**

inbeforeharrypotter&lotr

inky · **Joined:** Nov 2006 **Posts:** 4025 **Location:**

McLovin1t wrote:

Animal Farm, Catch 22, 1984 are good reads (if you are into that sort of thing).

I read 1984 but never got to reading Animal Farm. I will though, eventually. I moved to the US about 7 years ago so I was hardly exposed to anything but regular textbooks and some shitty monthly journals. Fucking provincial Catholic school education. I'm glad I got to study HS here though..even if they had to make me go 3 years back.

Breed · **Posted:** Tue Feb 08, 2011 4:16 am

This boy's life,

Spoiler!

The Millennium series is roly good and should be mentioned.

_Equal_ · **Posted:** Tue Feb 08, 2011 4:18 am

Old skool sci-fi

Ursula K. LeGuin
Asimov
Bova
Heinlein, but avoid his later stuff unless you like gender-bending
Arthur C. Clarke - Childhood's End always amazed me.
Ray Bradbury
Philip K. Dick
Gibson, even after neuromancer

Hit this list if you love scifi.
http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes ... rank1.html

Love · **Joined:** Nov 2007 **Posts:** 5336 **Location:**

Trump: How to Get Rich
Trump: Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education In Business and Life
Trump: The Art of the Deal

and my personal favorite:

The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom,

by the man himself, Dr. Phil.

McLovin1t · **Joined:** Apr 2008 **Posts:** 1825 **Location:**

inky wrote:

McLovin1t wrote:

Animal Farm, Catch 22, 1984 are good reads (if you are into that sort of thing).

I read 1984 but never got to reading Animal Farm. I will though, eventually. I moved to the US about 7 years ago so I was hardly exposed to anything but regular textbooks and some shitty monthly journals. Fucking provincial Catholic school education. I'm glad I got to study HS here though..even if they had to make me go 3 years back.

Yeah Animal Farm is GREAT, go for it.
Great Gatsby is really good too. Textbooks + journals are informative (sometimes biased) but they don't provide the enjoyment and real "knowledge" you get from reading classic literature. So yeah I'd recommend Animal Farm, Great Gatsby (this book to really enjoy, spend a lot of time going over it, because it has a plethora of motifs, symbols, and 'hidden' messages), or Catch 22.

inky · **Joined:** Nov 2006 **Posts:** 4025 **Location:**

I read the Great Gatsby a few years ago. Didn't really find it that enticing - even with its Western Canon status. It was alright - I did not hate it or anything but I never really found that much enjoyment in it. But I might find a bit more interesting these days, who knows.

Derailing from the topic just a little bit, I just have to express my hatred for "Push" ..I fucking hate that book. I remember trying to read it for Developmental Psychology and I ended up going for Sparknotes and telling my professor how much I dislike it. There was another book given to me as a gift by 1 of my ex-girlfriends that I ended up throwing in the garbage after 3 pages of reading. I can't stand books that are written in slang southern/ghetto accent...I just can't.

Edit: Oh I just remembered! It was George Pelecanos'"Hell To Pay" ..I felt my brain cells rotting while reading that book.

/Pi · **Joined:** May 2007 **Posts:** 4592 **Location:**

Too many to list! But to give you one fiction and one non fiction off the top of my head, I'd have to say:

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
I f*cking love this book! The sequels, not so much. Sometimes, I wish they make a movie out of it, but the again, Hollywood will most likely just f*ck it up.

Spoiler!

Unweaving the Rainbow - Richard Dawkins
One of my favorite non fiction books. He talks about science and art/poetry and how they are not entirely exclusive from each other. I can reread it over and over.

Spoiler!

inky wrote:

I read 1984 but never got to reading Animal Farm. I will though, eventually. I moved to the US about 7 years ago so I was hardly exposed to anything but regular textbooks and some shitty monthly journals. Fucking provincial Catholic school education. I'm glad I got to study HS here though..even if they had to make me go 3 years back.

Why is it that everytime you talk about your immigration, I feel like I'm reading my own life. It's just that you ended up in NY and I in CA. -_____-"

inky · **Joined:** Nov 2006 **Posts:** 4025 **Location:**

Lol Kind of Off-Topic but no harm in a little derailing..I'm kind of surprised since I deviate from what most Filipinos do when they move here. They stick together as a tight bunch. Not that I don't have Filipino friends but I don't just befriend people because of their nationality. I find myself having a completely different set of practices and beliefs and sometimes FOBs (Sorry, there's no other way to say it) find that rather irritating or "white-washed" (Hate that term). That and I don't have a Filipino accent when I speak English and vice versa when I speak Tagalog and my native dialect.

iGod · **Joined:** Oct 2006 **Posts:** 3728 **Location:**

The little prince.

aishsharma · **Posted:** Tue Feb 08, 2011 10:14 am

some books I go for:

Inheritance cycle, Chaos walking trilogy, Game world trilogy.

If your not into the fantasy/scifi thing then try books from Sidney Sheldon, John Grisham, Jeffrey Archer.

notable recommendations would be: A Painted house, the client, the broker, etc.

I actually read a lot of fiction, but can't remember many names right now =/

dom · **Posted:** Tue Feb 08, 2011 11:50 am

Couple I finished recently (exceptional denoted with an *):

*Life by Keith Richards
*Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan
Hitch 22 by Christopher Hitchens
Touching the Void by Joe Simpson
The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl by Belle
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
*Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain
*Losing My Virginity - Richard Branson
In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks by Adam Carolla
The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry
*American on Purpose by Craig Ferguson
*Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

In addition, I add every book written by Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawkins. Be weary of the later, he recycles his material a lot.

little_panther · **Joined:** Jan 2008 **Posts:** 147 **Location:**

For all those sci-fi, fantasy (and a zombie book

) lovers here are some of my favourite books:

Tad williams - Otherland series
Terry Goodkind - Sword of truth series
Tad williams - War of the flowers
Raymond E.Feist - Magician
Kylie chan - Dark heavens series
Mira Grant - Feed (becoming a series)
Rodger Zelanzy - city of amber series

just to name a few

Nick Invaders · **Joined:** Apr 2009 **Posts:** 1105 **Location:**

Fiction
Metro 2033 by Dmitri Glukhovsky

Non-Fiction
Death by Black Hole by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku

ltsune · **Joined:** Mar 2008 **Posts:** 5751 **Location:**

After a lot of recommendations I finally started reading the Artemis Fowl books. And I must say, I'm really impressed with them. So far I've only read the first one though. I'm gonna start the next one in a week, hopefully.

Do you guys have any recommendations for other fantasy books, which are worth reading?

Gaigemasta · **Joined:** Dec 2006 **Posts:** 4474 **Location:**

A Clockwork Orange

Brago · **Posted:** Tue Feb 08, 2011 4:17 pm

The Kane Chroncles is a good series (though i think only the first two books are out) first one was well written.
then percy jackson and the olympians is also a good series. i liked each book (the author is workin on a sequel series to this one).

both are written by Rick Riordan

Mark. · **Joined:** Mar 2008 **Posts:** 672 **Location:** Italy

Uh..I mostly read XIX and early XX century literature, so not many people may like what I do.

I enjoyed reading 1984 and Animal Farm, both by George Orwell. Both great books, both depict how crooked some totalitarian systems can be.

I read some russian short stories, Dostoevskij's and Puskin's and in spite of what people may say, they're nothing tough to read. I'm sorry I can't find the English version of the ones I read.

I found Waiting for Godot and Endgame by Samuel Becket both mind numbing, but great nonetheless.

I read a lot of short stories and out of the lot, I especially liked Odour of Chrysanthemums and The Rocking Horse Winner by D. H. Lawrence, both sad, but thoughtful stories; I also liked The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde, despite I did not enjoy The Picture of Dorian Gray as much.

A special mention should go to a Spanish contemporary literarature writer: Carlos Ruiz Zafón. His The Shadow of the Wind is one hell of masterpiece. I don't read much of 2000's books, but this one really got me.
I'm quite positive not many of you know it, so I'll just quote the plot from Wikipedia

Quote:

The novel, set in post–Spanish Civil War Barcelona, concerns a young boy, Daniel Sempere. Just after the war, Daniel's father takes him to the secret Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a huge library of old, forgotten titles lovingly preserved by a select few initiates. According to tradition, everyone initiated to this secret place is allowed to take one book from it, and must protect it for life. Daniel selects a book called The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax. That night he takes the book home and reads it, completely engrossed. Daniel then attempts to look for other books by this unknown author, but can find none. All he comes across are stories of a strange man – calling himself Laín Coubert, after a character in the book who happens to be the Devil – who has been seeking out Carax's books for decades, buying them all and burning them.

Another book he wrote a few years later, is The Angel's Game, almost 700 pages I went through in a six days' time lapse.
It's not very different from The Shadow of the Wind and is set 30 years before the former, in Barcelona. It's just..they're both great, I couldn't put either down.

Right now I'm reading The Garden Party and Other Stories, a collection of 15 stories by Katherine Mansfield. This New Zealand woman mostly wrote about everyday's life, a subject that some find boring, but which I love because life is not just made up of great events, but also by every little action of ours. And the way she could put down on paper these almost insignificant gestures made me love her (books) from the very first times I read her (books).

satman83 · **Joined:** Oct 2006 **Posts:** 9541 **Location:** London

cpinney wrote:

Spoiler!

derp

DUDE! am like reading that right now...super special awsome book :sohappy:

satman83 · **Joined:** Oct 2006 **Posts:** 9541 **Location:** London

Mark. wrote:

Uh..I mostly read XIX and early XX century literature, so not many people may like what I do.

I enjoyed reading 1984 and Animal Farm, both by George Orwell. Both great books, both depict how crooked some totalitarian systems can be.

I read some russian short stories, Dostoevskij's and Puskin's and in spite of what people may say, they're nothing tough to read. I'm sorry I can't find the English version of the ones I read.

I found Waiting for Godot and Endgame by Samuel Becket both mind numbing, but great nonetheless.

I read a lot of short stories and out of the lot, I especially liked Odour of Chrysanthemums and The Rocking Horse Winner by D. H. Lawrence, both sad, but thoughtful stories; I also liked The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde, despite I did not enjoy The Picture of Dorian Gray as much.

A special mention should go to a Spanish contemporary literarature writer: Carlos Ruiz Zafón. His The Shadow of the Wind is one hell of masterpiece. I don't read much of 2000's books, but this one really got me.
I'm quite positive not many of you know it, so I'll just quote the plot from Wikipedia

Quote:

The novel, set in post–Spanish Civil War Barcelona, concerns a young boy, Daniel Sempere. Just after the war, Daniel's father takes him to the secret Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a huge library of old, forgotten titles lovingly preserved by a select few initiates. According to tradition, everyone initiated to this secret place is allowed to take one book from it, and must protect it for life. Daniel selects a book called The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax. That night he takes the book home and reads it, completely engrossed. Daniel then attempts to look for other books by this unknown author, but can find none. All he comes across are stories of a strange man – calling himself Laín Coubert, after a character in the book who happens to be the Devil – who has been seeking out Carax's books for decades, buying them all and burning them.

Another book he wrote a few years later, is The Angel's Game, almost 700 pages I went through in a six days' time lapse.
It's not very different from The Shadow of the Wind and is set 30 years before the former, in Barcelona. It's just..they're both great, I couldn't put either down.

Right now I'm reading The Garden Party and Other Stories, a collection of 15 stories by Katherine Mansfield. This New Zealand woman mostly wrote about everyday's life, a subject that some find boring, but which I love because life is not just made up of great events, but also by every little action of ours. And the way she could put down on paper these almost insignificant gestures made me love her (books) from the very first times I read her (books).

you got them as PDF? or actual paper? sounds good, i may give it a read

Stress · **Posted:** Tue Feb 08, 2011 9:50 pm

Norman Mailer - The Naked and The Dead.

Brutal, thrilling, wonderful.

McLovin1t · **Joined:** Apr 2008 **Posts:** 1825 **Location:**

Gaigemasta wrote:

A Clockwork Orange

Ah yes forgot this one

inky · **Joined:** Nov 2006 **Posts:** 4025 **Location:**

The Shadow Of The Wind sounds pretty interesting. Although I have to ask: is the original version in Spanish or English? The problem I have with a lot of translated books is that the art in the writing and certain things exclusive to the original text such as idioms get lost in the translation. This tends to happen a lot especially in novels.

Then again, with the amount of textbook studying I have to do, I don't think I'm going to be done with The Art of War anytime soon. Especially since it's not the type of book you can simply read and instantly comprehend as you go along. What really enticed me to finally pick it up is its ability to apply its philosophy to nearly every aspect of life, at every level.

And yes, A Clockwork Orange is definitely a good read. I'm a huge fan of cult fiction novels so that one definitely hits the spot. Even if you've already seen the movie, which is equally great (despite the censorship), I would still recommend giving the text a chance.

Shomari · **Joined:** Jul 2007 **Posts:** 2341 **Location:** Limbo

Jules fking Verne books.

John_Doe · **Joined:** Mar 2007 **Posts:** 2094 **Location:**

Spoiler!

Kraq · **Posted:** Wed Feb 09, 2011 4:47 am

iGod wrote:

The little prince.

I fucking loved reading that book as a kid, even though I didn't get any of it. Huge nostalgia, I need to read it again.

Content:
Wizard's First Rule

Spoiler!

Great book, longer than average read; every time I look back at the events in this book, it plays like a movie. Terry Goodkind has a nice way of putting the words into your head, I've been meaning to read the rest of the Sword of Truth series.

Anthem

Spoiler!

Read it for school, extremely intriguing concept and engaging plot; it really makes you think, kind of a mindfuck. Quick read, as well.

And Then There Were None

Spoiler!

Good Mystery book, had me stuck on it until I finished it.

Currently reading:
Finnegan's Wake

Spoiler!

Can't really say much, since I'm only on the second chapter. But, from what I've read it's a huge like "WTF?" It's pretty cool once you're able to decode some of the words subconsciously, but most of it is hard to understand. Amazing concept.

Gladiator_RN · **Posted:** Wed Feb 09, 2011 12:33 pm

1984
Lord of the Flies

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