Thread: A Good Book

I'm in love with this thread already! My small but growing library is full of brain candy with some history and biographies sprinkled in, though I would like to start adding in more non fiction.

Asimov has to be my favorite author. His stories are almost all spellbinding page turners. My collection of his works is slowly increasing, they're just so hard to find in hardback sometimes.

I enjoy Clancy and have many of his, but some of his are just flat out boring!

Clive Cussler is one I enjoy, but only the Dirk Pitt novels.

John Grisham is a must have for me. I don't know of a book he's written that I don't like.

Any Sherlock Holmes. I have a wonderful collection in hard back which has I believe all original stories, I can't recall at the moment.

Chronicles of Narnia- nuff said.

Back many, many years ago when I read Clancy's "Red Storm Rising", I was never so damn happy to finish a book and be done with it! I couldn't put it down, and thus stayed up till the wee hours of the morning for a week plowing through it. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but felt like I had just run a marathon or something...

Originally Posted by Seraphim

"Crime and Punishment" Classic. Dostoyevsky always has great characters and dialouge. C&P is a must read. I'm a fan of all of Dostoyevsky's work, his short story collection are also wonderful.

Absolutely, possibly the best book of all time.
I'm also a big fan of Patrick O'Brian, Ian Rankin, Mark Billingham, Bill Bryson and for short stories - Saki.

I read Shakespeare ... over and over again! For other works, I have a deep appreciation for Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and Ernest Hemmingway's The Old Man and the Sea. Lots of Poe too.

X

Discworld FTW!

That and a lot of old horror, Dracula and such.

And a must read is Cryptonomicon. For those who haven't read it, please do

This summer I was hoping to hit up at least one of the Chinese classics. Was thinking about going in chronilogical order. Start with Romance of the Three Kingdoms (a.k.a. Three Kingdoms), move onto Water Margin (a.k.a. Outlaws of the Marsh), then Journey to the West, finally ending with the fourth official classic Dream of the Red Chamber (a.k.a. the Story of the Stone). After that, I'll go onto what some consider to be the fifth classic the Plum in the Golden Vase (a.k.a. Golden Lotus).

Big fan of Christopher Moore, light hearted and entertaining, makes good break from school reading.

Originally Posted by barneycg

+100 for the Terry Goodkind Sword of Truth series - a totally epic tale.
the Wheel of time was great until book 6 or so then it kind of lost its way and the last 2 have been utterly dreadful. I'm awaiting the ghost written final book with some trepidation.

Barney

I'm also one of those waiting for the last book in that series, and agree the last several books keep prolonging the story and wander off a bit. I heard Robert Jordan had terminal cancer, but did not know he had passed away...(?)
I thought he was writing the last one himself...


John P.

aYN rAND/ tHE fOUNTAINHEAD

With all respect to nun2sharp, I propose a voluntary, preemptive moratorium on discussion of Ayn Rand. I've never been privy to a discussion of Rand which included more than one viewpoint and remained civil for any length of time. This could be a great thread, and I'd hate to see it succumb to the devolution in discourse which seems to inevitably occur whenever Ayn Rand's name is invoked in polite company. Just a suggestion from a newbie.

I'm reading Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War, in the (relatively) new Landmark Edition. It makes a very challenging read somewhat easier for somebody like me who's got no background in classical history. I'd be lost without the copious maps and appendices. With them, I can barely follow along and focus on what Thucydides is really getting at, rather than trying to puzzle out how long the Lesbian navy would have had to sail to reach Aegina, and such geographic trifles. If you're into doorstops, I reccommend it highly.