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AARP LARPer fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Jan 22, 2016 |
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Feb 13, 2012 20:36
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4 Day Weekend posted:I've always loved reading, but I've never really read the 'classics' or 'staples' until recently. So far I've read Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Life of Pi and To Kill a Mockingbird, plus a couple others. I was just wondering if there's a list or even just some recommendations? Preferably the short ones first, so I can re-read it and analyse all the themes/motifs and symbols. Short ones? Off the top of my head: Of Mice and Men The Catcher in the Rye Animal Farm 1984 If you liked Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night, but it's 350ish pages.
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Feb 13, 2012 21:31
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Diogines posted:
Do Not Resuscitate posted:Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light. Seconding this, also Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan Xenophon, Anabasis H. Rider Haggard, She Mary Renault, The King Must Die Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander John Steinbeck, Cannery Row Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat Dianna Wynne Jones, The Dark Lord of Derkholm John Scalzi, Old Man's War or The Android's Dream Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Feb 13, 2012 |
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Feb 13, 2012 21:34
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e: posted to Audiobooks thread instead. Must have sorted wrong when looking for it.
feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Feb 13, 2012 |
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Feb 13, 2012 21:51
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I'm looking for some strategy books like The Art of War, but more contemporary. Preferably something written by the CIA, some famous ex-general whatever, or a Socialist revolutionary.
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Feb 14, 2012 00:45
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Two that come to mind are Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook by Edward Luttwak, and Guerrilla Warfare by Che Guevara.
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Feb 14, 2012 02:27
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RC and Moon Pie posted:Short ones? Off the top of my head: I'll check these out, as well as all the other ones mentioned as well. 350 is fine, I just don't want to read something like The Brothers Karamazov or Les Miserables or something.
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Feb 14, 2012 05:26
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4 Day Weekend posted:I've always loved reading, but I've never really read the 'classics' or 'staples' until recently. So far I've read Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Life of Pi and To Kill a Mockingbird, plus a couple others. I was just wondering if there's a list or even just some recommendations? Preferably the short ones first, so I can re-read it and analyse all the themes/motifs and symbols. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner That's all I can think of at the moment just glancing over my (tiny, tiny) bookshelf. e: You also might want to check this out (not the reader's list obviously): http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/ It's pretty biased in favor of white men but whatta ya gonna do Conduit for Sale! fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Feb 14, 2012 |
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Feb 14, 2012 06:11
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MrGreenShirt posted:Two that come to mind are Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook by Edward Luttwak, and Guerrilla Warfare by Che Guevara. Awesome, thanks MrGreenShirt. I just realized that I also need something to balance out the whole revolutionary theme. Preferably something with a counter revolutionary theme. For example, does anyone know where I can find something like this dandy little counter intelligence manual in print form?
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Feb 14, 2012 10:56
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Dryer Lint posted:Awesome, thanks MrGreenShirt. I just realized that I also need something to balance out the whole revolutionary theme. Preferably something with a counter revolutionary theme. For example, does anyone know where I can find something like this dandy little counter intelligence manual in print form? Nagl, How to eat soup with a knife. It's not on counter-intelligence, but on counter-insurgency. It shows the mistakes of the past, so you can judge for yourself whether the same are still being made today.
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Feb 14, 2012 13:35
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4 Day Weekend posted:I've always loved reading, but I've never really read the 'classics' or 'staples' until recently. So far I've read Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Life of Pi and To Kill a Mockingbird, plus a couple others. I was just wondering if there's a list or even just some recommendations? Preferably the short ones first, so I can re-read it and analyse all the themes/motifs and symbols. Candide by Voltaire The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger On the Road by Jack Kerouac Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe I can definitely give more if you want, I just didn't want to give too daunting a list in one post.
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Feb 15, 2012 00:39
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I'm looking for books that delve into the human psyche or at least deal with psychiatry/psychology and the like.
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Feb 15, 2012 09:18
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I posted back in November looking for some fun or light fantasy books or just books that are interesting but keep things fairly light (Doesn't have to be fantasy) and got some great recommendations which I've just finished reading so looking for some more. Series I've previously read/enjoyed: Terry Pratchett - Discworld GRRM - Song of Fire and Ice Douglas Adam - Hitchhikers/Dirk Gently J K Rowling - Harry Potter Books people recommended that I really enjoyed: Lev Grossman - The Magicans & Magician King A. Lee. Martinez - Gil's All Fright Diner & The Nameless Witch Robert Asprin - Myth Series Books people recommended that I thought were alright but not great: Christopher Moore - A Dirty Job Diana Wynn - Howls Moving Castle (Loved the film, book tended to have long sections of nothing really happening) Robin Becker - Brains: A Zombie Memoir Stephen King - Dark Tower Series (I'm on book three but finding it hard going and am losing interest in the series) I posted about this before, but last year I went on bit of a spree of reading books that tended to be a bit gritty or over the top 'grim dark', as well as several fiction books that had a lot of divorce/abuse etc and while interesting I am looking for something fairly light hearted or doesn't take itself too seriously. I don't really enjoy straight fantasy, I can tolerate books with Elves, Magic, Dragons and talking Animals as long as the book kinda winks at the reader and says 'Yeah this is pretty silly isn't it?'. If they're played 100% straight then I find them really awful, although I loved the films, I could not get into the LOTR books for example. I've found I especially enjoy books set in modern times with fantasy or supernatural elements, like Gil's All Fright Diner and the Magicians, as the main characters themselves constantly state how ridiculous it all is. Any really really good Spy thrillers would be welcome suggestions too, I enjoyed: Robert Littell - Legends John Le Carre - Tinker Tailor, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People Jason Bourne Series (Okay okay, I've only seen the Films) I don't like the look of Tom Clancy or anything that reads like a love letter to the intelligence community or 24-ish, prefer something thats character driven rather than 'We have to take down them terrists to protech mah cuntry!!!', which rightly or wrongly is how Clancy comes across to me. And lastly, is the Stieg Larsson - Millenium Trilogy worth reading? With the film having come out, everyone is really hyping the series, but they also did that with the Davinci Code in my opinion was really really terrible. Sorry for the long post, figured best to let people know what do/don't like for the best recommendation ideas.
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Feb 15, 2012 11:57
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Lord Dekks posted:Any really really good Spy thrillers would be welcome suggestions too, I enjoyed: Gerald Seymour's Timebomb, which I think comes out tomorrow, is modern, but very much inspired by classic le Carre. The Stieg Larsson books aren't all that- if you want some nice, dark Scandinavian thrillers, check out Jo Nesbo or Jussi Adler-Olsen.
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Feb 15, 2012 12:39
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Rereading China Miéville's The City and the City (which is awesome) has left me hankering for really good mysteries. It doesn't have to be noir/detective fiction, it doesn't have to be the most notable book in its genre, I don't really mind, as long as it's a loving good mystery with a really satisfying solution. For what it's worth I also loved both adaptations of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (although I don't really plan to read the books) and I've enjoyed the Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes adaptations I've seen.
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Feb 15, 2012 14:33
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Lord Dekks posted:I don't like the look of Tom Clancy or anything that reads like a love letter to the intelligence community or 24-ish, prefer something thats character driven rather than 'We have to take down them terrists to protech mah cuntry!!!', which rightly or wrongly is how Clancy comes across to me. You might like Graham Greene's The Third Man, which is a very character-driven story about a guy trying to find out who killed his friend in post-WW2 Vienna. It's a really good movie, too. Also, if you want to avoid dark stuff, I'd stay away from Stieg Larsson, who's books I found brutally violent and dark.
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Feb 15, 2012 17:44
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Evfedu posted:Does that take you through the structure of a plot and explain it with examples? I'm looking for something that does that, basically. What a pinch two is, where it goes and why you put it there. That kind of stuff. From a couple pages back, but Story Engineering by Larry Brooks is basically this. It's a quick read, meant for would-be authors, and it covers other territory besides plot, but it's got the info you want. It lays out plot structure and explains each point. Again, it's looking at plot from a writer's perspective rather than a reader's, but it does explain everything in a straightforward manner.
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Feb 16, 2012 06:49
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Vogler posted:The only book I've read in one sitting is How Fiction Works by James Wood. Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook. I used it in a creative writing class a few years back and kept it around because it was so helpful. There's also The Ode Less Traveled by Stephen Fry. It's all about metered stuff, but it's quick and fun.
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Feb 16, 2012 07:00
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Lord Dekks posted:Any really really good Spy thrillers would be welcome suggestions too, I enjoyed: I recommend them to everyone looking for spy thrillers, but your looking for a character-driven story just cements it even more: you should absolutely read Alex Berenson's John Wells novels, starting with The Faithful Spy. It's kind of the anti-24 (which is difficult for me to say considering I love both), in that it's very much character-driven, and Wells struggles with what the job requires of him even as he hunts down terrorists. The Faithful Spy is my favorite spy thriller, and I've read a lot of spy thrillers. You might also like The Bourne Identity. I personally enjoyed it much, much more than the movie, and they're so different from each other that they may as well be entirely different IPs. Basically the only similarities are "there is a dude named Bourne, he washed up on shore with no memory, the CIA is involved somehow." I actually hated the second one, though, and the third, while not as bad as the second, still wasn't as good as the first, and I ended up shelving it because I was still frustrated about the second book. So, yeah, just the first one.
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Feb 16, 2012 07:39
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I've been on a detective/crime-mystery kick lately. I've already read a bunch of Agatha Christe books before so I'm hoping for some good, more modern detective books to read though similar in style still
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Feb 17, 2012 01:12
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Lord Dekks posted:Robert Littell - Legends Also from Le Carre - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is one of the best spy novels ever written, and as character driven as it gets. Lord Dekks posted:And lastly, is the Stieg Larsson - Millenium Trilogy worth reading? I've only read the first one, but if the rest are just as bad then the answer is no. Absolutely nothing happens for the first 100 and last 150 pages of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and in between is bad prose (even allowing for the fact that it is a translation), a Mary-Sue main character, unidimensional side characters, lots of coffee drinking, sandwich eating, and rape. Avoid.
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Feb 17, 2012 01:42
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Dr. VooDoo posted:I've been on a detective/crime-mystery kick lately. I've already read a bunch of Agatha Christe books before so I'm hoping for some good, more modern detective books to read though similar in style still I went on a long run of detective fiction about six months to a year ago. Apart from the classic noir stuff by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, my favorites were the Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout and the Travis McGee books by John D. McDonald. Each series is set in a specific place (New York City and Florida, respectively) and written over a specific span of years at the rate of about one every year or other year or so, with the books set when the book was written. So if you read either series in order of publication you get this really interesting picture of a specific region of the country changing over time. The Wolfe books start in 1930's NYC and move through the depression, world war two, the postwar boom, and the growth of 1960's counterculture. Similarly the Travis McGee books give this really interesting picture of Florida in the 1960's and 70's.
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Feb 17, 2012 15:56
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Dr. VooDoo posted:I've been on a detective/crime-mystery kick lately. I've already read a bunch of Agatha Christe books before so I'm hoping for some good, more modern detective books to read though similar in style still The style is known as cozies. It's not really my cup of tea, but you might get some good suggestions from the goodreads cozy forum, like this thread.
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Feb 17, 2012 19:29
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Any recommendations for books about the history of New York City, especially from colonial times to the 1920s or so?
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Feb 18, 2012 23:18
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You know, I was gonna type out a huge paragraph on what I like, but I'll just sum it up. I'd love to read another series akin to the Dresden Files.
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Feb 21, 2012 02:29
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Go read the Dresden Files thread, there's usually a derail every few pages where everybody lists Dresden-like series. Barring that, the Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne, the Twenty Palaces series by Harry Connolly, and the Sandman Slim series by Richard Kadrey have been recommended a few times. Edit: VVV drat, knew I forgot one! MrGreenShirt fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Feb 21, 2012 |
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Feb 21, 2012 03:05
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MrGreenShirt posted:Go read the Dresden Files thread, there's usually a derail every few pages where everybody lists Dresden-like series. You forgot the other big one: Mike Carey's Felix Castor books.
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Feb 21, 2012 03:09
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Any good books on conflicts between Koreans and Japanese?
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Feb 21, 2012 05:38
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I'm just wondering if anyone has any recommendations about for fantasy or fiction books based in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt. I'm sorry if that's too broad of a topic but I'm really not even quite sure I myself know what I want to read 
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Feb 21, 2012 07:02
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Mike Tysons CARFAX posted:I'm just wondering if anyone has any recommendations about for fantasy or fiction books based in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt. I'm sorry if that's too broad of a topic but I'm really not even quite sure I myself know what I want to read How about the greater Roman empire? I like the Medicus series by Ruth Downie, set in Roman Britain.
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Feb 21, 2012 07:50
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Mike Tysons CARFAX posted:I'm just wondering if anyone has any recommendations about for fantasy or fiction books based in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt. I'm sorry if that's too broad of a topic but I'm really not even quite sure I myself know what I want to read Well, I'm currently reading I, Claudius. I'm not far enough into it to give it my personal stamp of approval yet (not that that matters for anything), but seeing it mentioned often here is the reason I picked it up.
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Feb 21, 2012 08:13
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Mike Tysons CARFAX posted:I'm just wondering if anyone has any recommendations about for fantasy or fiction books based in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt. I'm sorry if that's too broad of a topic but I'm really not even quite sure I myself know what I want to read Pretty sure Latro in the Mist by Gene Wolfe qualifies here. Roman soldier loses his memory and (maybe) hallucinates that he sees gods. Great book, although Wolfe can be challenging to decipher at times. This is a good thing.
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Feb 21, 2012 19:36
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Mike Tysons CARFAX posted:I'm just wondering if anyone has any recommendations about for fantasy or fiction books based in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt. I'm sorry if that's too broad of a topic but I'm really not even quite sure I myself know what I want to read For ancient Greece, Mary Renault is your go-to author. The King Must Die, The Last of the Wine, Fire From Heaven. Be aware that Renault has a lot of gay in her books. She was a gay writer writing about a time period when homosexual relationships weren't stigmatized, so it's all in there. She doesn't make it a big issue -- it's just all honestly in there, just like any other relationships are -- but the depiction is so clear and straightforward that it's really noticeable when set against a lot of other fiction that kinda tries to sidestep around the whole "platonic love" issue. For Rome, you want Robert Graves' I Claudius and Claudius the God, as above. For egypt, that's a bit harder. I'd almost just recommend you go read Herodotus. There was this book and I rembmer it being good, but can't remember any more -- been years since I read it: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...hHiSXtX2fJgxgpw Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Feb 21, 2012 |
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Feb 21, 2012 20:50
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Mike Tysons CARFAX posted:I'm just wondering if anyone has any recommendations about for fantasy or fiction books based in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt. I'm sorry if that's too broad of a topic but I'm really not even quite sure I myself know what I want to read I loved Ben Kane's Forgotten Legion trilogy. It's a historical fiction with very strong characters, war, and politics. I also want to second the LeCarre's Spy Who Came in from the Cold suggestion posted previously. I loved it, and I usually don't enjoy the genre.
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Feb 21, 2012 23:53
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You guys are awesome! I'm gonna check these out tomorrow after my midterm, appreciate the help!
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Feb 22, 2012 05:37
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Can someone recommend some sci-fi that is sort of low-key? I guess my idea is based off Cowboy Bebop - set in the future, but not necessarily tech overload. Also poo poo breaks all the time. My mind completely skipped firefly, but yeah, that sounds perfect! Thanks. V Myrmidongs fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Feb 22, 2012 |
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Feb 22, 2012 06:56
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Myrmidongs posted:Can someone recommend some sci-fi that is sort of low-key? I guess my idea is based off Cowboy Bebop - set in the future, but not necessarily tech overload. Also poo poo breaks all the time. Leviathan Wakes by James SA Corey. A novel that got a lot of buzz last year, and for good reasons, it's light and fast and fun. I haven't seen Cowboy Bebop but I've heard that show is similar to Firefly, and this book is kind of like Firefly-meets-detective-novel, only set in our solar system, with space chases and battles inside space-stations and some freaky biological horror.
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Feb 22, 2012 07:06
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Girlfriend loves Jane Eyre books. Her birthday is coming up so i'd like to buy her something in that same vein.
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Feb 22, 2012 08:27
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Mikaelomo posted:Girlfriend loves Jane Eyre books. Her birthday is coming up so i'd like to buy her something in that same vein.
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Feb 22, 2012 08:29
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I've lived here for 7 years now as a transplant, and I'd really like to read a reasonably comprehensive but concise history of Chicago. Something accessible and not too long that gives me the 10,000 ft. view of this city. In other words, I don't need 300 pages about the history of the land around here before the white man came or 80 page digressions into particular political merits, just something that gives me the basic overview.
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Feb 22, 2012 15:48
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