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Rhaegar posted:Can anyone recommend any good biographies? I'm looking for some Christmas gifts for my Dad. I think he would be more interested in political figures, celebrities from the 50, 60 and 70s, modern explorers/adventurers etc. Edmund Morris's three-volume Teddy Roosevelt biography just published the final volume. The first volume, Theodore Rising, won a pulitzer, and the other two volumes (Theodore Rex and Colonel Roosevelt) are just as good, if not quite as exciting. Roosevelt did a fair bit of genuine exploration (there's a previously-un-navigated-before-Roosevelt river in Brazil named after him, for example), so he hits both those notes, though he may not be modern enough.
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WeaponGradeSadness posted:end me some good books about India/Indians/Indian-Americans/etc, etc? I don't even really give a poo poo what it's about, fiction, non-fiction, whatever as long as India's involved in some way. I'm not even above the chick-lit "Madhuri's in love with Raj but her parents want her to get an arranged marriage, whatever will she do??? Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy is probably exactly what you're looking for as far as modern/1950's India goes. It clocks in at something like 1500 pages, and it's something of a love story/romance, but mostly it's About India, and as such it's pretty much the king of India-themed fiction, as far as I've been given to understand at least (I haven't read it myself, though I've got a copy sitting on my shelf, waiting). Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills is the collection of short stories that first made him a famous writer; may also contain his best overall writing, and definitely the best place to start if you're looking for Kipling on India. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Jan 3, 2011 |
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Jan 3, 2011 20:30
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" crap, as long as it offers some insight into the culture of India and/or the lives of its people. For reference, here's what I've got on the subject:
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Chamberk posted:
Glad I'm not the only one :P When I read about India I tend to focus on British Imperial India -- such a fascinatingly horrible era. So many things you wouldn't expect to, tie into it -- Sherlock Holme's The Sign of Four to The Secret Garden. How about George Orwell's On Shooting An Elephant? Burma, not India, but still colonial southeast asia.
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Jan 3, 2011 21:29
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gently caress TORNADO posted:I'm looking for a book that I saw a few weeks ago but have since forgotten about. It's a 1000+ page sci-fi book with a cloudy sky for it's cover. I've been searching Google and Amazon but no luck so far. The only thing I really remember is that the plot sounded fairly retarded, so I'm kind of morbidly curious about it. Maybe this? http://www.amazon.com/Androids-Dream-John-Scalzi/dp/0765309416 ?
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Jan 12, 2011 23:54
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anabatica posted:
Mary Renault's The King Must Die. It's a retelling of the Theseus myth as a first-person historical novel in Bronze Age Greece. You could also try Wilbur Smith's River God, which is set in bronze/stone age Ancient Egypt. For neolithic, there's always the Clan of the Cave Bear series, but I haven't read that in decades so I don't remember it that well.
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Jan 30, 2011 15:22
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gmq posted:Do good steampunk books exist? Yes, but they're rare, and are usually written by China Mieville. Try Mieville's Perdido Street Station, or for a runner-up, The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick.
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Feb 7, 2011 00:34
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showbiz_liz posted:I'm looking for books that are fairly fast, funny, entertaining reads, but that are still really well-written. I just finished The Man Who Was Thursday and totally dug it, finished it in two days. I also recently enjoyed a collection of Roald Dahl short stories, and I'd probably be reading a David Sedaris book right now if I hadn't already read them all. I'd rather avoid sci-fi and fantasy, because I typically read so much of it and I want to branch out. Any ideas? Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. It's a victorian-era travelogue, "some rambling notes from an idle excursion," very funny, very british, very sharp, very victorian. You could also try the Jeeves books by Wodehouse. It opens like this: quote:We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about it. Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness come over him at times, that he hardly knew what he was doing; and then George said that HE had fits of giddiness too, and hardly knew what HE was doing. With me, it was my liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver that was out of order, because I had just been reading a patent liver-pill circular, in which were detailed the various symptoms by which a man could tell when his liver was out of order. I had them all. If you like Chesterton, read his Father Brown mysteries. When I get sick of fantasy & sci-fi I switch over to mysteries to clear my head, and the Father Brown books are fairly clever, like all of Chesterton. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Feb 15, 2011 |
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Feb 14, 2011 20:41
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Encryptic posted:The Colour Out of Space, At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, etc. are good starting points for Lovecraft. Project Gutenberg has Lovecraft's entire catalog available online for free if you don't mind reading them on the computer. To add to this, "The Call of Cthulhu" is probably his most iconic single work, the one that will get you most familiar with the core of his mythos the fastest.
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Feb 24, 2011 05:47
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Bad Bromance posted:Can anyone recommend some good dying earth/apocalyptic books? And another more specific thing, something that deals with the ruins and whats left from a long dead civilization (ours, a fictional one, anything). I'm in kind of a morbid mood On the Beach and Canticle should be great for what you want. You could also try Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun; it takes place on an Earth so many millions of years in the future that they can't even count the number of apocalypses they've had.
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Feb 24, 2011 15:44
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dammitcharlie posted:Going on a week long camping adventure this spring break. Any ideas for novels that would fit the Appalachians? Obvious/well-known is ok. I'd kinda like a classic. http://www.amazon.com/Deliverance-James-Dickey/dp/038531387X is what you want. Squeal like a pig, boy!
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Feb 25, 2011 16:30
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Dog Jones posted:I love cyber punk poo poo no matter what the medium. Shadowrun, Blade Runner, the Sprawl trilogy, I'm all about that poo poo. I've read Neuromancer, Counter Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Snow Crash, and I'm aware of all of William Gibson other poo poo but I haven't read all of it. I've been googling around for other books to read because my thirst for cyber punk anything is relentless. I'm sure you guys have a few recommendations for me? Thanks in advance Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is the book they made Blade Runner from. Read all of William Gibson's other poo poo, especially Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties. Some people might define Charles Stross' Accellerando as cyberpunk but it's a stretch. A lot of people define Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination as the archetypal proto-cyberpunk novel, but it was written in the 1950's, so while it has evil corporations and cybernetics and robots and a lot of other weird poo poo, it's not exactly neuromancer. If you don't care about medium, make sure you've played Deus Ex, the first one, don't worry about the sequel. Ghost in the Shell is cyberpunk that's almost not-bad enough to make up for being anime. You could also try branching out into the better quality steampunk, though there isn't much of it; China Mieville's probably your best starting place there.
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Mar 3, 2011 15:25
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Felime posted:Ugh, welp, been doing some serious reading after a while of not reading much of anything new. Just finished up two of Ian M Bank's Culture novels, (Consider Phlebas and Matter). Very good books, but after two of them, they're feeling a little too thought provoking and deep, so I decided to go for something a bit lighter next, but have no idea what to read. Do you want modern sci-fi or more golden-age type stuff? If you're willing to read older stuff, then if you haven't read The Stars My Destination go read that. For more modern sci fi, try the Old Man's War series by John Scalzi or the Fire Upon the Deep or Deepness in the Sky books by Vernor Vinge. For something truly light-hearted and fun, try Scalzi's The Android's Dream. It opens with an Earth diplomat using a rectal implant to fart out insults in an alien's scent-language and gets weirder and more fun from there.
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Mar 5, 2011 08:47
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oceanside posted:I don't know if there are any G.K. Chesterton lovers here, but if there are I'd appreciate your wisdom. None of his other stuff is quite as out there as Thursday, but if you like that kind of thing, The Napoleon of Notting Hill is probably the next one you should read in that vein (Personally I prefer it to Thursday by a significant margin).
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Mar 5, 2011 16:17
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octothorpopus posted:So, I just got done watching Inside Job and wasn't surprised at how much of it basically flew over my head because it was either financial jargon or because of how much history is involved. What I'm looking for is non-fiction books that are about : Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
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Mar 6, 2011 15:26
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Nimrod posted:I could use some recommendations for sci-fi along the same lines of Asimov's Robot/Foundation series, or Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or JOB: A Comedy of Justice. You liked JOB? Weird. For Heinlein, I recommend anything he wrote, up to and including Stranger in a Strange Land. That is, "by up to," I mean chronologically. After he wrote Stranger he got on the crazy train and I hesitate to recommend anything he did after that. I Will Fear No Evil, Time Enough For Love, Job, etc., all might be good books and worth reading, but they're out-there enough that you're going to have to make that call on your own, I'm not going to take responsibility for recommending them. That said, if you haven't read Starship Troopers or Stranger in a Strange Land, you should read them just for general genre literacy. If you want more books like Heinlein, read Scalzi's Old Man's War series, also his "The Android's Dream." Also try Vernor Vinge's _Fire Upon the Deep_ or _Deepness in the Sky_. If you like Asimov's stuff, read Larry Niven's Known Space collections; specifically, the short story collection "All the Myriad Ways" and the novel Ringworld. Do not read the Ringworld sequels, only read the first one. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Mar 10, 2011 |
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Mar 10, 2011 19:53
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Nimrod posted:It was a fun rainy day read, and I usually like it when god fucks with characters in books. I was just trying to say that i'm open to more Heinlein than just Stranger/Mistress. Ah, ok. If you like his weird stuff, then I Will Fear No Evil and Time Enough For Love are probably the "best" of his crazy-train years, but yeah, I'm not "recommending" them, so on your own head be it :P If you like his juveniles, Citizen of the Galaxy is probably the best of them; it should probably be considered one of his masterworks but it gets forgotten because it's less controversial. Really an excellent, excellent book.
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Mar 10, 2011 20:01
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Mar 11, 2011 03:44
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nessin posted:Got a, likely, weird kind of craving lately. I'd like to find a horribly stereotypical storyline/concept from Sci-Fi/Fantasy done reasonably well or interesting. Pick up this one. You could also try the first few books of Robert Asprin's Myth series -- starts with "Another Fine Myth." Another good bet would be the Prydain Chronicles. Anyway, here's a question: I'm about to go on two 30-hour plane rides (New Zealand and back) and I need a *series* to read on the plane and keep me occupied. Ideally, I'd like something like the Dresden Files or the Wheel of Time or the Shadows of the Apt series, or Lawrence Watt-Evan's Ethshar series -- fun, entertaining, relatively clean fantasy. The problem(s) are 1) I read really fast, so for two days in the air, I need a series that's at least at the two-thousand-page mark to keep me busy, 2) It needs to be available as ebooks, since I'm travelling and can't pack a bunch of books, 3) It has to be something I haven't read before already, which rules out most fantasy. I'm thinking maybe it's time to crack open the Malazan books since that's just about the only major fantasy/sf series that's got a good critical repute & that I haven't tried yet, but I'm obsessive about reading a series "in order," which I hear is a problem with them. Any other suggestions? Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Mar 15, 2011 |
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Mar 14, 2011 05:10
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Yeah, I started the Memory/Sorrow/Thorn books a while back and didn't get past the first one because it seemed so generic. Look, everybody, it's a quest for a magic sword! I went ahead and grabbed the Malazan books for the kindle since they seem like they'd definitely be able to keep me busy, but I'm definitely open to other suggestions.
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Mar 15, 2011 18:02
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Eight Is Legend posted:What are the best books on human behavior like Blink, Outliers, Freakonomics and so on? I've read Freakonomics and really liked it. Influence by Cialdini.
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Mar 15, 2011 22:58
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Benagain posted:If you don't mind a bit of tragedy, Alistair Reynolds and Peter Watts are some extremely good sci-fi writers with huge series. In Alistair Reynolds you get to watch the downfall of the human race from some pretty dizzying highs over the course of six books, in Peter Watts you get to read about a near-future that's more depressing than Blade Runner. I've got blindsight ready to go because, yah, I'm sure it's a great book, but yeah, I tend to restrict my reading to relatively "upbeat" fantasy, and this is all for reading on the plane flights during my honeymoon, so I want to keep it upbeat. I'll definitely note down Reynolds though for future reading. Thanks!
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Mar 19, 2011 21:05
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The Ninth Layer posted:I've definitely recced the series a few times in the thread already so apologies if you've checked it out already, but if you can find them, you should check out the Dragaera books by Steven Brust, starting with Jhereg. It's a fairly lighthearted fantasy series that follows a sorcerer-assassin who works for the Mafia. If you liked Butcher's general writing style, you'll almost certainly like Brust's. It's a pretty fun series all the way through. Yup, I've read all those that I could find. They bug me a little because he wrote them out of chronological order, which drives me up the wall because I get obsessive about reading things in the "correct" order, but yeah, I'll second your recommendation to everyone else =)
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Mar 20, 2011 00:09
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Luminaflare posted:What's a good detective novel (even better if it's a series) to read? I've not really touched the genre but I read The Dresden Files and love the hell out of it. I really like the whole idea behind detective stuff as well and have been meaning to get in to the it ages. If you like the Dresden Files, you should read the classic Noir novels. You could go with either Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, but Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe is closer to what Butcher's channelling with Dresden -- he sortof took the Marlowe character, made him goonier, and added magic. Start with The Big Sleep and then read Farewell, My Lovely after that. There's four or five of 'em, all featuring the same character. If you want to read a more classic-style mystery detective fiction series, try Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series. Nero Wolfe is a sherlock holmes style brilliant detective, but he's fat and lazy and hates leaving his apartment, so Archie Goodwin is his "leg man" and investigator (basically following the noir-style private detective model), so you get both primary kinds of mystery protagonist in one series. There's about forty odd books in the series, and he wrote about one per year from the 1940's to the 1970's, so as you read from book to book you get a really interesting picture of New York City and America changing from year to year. If you want more fantasy detectives, Glen Cook, who wrote the Black Company novels, did the Garrett PI novels, which are basically fantasy versions of the Nero Wolfe books. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Mar 20, 2011 |
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Mar 20, 2011 01:46
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Hedrigall posted:Shouldn't you be macking on your new husband and/or wife for the duration of that flight? I love her very dearly, but it's a big plane, we'll be surrounded by ugly fat people (because most Americans are), it's something like a 30 hour flight (including layovers), and after all, that's what the hotel rooms are for. If we spent *that* much time in the plane's bathroom the rest of the passengers would probably complain.
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Mar 20, 2011 13:07
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freebooter posted:Ouch. Where are you flying to/from? I had an awful 32-hour flight last year between London and Perth, with a day-long layover in Brunei's lovely tiny airport, and all I had to read was Justin Cronin's crummy The Passage. East coast U.S. to New Zealand. Hobbit hunting! (it's like a safari package kinda thing) Anyway, I ended up grabbing the Malazan series and the first thirty or so Doc Savage books, so I should be well prepared =) Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Mar 24, 2011 |
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Mar 24, 2011 12:43
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dopaMEAN posted:Lately I've been getting back into reading. It's weird to think that I ever got out of it, but I just didn't really have time to read when I was in undergrad. Now I take the bus for 45 minutes a day and I find myself craving good reading material. I dove through 4 Kathy Reichs books before I decided I should put some effort into finding something I'd really like. When I was a kid I read sci-fi/fantasy books obsessively. I'm looking for something that I could really get into again. I hate to say it, but you should probably read the Wheel of Time series. It's practically designed for you. Imagine if Stephen King spent two decades putting together a 13-volume series about an in-depth fantasy world locked in massively epic conflict with whole volumes devoted almost entirely to romance subplots. I kid the wheel of time because I love it, but seriously, if you've already read Tolkien and a few other things like Shannara and are looking to get back into modern fantasy, it's the place to start. I'd recommend reading it before Game of Thrones, because Martin's book is a little bit of a "reaction" to Jordan's (more historically realistic and gritty, less "fantastic" and closer to horror). But whatever else is said about the Wheel of Time, it's the elephant in the bedroom of 1990's/2000's fantasy -- you can't get anywhere else without going around, over, or through it. (The writers of Dragon Age even admitted it was a major influence). Beyond that, my standard fantasy recommendations are Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan and Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Mar 24, 2011 |
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Mar 24, 2011 19:50
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dopaMEAN posted:Do I start with New Spring, or Eye of the World? New spring's a prequel; you could theoretically start there but I'd say start with Eye. New Spring's probably more "interesting to people who've read some of the books already" rather than "great place to start the story" -- it'd probably spoil some mysteries in the first book. Be aware that the first couple hundred pages of Eye move a little slowly -- you're sinking in for the long haul, after all :P You might end up not liking it after all -- maybe take a look at the Wheel of Time thread for some takes on the series --- but overall the wheel of time is to the Modern Fantasy Epic Series what the first Matrix movie was to cyperpunk: it took all the different elements that made up the genre and threw them together in a polished, defining masterpiece. It might be a masterpiece that seems a little hokey or flawed to newer eyes, but it's still right there and you can't get away from it. Just look at the size of the Wheel of Time thread -- if you count up that thread and threads of the other books and series that the WoT spawned (George R R Martin, for example, said he credited Robert Jordan's jacket quote with launching sales for Game of Thrones, the Brandon Sanderson thread, etc.,), this is almost a wheel of time subforum. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Mar 24, 2011 |
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Mar 24, 2011 20:23
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dopaMEAN posted:Well I'm certainly convinced to give it an honest try. I've always been more interested in science fiction books, mostly because I haven't found that many fantasy books that I loved. I prefer fantasy in games, though (even though I know Mass Effect is better written and paced than Dragon Age, I will always love Dragon Age more). Maybe this will finally really get me into the fantasy genre! Ok, for sci-fi, it's a little tougher. A few to look for (sticking to the big name classics): Ringworld by Larry Niven (don't read sequels) Neuromancer by William Gibson The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny (like a lot of Zelazny, the technology here is at a level where it's almost indistinguishable from magic, and he's playing along the border between fantasy and sci-fi) The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein Check those out if you haven't, they should give you some interesting directions to look in. If you like Moon is a Harsh Mistress, read Old Man's War by John Scalzi. If you like Neuromancer look up other cyberpunk (esp. Neal Stephenson). If you like Ringworld read more Niven, if you like Lord of Light read more Zelazny. EDIT: Mass Effect's writing borrowed heavily from Vernor Vinge's stuff, so he's another author you might be interested in. Read _Fire Upon_the_Deep or _Deepness in the Sky_. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Mar 24, 2011 |
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Mar 24, 2011 20:42
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Do Not Resuscitate posted:I just do not understand the love this book gets and cannot fathom how it won the SF award trifecta. Is it the mysterious tech that people fall for? I tried to re-read this after having first read it 20 years ago and this time around found the dialog between the characters downright embarassing to read. I couldn't finish it. It's good in the same way Asimov is good -- not so much the writing as that it's a story "about" fairly abstruse and interesting scientific and engineering concepts. It's one of the archetypal "hard SF" novels, right up there with the Foundation series. It's definitely not the best sci-fi novel ever written or anything, but it's an archetypal example of the type of "hard sf" that dominated the field for like twenty years. So if you're trying to figure out what SF you'd like to read, it's worth taking a look at. You might find out you want to read more Niven, Asimov, etc., or you might decide "wait, this sucks," and then when you start reading (for example) Zelazny or Gibson, you'll appreciate them even more than you would otherwise because you'll understand more of what they were reacting against.
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Mar 25, 2011 05:52
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freebooter posted:I'm looking for a readable book about the history of human civilisation. Like most people I've grown up with a patchwork of historical knowledge, fuzzy in most parts and brightening in areas that are more famous or have had movies made about them. I know, for example, that Australian society began when the First Fleet landed in 1788, and I know that the population really boomed with the Victorian gold rushes in the 1860s, but what about all the in between stuff? When did Sydney go from being a ramshackle bunch of houses to being a proper city - and what was society like when it did? Cartoon History of the Universe by Larry Gonick does a decent job. There's a fairly heavy focus on indo-european history but it's mostly chronological and DOES cover history in other parts of the world as well, especially in the later volumes, and it's interestingly researched and thoroughly scientific even when discussing history from religious sources (Moses, etc.) edit: http://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-History-Universe-Vol-Pt-1/dp/0385265204 http://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-History-Universe-Volumes-8-13/dp/0385420935/ref=pd_sim_b_1 http://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-History-Universe-Volumes-8-13/dp/0385420935/ref=bxgy_cc_b_img_b The only caveats I'll give about these are that 1) He tends to focus on "interesting" over "proven." Everything's well-researched, but given a boring theory and a cool sounding theory, each of which is potentially valid based on what we know, you'll get a panel on the cool one and maybe a footnote on the boring one, even if the boring one has more evidence. Still, he notes that he's talking theories when he does that kinda thing, and gives his sources. 2) They have a pretty weird mix of lots of religious history -- Jesus, Confucius, Buddha, Moses, etc. -- through an entirely secular/scientific lens. Given the author's obvious atheism, it's kinda weird that he spends that much time discussing religion at all, but then I guess it's a big part of human history. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Apr 12, 2011 |
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Apr 12, 2011 17:13
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blue squares posted:I also placed an order for Cartoon History of the Universe, Vol. 1 Hopefully it's good. Good luck, let me know what you think of it =)
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Apr 13, 2011 18:46
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Arnold of Soissons posted:Anybody want to recommend some Kindle store non-fiction? http://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Benjamin-Franklin-ebook/dp/B000JMLMXI/ref=cm_lmf_tit_2 http://www.amazon.com/The-Rough-Riders-ebook/dp/B000JMLDD2/ref=pd_sim_kinc_95?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2 http://www.amazon.com/Through-the-B...02890531&sr=1-4 http://www.amazon.com/Man-Eaters-Tsavo-African-Adventures-ebook/dp/B002RKRQ4Y/ref=pd_sim_kinc_17?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2 http://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Roosevelt-an-Autobiography-ebook/dp/B004TPAPHA/ref=pd_sim_kinc_40?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2
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Apr 15, 2011 19:03
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Any good nonfiction books on con games? Just watched The Sting and have been reading a bunch of financial crime fiction where the crimes get analogized to basic con games, so I'm wondering if there's an index/history of con games somewhere that I could read. Thanks!
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Apr 17, 2011 21:21
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Old Janx Spirit posted:Wouldn't the Dragonlance books be just the thing? Yeah, if Dragonlance isn't goony enough I have no idea. Hell, it's licensed AD&D fiction, what more does he want? Spock riding a dragon? Maybe Goodkind, just for terribility points? Does he want good-awesome-schlock or honestly bad? He could try the original Conan novels.
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Apr 23, 2011 20:10
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I've had a really unusual (for me) reading experience lately, and I'm wondering if there are any other authors out there I could read who pull the same trick. Normally I read a lot of sci/fi and fantasy, just like everyone else on this forum, but I'd been branching out and a reading various noir-themed mystery novels, and that's when I ran into the phenomenon I'm asking about. It first hit with the Nero Wolfe books -- there are about forty of them, written over a span of forty-odd years from the 30's to the 70's, and they're all set in the New York city of [year published]. So reading them is a really interesting historical experience -- you start out reading something that's very definitely set in 30's New York, and then you progress through the middle part of the American Century as you progress through the series. I thought it was sort of a one-off effect but I ran into it again over the past couple weeks as I've been reading John D. McDonald's old Travis McGee series. The titular McGee is a "salvage expert" who lives on a houseboat in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (when someone steals your poo poo but the law can't get it back for you, you go to him, he salvages what he can, for a cut). They're, similarly, set in and around Florida in [year of publication], which ends up being the 60's and 70's and early 80's, and again, reading them, there's a very strong sense of place and time, of reading fiction set in a particular era. And since it's now fifty-odd years on from 1960's Florida, reading them has the feel of reading historical fiction. Does anyone else have any other recommendations for fiction like that? Stuff that was written with a strongly detailed, contemporary setting, that's become "historical fiction" simpy due to the passage of time? It's a really interesting thing to come across, at least for me as a reader, and I'd like more of it if there's anything else out there that does it.
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Apr 25, 2011 19:39
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who cares posted:I would like to read an interesting memoir that isn't ghost-written or co-written. Any ideas? Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Edit: Actually, wait, nevermind, that one was co-written, though Feynman's voice is very clear -- Feynman spoke into tapes which the writer basically just set down. Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes. Also, All Creatures Great and Small, although that's lightly fictionalized (in the sense that you might fictionalize a story you were telling in a pub). Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 05:25 on May 1, 2011 |
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May 1, 2011 05:19
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Huck Finn is a deeper book that Tom Sawyer, but yeah, it won't hurt anything to read Tom Sawyer first. I think you're right that To Kill a Mockingbird is a perfect place to start. There are, unfortunately, some books you just missed -- if you don't read Catcher in the Rye when you're an angsty teenager it sucks, because it does such a good job of portraying an angsty teenager that, goddam, you hate it if you aren't an angsty teen (if you are, it's life changing!!!111!!). Catch-22? Faulkner's Go Down, Moses collection? Tom Stoppard's Arcadia? Camus' The Plague? Read Dickens. Specifically, read David Copperfield. Also, Chaucer. Get an annotated edition with a pronunciation guide and read the Miller's Tale in the original. James Joyce's Dubliners. Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.
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May 2, 2011 19:33
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StealthStealth posted:I would like some sci-fi either written by women, or with female protagonists. For sci-fi by women look up Ursula K. LeGuin. For westerns, classics are The Virginian and Shane.
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May 2, 2011 20:31
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Kontradaz posted:A while back I read "The Stranger", by Albert Camus. Can anybody recommend a book with similar themes (i.e existentialism; absurdism; realism/starkness), would like it if it wasn't all depressive story-telling. Short books (<200pg's), and with a clear and concise writing style. Nothing too flashy or wordy. I need to get back in the swing of reading books, but I'm just so put off by tomes of sci-fi or fantasy. I just want a good flowing book that tugs at my emotions. It would be even better if it could be based in reality or with a historical backdrop- in fact, that's exactly what I would like. The next logical progression would be Camus' The Plague. It's pretty drat depressing but much more uplifting and ultimately more optimistic than The Stranger. It's loosely based on William Dafoe's Journal of the Plague Year, which was a fictionalization of the events surrounding the Great Plague of 1665 in London. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 19:32 on May 5, 2011 |
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May 5, 2011 14:08
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hxcorpse posted:I'm looking for something along an action/horror/absurd situation novel, perhaps with a dash of buddy comedy thrown in the mix. I really loved John Dies at the End, Snow Crash, and the lesser known The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad. The fate of the world being thrown haphazardly into the hands of a couple average jerks touches a spot in my heart, and I'm really eager to read something new that fits along the aforementioned criteria. Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez might be the sort of thing you're looking for. It's not exactly Pratchett or Douglas Adams, but it ain't half bad, either and it might fit what it sounds like you're looking for.
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May 27, 2011 10:22
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