This was hijacked from Favorite hobbies and other threads. Seems like a lot of readers here so give a list of recomendations
God’s Demon by Wayne Barlow
Musashi by Eiji Yoshokawa
Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Lord of The Barnyard:Killing the Fatted Calf and Arming the Aware in the Cornbelt by Tristan Egolf
Hungry Ghosts:Mao’s Secret Famine by Jasper Becker
Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI by Robert K. Ressler
Wolfgang Gullich:A Life in the Vertical by Tillman Hepp
series(first book in series)
March Upcountry by David Weber and John Ringo
Something from the Nightside by Simon Green
The Shaman Sings by James D. Doss
Storm Front by Jim Butcher
Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI by Robert K. Ressler
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If you liked that, you should read Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit ~ John E. Douglas Same interviews and discussions with the killers, but you get an entirely different perspective and opinions on the killers, it’s interesting to compare the two.
I just got finished reading Nausea by John-Paul Sartre and The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker.
Sartre, as I expected, was a bit weird. It’s written in diary form and follows a man as he goes through the stages of existential angst – definitely an interesting read.
Pinker’s book was great. Generally, it asks what language can tell us about thought and the way the human mind operates. There’s a video floating around the internet of Pinker giving a lecture on the same topic. Check it out if you are at all interested in cognitive science.
I recently read “The Treatment” by Mo Hayder, it was a good read a bit disturbing at times.
“Caffery is back with very few of his problems solved. Alas, the case he is about to tackle will only make his job and his private life even more difficult. Called to a house which abuts Brockwell Park in South London, he finds Alek and Carmel Peach, prisoners in their own home suffering from beatings and dehydration. Worse, their young son, 9- year-old Rory, is missing. When the boy is found dead, the trail seems cold and Caffery realizes he not only has another unspeakable murderer on the loose but also one who will tap into Caffery’s own history and deepest conflicts.”
I also read “The Road” a while back and though it was good I do not think it is the literary masterpiece many people make it out to be.
[quote]xXSeraphimXx wrote:
I also read “The Road” a while back and though it was good I do not think it is the literary masterpiece many people make it out to be.[/quote]
In my opinion, the only literary masterpiece McCarthy has written is Blood Meridian. Compared to it, The Road is 5th rate. If not for Opera’s endorsement, I doubt The Road would be so praised.
I can’t speak highly enough of Blood Meridian. I first heard about it a number of years ago while watching an interview with literary critic Herold Bloom. He said the following about the novel:
"…if you read your way into the cosmos of the
book, then you are rewarded. You get an extraordinary landscape. You get an extraordinary visionary intensity of personality and character.
You get a great vision, a frightening vision of what is indeed something very deeply embedded in the American spirit, in the American psyche. And the more you read the book, I find, the more you will be
able to read the book.
It is–it’s as close, I think, to being the American prose epic as one can find, more perhaps even than Faulkner, though there are individual books by Faulkner like “As I Lay Dying,” which are perhaps of even higher aesthetic quality and originality than “Blood Meridian.”
But I think you would have to go back to “Moby Dick” for an American epic that fully compares to “Blood Meridian.”
Every time this topic comes up, I say the same thing, but if you haven’t yet, read Blood Meridian – it is one of the best American novels ever written.
[quote]IvanDmitritch wrote:
In my opinion, the only literary masterpiece McCarthy has written is Blood Meridian. Compared to it, The Road is 5th rate. If not for Opera’s endorsement, I doubt The Road would be so praised.
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I almost didn’t read ‘The Road’ simply b/c Opera endorsed it. In the end I finally did b/c McCarthy is simply McCarthy. I have the Borders Trilogy sitting on a shelf waiting to be read, but there hasn’t been enough time for me to get around to it.
[quote]Optimistic Cynic wrote:
IvanDmitritch wrote:
In my opinion, the only literary masterpiece McCarthy has written is Blood Meridian. Compared to it, The Road is 5th rate. If not for Opera’s endorsement, I doubt The Road would be so praised.
I almost didn’t read ‘The Road’ simply b/c Opera endorsed it. In the end I finally did b/c McCarthy is simply McCarthy. I have the Borders Trilogy sitting on a shelf waiting to be read, but there hasn’t been enough time for me to get around to it.[/quote]
I haven’t read the entire trilogy, but I recently read All The Pretty Horses. I definitely enjoyed it. But still, Blood Meridian, by far, is the best novel he’s ever written.
[quote]IvanDmitritch wrote:
I just got finished reading Nausea by John-Paul Sartre and The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker.
Sartre, as I expected, was a bit weird. It’s written in diary form and follows a man as he goes through the stages of existential angst – definitely an interesting read. [/quote]
I’ve been reading that book for years. Every time, I get to page eighty or so, and have an existential epiphany that involves the revelation that the novel is fucking stupid. Perhaps that’s what Sartre intended.
I’m going to recommend The Dart League King by Keith Lee Morris. I almost never read modern fiction, but I picked this one up on a whim and it was incredible. The characters were the most vivid and realistically flawed I’ve read in a long time, and the story is simply fantastic. I fucking cried. It’s very well written, naturally. Tight and fast. That’s how I like 'em.
I have been reading chuck palahniuk lately. The characters have no redeaming qualities. Choke was good and Hauted was full of vile people. Diary was okay. I finished all three in about four weeks. They are fairly easy reads.
I also just got through reading John Paul Evans’s The Letter. I wouldn’t recommend it and am kind of ashamed to admit I read it.
[quote]IvanDmitritch wrote:
I just got finished reading Nausea by John-Paul Sartre and The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker.
Sartre, as I expected, was a bit weird. It’s written in diary form and follows a man as he goes through the stages of existential angst – definitely an interesting read.
Pinker’s book was great. Generally, it asks what language can tell us about thought and the way the human mind operates. There’s a video floating around the internet of Pinker giving a lecture on the same topic. Check it out if you are at all interested in cognitive science. [/quote]
I’m in a linguistics class currently, The Language Instinct by pinker is one of the a required books. Despite initially not liking linguistics, Pinker’s book is pretty interesting.
[quote]Vicomte wrote:
IvanDmitritch wrote:
I just got finished reading Nausea by John-Paul Sartre and The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker.
Sartre, as I expected, was a bit weird. It’s written in diary form and follows a man as he goes through the stages of existential angst – definitely an interesting read.
I’ve been reading that book for years. Every time, I get to page eighty or so, and have an existential epiphany that involves the revelation that the novel is fucking stupid. Perhaps that’s what Sartre intended.
[/quote]
Lol… yeah, I guess that’s not an altogether unfair criticism
[quote]Tstud_9 wrote:
IvanDmitritch wrote:
I just got finished reading Nausea by John-Paul Sartre and The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker.
Sartre, as I expected, was a bit weird. It’s written in diary form and follows a man as he goes through the stages of existential angst – definitely an interesting read.
Pinker’s book was great. Generally, it asks what language can tell us about thought and the way the human mind operates. There’s a video floating around the internet of Pinker giving a lecture on the same topic. Check it out if you are at all interested in cognitive science.
I’m in a linguistics class currently, The Language Instinct by pinker is one of the a required books. Despite initially not liking linguistics, Pinker’s book is pretty interesting. [/quote]
That’s cool. Are they still using Chomsky, too? Pinker seems to be leading a bit of a revolution in the field. There was a really cool interview with Pinker – and a lecture – that appeared on C-span’s Book TV last month. If you go to their website I’m sure it’s posted. Really interesting stuff and a very entertaining lecturer.
