I'm always looking for a good book. I like knowing what other people are reading or have read and enjoyed. I joined GoodReads and found an endless supply. It's kind of like one of those social networks except it's only for sharing books and reviewing/rating books. Check it out at http://www.goodreads.com/
Look me up to compare books. Use my email:
Need a good read?
Can't let this one die
I was having trouble with that website and using my gmail account. I'm gonna keep trying, though.
I'll tell you what I'm doing for books here, though, if you don't mind. (If you do mind, just go read something else.)
For one thing, I started reading some of my old books from high school and college. Now that I am sober, it's like reading a new book! Mainly, I am thinking about Three Musketeers, Count of Monte Cristo, Great Gatsby and (especially if you are in your late 20's/early 30's) The Son Also Rises. I actually hated Hemingway while in high school, but enjoy him more now.
Also, more current and more humorous: The End of the Road and The Big Garage on Clear Shot, both by Tom Bodet, the guy who did the Motel 6 radio commercials. I think these were the inspiration for some of the characters on the Northern Exposure show that was funny for one year and then never again.
If you are a history buff, someone bought me that 1776 by McCullough(?). I started it and couldn't put it down. Very Smooth Read. I plan on getting the John Adams book as soon as I sell enough blood plasma to afford it. I also have some Anglo-Saxon and Russian history suggestions, but I think I'm starting to sound boring or pretentious or both.
Also, just looking up at my bookshelf, I would suggest Frankentstein (not at all like the movie, of course, but it's great if you like that genre), A Tale of Two Cities, Thorn Birds, Lord of the Ring series, Crime and Punishment, and the Annals of Tacitus for an interesting view of... oh nevermind, boring and pretentious again. My wife is right.
I also have a ton of more religious suggestions, but I know that can make people uncomfy; and I don't want that feeling here. If asked, though, Ill offer.
Now, what I want are some other suggestions from y'all. Now you know what I like, but I am out of books. Gimme.
Pretentious Suggestions
"Rubicon" by Tom Holland; it's an historical reconstruction of the 50-60 years leading up to Caesar's assassination. It's very accessible.
"An Instance of the Fingerpost" by Iain Pears; it's a mystery about a fictional murder and trial that take place at Cambridge University in the 17th century. Told from four different perspectives, and if you are at all interested in Restoration England it's a really good piece of historical fiction as well as being a great mystery.
"Baudalino" by Umberto Ecco; it's a fictionalized history of the origins of the Prester John letters that were circulated during the Crusades. A great historical fiction. I really geeked out over this one because I wrote a research paper about the Prester John legend a few years ago, and Ecco is a fabulous historian on top of being an excellent writer.
http://backpackingdad.blogspot.com
Instance at the Fingerpost....
is excellent. You should also try some Arturo Perez-Alverte if you like Pears (esp Club Dumas, Flanders Panel, and his Captain Alatriste series).
I tend to read a lot of non-fiction...don't know why...a few suggestions:
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer...reads like a novel
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow....hefty but fabulous
One Helluva Ride by Liz Clarke....a look into NASCAR, very basic but fascinating (PS For fans of Pixar's Cars, there really WAS a Fabulous Hudson Hornet)
A couple of fiction suggestions:
The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Chabon (maybe the best novel Ive ever read)
Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo....Im not even the demographic and I thought it was a wonderful book.
Josh
SAHD Since August 2005
Historical Fiction
"A Spectacle of Corruption," is an engaging and facinating read about commerce and how the world of stocks and bonds, which are just paper really, came to have value. Our hero, Benjamin Weaver, a nacent private investigator and former boxer, is a Jew in a mostly gentile world. He must navigate carefully as he ties to unravel a...well, spectical of corruption when a friend hires him to do so.
"The Killer Angles." by Michael Shaara is the gold standard for historical fiction. It is beautifly written and gives a very lucid account of the Battle of Gettysburg. My only critacizm is that Shaara buys into the myth that Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain created for himslef.
Be Seeing You.
try these
I just finished Cormac McCarthy's The Road (author of No Country for Old Men), Kind of a more realistic post-apocolypse Steven King - pretty crazy
also, you should try Elisabeth Kostova's The Historian, if Dan Brown had more talent, and wrote about Dracula, he'd of written this book
For Non-fiction, try Free Lunch - How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at the Government's Expense by David Cay Johnston and prepare to get either really angry or really disgusted
Aye, there's nary an animal alive that can outrun a greased scotsman...
foreign writers
Try some of this
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: "One Hundred Years of Solitude", Living to tell the tale, ...
Gunter Grass: The Tin Drum
Isabel Allende: The House of the Spirits, Evaluna
Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita
William Faulkner (not foreigner): The Sound and the Fury
Or maybe you can check the ones I have introduced in Goodreads
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Congratatio pro erudio et auxilium
Itux
Joined: 2008-01-07
Dad Points: 499