The Official Read this Good Book Thread

[Little Skittle]

Anyone got any experience on great books?


I recommend these few, I will give a little synopsis on them:

Lucky: - Alice Sebold- About an 18 yr old college freshman woman getting raped. Based on her life story. Yet, after everything happens, she calls herself Lucky. So it only gets worse.

Down These Mean Streets: -Piri Thomas- A great book about his life growing up as a dark skinned Puerto Rican suffering racism even in his own family. He goes through life in Spanish Harlem in the early 1900's dealing with drugs, street fighting, armed robbery....etc...VERY detailed. (Sex scene too for you pervs.)

A Good Man Is Hard To Find: -Flannery O' Connor- Short stories. My favorite is the title of the book, a good man is hard to find.

The Things They Carried: -Tim O Brien - Short stories about men carrying emotional/physical burdens about wars, very interesting and insightful.


Also this play I read for English class a while back:

The Piano Lesson: August Wilson - About a family with the slave history inscribed on a piano. In the play, the characters fight and learn valuable lessons in life. The play won a Pulitzer prize.

Haha you must be in a modern American Lit class? Flannery O'Connor is an AMAZING short story author...she is one of my favorites along with Hemingway, Borges, and Gogol. As for novels...

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson

 

[Jokerman]

You want great books or good reads because they're not always the same. Great books take a lifetime to read. We have not read a great book at all if we have read it only once. They should be read and reread. The two greatest books are the Bible and Shakespeare. At some fundamental level most of the important things about human life are contained in these two books. But I don't think that's the kind of recommendations you're looking for.

So here are a few personal recommendations.

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Gates of the Forest by Elie Wiesel
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Quiet American by Grahame Greene
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
Damien by Hermann Hesse
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

 

[Da_Funk]

I've always been more a fantasy reader so:

A song of Ice and Fire - This is the name of the series, written by Georgre RR. Martin. One of the best reads you'll ever have if your in to fantasy.

Wheel of Time series - Robert Jordan

The Dirt - Motley Crue's autobiography

The Heroin Diaries - A tale about Nikki Sixx's battle with addiction

Tigana - Guy Gavriel Kay

The Fionavar Tapestry - Guy Gavriel Kay

The Talisman - Steven King + Peter Straub

The Stand - Steven King

 

[Bender]

Runaway; Diary of a street kid, by Evelyn Lau

its a real true story of a 14 year old prostitute in vancouver canada, written by herself, the book is a best seller, Evalyn Lau was an aspirational writer aswell, that contributes to what makes this book so great

Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid: Amazon.co.uk: Evelyn Lau: Books

 

[Little Skittle]

You want great books or good reads because they're not always the same. Great books take a lifetime to read. We have not read a great book at all if we have read it only once. They should be read and reread. The two greatest books are the Bible and Shakespeare. At some fundamental level most of the important things about human life are contained in these two books. But I don't think that's the kind of recommendations you're looking for.

So here are a few personal recommendations.

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Gates of the Forest by Elie Wiesel
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Quiet American by Grahame Greene
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
Damien by Hermann Hesse
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Hmm it's weird that you say that, as Shakespeare was not so much loved for his analysis of human nature, as he was his mastery of the English language. I can think of several novels off the top of my head that disect human nature better than any Shakespeare play (Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, Frankenstein, Fathers and Sons, Lolita, etc.) That being said, I'll co-sign your Vonnegut recommendation.

 

[Glockmatic]

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. It looks into how humans adapted differently in the locations they were in. It looks into why European's were making airplanes while the people of New Guinea were still stone tools. Very interesting stuff.

 

[Jokerman]

Hmm it's weird that you say that, as Shakespeare was not so much loved for his analysis of human nature, as he was his mastery of the English language. I can think of several novels off the top of my head that disect human nature better than any Shakespeare play (Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, Frankenstein, Fathers and Sons, Lolita, etc.)

I did say “at some fundamental level.” Shakespeare’s command of language, though overwhelming, is not unique and is capable of imitation. Poetry written in English becomes Shakespearean frequently enough to testify to the contaminating power of his high rhetoric. But the peculiar magnificence of Shakespeare is his power of representation of human character and personality and their mutabilities. His representation of character has a preternatural richness about it because no other writer, before or since, gives us a stronger illusion that each character speaks with a different voice from the others. His uncanny ability to present consistent and different actual-seeming voices of imaginary beings stems in part from the most abundant sense of reality ever to invade literature.

The most bewildering of Shakespearean achievements is to have suggested more contexts for explaining us than we are capable of supplying for explaining his characters. And like the Bible, Shakespeare is universal. Universality is the authentic aspect of only a handful of Western writers. Tolstoy is also one of them. Yet despite Tolstoy’s furious polemics against Shakespeare, his own art depends on a Shakespearean sense of character. Dostoevsky manifestly owes his grand nihilists to their Shakespearean precursors, while Turgenev idolized him. Freud, too, idolized Shakespeare because he understood that Shakespeare helped him invent psychoanalysis by inventing the psyche, insofar as Freud could recognize and describe it.

And all those books you mentioned are, of course, great works.

 

[Bender]

any of the Discworld series books by tony pratchett

 

[Elmira]

"You Shall Know Our Velocity" by Dave Eggers

Fantastic read! Eggers, one of the last keepers of the flame.

 

[Ristol]

Books are important to me. I'm still a lowly English major, but I want to become a teacher of literature in some capacity. I notice that a huge amount of great books have already been listed, so I won't restate all the classics. I'll give you some books I truly treasure, and if a couple run concurrent to classic status, well, okay.

The Great Gatsby is my favorite. I cherish most of Fitzgerald's stuff.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce is probably the best book I've ever read on any subject. This is purely my opinion. It's no coincidence that it's about the excessively Irish Catholic, hellfire sermon-filled school life of a young boy. The personal overtones abound.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley (It's probably been listed multiple times already, but hey, I read it in 10th grade and have always admired it for its forthrightness. I guess lots of it had to do with Haley's talent as a writer. Let it be a lesson to ya.)
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard
On the Road by Jack Kerouac (I've had my doubts about this one. I've settled on this opinion: I don't really care if it's a classic, or if it's great. I like the way it moves, the way the words dance. It's a beautiful book. I quote: "Nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old." Yes.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
'Salem's Lot by Stephen King

And, for plays, I'm a Shakespeare addict. Hamlet.

 

[Jokerman]

^Good for you on wanting to teach literature.

The Great Gatsby- I read once a year. I also really like his 2nd novel The Beautiful and the Damned, which isn't read so much.

The Awakening- bores me every time I've tried to read it.

On the Road- Don't wonder about it, it's great.

"Salem's Lot- the spooky atmosphere in this is amazing. I think The Shining is his best novel, though.

Another horror writer to read is Dean Koontz. The Watchers or Strangers.

 

[BombFirst5]

ok i went thru this thread and the books that look interesting enough to read are:
"Monster" Sanyika Shakur
Papillon - Patrick O'Brian
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them - Al Franken
A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin

ill def check those out

my all time favourite book is The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay... a must read book
also read the green mile by stephen king..you've probably seen the movie but the book is great

 

[Elmira]

So my roommate is reading this book "Still Life with Woodpecker," and this is the summary on the back of the book. Needless to say the book sounds interesting enough.


"STILL LIFE WITH WOODPECKER is sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty and pregnant cheerleaders. It also deals with the problem of redheads."

 

[roaches]

i like the idea of tom robbins books more than i ever enjoyed actually reading them.

 

[_streethop101]

So my roommate is reading this book "Still Life with Woodpecker," and this is the summary on the back of the book. Needless to say the book sounds interesting enough.


"STILL LIFE WITH WOODPECKER is sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty and pregnant cheerleaders. It also deals with the problem of redheads."

...whhaattt?

 

[biswas]

The Autobiography of Malcom X - Malcolm X and Alex Haley , My favourite book so far.

Manchild in a Promised Land - Claude Brown

The Black Panthers Speak - Great Book everything you want to know about the BPP

and

Uprising - Yusef Jah and Sister Shah'Keyah (If you liked Monster you'll like this)
SEE MORE

 

[sulvulhop]

I accept: America's Boy by James Hamilton-Paterson - It is about colonialism in the Philippines focusing on ex-president.
______________________
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[Ristol]

By the way, just read The Shining over the past three days. I can never watch the movie again. At first I had trouble not picturing Nicholson, but once I decided to picture Steve Martin, my reading was a lot clearer. I love me some Stephen King, I'm of the opinion that he writes his ass off, and I'm in full agreement with Jokerman that The Shining is him at his best, because at its core it's about family. There are few things that get to me more thoroughly.

 

[lyrical start]

Anyone read the The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown ? It's a really intresting good book.

 

[Duke]

George Gaylord Simpson - The Meaning of Evolution