Hello all.
Just wondering what kind of books everybody was reading out there. Would be great to hear what you like/dislike about them, too.
Among others, I'm halfway through "The I Chong" by Tommy Chong, which is about his life and his ordeal of being sentenced to nine months in a federal prison for selling bongs.
If we get any responses here, I'll try to supply a good quote or a little more info.
Just wondering what kind of books everybody was reading out there. Would be great to hear what you like/dislike about them, too.
Among others, I'm halfway through "The I Chong" by Tommy Chong, which is about his life and his ordeal of being sentenced to nine months in a federal prison for selling bongs.
If we get any responses here, I'll try to supply a good quote or a little more info.
About to start 'DMT The Spirit Molecule' by Dr Rick Strassman
May revisit my dads old Heinlein too. Been a few years.
I honestly wish I had time to read, if I'm not stuck waist deep in a business or physics book I'm off prepping for grad school exams.
The Wheel of Time, Book 7
Crown of Swords
1977-M.E. Winfield
whaddaya know....the Library of Congress won't touch it......
No, the last one I read was Inca Gold by Clive Cussler. Mystery/action novel. Pretty good.
I'm a big fan of fantasy and Sci-Fi.
Some of my favorite authors are:
Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman (Dragonlance Chronicles and The Death Gate Cycle)
Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time)
Terry Goodkind (Sword of Truth)
Robert Heinlein
Roger Zelazny (Chronicles of Amber)
J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter)
R. A. Salvatore (Drizzt Books)
George R. R. Martin (Song of Ice & Fire).
Well there are just a few
Collapse, by Jared Diamond, the follow up to his more famous Guns, Germs, & Steel but arguably the more important of the two.
Desert Queen by Janet Wallach, which is a biography of Gertrude Bell, a surprisingly important historical figure, she was the first woman intelligence officer in British history, serving them during WW1 and afterwards she had a hand in determining the borders of modern day Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, and Syria... prior to that she had been an archaeologist of some note and an intrepid explorer, very much a female Lawrence of Arabia (and actually was a pretty good friend of his, one of the few women in his life he would deign to refer to on a first name basis), as she was also fluent in several languages of the Levant and Arabic and befriended many of the desert tribes on her far-ranging journeys prior to the war. During the war these friendships enabled the British to overturn the Ottomans and maintain relative peace in the region in the aftermath.
But until I picked up this book, I HAD NEVER HEARD PEEP ABOUT HER! But then again, how surprising is that? She was, after all, a chick, and we get no cred. She also founded the Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad that got looted when we Yanks rolled in four years ago... somewhere on her family estate in Britain she's probably chain-smoking and spinning in her grave as we speak.
So that's my book report... gotta say though, y'all seem to be reading otherwise similar books, Bruce Campbell's If Chins Could Kill is excellent, as is anything by Doug Adams and Robert Heinlein... still two of my very favorite authors.
Robert Heinlein - The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
Before that it was:
Craig Mullin - Murder in Samarkand
Zaki Chehab - Inside Hamas
The Endless Knot (Song of Albion Series) - Stephen R. Lawhead
--It's OK I guess. Not too spectacular
Fatal Revenant (Chronicles of Thomas Covenant) - Stephen R. Donaldson
--Finally, after 30 years, Donaldson finishes the series. Fantastic!
My Favorites:
The Dark Tower (series)- Stephen King
--Probably don't have to explain this series. One of the finest series ever written. Only fiction novels I've ever read a second time.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever (series)- Stephen R. Donaldson
--Perfect anti-hero/hero you love to hate saves/destroys the world in every volume.
Homecoming (series) - Orson Scott Card
--Any details are spoilers for this series. Orson might be the best fantasy/sci-fi writer alive.
The Stand - Stephen King
--The apocalypse according to Stephen King.
BTW, I'm looking for more fantasy novels that are especially otherworldly. I'm bored by knights and wizards unless their world is distinctly different than ours. I also like stories where typical folks are dropped into weird other worlds. Any ideas?
Currently, whenever I have a few minutes, I'm reading a couple books about logic, Logic Made Easy by Deborah J Bennett and 101 Philosophy problems by Martin Cohen.
Just finished and highly recommend Eifelheim by Michael Flynn. Especially if you like medieval Germany, the black plague and trans-dimensional space aliens.
Have you ever checked out The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny? It might fit the bill, I quite enjoyed it.
I was reading a friend's copy of the Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson, but he took it back before I could finish. Procrastination delay in getting another copy, so I moved on to Roger Penrose's The Large, The Small, and The Human Mind.
Prior to that - Phthor, Piers Anthony; Shardik, Richard Adams; and a reread of the Dune series.
*quality post for generating a great book list.
I'm sure I get huge nerd points for recommending a book that now has a game attached to it... and generally I wouldn't be into that sort of thing but a friend got me hooked on the book on tape versions during a road trip.
The world it's set in is maybe not so crazy (don't know what your standards are for that), and there are dragons but only a few. But the characters are great and extremely well written... to the point where you empathize with some of the villains... and the intricate political maneuvering and backstabbing among one another was enough to suck me in... its very rare that modern fantasy does that... also, there are zombies (of a sort) and that is always wicked cool.
REcently finished the entire Preacher series (I trade graphic novels with friends and in return for Preacher I am making two new 100 Bullets fans) and before that was... "Son of a Witch" - the sequel to "Wicked" which wasn't bad, but not as good as I hoped.
About to dive into a Stephen Brust series. Also have a Phillip K Dick I neglected to read while in the hospital. Need to get the latest "Fell" and "DNZ" in th series. I am a graphic novel FANATIC.
Doc_m I recommend Ursula K Leguin. The best there ever was in fantasy.
last non-fiction book was "Blink" (sequel to The Tipping Point) - awesome fun read
I wish I could touch base with everybody to find out more details, but I think the thread would be too long.
All of the contributions are very interesting and much appreciated.
I like getting a feel for where other people are regarding literature.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/specials/calvino-palomar.html
I also pretty much enjoy anything from Stephen King, Dean Koontz, or Michael Crichton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_Innocence_and_of_Experience
Now I'm almost done re-reading Rookies (a comic).
I'll probably read next Morituri te Salutant.
currently I'm re-reading
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart Erhman
From Booklist
The popular perception of the Bible as a divinely perfect book receives scant support from Ehrman, who sees in Holy Writ ample evidence of human fallibility and ecclesiastical politics. Though himself schooled in evangelical literalism, Ehrman has come to regard his earlier faith in the inerrant inspiration of the Bible as misguided, given that the original texts have disappeared and that the extant texts available do not agree with one another. Most of the textual discrepancies, Ehrman acknowledges, matter little, but some do profoundly affect religious doctrine. To assess how ignorant or theologically manipulative scribes may have changed the biblical text, modern scholars have developed procedures for comparing diverging texts. And in language accessible to nonspecialists, Ehrman explains these procedures and their results. He further explains why textual criticism has frequently sparked intense controversy, especially among scripture-alone Protestants. In discounting not only the authenticity of existing manuscripts but also the inspiration of the original writers, Ehrman will deeply divide his readers. Although he addresses a popular audience, he undercuts the very religious attitudes that have made the Bible a popular book. Still, this is a useful overview for biblical history collections.
and I just finished, THE FLUORIDE DECPTION, by Christopher Bryson
From Publishers Weekly
Concerns over fluoridated drinking water have long been derided as the obsession of McCarthyite cranks. But this muckraking j’accuse asserts that fluoride is indeed a dire threat to public health, one foisted upon the nation by a vast conspiracy—not of Communist agents, but of our very own military-industrial complex. Investigative reporter Bryson revisits the decades-long controversy, drawing on mountains of scientific studies, some unearthed from secret archives of government and corporate laboratories, to question the effects of fluoride and the motives of its leading advocates. The efficacy of fluoridated drinking water in preventing tooth decay, he contends, is dubious. Fluoride in its many forms may be one of the most toxic of industrial pollutants, and Bryson cites scientific analyses linking fluoridated drinking water to bone deformities, hyperactivity and a host of other complaints. The post-war campaign to fluoridate drinking water, he claims, was less a public health innovation than a public relations ploy sponsored by industrial users of fluoride—including the government’s nuclear weapons program. Legendary spin doctors like Edward Bernays exploited the tenuous link between dental hygiene and fluoridation to create markets to stimulate fluoride production and to prove the innocuousness of fluoride compounds, thereby heading off lawsuits by factory workers and others poisoned by industrial fluoride pollution. Bryson marshals an impressive amount of research to demonstrate fluoride’s harmfulness, the ties between leading fluoride researchers and the corporations who funded and benefited from their research, and what he says is the duplicity with which fluoridation was sold to the people. The result is a compelling challenge to the reigning dental orthodoxy, which should provoke renewed scientific scrutiny and public debate.
I just finished “Before the Deluge” about Berlin from the late 1920’s to the election of Hitler. Quite a read.
Days after Hitler became chancellor, he banned freedom of opinion, freedom of association, and freedom of the press.
He had 120 people killed, some shot in cold blood, some taken to a warehouse and tortured first. Many of the people that he killed were members of his own party whom he was either jealous of or suspected of betrayal.
A man - “Dr. W” I’ll call him - was practicing his cello in his apartment with his wife and kids when some storm troopers came and took him to the warehouse. Dr. W - an active Nazi member - was suspected of plotting against Hitler. The thing is, there were two Dr. W’s in Berlin, and they tortured and killed the wrong one.
Waiting for the Galactic Bus
The Snake Oil Wars
Both funny as hell - and should prove interesting to those following the evolution vs. ID debates.
guess the invocation needs to be added? Lucky? little help here.