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Favorite Books

bob_m

Active member
in some sembelence of order
Once and Future King - T H White (who co authored the writers bible "Elements of Style" with Strunk) is a beautiful, supurbly written, easy to read story about King Arthur
Grapes of Wrath - John Stienbeck: Pulitzer prize and national book award winner. Brilliant character development and story telling about a family during the depression. The tragic and uplifting story of those wackey Joads.
Sometimes A Great Notion - Ken Keasy: colorful, descriptive story about the Pacific Northwest and the logging culture and people - sorta a challenging read.
Pissing in the Snow - Vance Randolf - a collection of humorous, sex related Ozark folk tales in authentic colorful language. Great at a camp site
Spartina - John Casey: Great book about a modern day fisherman. it sorta defies adequate description.
Grendel - John Gardener: The story of the mythic monster through the monster's eyes & dark philosophy.
Paris Trout - Pete Dexter: Evil meets violence in the deep south and messes up peoples lives - gripping well told story
Hitch hikers guide to the Galaxy - funny, clever romp of science fiction
Something Wicked this Way Comes - Ray Bradbury paints tension and suspense into a vividly descriptive novela.
Maus - Art Spiegeleman's graphic novel defines the concept of adult comic books. Tells the story of the holocaust. Surprisingly powerful
Oh Yea; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig wrote this intellectual tour de force that follows his inquiry into the meaning of life while on a motorcycle tour. a heavy read.
 
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Dubliners by James Joyce
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Hawaii by James Michener

getting ready to read

She's a Bad Motorcycle edited by Geno Zanetti
 
good idea for a thread

my favorite book is usually the one that i am currently reading. which today is "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood" by Alexandra Fuller. her story of growing up (mostly) in Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe). before that i read a couple by Bill Bryson - Walk in The Woods (he takes on the Appalachian Trail) and ...Sunburned Country in which he takes an interesting look at Australia.
read tom sawyer/huck finn 65 time as a kid, but now i mostly read things once and move on. gosh there are soooooo many books!
 
Most of my mental development ended at age 5

Everybody Poops by Taro Gomi
Arthur Babysits Marc Brown
And anything by Al Franken

:D
 
interesting thread

I started re-reading Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance yesterday. First read was 25 or so years ago. My margin notes look pretty sophomoric now. Pirsig's second book (don't recall the title) is simply unreadable.

Looking at my bookcase, a few favorites jump out:
The Magus by John Fowels (the only book that ever kept me up all night on a worknight)
Blue Highways and River Horse by William Least Heat Moon. In the first he travels America's back roads in an old van, meeting some really interesting folk along the way (easy to imagine substituting a M/C for the van). In the second he travels from the Atlantic, across America to the Pacific by boat. It CAN be done.
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. If you saw the TV mini series you probably don't need to read it as it was quite faithful to the book. In either media it is worth the time.
Anything by Alan Furst. Night Soldiers may be the best. A spy novel set in Europe in the 1930's between the Nazi's and the Soviets. Furst is a master sentence crafter.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, a mystery novel set in a monastary in 1327. It is really much better than you'd think. And better than the movie though Sean Connery is almost always worth watching.
And for sheer fun, anything by Tom Robbins.

John
 
Real ponies don't go oink, Patrick F Mcmanus,
Beyond top Secret, Timothy Good
The man who walked through time, Colin Edwards
 
Ulysses - James Joyce (especially the last chapter, known in literary circles as "Molly Bloom's Soliloquy")

The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu (aka "In Search of Lost TIme" and "Remembrance of things Past")- Marcel Proust

The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemmingway

An Ice-Cream War - William Boyd

Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev

The Winter of our Discontent - John Steinbeck
 
nice thread. now, where to start?

"tao te ching" by lao tzu is one book i wish every person on earth was required to read and think about. it takes 30 minutes read and will rattle in your head for 30 lifetimes.

i like tom robbins' books. i wish he could write more of them, but i think he insists on writing them himself, and enjoying life in between books. it's for the best, but it has me feeling like a crackhead waiting for them to come out. one robbins sentence is more clever than entire lives.

edward abbey has a few that i liked. black sun. desert solitaire. he somehow is able to write about both nature and women in a way that makes each of these topics as special as they really are. somehow he seems to simultaneously worship them, (yet not in an obsequious manner,) and treat them poorly. i cant explain it properly, but these two books, along with 'the road home' are great.

anything by jd salinger. him not publishing anything else is a literary tragedy. 'catcher in the rye' is a famous one. 'perfect day for banafish' is a good collection of short stories, but i think my fave is 'franny and zooey,' particularly the part where zooey's mom has him cornered in the tub, and they are talking about franny, (and seymour, and everything else.) really good writing.

anything by charles bukowski. boy i love his stuff. i was sad when he died. bukowski wrote many memorable things, but the one that sticks in my mind is, "the most beautiful woman in the world is the one who walks by your window, and then she is gone." if youre new to bukowski, start with 'septugenarian stew.' it's a collection of poems and short stories. 'ham on rye' is a good first novel to start with.

hermann hesse is fantastic. start with siddhartha then work your way in.

i must admit that 'illusions' by richard bach taught me how to dissolve clouds, and convinced me that someday i will be able to swim in dirt. if youre not in the right frame of mind, or you have what i call a 'reality hangup' then the book wont do much for you.

henry miller i like a lot, although i enjoy reading interviews with him more than i enjoy reading his work. try "stand still like the hummingbird." for a good collection of conversations. the title alone is more useful than entire books written by others.

steinbeck of course, everyone's going to pick that. 'winter of our discontent' is good for you if you think you're stuck in your job. 'east of eden' is really good too, for other reasons. both make my heart heavy, but in a good way. 'cannery row' makes me want to build a time machine, load it up with a jug of wine, and go back to monterey in the heyday of sardine canning and get drunk under a tree, then stagger over to doc's and see what he caught last night.

i read a few hemingway short stories over the holiday, and i just cant get over how well that dude writes dialog. there is something about his writing, where it is sparse as hell, just as unflowery as it can get, yet when i read his work, i get an amazingly sharp mental picture of what is going on, and have no trouble imagining each aspect of it. "hills like white elephants" is a great example. i read it in high school, and have re-read it several times, and it always hits me right between the eyes. i was once in mojave, CA, and i swear i felt like i was in the exact diner where that book took place. i know that i wasnt, but somehow, everything converged, and it was amazing. if he hadnt written that story, that wouldve just been a diner. im no scholar, but im pretty sure that is my definition of great writing - economy of words and maximization of impact. (i lack this... )

thats enough for now. im getting all nostalgic for the good books ive read. i can remember when i bought many of them, the bookstores, the people i was with, the way i felt when i first read them. the parts that i liked. the folks i shared them with. the associations i made later in life.

ahhhh, great thread. thanks.
 
I read way to many books to pick a fav. (average one a week)

really like Vonnegut, Chrichton, and 1st person WWII books.
last book read "Flags of our father's"

For childrens books
"Arthur the farting dog" I giggle alot during that one.
anything by dr. zues, read "Sue Snue" last night at bedtime.
 
The Gunslinger - Stephen King
ANYTHING by James Michener
Most of Tony Hillermans novels

So many fine books so little time.......... how do I choose...???.. :dunno
 
In no special order:

1. Marine Sniper (Carlos Hatchcock)
2. Silent Warrior (Volume II)
3. Marine (Chesty Puller)
4. One Shot, One Kill
5. Brown Water, Black Beret
6. Fortunate Son (Chesty Pullers son's ordeal)
7. The Divinci Code
8. Blind Mans Bluff
9. Navy Seals in Vietnam (did I spell Vietnam correctly?)
10. We Were Soldiers Once... and Young
11. Digital Fortress


For some reason, fiction doesn't interest me all that much, but Mr. Brown does write a good novel.

MTBATP
 
MIKETHEBIKE said:
In no special order:

1. Marine Sniper (Carlos Hatchcock)
2. Silent Warrior (Volume II)
3. Marine (Chesty Puller)
4. One Shot, One Kill
5. Brown Water, Black Beret
6. Fortunate Son (Chesty Pullers son's ordeal)
7. The Divinci Code
8. Blind Mans Bluff
9. Navy Seals in Vietnam (did I spell Vietnam correctly?)
10. We Were Soldiers Once... and Young
11. Digital Fortress


For some reason, fiction doesn't interest me all that much, but Mr. Brown does write a good novel.

MTBATP


I smell a theme
you scare me sometimes....
 
mike and mark - i've read most of the books on your lists - if you like the military stuff, give "flyboys" a try. it's by the same dude who did "flags of our fathers" and it's got some wild stuff in it.
 
username said:
mike and mark - i've read most of the books on your lists - if you like the military stuff, give "flyboys" a try. it's by the same dude who did "flags of our fathers" and it's got some wild stuff in it.

The Princess gave "Flyboys" to me last Christmas. Couldn't set it down! For some reason (early onset Alsheimers maybe?) I left it off. But Bush #1 sure was lucky!

MTBATP

P.S.
Have a look at "A Glimpse Into Hell" about the USS Iowa 16 in. gun turrent explosion. Another Navy cover-up and also the reason I believe CNO Borda commited suicide and not Col. Hackworths questioning of his Bronze Star with "v" for valour.
 
Mark I have flyboys here and you may borrow it whenyoucome down if you like
scary stuff in that book
 
Way too many to pick from.

Probably anything by Christopher Buckley
Hitchhiker Series by Douglas Adams
October Sky
Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
The Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet
Ron Ayers' Books

And I can just keep going and going and going and going and going and going



bathreadsmall.jpg
 
It's difficult to pick really favorite books. I'll read everything by several authors. Some of them are:

Foundation series, by Asimov
Hitchhiker's Guide, et al
Incarnations of Immortality series, by Antony
Anything by Heinlein
Dickens, for when I need a laugh (?)
I've read Ron Ayres books, and continue to read David Hough's work.
Neil Peart has struck a chord also.
And not to forget Tolkien.
 
I can't pic a favorite book, but favorite authors are:(in no particular order)

Nelson DeMille
David Baldacci
James Lee Burke
Walter Mosley
Robert B Parker
Robert Ludlum
John Grisham
Jonathan Kellerman
Tom Clancy
 
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