Reading List Thread

[hyena]

*

[Malaclypse]

i currently read
neal stephenson - cryptonimicon
dense stuff, but i guess you'll have to be at least a bit familiar with mathematics and computers

and hopefully i'll get the illuminatus trilogy for christmas

[overkiller]

stanislaw lem - solaris
-the best novel of all times

george orwell - 1984
-the best criticism to totalitarianism

alfred bester - the demolished man
-murder in a society full of telepats?

alfred bester - stars my destination ( or tiger tiger, the same book with different names)
- what an ordinary person can be, when he is ambitious

larry niven - ringworld
- for the ones keen on alternative worlds. very scientific, a great book.

william gibson - neuromancer
- the bible of cyberpunk

[manuelgv]

Thomas Mann-The Buddenbrok
A great book about the stages a family goes through,from wealth to poverty
John Kennedy Toole-A confederacy of dunces
A hilarious book about a guy in NOLA

[rahvin]

my suggestion for the month is john steinbeck. for those not familiar with the name, he's a bestselling american writer that wrote most of his works during the middle years of the xx century.
his novels are all set in america during the years when pioneers conquered land and made huge fortunes (sometimes) over empires based on farming and trading. it might sound unappealing, but his novels - most of them rather short - do not revolve around wars or the joys of farming: they sport a deep level of social inquiry and subtly debate - always in the form of story-telling - the different moral and psychological sets a human mind can adopt to achieve what it wants or merely to survive.
character analysis is so well thought-out and all-round as to be absolutely enlightening for a myriad of feelings and moral situation you probably didn't even know existed.
steinbeck's prose is harsh and cruel, with just a hint of irony here and there. every time the author comments on the situation depicted, the sheer lucidity of his vision manages to cast all previous readings of real-life circumstances into a different, paler light.
one of my favourite examples is the following snippet out of "east of eden", one of his longest works:

"when a child first catches adults out - when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgements are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just - his world falls into panic desolation. the gods are fallen and all safety gone. and there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. it is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. and the child's world is never quite whole again. it is an aching kind of growing"

i cannot even begin to tell how i feel every time i read about the world falling into "panic desolation".

rahvin.

[Wolfman Von Jones]

Brian Lumley - The Necroscope Saga.

The books are basically about this man named Hary Keogh who has powers such as talking ot the dead and drawing form their knowledge,and teleporting through space/time via the Mobius Continum.

He basically is part of this secret british organization called E-Branch, which is full of people with special abilities (telepaths, scryers,etc,etc), and Harry works with them to destroy vampires that got to this Earth from a gate to another dimension in the Ural Mountains.

Great books, very well written and entertaining. There are about 10 Necroscope books in all.

Nick

[Onde Erik]

Originally posted by overkiller

alfred bester - stars my destination ( or tiger tiger, the same book with different names)

Yes! Please check this out. It's a fascinating story about a man who's lost everything but the lust for revenge.

A suggestion of my own would be China Miéville's Perdido Street Station, a book that should be read by those who have lost their faith in fantasy. It's not really traditional fantasy though... More of a mix between fantasy, science fiction and steampunk.
The plot revolves around scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin who gets a job offer that will not only make him doubt his own sense of ethics but also puts him at odds with the fascistoid Parliament that runs the town in which the story unfolds.

Cautions:
There are some gruesome descriptions of how the Parliament treats their prisoners. Some people might also be put off by the idea of an insectoid and human having sex.

Now reading: Neil Gaiman - American Gods

[Tranquillian]

Anyone who hasn't read Lord of the rings yet needs to do it.

[thunderstruck67]

My favorite book is Dreamcatcher by Stephen King. It's a fantasy, sci-fi type of story. The range, and depth of it, is just amazing. It's basically about 4 life-long friends who go hunting each year, only this year...something goes wrong...

[Arch]

I am currently reading "Stupid White Men" by Michael Moore. The same guy who brought you "Bowling for Columbine". The book examine the American government and its culture and comparing it to other countries in the world in a very negative light. It has a lot of Corporate America and George W. Bush bashing and harsh criticism about them. The book is definitely a good read and the humor keeps it going.

[FatherVic]

Douglas Adams - The Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy (a trilogy of five books)

wonderful sci-fi story about the future happening now, when the earth gets demolished to create an intergalactic bypass...
people who doesn't like humour on the written side of it, please avoid this book and take the next bus...

fathervic (marvin)