Favorite books

Poststructural Pub
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Inspired by another thread, I wanted to start a general book-related thread. What are some titles of good books you’ve read recently, and why did you like them? What books have you been meaning to read, or list your favorite authors, etc.

Me:

Nonfiction:

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, M.D. A board member reccomended this to me. It was quite eye opening as far as emotional growth and spiritual growth. I like Dr. Peck’s belief that they’re one in the same. An old book but a good book. This book changed my life.

The Prayer Of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson. I know a lot of people like this book, but for me it wasn’t all that spectacular. It didn’t inspire me and it seemed too short and superficial.

Living With The End In Mind by Erin Tierney Kramp, et al. About learning how to die with dignity and grace, while still having all your earthly matters in order so that your loved ones won’t have to. It covers things such as planning your funeral, and how to preserve memories. I don’t plan to die any time soon, but this book is also for healthy people. It also changed my life.

The Blue Day Book by Bradley Trevor Grieve. Not really a nonfiction book since it’s a picture book about being sad, but I’ve talked about how much I love this book before. It’s an awesome book for when you’re feeling blue. Kids love it, too, and it only costs $6 at Walmart. This book did not change my life. :wink:

Fiction:

The Silk Vendetta by Victoria Holt. Cheesy 1900s-ish British romance novel about a silk producing family and their rivals in France. I liked it anyway. I read it twice.

Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder. A novel about the history of philosophy. Enough said. I read it all 515 pages in 2 days. I loved it.

Back Roads by Tawni O’Dell. A novel set in rural Pennsylvania about a young man raising his siblings after his father was killed and his mother went to prison. I found many, many, things similar to my own life in this book. It was even on Oprah. It changed my life, too.

Currently reading:

Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

Joni by Joni Eareckson

To read in the future:

Further Along The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, M.D.

The Sorrows Of Young Werther by Goethe

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I picked up one in Ireland that I liked a lot, Seek the Fair Land by Macken. He wrote a lot of Irish historical fiction. This one is told from the Irish point of view during the Cromwellian war in the 1650’s.

I recently read The Islandman by Crohan, his autobiography of living on the Great Blasket Island during the 1800’s. Fascinating stuff if you like Irish history.

One of the B&B owners in Ireland gave me a copy of Star of the Sea, by O’Connor. It’s about life and death aboard a famine ship headed for America in 1847.

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Oh, I forgot one.

Mother Tongue: English And How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson. Very funny (but largely inacurrate in some sections) history of the English language.

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Macken is fantastic (imho anyway). He’s one of my favorites.
Lately I have been reading Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities is the most recent). I’m not sure why…I wasn’t terribly fond of him when I HAD to read him in high school. I suppose it makes more sense to me now.
I’ve also been into organizational books. I need to be more organized. I figure that since there are 24 hours in a day, at LEAST 12-18 of those hours could be spent whistling. Eating, sleeping, kids and husband can be crammed into the rest, right? :wink: But honestly, with this many kids, I NEED to have some sort of organization. You know that things are bad when your shoes stick to the floor in the kitchen :roll:

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The Dune books
-Frank Herbert

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The best book I’ve read in ages is called Green Rider. It’s a heroic fantasy book by someone named Kristen Britain. It was the first book she wrote. I read the sequel, First Rider’s Call, as soon as it came out. That was pretty good, too. I reread the first one within six months of when I first read it.

I’m not so sure why I like these so well. They’re creative and they move well. The premise is the lead character ran away from school and sort of inherits a magical brooch, which causes her to become a messenger for the king. There’s a little of everything that makes a heroic fantasy in it.

I’m currently reading Angels and Demons, Dan Brown’s first book. I liked the Da Vinci Code, and I’m really enjoying this one, too. Both very high energy, and eye-opening in a way.

Some of my all-time faves:

science fiction:

The Computer Connection by Alfred Bester
Most of Heinlein’s non-juvenile novels and stories from before the late '60’s
The Gods Themselves and The Caves of Steel by Asimov
The Long Afternoon of Earth and Heliconia Spring by Brian Aldiss
The first set of Amber books, Creatures of Light and Darkness, and several others by Zelazny (A Rose for Ecclesiastes is my absolute favorite short story, too)
Babel-17 and Triton by Samuel Delaney

Fantasy:

The Well at the World’s end by William Morris
The King of Elfland’s Daughter and the Charwoman’s shadow by Lord Dunsany
Most of HP Lovecraft’s work, esp. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and The Cats of Ulthar
Everything I’ve read by Patricia McKillip, esp. the Forgotten Beasts of Eld

Literature:

Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Persuasion
Wuthering Heights
Anna Karenina
Camille
Everything I’ve read by Sinclair Lewis except Arrowsmith and Main Street

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Amongst the authors I return to again and again are Thomas Hardy,F.Scott Fitzgerald,Annie Proulx and Flann O 'Brian.
Other favourites would be Roddy Doyle,Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith.
My main reading material is Poetry and my favourites in that department are Yeats,Kavanagh,Hardy,McGough and Irelands greatest ever poet Austin Clarke.
Since getting my first computer about six months ago I tend to read the Chiff board more than anything else!

Slan,
D.

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I enjoyed the Bunnicula books.

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The best book I’ve read lately is Vernon God Little , you gotta go there !

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My all-time favorite (big surprise) is The Origin of Species, by the original owner of my forum handle. The Voyage of the Beagle is pretty hot, too.

I have way too many non-fiction favorites to list even one percent of them here. Some representative choices by genre are:

Non-fiction:
Physics: QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Richard P. Feynman
Biology: The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time, Johnathan Weiner
Chaos Theory: Does God Play Dice: The Mathematics of Chaos, Ian Stewart
Symmetry Theory: Fearful Symmetry: Is God a Geometer?, Ian Stewart and Martin Golubitsky
General Linguistics: Historical Linguistics: An Introduction, Lyle Campbell
Chinese Linguistics: Middle Chinese: A Study in Historical Phonology,E.G. Pulleyblank
Buddhism: Buddhism Without Beliefs, Stephen Bachelor
Espresso: Espresso Coffee: Professional Techniques–How to Identify and Control Each Factor to Perfect Espresso Coffee in a Commercial Espresso Program, David C. Schromer
Art: The Way of the Brush: Painting Techniques of China and Japan, Fritz Van Briessen
Guitar: Hot Licks for Bluegrass Guitar, Orrin Star
Neuroscience: The Mind-Brain Continuum: Sensory Processes, edited by Rodolfo Llinás and Patricia S. Churchland
Cognitive Science: Descarte’s Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Antonio R. Damasio
Martial Arts: Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere: An Illustrated Introduction, A. Westbrook and O. Ratti
Critters: Photographic Atlas of Entomology and Guide to Insect Identification, James L. Castner
Cooking: Southwest Tastes: From the Television Series Great Chefs of the West, Ellen Brown
History/Biography: Stillwell and the American Experience in China, Barbara Tuchman

Fiction:
SciFi: The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Fantasy: God Stalk (and all following), P.C. Hodgell
Detective: Big Red Tequila (and all following), Rick Riordan
Historical: Crocodile on the Sandbank (and all following), Elizabeth Peters

I’m now reading:

The Mind’s Past, by Michael S. Gazzaniga. This is about how the brain/mind constructs the past–and the self. Gazzaniga did the first reporting on the split-brain experiments that spawned all that left-brain/right-brain “literature”. He’s the Director of the Program in Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College. As a kind of Buddhist, I could ask for nothing more than the first chapter, entitled, “The Fictional Self”. It’s good to see science finally catching up with Buddhism. :smiley:

Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China, by David N. Keightley. This is old (1978), but is a pretty good introduction to how Chinese writing was first used in the service of divination (fortune telling). It includes lots of details on bone and shell preparation, as well as info on content. Unfortunately, it’s not much oriented toward character forms, which is what I really need. If you’re not an academic type, you just have to wait for publications to appear.

I recently finished The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation, by Matt Ridley. This is sort of advanced game theory informed by natural selection. It includes the origins of moral sentiments, altruism, war, property, sex, religion, and more.

Finally, there’s the book that seldom leaves my side: Ireland’s Best Slow Airs, from Walton’s Publishing.

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Are there more than one? I only found Bunnicula: A Rabbit Tale of Mystery.

{I’ve got to switch my browser to Firefox. I went looking for Bunnicula and ended up with half a dozen popup ads.)

And I must have been away from home for way too long, because I have no idea what that MIDI file was all about. (Or, was it just part of an Oklahoman plot?)

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Anything by Bill Bryson.

Taking the Quantum Leap, by Fred Alan Wolf. A really fun way for those without physics-caliber math chops to be wowed by the concepts.

Philip Pullman: The Golden Compass Trilogy. Read it to kids a few years ago, and found I couldn’t stand not to read ahead, so I actually read it twice.

Currently reading: The Tao of Physics, by Fritjof Capra. Compares modern physics to eastern mysticism.

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I have no idea what that MIDI file was all about.

That makes two of us Darwin.

Slan,
D.

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here’s a different view on another irish nation http://www.qub.ac.uk/iis/publications/CulturePubs/Irishtravellers.htm

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Philip Pullman: The Golden Compass Trilogy. Read it to kids a few years ago, and found I couldn’t stand not to read ahead, so I actually read it twice.

I loved the ‘his dark materials’ trilogy have you read that ? Kids will love it.

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Sadly,a much maligned race.Liam Weldons song “The Blue Tar Road” is often played in this house.

Slan,
D.

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I am a slow reader and carefully choose what I read. In contrast, a good friend reads very quickly and does not choose carefully. Consequently, he reads more and occasionally discovers an unknown gem that I wouldn’t find by my method.

Sometimes I tend to read by author rather than book and am currently reading the following:

José Saramago: “Blindness” was first. Gripping and hard to put down. Then “The Cave” and “All the Names.” Saramago creates characters we could know living in unreal worlds we could not possibly know. Saramago is 82 years old and still writing; his latest book, “The Double,” which was released last month, and his previous one, “The Raft,” are waiting for me on my shelf. I wish him longevity and health.

Patricia Highsmith: A few years ago I watched the movie, “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” and enjoyed it very much. Since then I have read Highsmith’s five Ripley novels and eight or so other of her novels and short story collections. Highsmith creates great characters, mood, and suspense. Born in Ft. Worth, Texas, Highsmith lived much of her adult life in Switzerland and France.

T.C. Boyle: Quirky, well written short stories. I haven’t read any of Boyle’s novels yet.

I recently obtained two Irvine Welsh novels, “Trainspotting” and “Porno” and am looking forward to them.

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same as what I mentioned: the 3 books are The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. Phenomenal story.

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Howliday Inn, and The Celery Stalks at Midnight were other Bunnicula books. There are more, but by a different author.

And I must have been away from home for way too long, because I have no idea what that MIDI file was all about. (Or, was it just part of an Oklahoman plot?)

The MIDI is the University of Oklahoma song, “Boomer Sooner,” inasmuch as, though I don’t generally watch football, they beat the Longhorns for the 5th straight year, and Texas didn’t even score a single point. Today was the 99th Oklahoma-Texas game.

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Thanks. I have a granddaughter in Texas who is just about the right age for that kind of thing. (Very funny titles, by the way.)

And I must have been away from home for way too long, because I have no idea what that MIDI file was all about. (Or, was it just part of an Oklahoman plot?)

The MIDI is the University of Oklahoma song, “Boomer Sooner,” inasmuch as, though I don’t generally watch football, they beat the Longhorns for the 5th straight year, and Texas didn’t even score a single point. Today was the 99th Oklahoma-Texas game.

Ah. No wonder I didn’t recognize it. I don’t follow sports, myself. I went to one UT game (vs. Rice) back in the late '50s. I think that’s the only non-high school football game I’ve ever attended. I’ve also been to only one baseball game, ever (Astros vs. Cardinals in the Astrodome, in the mid '90s). I played one year of football in high school, but I find watching other people engage in team sports intensely boring.