Give Me a Book to Read!!

[Kickbuttmario]

Hey there. So a while ago I started a thread a while back and I finally managed to read one of the books listed a week ago, called "The Screwtape Letters" by RC Lewis.

So I was hoping, well, again, you guys can give me another book to read, and perhaps we can help motivate each other to read more. My goal is to read a book at least every 1-2 months. I read mostly manga (aka Japanese comics) and they pretty much nailed my love for fantasies since they are usually filled with japanese anthologies with interesting spins.

Screwtape Letters was mostly philosophical, so I enjoy them a lot. Again, I can enjoy any genre, as long as the book is good. I don't mind fantasy but it's not something I am after right now.

Thanks to those that can help.

[Serath]

Are you looking for a quick little read or something a big denser?
For a quick fun read I think it's hard to beat classic sci-fi of Robert Heinlein. I recommend, Have spacesuit, will travel. If you're looking for something more substantial, but I LOVE the Deathgate Cycle by Margret Weis and Tracey Hickman.

If you're looking for something newer and in that Fantasy vein I'd say anything by Brandon Sanderson. I think Elantris is an excellent entry book as is the Mistborn series. The Codex Alera by Jim Butcher is also high on my list.

[montygreen]

In case you haven't read it yet, I'd highly recommend:
Ready Player One
http://smile.amazon.com/dp/0307887448

[Deleted]

I think this is like the 20th time someone has asked about books, and I'll give the same recommendation:



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_(Simmons_novel)

[Aoyi]

Try "The Three Body Problem" by Cixin Liu. Its an excellent sci-fi story that jumps between several characters from the 1960s until today. Its unlike any other sci-fi book I've ever read.

[Puupi]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Egyptian

A book everyone should read.

[Gallahadd]

Anything by Haruki Murakami.

I'd suggest you read Kafka on the Shore, then Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, then Windup Bird Chronicle then 1Q84.

[Independent voter]

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.

When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake — not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its rattling days were over. The sow had it by the neck, and the shoat had the tail.

"You pigs git," Augustus said, kicking the shoat. "Head on down to the creek if you want to eat that snake." It was the porch he begrudged them, not the snake. Pigs on the porch just made things hotter, and things were already hot enough. He stepped down into the dusty yard and walked around to the springhouse to get his jug. The sun was still high, sulled in the sky like a mule, but Augustus had a keen eye for sun, and to his eye the long light from the west had taken on an encouraging slant.

Evening took a long time getting to Lonesome Dove, but when it came it was a comfort. For most of the hours of the day — and most of the months of the year — the sun had the town trapped deep in dust, far out in the chaparral flats, a heaven for snakes and horned toads, roadrunners and stinging lizards, but a hell for pigs and Tennesseans. There was not even a respectable shade tree within twenty or thirty miles; in fact, the actual location of the nearest decent shade was a matter of vigorous debate in the offices — if you wanted to call a roofless barn and a couple of patched-up corrals offices — of the Hat Creek Cattle Company, half of which Augustus owned.

His stubborn partner, Captain W. F. Call, maintained that there was excellent shade as close as Pickles Gap, only twelve miles away, but Augustus wouldn't allow it. Pickles Gap was if anything a more worthless community than Lonesome Dove. It had only sprung up because a fool from north Georgia named Wesley Pickles had gotten himself and his family lost in the mesquites for about ten days. When he finally found a clearing, he wouldn't leave it, and Pickles Gap came into being, mainly attracting travelers like its founder, which is to say people too weak-willed to be able to negotiate a few hundred miles of mesquite thicket without losing their nerve.

The springhouse was a little lumpy adobe building, so cool on the inside that Augustus would have been tempted to live in it had it not been for its popularity with black widows, yellow jackets and centipedes. When he opened the door he didn't immediately see any centipedes but he did immediately hear the nervous buzz of a rattlesnake that was evidently smarter than the one the pigs were eating. Augustus could just make out the snake, coiled in a corner, but decided not to shoot it; on a quiet spring evening in Lonesome Dove, a shot could cause complications. Everybody in town would hear it and conclude either that the Comanches were down from the plains or the Mexicans up from the river. If any of the customers of the Dry Bean, the town's one saloon, happened to be drunk or unhappy — which was very likely — they would probably run out into the street and shoot a Mexican or two, just to be on the safe side.

At the very least, Call would come stomping up from the lots, only to be annoyed to discover it had just been a snake. Call had no respect whatsoever for snakes, or for anyone who stood aside for snakes. He treated rattlers like gnats, disposing of them with one stroke of whatever tool he had in hand. "A man that slows down for snakes might as well walk," he often said, a statement that made about as much sense to an educated man as most of the things Call said.

Augustus held to a more leisurely philosophy. He believed in giving creatures a little time to think, so he stood in the sun a few minutes until the rattler calmed down and crawled out a hole. Then he reached in and lifted his jug out of the mud. It had been a dry year, even by the standards of Lonesome Dove, and the spring was just springing enough to make a nice mud puddle. The pigs spent half their time rooting around the springhouse, hoping to get into the mud, but so far none of the holes in the adobe was big enough to admit a pig.

The damp burlap the jug was wrapped in naturally appealed to the centipedes, so Augustus made sure none had sneaked under the wrapping before he uncorked the jug and took a modest swig. The one white barber in Lonesome Dove, a fellow Tennessean named Dillard Brawley, had to do his barbering on one leg because he had not been cautious enough about centipedes. Two of the vicious red-legged variety had crawled into his pants one night and Dillard had got up in a hurry and had neglected to shake out the pants. The leg hadn't totally rotted off, but it had rotted sufficiently that the family got nervous about blood poisoning and persuaded he and Call to saw it off.

[Fencers]

Recently began reading Philip Roth's The Dying Animal. Midway through and it is superb.

[Sierra85]

Traci Harding - The Ancient Future

[apepi]

Since your into Manga, maybe you would interested in a graphic novel? Give Locke and Key a shot.

[melodramocracy]

I'll suggest 'House of Leaves' by Mark Z. Danielewski. It is an unusual book, and demands quite a bit more attention than a typical book if you read it as intended, but it's absolutely amazing.

[Hotmail]

The Book Thief



A few days ago, when I was starting to read it, my mother stopped by and saw the book on my coffee table. Having just read it herself (and knowing me better than anyone else in the world, I might add), she was determined to save me from myself. She did her very best to convince me not to read it. She described in detail the three day long headache all the crying had caused her and the heartache she now has to live with, but I’m nothing if not stubborn. I guess I never learned to listen to my mother.
I’m pretty sure her parting sentence was: “Don’t come crying to me.” And I didn’t. I huddled in a corner and cried inconsolably instead.

Death himself narrates the story about a little girl named Liesel growing up with her foster parents in Nazi Germany. At the beginning, I felt somewhat intimidated by the idea of Death as a narrator. I assumed that his voice would be dark and thunderous, but for the most part, he was a ray of light illuminating earth’s saddest time. Incredibly insightful observations and occasional dry humor are only some of the things no one but Death could have brought into this story.

I really recommend it.

[vindicatorx]

Survivor By Chuck Palahniuk

It's from the guy who wrote Fight Club and it's pretty trippy in general. It's the story of the last remaining survivor of a death cult and how he was turned into a modern day messiah. It's an amazing story and hard to put it down once you start. It does look at the dark side of people as a lot of his works do so be prepared for that.

[Eaglehorn]

Hey there. So a while ago I started a thread a while back and I finally managed to read one of the books listed a week ago, called "The Screwtape Letters" by RC Lewis.

So I was hoping, well, again, you guys can give me another book to read, and perhaps we can help motivate each other to read more. My goal is to read a book at least every 1-2 months. I read mostly manga (aka Japanese comics) and they pretty much nailed my love for fantasies since they are usually filled with japanese anthologies with interesting spins.

Screwtape Letters was mostly philosophical, so I enjoy them a lot. Again, I can enjoy any genre, as long as the book is good. I don't mind fantasy but it's not something I am after right now.

Thanks to those that can help.

I will give you 5 books.

A Song of Fire and Ice

You're welcome.

[Skizzit]

Out of curiosity, why not read one of the other hundreds of books already recommended in your other thread?

Anyways, if you are looking for something unique, check out Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (not to be confused with that Twilight porn fanfic with a similar name)



"Welcome to Chromatacia, where the societal hierarchy is strictly regulated by one's limited color perception. And Eddie Russet wants to move up. But his plans to leverage his better-than-average red perception and marry into a powerful family are quickly upended. Juggling inviolable rules, sneaky Yellows, and a risky friendship with an intriguing Grey named Jane who shows Eddie that the apparent peace of his world is as much an illusion as color itself, Eddie finds he must reckon with the cruel regime behind this gaily painted façade"

I am a sucker for interesting world-building and the world of Chomatacia is a unique one. It has many of the tropes of a dystopian novel, but so many of the ideas present are things I have never imagined and the result is a great read. It's a world where something happened in the past that changed humans to the point where people can only see a certain percentage of the color spectrum. It's also an inherited trait so if someone who can see a high amount of the red spectrum has a child with someone who can see a high amount of blue, the child will be able to see a somewhat high amount of both resulting in them being a purple. This color perception determines everything about that person's life from the kinds of jobs they can work to their social standing to even who they can marry. A high level purple is forbidden from marrying a high level yellow for example as they are not complementary colors. There are also some other quirks in the world like a unseen but powerful ruling government has total control over technology and has been slowly forcing the tech level to go backwards by outlawing everything to the point where things like computers, phones, and cars no longer exist.

It's a really fun read that it at times both funny and exciting. Highly recommend it. Sadly, the author has yet to get around to writing the planned sequel, but it is still very much worth reading.

[dextersmith]

I love Norse Mythology and would recommend Nintendo Power Magazine.

[apepi]

Out of curiosity, why not read one of the other hundreds of books already recommended in your other thread?

Anyways, if you are looking for something unique, check out Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (not to be confused with that Twilight porn fanfic with a similar name)



"Welcome to Chromatacia, where the societal hierarchy is strictly regulated by one's limited color perception. And Eddie Russet wants to move up. But his plans to leverage his better-than-average red perception and marry into a powerful family are quickly upended. Juggling inviolable rules, sneaky Yellows, and a risky friendship with an intriguing Grey named Jane who shows Eddie that the apparent peace of his world is as much an illusion as color itself, Eddie finds he must reckon with the cruel regime behind this gaily painted façade"

I am a sucker for interesting world-building and the world of Chomatacia is a unique one. It has many of the tropes of a dystopian novel, but so many of the ideas present are things I have never imagined and the result is a great read. It's a world where something happened in the past that changed humans to the point where people can only see a certain percentage of the color spectrum. It's also an inherited trait so if someone who can see a high amount of the red spectrum has a child with someone who can see a high amount of blue, the child will be able to see a somewhat high amount of both resulting in them being a purple. This color perception determines everything about that person's life from the kinds of jobs they can work to their social standing to even who they can marry. A high level purple is forbidden from marrying a high level yellow for example as they are not complementary colors. There are also some other quirks in the world like a unseen but powerful ruling government has total control over technology and has been slowly forcing the tech level to go backwards by outlawing everything to the point where things like computers, phones, and cars no longer exist.

It's a really fun read that it at times both funny and exciting. Highly recommend it. Sadly, the author has yet to get around to writing the planned sequel, but it is still very much worth reading.

Ive actually read a little of that book, I need to go back into it. It actually reminded me of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

[dextersmith]

When I can find the time, I'm going to read Grimm's Fairy Tales, I hear it's really dark.

Dante's Inferno was decent.

[Skizzit]

Ive actually read a little of that book, I need to go back into it. It actually reminded me of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Yeah, Fforde's style is a lot like Douglas Adams. One of my all time favorite authors, Christopher Moore, also has an Adams-esque feel to his work.