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Author Topic: Exciting New Book Thread  (Read 16428 times)

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melack

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Re: Exciting New Book Thread
« Reply #90 on: October 20, 2007, 06:48:42 am »
Okay, dudes. I just got a 75 dollar Amazon gift card and I need some book ideas.

Since finishing college a year and a half ago, I've basically been reading all the books that I'd bought during school but never got around to finishing or even starting. You'd be surprised how many of those I'd had lying around. Just picking up a new book off a stack of books I already own means I haven't been following the latest releases, so I'm totally out of touch with what's new.

I was an English and Poli Sci major in school, so I enjoy fiction and non-fiction stuff. Any body have any recommendations off the top of their head?
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theinevitable

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Re: Exciting New Book Thread
« Reply #91 on: October 20, 2007, 07:58:31 am »
The Invisible Man, by Ralph Elllison. I love this book. I am reading it right now and it is intense.
Um, right now I am reading that book, and I just read Plato's Republic, and Machiavelli's The Prince, and Aristotle's "Politics and Constitution of Athens" and "Nicomachean Ethics". Except... I read them badly and now I have to write a paper on them. Plato, though, he is fuck*ng awesome and he changed the way I think about things. So good.

allso: hell of books about Italian Film (actually, litearally, 4), a Human Evolution textbook, a Linguistics textbook, various random psych articles/chapters/experiments about Human Memory. All of those are awesome, but are probably not good for pleasure reading.
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CortJstr

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Re: Exciting New Book Thread
« Reply #92 on: October 20, 2007, 04:02:47 pm »
I'm still just reading The Malazan Book of the Fallen. As I have been basically since this thread started. Fuck you, Steven Erikson for writing a 10-book series that's actually good. I had other things to do, you bastard.

At least I'm up to book 6, The Bonehunters. More than halfway there!
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melack

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Re: Exciting New Book Thread
« Reply #93 on: October 20, 2007, 04:18:07 pm »
I'm wondering if I should take special advantage of the buyer's anonymity offered by my newfound Amazon gift card. That is to say, load up on the painfully obvious classics -- Hemingway, etc. -- that I've never had the occasion to read before. The benefit of this, of course, is being able to buy books that everyone in the world has already read without suffering dirty looks from the cashier.
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wombat

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Re: Exciting New Book Thread
« Reply #94 on: October 20, 2007, 06:56:34 pm »
Where do you shop where bookstore clerks give you dirty looks? I have never encountered this. I thought this was just a music-purchasing phenomenon.
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Re: Exciting New Book Thread
« Reply #95 on: October 21, 2007, 02:59:50 am »
Yeah having worked at different bookstores for a total of about 4+ years, I have to say someone coming up to the counter with a classic was always viewed as a "cool" customer in all us book store employee's eyes.  I mean if you're buying Hemingway, that probably means you've read other Hemingway.  It was the Daniel Steel and Tom Clancy buyers that were the ones that disappointed us.  Or even worse, people who read Harlequin or Historical Romance novels.  WTF?  I always tried to remind myself that "hey, at least they're reading!"  But you have to remember that most bookstore employees are a special kind of loser in and of themselves, and their snobby judgment of you should only be a reminder that you probably get laid more than they do.
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littlefallsmets

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Re: Exciting New Book Thread
« Reply #96 on: October 21, 2007, 03:46:24 am »
Getting the "Watchmen" graphic novel is always important. "Dark Knight Returns" too.

Is there any Philip K Dick you haven't read yet? Any Vonnegut? Hunter S Thompson? Mark Twain?

The classic sci-fi novel "The Stars My Destination" is often unjustly overlooked.

A good translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh is always awesome.

A play to read, maybe? "Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead" seems to have been ripped off so often that it seems to have been rendered insignificant? But it totally fuckin' hasn't actually. Our Town, maybe? Tennessee Williams is some good shit.

If you wanna go total old-school, The Tempest is fuck*ng amazing.

"The Bad Guys Won" about the 1986 Mets is clutch, for obvious reasons.
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Re: Exciting New Book Thread
« Reply #97 on: October 21, 2007, 04:21:47 am »
Try some quality genre fiction -- It's hard to go wrong with John Le Carre or Patrick O'Brian.
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theinevitable

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Re: Exciting New Book Thread
« Reply #98 on: October 21, 2007, 04:54:28 am »
For some reason, I have lost a really large number of graphic novels to the "I borrowed this from you, and will never return it" thing. Watchmen? Gone. Bone? Gone. The Cute Manifesto? Gone.

my english teacher from high school has the first two. after this year she's moving to Virginia, so, I'd better get them back.
My ex has The Cute Manifesto, but she goes here now. So maybe one day I'll run into her and mention it?
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Re: Exciting New Book Thread
« Reply #99 on: October 21, 2007, 05:11:51 am »
I'd definitely back up good genre stuff like Le Carre or Watchmen or Heinlen, Wodehouse is also deliciously tasty in my opinion if you've never read him. The man wrote books that just convince you all is right with the world.
I'm reading a book called Hollow Earth by someone Standish (don't have it with me right now) which is a history of theories that the earth is hollow over the last few hundred years. Maybe also some accessible non-fiction stuff like the Selgiraffe Gene by Dawkins or A Brief History of Time by Hawking, really tasty if you've never read them.

At the end of the day though nothing is quite as satisfying as picking up a book by that author you always meant to read but never got around to it. That's just an opinion of course.
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KeithHernandez

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Re: Exciting New Book Thread
« Reply #100 on: October 21, 2007, 08:54:11 am »
Quote from: littlefallsmets on October 21, 2007, 03:46:24 am
Is there any Philip K Dick you haven't read yet? Any Vonnegut? Hunter S Thompson? Mark Twain?.

You have no idea how much of my reading decisions revolve around this (the answer to all of them is no, but I am quickly getting there).  Sometimes it is ever like "hey vonnegut thought well of Heller, I should read some of his stuff"

Also, Catch22 is good.

Does it seem like novelists are better at being good for long amounts of time compared to musicians and such?  I mean PKD probably did as many drugs as your average funk band, but he stayed better longer than nearly any body I can think of as far as music goes, so it ain't that.
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littlefallsmets

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Re: Exciting New Book Thread
« Reply #101 on: October 21, 2007, 10:08:33 am »
Well, Phil had on his side the fact that he was Genuinely Crazy, y'know.

Say what you will about madness and much of it'll be true but... it never leaves you at a loss for ideas. If you can keep yourself together mentally enough to actually write your ideas down, madness can keep you going for years and years and year.

The inconceivable amount of amphetamines he did helped too, of course.

I'm almost at the point in this writing project I'm working on where PKD get introduced as a character and... man... am I looking forward to writing him.
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Re: Exciting New Book Thread
« Reply #102 on: October 21, 2007, 03:39:13 pm »
Quote from: KeithHernandez on October 21, 2007, 08:54:11 am
Also, Catch22 is good.


I just re-read Catch-22 about 2 months ago, then listened to Closing Time just recently.  Closing Time was pretty good, but Catch-22 if just a fuck*ng amazing book.
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melack

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Re: Exciting New Book Thread
« Reply #103 on: October 22, 2007, 05:13:56 am »
Reading Catch-22 in high school is pretty much the reason I went on to major in English in college.
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Re: Exciting New Book Thread
« Reply #104 on: October 22, 2007, 01:46:54 pm »
Everyone should read Edward Abbey's "The Fool's Progress."
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