The thread all about good books

Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse

 Spoiler

Harry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joys. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the bourgeois values he despises. His life changes dramatically when he meets a woman who is his opposite, the carefree and elusive Hermine. The tale of the Steppenwolf culminates in the surreal Magic Theater — For Madman Only!

The battle of one's self between the outspoken hatred and silent longing of humanity.

ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY

 Quote

This shrinking was in course of time replaced by a sympathy inspired by pity for one who has suffered so long and deeply, and whose loneliness and inward death I witnessed. In course of time I was more and more conscious, too, that this affliction was not due to any defects of nature, but rather to a profusion of gifts and powers which had not attained to harmony. I saw that Haller was a genius of suffering and that in the meaning of many sayings of Nietzsche he had created within himself with positive genius a boundless and frightful capacity for pain. I saw at the same time that the root of his pessimism was not world-contempt but self-contempt; for however mercilessly he might annihilate institutions and persons with his talk he never spared himself. It was always at himself first and foremost that he aimed the shaft, himself first and foremost whom he hated and despised.

So today I finished Flight and I almost cried. I was really moved. I really think you guys should read it, and don't worry, it is a fast read. I think it took me 4~5 days to finish.

I think my favorite part was how it was written. It was written in stream-of-consciousness.

After Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and some of Joyce's books, I'm a little tentative on touching stream-of-consciousness again.

I recently read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

 Spoiler

In a dark vision of the near future, a terrifying reality TV show is taking place. Twelve boys and twelve girls are forced to appear in a live event called the Hunger Games. There is only one rule: kill or be killed.

When sixteen year old Katniss Everdeen steps forward to take her sister's place in the games. she sees it as a death sentence. But Katniss has been close to death before. For her, survival is second nature.

I found it really interesting, I was a bit skeptical about getting it in the store, but it was really enjoyable and I'm glad I did. I'm dying for the 3rd book.

If you haven't read the Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy I also recommend it.. I didn't think it would be my type of book, but I found it funny and very enjoyable.. Mind you I only read 3 and a half. I got sidetracked and never finished it..

 Spoiler

One Thursday lunchtime the Earth gets unexpectedly demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems already to be more than he can cope with. Sadly, however, the weekend has only just begun, and the Galaxy is a very very very large and startling place.

The Seventh Tower by Garth Nix was also really enjoyable, it was adventurous, interesting and funny at times, There's also The Keys to the Kingdom by Garth Nix, It's also enjoyable, they're a bit short and simple reads but quite interesting to see the many things Arthur has to accomplish.

One more book I recommend is Monster Blood Tattoo by D.M Cornish
Adventurous, gory.. I loved it.

 Spoiler

The vast lands of the Half Continent bear the scars of centuries of conflict between humans and monsters. Only the hardiest of souls now travel the inland ways: merchants, Imperial messengers and bravest of all the monster-hunters. To be a hunter takes great cunning and extraordinary skill, for the creatures are as deadly as they are varied. Bogles, rever-man, grinnlings and nickers any one can kill a human quicker than thought.

Not that Rossamund Bookchild should worry. The orphan boy with a girl's name lives safe within the walls of Madam Opera's Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls. Safe, at least, until the day he is recruited into the service of the Empire, by a strange man with blood red eyes. This is his story.

Despite what people say I enjoyed Twilight, the imagery was very clear in my head, and is probably why I enjoyed them so much, not many authors can make me imagine a book in great detail, like Stephenie Meyer did in Twilight.(Don't kill me for saying that D

I would grab my Garth Nix books for the excerpt out of them but sadly they are at the bottom of my manga and keeping them stable and I'm terrified that if I pull them out the whole stack will fall down.. I really don't need over 100 manga falling on me ^^;

After Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and some of Joyce's books, I'm a little tentative on touching stream-of-consciousness again.

Stream-of-consciousness is amazing!

There's also The Keys to the Kingdom by Garth Nix, It's also enjoyable, they're a bit short and simple reads but quite interesting to see the many things Arthur has to accomplish.

I read up to Lady Friday, but I kind of forgot about these books. I thought they were interesting when I read them (Jr. high and early in high school).

Anyways, I am about halfway through Candide by Voltaire and it has a lot of powerful quotes. It is really, really good.

 Spoiler

Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." On the surface a witty, bantering tale, this eighteenth-century classic is actually a savage, satiric thrust at the philosophical optimism that proclaims that all disaster and human suffering is part of a benevolent cosmic plan. Fast, funny, often outrageous, the French philosopher's immortal narrative takes Candide around the world to discover that -- contrary to the teachings of his distringuished tutor Dr. Pangloss -- all is not always for the best. Alive with wit, brilliance, and graceful storytelling, Candide has become Voltaire's most celebrated work.

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

Good book ^.^

Any Suggestions?

Finished Candide the other day. It was a really good book. The most interesting parts of the book is how it gave what I believe was an accurate portrayal of life in that time.

Reading Moll Flanders for literature class, not sure how much I like this...

Hm, I've read an excerpt from Candide, and it doesn't seem too bad compared to how obnoxiously difficult Daniel Defoe wrote Moll Flanders, who apparently thought it brilliant to write everything in vernacular, un-literary, and plain language of the time and decides to ride everything on strong journalistic accuracy and a strong voice to tell this story; hell, I think I found Shakespeare's Macbeth that my class read last month a more comfortable read than this read that makes me feel butthurt everytime I read it. I think I might decide to look into Candide for the heck of it someday.

My favorite books:

Dragon Rider
Treasure Island
Murder Mystery (yes, thats the real name)
Pendragon Series
Axis Institute Series

And one more I can't think of right now.

Reading Moll Flanders for literature class, not sure how much I like this...

Hm, I've read an excerpt from Candide, and it doesn't seem too bad compared to how obnoxiously difficult Daniel Defoe wrote Moll Flanders, who apparently thought it brilliant to write everything in vernacular, un-literary, and plain language of the time and decides to ride everything on strong journalistic accuracy and a strong voice to tell this story; hell, I think I found Shakespeare's Macbeth that my class read last month a more comfortable read than this read that makes me feel butthurt everytime I read it. I think I might decide to look into Candide for the heck of it someday.

Do it. To be honest, I never thought I would ever really like books by writers you learn about in school. I gave it a chance, and it was a great book. Short but powerful.

I loved Animal Farm and Watership Down.
:|
PROPAGANDA YAY

I loved Animal Farm and Watership Down.
:|
PROPAGANDA YAY

Animal Farm, huh? When I read through that for school, I loved it so much that I bought a personal copy! Same with Art Spiegelman's Maus I and II as well as Catcher in the Rye.

Speaking of school curriculum stuff, how about Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None? Pretty nice mystery book and definitely one of my favorites for something I've had to read for school.

The Great Gatsby was really good, too. I wasn't a big fan of Huckleberry Fin, though.

you should try stuff by james kerouac if you like stream of consciousness. he's one of the better known stream of consciousness writers that kind of pioneered it during the beat generation

Atlas Shrugged is a must for anyone seeking intellectual readings. It is the new world Bible that will be the savior of socialistic mentality. LONG LIKE CAPITALISM. LONG LIVE OBJECTIVISM. LONG. LIVE. RAND.

[color="#000080"] Norgewian Wood - Haruki Murakami

 Summary

In a complete stylistic departure from his mysterious and surreal novels (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; A Wild Sheep Chase) that show the influences of Salinger, Fitzgerald and Tom Robbins, Murakami tells a bittersweet coming-of-age story, reminiscent of J.R. Salamanca's classic 1964 novel, LilithAthe tale of a young man's involvement with a schizophrenic girl. A successful, 37-year-old businessman, Toru Watanabe, hears a version of the Beatles' Norwegian Wood, and the music transports him back 18 years to his college days. His best friend, Kizuki, inexplicably commits suicide, after which Toru becomes first enamored, then involved with Kizuki's girlfriend, Naoko. But Naoko is a very troubled young woman; her brilliant older sister has also committed suicide, and though sweet and desperate for happiness, she often becomes untethered. She eventually enters a convalescent home for disturbed people, and when Toru visits her, he meets her roommate, an older musician named Reiko, who's had a long history of mental instability. The three become fast friends. Toru makes a commitment to Naoko, but back at college he encounters Midori, a vibrant, outgoing young woman. As he falls in love with her, Toru realizes he cannot continue his relationship with Naoko, whose sanity is fast deteriorating. Though the solution to his problem comes too easily, Murakami tells a subtle, charming, profound and very sexy story of young love bound for tragedy. Published in Japan in 1987, this novel proved a wild success there, selling four million copies.

I cannot explain how good this book makes me feel. It's one of those books you have to read over and over and over and over again. I completely loved it. In line with Kafka on the Shore, the other book by Murakami I reviewed in this same thread, the imaginery is perfect, the narrating-style is brilliant, and the characters lovable, to say the least.

I'm still wondering about the ending though, even if I read it for the first time like 2 and a half months ago. If anyone is interested in picking a Japanese author, let it be Murakami with this book, it's pretty western oriented, but Japanese at the same time. Hard to explain. [/color]

Brian Lumleys The necroscope series is one of the best book series ever written.

Harry Keogh (born Harry Snaith) is born with the ability to speak to the dead. As he grows up and his power manifests itself, he befriends the dead. From them he learns that death is not the end, that once the bodies die the mind goes on, and the dead continue to do in death what they did in life. From him, the once silent Great Majority learns to communicate amongst themselves, and love him for it. In turn, they offer him their knowledge. From a former maths teacher he discovers his own mathematical genius, and an ex-ex-army sergeant teaches him self-defense.
As the years go by, he has recurring dreams about his mother, dead after an alleged ice-skating accident but in reality murdered by her husband and Harry's stepfather Victor Shukshin. Shukshin is a psychic sensitive, a defector sleeper agent planted by the Soviet E-Branch. In his self-appointed mission to avenge his mother's death, Harry is dragged into a web of espionage (actually, ESPionage) involving the British and Soviet ESP agencies.
This leads to Harry learning to use the Möbius Continuum (from its discoverer, August Ferdinand Möbius himself, at his grave in Leipzig, Germany), which allows him to instantaneously transport himself anywhere in the world, and pits him head to head against Boris Dragosani, a necromancer and fledgling vampire.
From that point on, Keogh, backed by the British E-Branch, works to rid the world of the vampire menace, a mission that will eventually lead him to a parallel world, Sunside/Starside, the vampire world connected to Earth via two grey holes, one in Romania (the original "source" of vampires on Earth) and a second, recent one in the Pechorsk Proyect in the Urals. It is there that Harry Keogh's final death eventually meets up with him, after he has lost his family, his friends, his deadspeak and his numeracy... but not his humanity.
But as Harry knows well, death is not the end. His was a success story, and such stories need to go on. In the Möbius Continuum, Harry's essence explodes in a burst of golden light, and from that explosion a myriad of golden darts, each a part of Harry, come forth.
Each of those golden darts carry a part of Keogh, and can join with a host to grant him some of the abilities of the original Necroscope. Later books in the series tell the stories of individuals touched by these darts; Nathan Kiklu, Jake Cutter and Scott St. John. The darts seek to continue their mission in life, and so bond to individuals who will come up against the Necroscope's old foes, the Wamphyri, or menaces of a similar nature.
Harry's physical remains, infected by the spores of the vampire Faethor Ferenczy, were sent back in time by the Möbius Continuum and ended up in the marshes of the vampire world, ironically making him the source of the vampire plague when his own spores infected Shaitan; the first Wamphyri lord.

*book thread bump for the new year*

I liked seeing someone who read The Picture of Dorian Gray as I browsed through here, that's definitely in my top favorites for classics (and Oscar Wilde is a dear favorite author of mine).

I don't suppose anyone here has kept up with Lemony Snicket? The book he published this... last year, All The Wrong Questions, was very enjoyable to read. I'm a long-time fan of the Unfortunate Events series and universe so it was especially exciting to pick up. Now I just need the second book. Ergh, cliffhangers. While I wait for it I've started on Good Omens, because I've had that book sitting on my shelf for about a year now. I like it so far, within the first one-hundred pages.

I guess this is all a roundabout way of wondering if anyone else reads Neil Gaiman or Lemony Snicket here? They're my favorite modern writers, by far.

Brian Lumleys The necroscope series is one of the best book series ever written.

WHY ARE WE NOT BEST FRIENDS

Just glancing at this thread, I thought it said, "The thread all about good looks".

Ah, well.

Although not really a book, it is still a good read.

M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang

 Spoiler

The play was inspired by Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly. The first act introduces the main character, Rene Gallimard, who is a civil servant attached to the French embassy in China. He falls in love with a beautiful Chinese opera diva, Song Liling, who is actually a man masquerading as a woman. In traditional Beijing opera, females were banned from the stage; all female roles were played by males.

Won't reveal more than that. I did a large report on it for school, but it is still a good and interesting read, imo. Deals with stereotypes between Western and Eastern culture along with gender roles and possibly inversion as well as homosexuality.

*book thread bump for the new year*

I liked seeing someone who read The Picture of Dorian Gray as I browsed through here, that's definitely in my top favorites for classics (and Oscar Wilde is a dear favorite author of mine).

I don't suppose anyone here has kept up with Lemony Snicket? The book he published this... last year, All The Wrong Questions, was very enjoyable to read. I'm a long-time fan of the Unfortunate Events series and universe so it was especially exciting to pick up. Now I just need the second book. Ergh, cliffhangers. While I wait for it I've started on Good Omens, because I've had that book sitting on my shelf for about a year now. I like it so far, within the first one-hundred pages.

I guess this is all a roundabout way of wondering if anyone else reads Neil Gaiman or Lemony Snicket here? They're my favorite modern writers, by far.

High-five, Lemony Snicket fan here! I'm not too fond of how A Series of Unfortunate Events ended but I think he did a great job of writing a book that's suitably dark enough for an adult and yet is easy enough for a kid to understand as well. I've read Good Omens a long time ago as well so I ought to get it again since the previous book was borrowed and The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of my favourite classics, along with Frankenstein.

And while we're looking for favourite authors, does anyone here read books by Joe Abercrombie? My friend introduced me to his works such as The First Law series (The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Feast of Kings) and I've been hooked on it ever since. What I enjoy about his works is that he doesn't bother to sugarcoat and he makes a very convincing argument as to why battles are bad but they happen anyway, while his characters are variously on the sliding scale of bad and evil but they sometimes do good things or can still be good people. I highly recommend this series if you're a fan of low fantasy and you like continuity as all of his books thus far have been set in the same world.