June 28, 2004

Curious, GeorgeWhat are your favorite books? What books shaped your life? What are you reading now? What do you recommend? If you could bring only ten books to a desert island, which....well, you get the idea.

Any books you used to love but that didn't hold up over time? ( For me, that one was 'Atlas Shrugged' Gawd, what an overblown anal-retentive, piece of...with a supreme effort, backs out of the Ayn Rand Rant)

posted by PatB 20 years ago
  • "Where the Red Fern Grows" I easily read that front to back over 20 times throughout the course of my childhood. Still brings me to tears when Billy has to bury his dogs.
  • The books that shaped my life have been 'Heart of Darkness', by Joseph Conrad - because I had given up writing and reading it (as a teen) made me want to take up the pen again. Also 'The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy' by Robert Anton Wilson because it made me realise that a book could be brilliant, funny, & not bound by the usual rules. Also, 'The Atrocity Exhibition' by JG Ballard, because it is a work of genius.. for so many reasons that I could talk all day about. Ditto 'Naked Lunch' by William S Burroughs. Another one is 'At Swim Two Birds' by Flann O'Brien, the beginning of which inspired me to magnificent flights of fancy in my own wretched stories. There are probably many other books that have 'shaped' my thinking, that I have forgotten. I can't think of any books that I used to think were brilliant but don't anymore.. oh, I suppose 'the book of EST' by Luke Rinehart.
  • Wait - I mean, Ulysses, or some fucking ultra-smart shit like that.
  • I've read Memoirs of a Geisha so many times I've practically memorized the book, and still keep going back to it. I believe it's one of the best stories I've ever read, heard, seen, whatever. Mists of Avalon is #2 on my most loved books list. One of the hardest books for me to actually complete was the first Lord of the Rings. No action, some talking, a whole friggin lot of scenery. "The grass was tall, taller than Sam's shoulders, though shorter than Boromir's. It was green, or as green as a yellow hued green grass could be, and yet it shone like a jewel. When it swayed with the wind, it made a sighing noise. siiiiiiiiiiiiigh. Frodo wondered what kind of ants lived in the grass; if they ate the grass or..." and on and on and on.
  • The best book that I have read in the past few months would have to be John Okada's No No Boy.
  • As a kid/adolescent, I read Cynthia Voigt's Homecoming over and over again. The sequel/s were never as satisfying as the first book. Heller's Catch-22 is always funny and always new and has that euphoric ending. Lord of the Rings is a good timewaster, although I for one can't read it more often than once a year. Same for Chronicles of Narnia. I've also read The Godfather a few dozen times since I first bought a tatty copy for 50 cents five years ago. I'm currently reading Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything and am disappointed with all the inaccuracies, although his style is consistent with his travel books.
  • ROFL, minda25!
  • I read The Stand at 14. Probably a little too young to get the full dose of Stephen King's apocalypse theory, but my mother didn't stop me. And I've cast a worried glance at news reports of flu epidemics ever since. But I love this book. I have read it several times. It also hooked me on other giant epic novels. I read fairly quickly, so the longer, the better for my desert island Top 10 list.
  • you mean NOBODY is blowing the whistle on a double-post?
  • The Galactic Pothealer by Philip K Dick and Kleinzeit by Russel Hoban.
  • Oh yeah! Catch-22! There's another great non-linear storyline. And Russel Hoban is an awesome writer. Nobody is blowing the whistle on a double-post, SideDish, because the other link is toooooo long now, and also it's a different question, even though most people have chosen only to answer the first part of it. :)
  • AND WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH RADIOACTIVE GROWING ROCKS WITH HEARTBEATS??? HMMM??
  • *hee hee*
  • *whispers* Dishy, didn't anybody tell you that it's Ignore SideDish Day? Oh... oops... *skulks off*
  • OK, i'll play along, right now i'm reading the latest edition of "the thinking fans guide to baseball," which is an absolute classic and delicious summer reading. highly recommended. two sidedish thumbs up.
  • Yeah, I still like all these things, but I would aditionally recommend Timoleon Vieta, Come Home by Dan Rhodes, and Venus As A Boy by Luke Sutherland. They are good, and I have read them recently. So there.
  • Woolf's The Waves convinced me first to major in English and then to go to grad school in it. Now that I'm here, I have not only retained my love of Woolf (and Joyce--I'm one of those twits who calls Ulysses one of his favorite books), but have grown fond of some more recent pop-literati like Rushdie and McEwan. While Atonement hasn't changed my life like Woolf has, it has certainly changed my conceptions about how literary works should be organized.
  • Currently reading Paranoia by Joseph Finder and really enjoying it. Also, Contortionists Handbook by Craig Clevenger is fun. A book that didn't hold up over time for me was Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. I usually love this type of stuff, but it took me 3 readings to finish and even then I didn't enjoy it. Maybe a monkey could help me better appreciate it. I am reminded of a friend who would freak out if I put a book on the floor. "Show some respect man, books are our teachers!"
  • Mm- The Waves is incredible, I was lucky enough to pick up a first edition some years back. The ex-wife has it now. Anyone have an opinion on Haruki Murakami? Next on my reading list...
  • Haruki Murakami isn't that what they sing in the Lion King when they hold up the baby lion? never mind.
  • I'm a big fan of Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land it definitely changed my life and of course HHGTTG.
  • Watership Down, without a doubt. This was my personal Bible as a kid, and it's still the book I turn to when I'm looking for the comfort of a well-worn, well-loved novel.
  • The Chess Garden by Brooks Hansen. I read that about once a year. Never fails to enchant me.
  • Hey Tracy, what was inaccurate about A Short History of Nearly Everything? We purchased the book on tape version (er, book on 7 CDs version) for our 16 hour drive up to Seattle. I thought it was entertaining, and it's good when the authors themselves read their books to you. So are you saying we're not all going to die when the Yellowstone caldera erupts?
  • can never have too many book threads, SideDish. I didn't use the right keywords when I searched, I guess. But thanks for the link to the other thread. think of this one as a continuation. Some of my favorites: any of the Moomin books by Tove Jannsen. ( I bear a striking resemblance to Too-tickey) the Harry Potters. Everything by Michael Chabon (so far) 'Housekeeping' by Marilyn Robinson (every sentence of this book is worth reading aloud and savoring) 'the Leopard' by Guiseppe Di Lampedusa (novel, set in Italy in the 1860's.may not be in print anymore.) and when I get in an 'empire' mood, I'll start with Kipling's 'Kim', move on through Conrad...usually end up with 'Nostromo' If that isn't enough to cure me, I wade through a few chapters of 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' I love Umberto Eco but I usually feel like an ignoramous at least once a book. Anne Rice for sheer smut value, Diana Gabaldon for more smut (but I only read it for the history) ...and pretty much any historical non-fiction that is even the teensiest bit readable. enough from me. I love to read, love to talk books, love to reread books, love to smell books. Any recommendations you guys have will be devoured.
  • Daniel, I was talking about that over on Bookfilter, but the thing Bryson wrote about NZ being a major dumper of radioactive waste in the ocean really got to me.
  • I've read Memoirs of a Geisha so many times I've practically memorized the book Small filter. I haven't read it, but I cooked dinner for the author's wife (who is an acquaintance of my wife) last night. /illiterate name dropper Woolf's The Waves I keep seeing this as Wolof's The Waves. Currently reading Kachadorian's The Passive Solar House, and re-reading Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn.
  • My opinion of Haruki Murakami is: he is a fucking genius who would likely object to me swearing and would prefer I express myself with a suitable Raymond Chandler similie and/or Beatles quotation but I canna be bothered because I'm too busy telling you not to wait, go read Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World right now. No, seriously, go. I'll wait. In the meantime, Middlemarch I love love love, and my desert island books would also have to include my complete Riverside Shakespeare and the Collected Works of Jane Austen (the annual re-read of Pride & Prejudice, frequently followed by the re-watching of the BBC epic, is a much loved guilty pleasure).
  • I meant to say: the Shakespeare/Eliot/Austen not leastwise because they are damn LONG, and I am stuck on a desert island...
  • I really love In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. It's such a pleasure to read. So complete, beautiful, profound, and funny. And life changing too (as others have said). For example, Proust demonstrates that nothing is more important for an artist than art itself (not society or friendship or even love, except in so far as it inspires art). I took from this an important corollary, namely that for a non-artist like me, it was prolly a good idea to learn how to type and prepare for life of commerce. This book saved me from my own artistic ambitions. In a way, I owe it every decent paycheck I have ever collected. (And one little snark about Joyce in the wake of all this Bloomsday hype. So I hear it is likely that either he or Proust wrote the greatest novel of the 20th century. At the very least then, Proust wrote the greatest legible novel of the 20th century. While Ulysses may be readable to scholars or intelligent folks with guidebooks, Proust is readable to almost anyone. To write great fiction for a tiny, highly-educated audience is hard. I don't deny it. But to write fiction just as great for a wider audience is harder still.) The only other books I truly love are: Cities of the Red Night by William Burroughs, which I think is more wonderful, vibrant, and mind-blowing than even Naked Lunch. The Beautiful Room Is Empty by Edmund White, which is so well-written and has such delightful characters. I don't think there's any other book I've reread more. Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran. It is romantic and fabulous and makes me yearn for the New York of the 1970s. (Although episodes of the Jefferson's have that effect on me too.)
  • The Christian "Bible" shaped the world in ways impossible to calculate, but "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", "The Basketball Diaries", "Catcher in the Rye", The History of Luminous Motion", "Breakfast of Champions", "To Say Nothing Of The Dog" come to mind. Oh, and then there's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" . . . I'd better stop.
  • steveno I'd take 'The Doomsday Book' or 'Lincoln's Dreams' over 'To Say Nothing of the Dog' any day. More into poignance, prodromic dreams, and plague I guess.
  • Rereading Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale. More or less just for the shape of the sentences, although the mordant irony doesn't hurt any. Also Freud.
  • Books I would take to an island: - David Mitchell's "Ghostwritten" and "Number9Dream" - Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" - Haruki Murakami's "The Elephant Vanishes" Of course, David Mitchell has been accused of biting most of his material from Murakami. I don't think that's true, but even if it were, it would be fine with me -- his stories are amazing.
  • Although I haven't read it completely yet, current vote goes to Godel, Escher, Bach.
  • Here's my Desert Island Five: - James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" - Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" - Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" - Whitley Strieber's "Communion" - Alan Lightman's "Einstein's Dreams"
  • You get to bring ten books, cubeless and Einstein's Dreams is a tiny book, so only counts as 1/4
  • I almost don't read books (three a year at most). And I never read the same book twice (if I did my book count would be much lower). So, most of the books you all mention I even never heard about. That said... The books that gave words to my thoughts were: - Demian, by Herman Hesse. - Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse. - The Stranger, by Albert Camus. Those books and similar ones spoke for me for at least 5 years. Then I turned to borrowed SF paperbacks, which turned me from immature angsty existencialism to immature cynicism. Just the same but without the pretty words. I also tried reading GEB and almost got all the way but I had to turn back the book to the library before they expelled me for unpaid fines.
  • I'm terrible at making lists and invariably forget something important, but here goes. Books I've loved include (in the order I see them on my haphazard shelving): Immortality, Milan Kundera (Not his most famous but my favorite, it has a lighter touch that I found charming) Grendel, John Gardner (This might be my very favorite. Read or at least skim the Cliff's Notes for Beowulf first) Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (I have no idea how it does, but this just sucks me right in) Animal Farm, George Orwell (Still the scariest book I've read) The Quincunx, Charles Palliser (For fans of long, intricately plotted suspense. I've recommended it to fans of The Cryptonomicon even though it's an historrical novel) I think I bit off more than I could chew so I'll stop at this pretty arbitrary point, before this becomes an unending ohmygodyouhavetoreadthis! list. I should mention that I spent way too much time reading Salinger in my teens, and that the last book that really grabbed me was The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead. Don't even get me started on kids' books.
  • goetter, you are one lucky, lucky man. Should you feel like sharing, I'd love to hear how you met. No pressure, though. :o)
  • This is all I could come up with.. I don't know which answers which question it's way too late The Catcher in the Rye The Great Gatsby Altered Carbon and Broken Angels - Richard K. Morgan TWODENP, SVATCL, TTOOCG - Louis De Bernieres The Man in the High Castle, Valis, Ubik, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, Divine Invasion - Phillip K. Dick The Dune Series The Winter Queen - Borris Akunin Bangkok 8 - John Burdett The Wolf and the Crown, The Dragon and the Unicorn, The Eagle and the Sword, The Serpent and the Grail, Wyvern, Radix, Solis - A.A. Attanasio On The Road, Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac Junky - William Burroughs The First Third - Neal Cassady The Years of Rice and Salt - Kim Stanley Robinson Illium - Dan Simmons The Deathgate novels - Weiss + Hickman
  • These two have lived on my bedside table for decades and so get read frequently: Joyce's Finnegan's Wake and Flann O' Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds. Also lifelong favorites which I reread often: Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy and Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Most influential: The Lord of the Rings, Shaw's Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, Thucydides' History of the Peloponesian War, T. H. White's England Have My Bones, C.S. Lewis' The Discarded Image, and I suppose The Oxford English Dictionary should be on this list, too.
  • So many of the books I've read seem to carry most of their weight because of the point in my life where I happened to read them. If I had read them earlier I might not have been able to appreciate them, while later I moved past books that were very important to me at the time and I would read again in the same moment. It is difficult to judge which are 'all time' greats. There are many wonderful books listed already, but one genre that seems under-represented is fantasy. So, a fantasy epic that is both under-appreciated and destined for long term greatness, reminiscent of Tolkien and Homer. Lord of the Rings re-told for the modern adult... The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay
  • *enters weeping and rending clothes I can't do this! How can I possibly choose? ONLY TEN???? Just shoot me now.
  • The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri - a Pulitzer Prize winning collection of great short stories.
  • Nal, I kiss you. I did the Fionavar Tapestry for my Honors thesis. And I still cry at the end of Tigana. Dang. Told myself I wouldn't post here. Can I pick ten writers instead? Anything by: Guy Gavriel Kay; Terry Pratchett; Isaac Asimov; Roger Zelazny; Philip K. Dick; Louis Cha (aka Jin Yong); Louise McMaster Bujold; JRR Tolkien. Heinlein's Friday, Starship Troopers, Double Star, Job, The Cat That Walked Through Walls, Stranger in a Strange Land; Herbert's Dune (Only the first book; the others were a pain); George R R Martin (although this is a cheat; I love him, but I can't read him. But I love him. It's strange) But...if I really, really had to choose: Pratchett's Small Gods and The Night Watch; Kay's Fionavar Tapestry; Zelazny's Lord of Light and Creatures of Light and Darkness; Bujold's Cordelia's Honor; Jin Yong's Condor Heroes... that's it. Hard put to decide the remaining four books. Too many to choose.
  • 'Day of the triffids' by J Wyndham, cos I'd like to be that guy 'Orlando', by V Wolf, cos i'd like to be that guy / girl Any Kerouac One day in the life of Ivan Denisovitch (sp?) Pratchett is just sub Douglas Adams in my opinion (no offence intended, at all) Ian McKewan, F Scott Fitzgerald, the list goes ever on and on...
  • Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
  • I can not believe no one yet has posted W. Richard Steven's Unix Network Programming, Vol. 1.
    I'm apalled. /nyie
  • Alnedra, Nal, I believe you and I could talk. Yes, I love G.G. Kay's work too. He just doesn't write enough. *sigh* Hmm, the Taltos series by Steven Brust is fun, and looks like it's going places, but not necessarily a desert island book. I want fun and for that I nominate Douglas Adams. But only as far as "So long and thanks for all the fish". NOT Dirk Gently, in any universe. And "Last chance to see", of course. Think I'd enjoy the irony of the title, given my desert island status. Hmmm, what else. "Traveller in Black" is always worth pulling out every now and then. And (if I may be permitted to cheat) I would like to nominate a picture book; anything containing the surviving photos by Frank Hurley from the Shackleton expedition to the South Pole (even though they didn't get there.) Wonderful stuff for a desert island. Things can always be worse. I would also nominate...the Oxford English Dictionary (does that count as one book?) Complete with complimentary copy of the Surgeon of Crowthorne, to remind me of what an insane undertaking it was. "The Golden Gate" by Vikram Seth. Think I'll stop now, I want to go off and read somewhere.
  • Alnedra: You read Creatures of Light and Darkness? Wow, not just me then huh? Think I'd disagree over Small Gods though; if we're Pratchetting I would go for The Light Fantastic first. And probably, from the Guards story arc, I'd choose either Feet of Clay or Jingo. In my oh so terribly humble opinion. Oh, and no John Brunner on your list? Colour me surprised. I think I'd add Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion to my list. Maybe.
  • A short 10-list of books for the aforementioned isle... 1. Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night (imo his finest, most dehabilitating work) 2. Michael Moorcock's The War Hound and the World's Pain (the grail legend retold from a Lucipherian perspective) 3. Norman Spinrad's The Void Captain's Tale (the epic, stripped down to it's verdant essentials as only Spinrad can do) 4. Iain Banks' The Player of Games (deft, wry cultural commentary told *perfectly*) 5. Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum (the stone hammer of pure polymathicism against the anvil of the intellect - only, you know, funner) 6. Iain Pears' The Dream of Scipio (glorious is scope, heartbreaking in tone) 7. How To Survive On A Desert Island (man's gotta eat) 8. W. H. Auden's Collected Poems (my favorite poet) 9. my giant unabridged works of Shakespeare (to lend me perspective on those long desert isle nights) 10. Lawrence Sanders' McNally's [insert title here] (sleek, easy tales of a shallow effete's adventures as a half-ass p.i. - yeah, it's light fare, but we can't read Joyce all the time, now can we?)
  • Pratchett is just sub Douglas Adams in my opinion (no offence intended, at all) Them's fightin' words. IMO, Pratchett is much better. But let me add: His Dark Materials. Soooooo addictive.
  • Firstly, thank you SideDish for single-handedly (clears throat, glares at monkeys-who-know-better) calling the double-post. But, hey, this ain't no MetaPoutFilter so here we go: Catcher in the Rye (D'yever see that movie 'Six Degrees of Separation'?) Satanic Verses (Man that was hard) The Beatles: Sessions (Most.awesome.book.ever) umm . . shoot i forget. Maybe that's why i have so many books - they're all unread. We need a thread just for Who's Read War and Peace? not me What's that disease called where you walk into a bookstore and load up even though you have a big stack of unread books already?
  • Who's Read War and Peace? not me either. And that disease is called "erudition," pete.
  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being affected me profoundly; I'm surprised noone else has mentioned it. If you haven't read it yet, go do so. Life of Pi also made me think, but I never did figure out all the metaphors. My guilty-pleasure-go-back-and-read-it-over-and-over is either Neuromancer or The Difference Engine depending on my mood. Oh, that early Gibson, where did he go?
  • Ahhh, the ancient seminal Cyberpunk masterpiece! I prefer Count Zero, but I did my Master's thesis on The Difference Engine. If you have trouble sleeping, I'd be pleased to send you a pdf of it. Early Gibson became Later Gibson, as all authors inevitably do. Pattern Recognition was good, but nothing he's done since the 80s has really, imo, measured up to the lawless, dystopiac glory of the Sprawl series.
  • Gibson is OK; problem is, I read The Shockwave Rider (by Brunner) before I read Neuromancer (or Count Zero).
  • Coming in late, but : The Stand - Stephen King (read when I was but a small child, but still re-read) One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest - Ken Kesey (only book to ever make me cry on the tube. V embarrassing. If you
  • I think we need a word for what happens when you go through a thread and come out through the other side since I am now contemplating all the books I haven't read. Like this
  • minda25, my wife met her by purest happenstance on a vacation in California, where they hit it off. Business -- researching a book of her own -- brought her to Seattle, so she joined us for dinner, which is where I met her. Her husband Arthur-the-author wasn't with her, thus sparing me any embarrassment at my lack of erudition. She's a charming (translation: she was gracious about my veal chops [laugh]) and thoughtful woman. Speaks Mandarin and Japanese. Met her husband in an Asian Studies grad program at I-forget-which university (Columbia?). Famous author anecdote: when describing why it can be better to have a secretary or personal assistant make dinner reservations for you, she admitted, "It's because they can shamelessly name-drop to get you a better table-- 'I'd like to reserve a table for ARTHUR GOLDEN and AMY TAN, please'-- which you'd never have the gall to do in person."
  • waraw, I was doing fine with the Life of Pi metaphors until the island. That was just...weird. That is another of my favourites though. The problem I find with these books threads is that I have to walk away, or I'd be commenting on every comment, saying, "Oh yeah! I forgot about that one!" Douglas Adams = prime example. And I think Dirk Gently has its moments of brilliance that make it worthwhile.
  • You know, y'all have brought up so many good books and authors, I think I'm going to change the rules: you have a solar powered laptop and ten CDs. There. That's better.
  • Hey- no fair changing rules in mid-thread! The Desert Island Ten, or those books I would suffer without. - Umberto Eco: Name of the Rose - Chaucer: Canterbury Tales - Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf - Charles Finney: Circus of Dr. Lao - Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land - Gore Vidal: Creation - Don Marquis: Archy & Mehitabel - Murasaki Shikibu: Tale of Genji - Roald Dahl: any anthology of his adult stories - Robertson Davies: anything at all, fiction or non, doesn't matter. Secondary choices, because I just can't stop: anything by Ray Bradbury, Peter Matthiessen, James Thurber, Douglas Adams, Christopher Moore, and Mark Twain. Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and Jack Finney's Time and Again. That's it. Oh, wait, I see something else on the back shelf....
  • oooh... polychrome, we can so tear each other's eyes out about which Pratchett novel. The Light Fantastic was ok for me, but I loved Small Gods. Read it eight times in two weeks. And probably close to thirty times by now. The Night Watch mainly because of the "little angels" song; I'd have to agree with your choices, because the Guards novels are all really good. Who's John Brunner? *Googles furiously*
  • Might try John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, Alnedra. Pratchett novel I enjoy most is Reaper Man, followed by Hogfather.
  • Stand On Zanzibar is his magnum opus, Alnedra. If you've read any of John dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy, you get the style. As an added bonus, you get to meet MeFi regular Midas Mulligan. Brunner was, or is, I'm not sure if he's still writing, nearly as prolific as Asimov. He did 'The Compleat Enchanter' which is nice, bu5t nowhere near as nifty as the guy who wrote the Fafherd and the Grey Mouser stories. Can't think of his name. Same guy who wrote 'bell, book and candle' which was made into the movie 'conjure wife' or vice versa. I have an extra copy of Stand on Zanzibar if youy'd like it, Alnedra. AND Beeswacky you should just be aware that I wrote a whole bunch of pertinent stuff about Brunner well before you posted but it mysteriously disappeared on preview.
  • wait. I fucked up Fahferd and the grey mouser had nothing to do with Brunner. Sorry.
  • Whoa, hold up: how does Midas Mulligan fit in here with Brunner and dos Passos?
  • OK, late to the party, but still sticking in my 2 cents. Nine Stories by Salinger. They're short, but they pack a real punch. 1984 by Orwell. Every time I read it I pick up on something new. Space-Time and Beyond by Bob Toben. Crazy theoretical physics in cartoon form. Regrettably, it's been out of print for many years, but well worth it if you can find it. The Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn. Only read excerpts of it, but if I'm stuck on a desert island, I suppose I'll have lots of time.
  • Fes dude. Midas Mulligan is a character that Brunner invented, who wrote a book called something like 'You're an Ignorant Idiot' This is a fictional book, like the Necronomicon, but more 'hep' The person who calls himself Midas Mulligan on MeFi is being Kewl.
  • yah, Fafhrd is a Fritz Leiber character. Compleat Enchanter is Sprague and de Camp, I think. /dating self
  • Some excellent choices in this thread, methinks. It'd be too heart-breaking to choose just ten, but without a doubt I'd include: #1 The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea, which IMHO is not only an excellent trip of a novel, but easily re-readable. #2 The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli, which similarly is very re-readable and might add some serious strategic thought to counter-balance the amusement factor of #1. #3 Foucault's Pendulum, which is open to so much interpretation it's a puzzle unto itself. #4 Finnegan's Wake by Joyce, since you could read it 100 times and get a different meaning every time - plus it'd take you a lifetime to understand every single sentence in that mother of a book. ...and I find it harder and harder to chose the rest, so I'll save the bandwidth.
  • Perhaps we should restrict the number of times we can post about our favorite books or about any books for that matter. My bank account seems to be mysteriously lower after every post, and my pile of "to be read" books grows ever larger.
  • I like Tristes Tropiques by Levi-Strauss and Speak Memory by Nabokov. Those are also the two books prolly changed me most out of those I still like, apart from Ulysses, and if I keep going down that road, well, as others have said, better stop here. What I'm reading now is Aubrey's Brief Lives and
  • [excrpt, damn you preview function, damn you]
  • It's really no use, I can't choose. I'll just have to take my library card and do air-drop style interlibrary loans. Keep 'em coming, I see old favorites, and keep writing down new stuff. I love to read, love to talk books, love to reread books, love to smell books. YES! Where would I be without books? How incomplete my life would be. Poetry, fiction, non-fiction, plays! Hooray for them all. I love having access to different items on the web, but it doesn't satisfy like holding a book. Confession time: I read murder mysteries like you'd eat potato chips. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
  • goetter swear to god, i have the Compleat Enchanter right here next to my beer bottle and its by Brunner. Not to say, never to say that L. Sprague DeCamp is unworthy of rememberance but damned if I can pin a single title on him. I pulled out 'The Road to Science Fiction' vols. one through three and also the novel version of 'Flowers for Algernon' and the complete short stories of Cordwainer Smith, who, if you ask me, makes images that stick forever. Plus the guy was some kind of spook and he's buried in Arlington Cemetary Anyway, Suomynona this is my thread and I get to milk it for what its worth. And to you guys who like Foucault's Pendulum all I can say is I read it and I liked the Name of the Rose better. That guy has a mind with too many arcane things in it. I read a book about a guy who lost his cat and wife and wound up in a hole being guarded by a possibly psycho teenage girl. I'm figuring it's written by the Japanese guy you all are talking about. I read it a while ago but the fucker still haunts me. I'd get it in hardback if I knew for sure who wrote it. If it was up to me, i'd go for anything written by Will Durant. And Samuel Delaney. Oh goody,an essay sure to be a thread killer. Lucky us.
  • I like Tristes Tropiques by Levi-Strauss and Speak Memory by Nabokov. You have good taste. This is always pleasing. I will not, however, comment upon your spelling of
  • PatB, yes, that is Murakami and that would be the Wind Up Bird Chronicle and you know, when you describe it like that it does sound kinda fucked up. Will Self, also I love, particularly The Quality Theory of Insanitybut is likewise fucked up. I am a Bad Canadian: not only does Alice Munro do nothing for me, I am bored by 90% of Carol Shields. I know, wrong.
  • Fucked up, yeah, but deep
  • PatB et al: Fletcher Pratt with L.S. de Camp wrote a book called The Incomplete Enchanter, my edition came out in 1960. Still quite amusing if you can find a copy. There are a number of sequels, two or three of which were later published in a volume called The Complete Incompleat Enchanter -- but to my mind, the original was the best one. Googling around, there seems also to have been an edition of one of the series called The Compleat Enchanter, possibly a re-title, a deed to thoroughly muddle the minds of bibliographers and interested readers.
  • kinda like JG Ballard and Kobo Abe but on some kind of drug that wasn't invented then. Or maybe I'm on the drug.
  • Um, sorry all. I'm thinkin' of "The Compleat Traveller in Black' Not to be confused with Elric of Melnibone, the guy with the big black sword that sucked souls and couldn't be controlled.
  • Praise to PatB, For this fine FPP!
  • PatB: too true; holes = deep.
  • D'ya think we could maybe do a Science Fiction FPP? That wouldn't be a double post, would it? I have a deep-seated need to talk about Elric's long, thick, hard, penetrating, soul-stealing, cruel and compelling black sword, Stormbringer, and how it wound up in this game which is incredibly cool but impossible to beat without cheating, not like this has anything to do with books. Except you can kill and sacrifice Hobbits on any Chaotic altar. Oh, and Beeswacky, the check is in the mail, along with a little something extra. Go buy yourself something pretty.
  • *ponders: Could it be I'm getting a new sporran to replace the one my collie ate?* Heh. Woz the brown one with the beady wee eyes.
  • Oh I do love me some Stormbringer. My favorite weapon, though, is the Valkyrie's Mjolnir, which comes back to you if you toss it wearing the gauntlets of power - more reliable.
  • Oh, and it's not impossible to beat without cheating. One friend of mine beat it playing a Tourist, and several times as a Samurai. You just have to have a long essay due, you'll beat it eventually, about two weeks after deadline.
  • Patb -- I think you may have taken that more seriously then it was intended. Harold and the Purple Crayon -- one of my favorite books when I was younger and if I could find it, today. also the Uncle Wiggily stories.
  • "One evening Harold decided to go for a walk in the moonlight. But there wasn't any moon, and Harold needed a moon for a walk in the moonlight. Fortunately, he had brought his purple crayon. So he drew a moon. He also needed something to walk on. So he drew a path..." no worries, Suo. I took it just the way you meant it. YOU, however, seem to have taken ME too seriously. (after you, my dear Alphonse...no no no, after YOU...)
  • Suoynona: You read the Uncle Wiggily stories? I thought I was the only surviving person who did that. I loved them! (Another kids' book I miss is "Hoppity." It was one of those cheap things you'd buy at a grocery store, and I read it to my daughter over and over when she was a toddler, going through several copies since the binding was so bad that the books would fall apart quickly.) Not desert island stuff, but the first books that entranced me and were slightly more "literature" than cute stories were the Laura Ingalls Wilder "Little House" series, followed closely by Louisa May Alcott's books, especially "Little Women." I still love history and biography, whether fictionalized or au natural. I got through "Godel, Escher and Bach", but didn't really have the math training to understand the last part. A science-for-the-masses book from the 1970s I did love, though, was "Dancing Wu Li Masters." Few books have made me say "Wow!!!" so often. Long out of print, and maybe outdated, but I'd like to read it again.
  • Moving from South Dakota to North Carolina when I was just starting high school, I hit an unbelievable wall: the lackluster public school system of NC would not accept any of my credits from courses taken in SD (apparently the English Literature course I took in SD did not equal the 10th Grade English course offered in NC, and on and on for every course I took in SD...). I was effectively "dumped" into the 10th Grade even though I was officially in the 11th Grade. I'll never forget the "10th Grade English" course I was forced to take. On the first day, the teacher said "based on statistics, over 50% of you will drop out before the end of the school year." I was in total disbelief. Yet by the end of the year, indeed, over 50% of my classmates had dropped out. "10th Grade English" in NC consisted of taking spelling tests each week (such disturbing words as airport, automobile, and building are some of the memorable words that come to mind) and taking naps. I remember taking the tests and shaking my head each time. There were always other students ogling my test to "figure" out correct spellings - it was sad. Needless to say, the teacher realized that I was a bit too bright for the given level of the course. She spoke with the school officials and arranged for me to enter "Advanced English 12" during my senior year (woo hoo). There was one condition: I had to make up "11th Grade English." I was completely punished for being better educated than the average NC student: I had to attend night school to take 11th Grade English during my senior year. This so-called night course was a COMPLETE joke. Night School is where they sent the pregnant students, the mentally disturbed, the "trouble makers", etc. Each night for two hours, I had to do such tasks as word-find puzzles, drawing with crayons, and other wonderfully mind-numbing activities. As luck would have it, the teacher who was stuck "teaching" this night class was a rather witty lady. She caught on fairly soon that I shouldn’t even be there. I'll never forget the night she walked up to me and handed me a copy of Breakfast of Champions. Having never been exposed to Kurt Vonnegut, I was never the same person after I finished reading that book. She gave me hope, encouragement, and a new-found look on life... OK, sorry for the long story. But screw it, this thread has big 'ol dusty cobwebs strung about. Others that have greatly affected my life: Brave New World Little House on the Prairie series Tales from the White Hart Some unknown pop-up book Kodonsha's Compact Kanji Guide The Science in Science Fiction a greatly worn Penthouse stories paperback from the 80's The Twenty-One Balloons What am I reading now? Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty.
  • What is up with the crazy italics in this thread?
  • they just invented some smog-eating cement and they're just going nuts over it. on preview, sorry, that's another thread