I hit this thread up because I'm on amazon.com right now.. I'm a guy who loves to write but hates to read...utter irony... Here are a few I enjoyed.. Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerny Moneyball by Michael Lewis Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman Choke Chuck Palanhiuk PS - I'm buying Blood Meridian, Invisible Monsters and The Last Lecture
Read Philip K Dick. A very good one is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The movie, Blade Runner, was made after it. Another good one by him is The Divine Invasion. He writes heavily about psychology and philosophy, and almost always about paranoia esp in a "police state." You have to keep in mind, he was ahead of his time when he wrote this stuff. Kinda like Orwell.
For anyone who likes nonfiction, check out Goat by Brad Land. Very unconventional, super-quick read with a haunting story. It details hazing rituals (at Clemson) and how they paralleled a mugging he survived in which he was left for dead. He actually did his MFA at the college I went to for undergrad, where he wrote the book. It was a NY Times best seller and received a lot of praise as well as harsh criticism -- usually stuff like that winds up being good because people don't know what to make of it.
I read a really good one recently. "The Whiskey Rebels" by David Liss. It historical fiction about the startup of the US banking system. Sounds boring, but it is not. It has elements of a thriller and mystery. Really well written with good characters.
I spent my whole vacation last week with one book, and still haven't gotten half the way through its over 1200 pages. That would be "Drood", by Dan Simmons, which I know I have mentioned here before. Its an exhausting read, with so many stops and starts and timelines shifting back and forth, its really like reading a disordered encyclopedia of Charles Dickens. But I'm still enjoying it. That Charles Dickens was a real strange bird.
A Mediterranean Society by Goitein and The Closed Circle by David Pryce-Jones are good books for learning about Islam and middle eastern history. Med Society is sort of inadvertantly good for this, since its main focus is Jewish life in medieval Cairo.
Gates of Fire, by Steven Pressfield. The best writer of military faction (fiction but heavily based on fact and research) writes the best book of his career. The story of the 300 Spartans (and the thouands of other Greeks who were actually with them, despite history choosing to forget that) is one of the most moving books I've ever read. The film '300' is good. Gates of Fire blows it away. Pressfield's technique is to bring ancient history bang up to date. He gives ancient warriors the same concerns, fears and motivation as modern troops - often they use the same slang. This makes them seem far more real than the many books where they walk around spouting stuff like "verily, 'tis much to be apprehended that yonder mighty host might fall upon us." The Spartans in Gates of Fire are husbands, brothers, sons and you can believe in them as people. It's magnificent. Read it!
Blue Blood - Edward Conlon: excellent memoir written by a harvard educated NYPD detective Gommorah - Robert Saviano: Difficult read, because it's overwritten and translated from Italian, but this is a very important book about the new face of organized crime in Napoli. Mr. Saviano had to go under government protection after he wrote it. Rule of the Bone - Russel Banks: I re-read this book recently, I had read it when I was a teenager. It's a YA fiction, but it's an excellent coming of age story that is kinda a 90s hybrid of Huckelberry Finn and the Odyssey. I highly recommend it.
Did you really think the film "300" was good? I thought it beyond awful. Depicting Xerxes as some 10 foot tall giant was laughable, as were many of the "warriors" Persia was throwing at the Spartans in the movie. History and that film have very little in common. An accurate historical portrayal had more than enough story in it to make a great film and story line, but they completely butchered it into some fictional sci-fi movie, complete with dark scenes, scary monsters and no sunlight throughout. One of the most disappointing films I ever saw. PS: Why did they try to make the Immortals look like Star Wars Storm Troopers? Those masks actually had me laughing out loud. The Immortals were not heavilly armed soldiers like that. In fact their shields offered almost no protection against the spears of the Spartans. They were called Immortals because when one fell, there was always another to take his place... thus, they were immortal.
Oh man - it's based on a comic book...how realistic did you expect it to be? It's a very entertaining movie. Back to the thread: William Cooper's Behold a Pale Horse - read up on the author of this...he was mysteriously gunned down by "police".
Bosko's books are like Kim Jong il's plays, timeless, hyped up, yet most likely nonexistent classics.
Come on! That film wasn't even trying to be historically accurate. It was trying to be a visually stunning experience and it succeeded. Do you think the filmmakers thought Xerxes was really 10-feet tall?
DBJ, checking the first page i noticed you a king and koontz fan. If you haven't already read them i would reccomend the Odd Thomas trilogy, and Sieze the night/Fear nothing which is a two part continuing novel. With King, all the old stuff is great, new stuff, not so much. The only one i actually enjoyed was Cell. Also if you haven't read the 7 part dark tower series DO IT NOW! Since you like King and Koontz, check out John Saul if your not familiar with him. Some type of author except the endings aren't always happy.
Yeah, I'm reading Outliers right now, too. Gladwell is the only pure non-fiction author I've come across whose books you can't put down.
if you like farenheit 451 maybe you should look into Kurt Vonnegut or Tom robbins If you want a quick read Kurt Vonnegut God Bless you Dr Kevorkian is a great quick read its witty and quite funny at times.
I am about to go pick up the watchmen book its a comic book more or less but its gotten great reviews plus i wanna see the movie quite badly and cant wait
