wanna start reading chronomaster. never had the chance to actually finish the game i started. guess i'll find out how it ends with the book.
Favorite books / What are you reading?
- Thread starter Snackpack
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UniversalWolf
eaten by a grue.
I can never follow the plan when it comes to my reading list. I've started rereading Plutarch's Lives. I'm about halfway through the life of Quintus Sertorius, which is one of my favorites. That story could make a great epic movie.
Oh, and I'll take Mark Twain over Steinbeck, although I agree Steinbeck is great.
Oh, and I'll take Mark Twain over Steinbeck, although I agree Steinbeck is great.
UniversalWolf
eaten by a grue.
Definitely, if you think it would interest you. It's been several years since I read any Mark Twain, but I know I've never been disappointed by anything I have read. And that's without mentioning what a great character he was in real life.Stealste said:
Not that I don't appreciate Steinbeck, though. His books have never disappointed me either.
I've finished Plutarch's life of Sertorius, and now I've jumped to Cato the Younger.
Member of Khans
Vault Dweller
Well, obviously I'm reading stuff with a lot less cultural impact than UniversalWolf or many other guys round here 
A my parents' neighbor moved to a smaller apartment and had to get rid of her whole Terry Pratchett collection.... so I'm now the proud owner of 18 Discworld novels. 6 in German translation, rest in English. Looks like I've got quite some reading to do.
A my parents' neighbor moved to a smaller apartment and had to get rid of her whole Terry Pratchett collection.... so I'm now the proud owner of 18 Discworld novels. 6 in German translation, rest in English. Looks like I've got quite some reading to do.
welsh
Junkmaster
You know, MofK, don't feel so bad. I usually don't read much high-brow literature.
Sylvia Plath I read in College and... she goes nuts and tries to kill herself. Hope that didn't spoil the fun...
You can read some pretty good books that are considered to be high brow but are pretty good. For instance, Robert Stone's A Flag for Sunrise- is pretty powerful, not merely as a literature but as thriller too. In my opinion, Stone's book is better than Dog Soldiers (a story about people running heroin from Vietnam to California as the Vietnam War ends - and that book one the National Book of the Year Prize as best book of the year.
World According To Garp is also a lot of fun. Actually John Updike is a lot of fun.
Born on the 4th of July- is pretty good.
My advice- don't get caught up in genre-
But if you want a good thriller-
Eric Ambler's Coffin for Demitros is pretty sweet.
Robert Conrad's The Secret Agent- awesomely twisted.
I also love London's The Sea Wolf - one of the best reads.
Last of the Mohicans and Three Muskateers- might be considered adventure fiction, but hey, its the summer and they are a lot of fun to read.
Sylvia Plath I read in College and... she goes nuts and tries to kill herself. Hope that didn't spoil the fun...
You can read some pretty good books that are considered to be high brow but are pretty good. For instance, Robert Stone's A Flag for Sunrise- is pretty powerful, not merely as a literature but as thriller too. In my opinion, Stone's book is better than Dog Soldiers (a story about people running heroin from Vietnam to California as the Vietnam War ends - and that book one the National Book of the Year Prize as best book of the year.
World According To Garp is also a lot of fun. Actually John Updike is a lot of fun.
Born on the 4th of July- is pretty good.
My advice- don't get caught up in genre-
But if you want a good thriller-
Eric Ambler's Coffin for Demitros is pretty sweet.
Robert Conrad's The Secret Agent- awesomely twisted.
I also love London's The Sea Wolf - one of the best reads.
Last of the Mohicans and Three Muskateers- might be considered adventure fiction, but hey, its the summer and they are a lot of fun to read.
Edmond Dantès
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Right now:
- Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse
- Herodotus, The Histories
Since I've started studying I simply haven't been able to get to read my normal bedtime literature anymore. Good old Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, etc. I miss 'em. Herodotus just doesn't make me snicker and grin like those writers.
I'm in a bind between either reading something relevant to my studies, involving history or philosophy, or reading something irrelevant yet vastly enjoyable. But enjoyable literature has the effect of sucking me in, throwing me back up the following morning, or a few days later depending on how thick the book or how many the series contains, leaving me to wonder when precisely I stepped in the time machine and ended up in the future so soon.
Last time that happened was with Umberto Ecco's The name of the rose. Luckily that was just one book, before that I took a stroll through Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I hope I don't get stuck like that in my collection of 15 Nietzsche books. I'd probably follow the author in his illness at the end.
- Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse
- Herodotus, The Histories
Since I've started studying I simply haven't been able to get to read my normal bedtime literature anymore. Good old Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, etc. I miss 'em. Herodotus just doesn't make me snicker and grin like those writers.
I'm in a bind between either reading something relevant to my studies, involving history or philosophy, or reading something irrelevant yet vastly enjoyable. But enjoyable literature has the effect of sucking me in, throwing me back up the following morning, or a few days later depending on how thick the book or how many the series contains, leaving me to wonder when precisely I stepped in the time machine and ended up in the future so soon.
Last time that happened was with Umberto Ecco's The name of the rose. Luckily that was just one book, before that I took a stroll through Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I hope I don't get stuck like that in my collection of 15 Nietzsche books. I'd probably follow the author in his illness at the end.
SimpleMinded
Vault Fossil
Welsh, what made you go from World According to Garp to John Updike (John Irving did Garp...)?
But yea, World According to Garp is AWESOME. haha, it's not just fun. I love the whole story within a story and it's just so gripping, and everything always seems so connected.
And yea, you didn't spoil Plath for me lol. That was in the opening of the book. Bell Jar was good up until the main character goes nuts and then it was mostly interesting because of the unreliable narrator (not knowing what you can trust is always awesome), but it kind of plods along.
Next on my list is The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.
But yea, World According to Garp is AWESOME. haha, it's not just fun. I love the whole story within a story and it's just so gripping, and everything always seems so connected.
And yea, you didn't spoil Plath for me lol. That was in the opening of the book. Bell Jar was good up until the main character goes nuts and then it was mostly interesting because of the unreliable narrator (not knowing what you can trust is always awesome), but it kind of plods along.
Next on my list is The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.
Member of Khans
Vault Dweller
I wasn't being death-serious, you know.welsh said:
@ Edmonts: that reminds me of the fact that I've to re-read the Darks Tower series as well. Meh, my girl just dumped me, I've finished Fallout 3 for the fifth time and my new appointment doesn't start until November, lots of free time to my hands.
Also, concerning Nietzsche, is he actually, er, "readable"? I was encouraged to read Thus Spoke Zarathustra by my philosophy teacher* in 11th grade, and never made it past the first 20 pages.
(* cool guy, btw. he considered Newton, Darwin and Einstein to be the three most important philosophers of modern times; he was also the one who got me interested in natural science in first place)
Edmond Dantès
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Member of Khans said:
Nietzsche is somewhat readable, but it's pretty damn hard to get a firm grasp of the points he's trying to make. My advantage is that I've lived in Germany for 8 years and can read the original text. Translations are usually quite precise but sometimes translate a certain word to a different meaning.
He has some wonderful way with words, but that often doesn't really add to his understandability. He was originally a classical philologist, studying the meaning of linguistic expressions and such, and he mentions that his books ought to be read slowly and carefully. During his later years he got a bit fed up about the fact that people didn't quite read his books as he had intended (or simply didn't read them at all) and started offering introductions and such.
The Zarathustra work is probably one of his most well known books, but the constant use of metaphors, paradoxes and parables, abounding with references to the bible, certainly don't make it an easy read. If you're planning not just to read words but also to get an understanding of what you're reading, I might recommend the following: Keith Ansell Pearson, A companion to Nietzsche (Malden 2006).
Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality is another fascinating work, and probably more readable than Zarathustra. Daniel Conway's Nietzsche’s On the genealogy of morals : a reader’s guide can be quite helpful with that one. It helps a lot to get at least the basic outlines of his biggest ideas (such as the affirmation of life, the will to power, eternal recurrence, slave and master morality) before trying to make sense of his writings. But making an effort to understand him really pays off I find. If you ever need some goods books on his political thought, I've got a great bibliography from a course on 'Nietzsche and Democracy'.
Member of Khans
Vault Dweller
Since German is my native language, that shouldn't be much of a problem ^^Edmond Dantès said:
I'll give it a trie some day. Thanks, anyway.
UniversalWolf
eaten by a grue.
It's true that Plutarch is a high-minded writer, but I wouldn't want anyone to think it's too intellectual to be enjoyable. I've read plenty of the classics. Some are dense and boring, but that's not generally true, by any means. Plutarch's Lives read like epic dramas. He has a great knack for nailing the endings of his biographies in a way that is both moving and profound; the ending of his life of Cato the Younger is mind-blowing, for instance. Many of them would make really great movies. If there's a difficulty with Plutarch it's that you can get confused without a fairly detailed knowledge of ancient geography and placenames. It helps if you have a map like one of those on this site:
http://iam.classics.unc.edu/map/map_idx.html
It also helps if you have some familiarity with major events in the ancient world, like the Social War in Italy, but if you don't know anything about that, you can pick it up as you go along.
Personally I don't think there's anything you can read that will give you more knowledge and context for western culture than Plutarch. Everyone should give it a try. Mark Antony or Coriolanus are good places to start, since Shakespeare based his Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra on them. Lycurgus, Timoleon, and Sertorius are also good.
The bottom line is that they're great stories well worth the effort of reading.
http://iam.classics.unc.edu/map/map_idx.html
It also helps if you have some familiarity with major events in the ancient world, like the Social War in Italy, but if you don't know anything about that, you can pick it up as you go along.
Personally I don't think there's anything you can read that will give you more knowledge and context for western culture than Plutarch. Everyone should give it a try. Mark Antony or Coriolanus are good places to start, since Shakespeare based his Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra on them. Lycurgus, Timoleon, and Sertorius are also good.
The bottom line is that they're great stories well worth the effort of reading.
I should read that book. I like the movie.SimpleMinded said:
That's a great novel. Almost perfect.Edmond Dantès said:
DexterMorgan
A Smooth-Skin
Just finished:
Robert Fisk: The Age of The Warrior
Jimmy Carter: Palestine Peace Not Apartheid
Currently reading:
Norman G. Finkelstein: Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History
Robert Fisk: The Age of The Warrior
Jimmy Carter: Palestine Peace Not Apartheid
Currently reading:
Norman G. Finkelstein: Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History
Read The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks yesterday. Fairly entertaining four hour read. The last chapter about living in an undead world is nice.
patriot_41
Where'd That 6th Toe Come From?
Recently finished 1984 by Orwell. Brilliant.
Before that - Good Omens by Neil GAiman and Terry Pratchett.
Even before that - Pratchett's Nation and Gaiman's Graveyard Book and Coraline. Those guys are amazing.
And now I'm reading LOTR. I've never read it in English before, so it's quite awesome, especially provided, that I haven't read it since 11-th grade.
Before that - Good Omens by Neil GAiman and Terry Pratchett.
Even before that - Pratchett's Nation and Gaiman's Graveyard Book and Coraline. Those guys are amazing.
And now I'm reading LOTR. I've never read it in English before, so it's quite awesome, especially provided, that I haven't read it since 11-th grade.
Violator
Still Mildly Glowing
Wow, lots of good books mentioned here and great read suggestions too. I like this thread=))
I myself am currently stuck in the realms of Zelazny reading the "Chronicles of Amber" (quite amazing how much this book reminds me of planescape: torment in some aspects; as if Avellone used it for a great deal of inspiration...) followed by the books from Merlin cycle.
I'm also reading "Nacela Metafizike" from Branislav Petronijevic ("Principles of Metaphysics"; I don't believe it ever was translated to English) and the "Golden Baugh" from James George Frazer (superb read, I recommend it).
I'm also looking to obtain the two last books from Mars Trilogy (by Kim Stanley Robinson) and the "Lucifer's Hammer" but with little success:p
I myself am currently stuck in the realms of Zelazny reading the "Chronicles of Amber" (quite amazing how much this book reminds me of planescape: torment in some aspects; as if Avellone used it for a great deal of inspiration...) followed by the books from Merlin cycle.
I'm also reading "Nacela Metafizike" from Branislav Petronijevic ("Principles of Metaphysics"; I don't believe it ever was translated to English) and the "Golden Baugh" from James George Frazer (superb read, I recommend it).
I'm also looking to obtain the two last books from Mars Trilogy (by Kim Stanley Robinson) and the "Lucifer's Hammer" but with little success:p
NFSreloaded
Still Mildly Glowing
Just started reading Tom Johnson's To The Limit, about the experiences of a Huey pilot in the Vietnam War.
After that I'm going to read David Glantz's When Titans Clashed, about the history of the Red Army and the battles on the Eastern Front.
After that I'm going to read David Glantz's When Titans Clashed, about the history of the Red Army and the battles on the Eastern Front.