Suggest me some books!

[JMP300z]

I read a lot but im at a loss of what to read next. I dont have as much time with dental school being as rediculously time consuming as it is, but i still avg a book every week or 2. Ive read a lot of books so chances are ive read yours but still....throw em out there. Im down for anything, fiction to non fiction, essays, short stories, poetry....I just want to compile a big list of stuff to read as im out of suggestions.

Most recent books ive read:
Less than zero
american psycho
high fidelity
House of god
kite runner

some of my favorite books:
The great gatsby
The picture of dorian gray
Labrynths-borges
the man who was thursday-chesterton
Ender's Game
Starship Troopers
The rules of attraction
cats cradle
Catch 22
The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

Fire away.

-JP

[[censored]]

I very much enjoyed both Survivor and Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk

[MrTrik]

Take a look at William Gibson's "All Tomorrow's parties"

[Colonel Kataffy]

All my friends are going to be strangers, by Larry McMurtry

[coolhandkuhn]

Lunar Park --- Bret Easton Ellis
Survivor --- Chuck Palahniuk
Brightness Falls --- Jay McInerney
Bright Lights, Big City --- Jay McInerney
Love Monkey --- Kyle Smith
Balling the Jack --- Frank Baldwin
The Dog of the Marriage --- Amy Hempel (short stories)

all fiction suggestions, by the authors you said you liked, or contemporaries from the same genre.

[tdarko]

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Most recent books ive read:
Less than zero
american psycho
high fidelity
House of god
kite runner


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what [censored] said plus i loved invisible monsters as well. a lot of people on this board hate chuck though.

i just finished jarhead and thought it was pretty good, makes me want to see the movie even more now.

[tdarko]

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The Dog of the Marriage --- Amy Hempel (short stories)


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wow! you like hempel? first person i know of that has heard of her. have you read tumbe home?

last of the savages was my favorite McInerney.

[jason_t]

Blindness - Jose Saramago

[diebitter]

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. If you like that, the Blind Watchmaker by same.

Not only are they illuminating and interesting books, you'll easily pwn any christian fundamentalists who ridicule evolution + "intelligent design" tards you encounter.

[[censored]]

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what [censored] said plus i loved invisible monsters as well. a lot of people on this board hate chuck though.



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What's the knock on Chuck? Just overrated because of Fight Club?

[tdarko]

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Not only are they illuminating and interesting books, you'll easily pwn any christian fundamentalists who ridicule evolution + "intelligent design" tards you encounter.

[/ QUOTE ]
haha sounds like my side of the water /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[coolhandkuhn]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The Dog of the Marriage --- Amy Hempel (short stories)


[/ QUOTE ]
wow! you like hempel? first person i know of that has heard of her. have you read tumbe home?

last of the savages was my favorite McInerney.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have not read Tumble Home, but have read Reasons to Live. Her short stories are great.

Last of the Savages is very good, just not my fav. McInerney. All of his stuff is great, though. New book in Jan '06.

I like Chuck a lot, but thought Invisible Monsters was his worst book. Haunted, his new book, was less than I thought it would be. Basically a book of short stories tied together by an uninteresting story. Some of the shorts are great, though.

[oddjob]

heartbreaking work of staggering genius by dave eggers.

[Skipbidder]

Judging from the books on the list, you may have already read some of these:

Fiction first:

Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson (first book in a series). His protagonist is complex and interesting. There's a rough patch early on in this first book. You might find yourself wanting to quit the book (and being angry at me for recommending it). Get through this section. It is worth it.

Douglas Adams wrote two books about a detective named Dirk Gently. Long Dark Teatime of the Soul and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.

Rumpole of the Bailey by John Mortimer. There are several short stories available. These are also nice to listen to in the car.

Nonfiction:

Any of Bill Bryson's books, but only if read by the author.

Carl Sagan's Demon-Haunted World. He captures the wonder of science and his feelings about pseudoscience and quackery without getting condescending or preachy.

James Randi's Faith Healers. Randi has the same side of the issue regarding pseudoscience and quackery, but is quite frequently condescending and preachy. In this book, he describes the way he busted religious fraud Peter Popoff. (This story got lifted, without credit or payment, for the movie Leap of Faith.)

Prisoner's Dilema. Half game-theory, half biography of Von Neumann.

Partnership Bidding at Bridge by Robson and Segal. (Probably not such a good suggestion, since I doubt you play bridge. It is, however, easily the best bridge book that is not well-known.)

[Diplomat]

Probably the best book I've read in the last year or so is The Master and The Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Other things to try out would be anything by Vonnegut, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole...Oh and maybe Against The Gods by Peter Bernstein, for something non-fiction.

-Diplomat

[Blarg]

Cosmicomics, by Italo Calvino(short stories, brilliant imagination by a truly great, gifted author)

In the Heart of the Sea - the true story of Moby Dick; great and frightening -- cannibalism, the terror of the open sea and its monsters, piracy, mutiny, cruelty, heroism, incredibly good and readable evocation of a very strange time and place, you name it, this story has it all

[tdarko]

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What's the knock on Chuck? Just overrated because of Fight Club?

[/ QUOTE ]
i think the words that are thrown around here are "trite," "pompous," etc., every time i get into book discussions around here i am waiting for JaBlue (where are ya bud? /images/graemlins/wink.gif).

personally i can't think of a more creative book than survivor, maybe AS creative but not more.

i think anytime something that is considered "cult" people cherish it b/c it is unknown and they want to feel like they are the only ones watching it (donnie darko) or reading it (fight club/before the movie) but when it blows up and becomes part of pop culture and mainstream then people start to get pissed because it becomes sort of what it was against even though it has never changed just the audience has.

[Skipbidder]

[ QUOTE ]
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. If you like that, the Blind Watchmaker by same.

Not only are they illuminating and interesting books, you'll easily pwn any christian fundamentalists who ridicule evolution + "intelligent design" tards you encounter.

[/ QUOTE ]

No you won't. They don't listen and they don't think. You will only make yourself extremely frustrated.

[diebitter]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. If you like that, the Blind Watchmaker by same.

Not only are they illuminating and interesting books, you'll easily pwn any christian fundamentalists who ridicule evolution + "intelligent design" tards you encounter.

[/ QUOTE ]

No you won't. They don't listen and they don't think. You will only make yourself extremely frustrated.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry, I didn't explain. You hit them with the books, spine first.

[tdarko]

[ QUOTE ]
Sorry, I didn't explain. You hit them with the books, spine first.

[/ QUOTE ]
then gouge eyes with the corners /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[Sightless]

Master and Margarita By Bulgakov, I am reading it for the third time right now, amazing book...

I am shocked to see another 2p2er recomend this book as not many people outside EX USSR know about it..

one of the best books ever... even better in Russian ):
also I recomend Choke and Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk

[Blarg]

I'm going to chime in with another that strikes me as appropriate if you like things like Fight Club, but just as good if you don't like Fight Club. It's a non-fiction book about the fight game by a guy who goes from easily beaten young college fighter to professional sportswriter to manager of a world champion, and the people he meets and things he sees along the way. There are many heart-wrenching sequences set in and out of the ring, some great fear, great exhiliration, and great sadness. This guy's powers of observation and description powers are phenomenal. This one really hit me hard. I've recommended it in OOT before, and it's called This Bloody Mary is the Last Thing I Own.

Here are some reviews at the top of the page in Amazon.com.

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Amazon.com
There's something about the mano-a-mano primacy of boxing, something about men fighting men, and the seediness and corruption that so much of the sport wallows in that forces chroniclers of the sweet science to adopt the film noir persona of a Sam Spade. Rendall provides the antidote. His marvelously titled memoir recounts his transition from a starry-eyed young British boxing writer to a disenchanted manager of a promising fighter named Colin McMillan, who rises from nobody status to the featherweight champion of the world.

This is a knockout performance by a graceful writer who knows his subject, knows how to spin a yarn, and knows how to make an eclectic stable of characters come alive on the page. As a stylist, Rendall comes out swinging; when he finds an opening, he can score, whether he's in a smoky British boxing club or beneath the neon skies of Las Vegas. He is not afraid to run counter to so much of the good boxing writing that has come before him: what others have praised as colorful, he sees from his insider's perspective as somewhat sinister and grotesque. There is a sadness, a melancholy really, to much of Rendall's personal journey as he begins to distinguish between boxing's realities and its myths. And yet he's capable of relating this with an almost surreal sense of humor, well timed and well placed, like good jabs should be. A lesser writer might have been flattened by the ordeal; it's Rendall's grace under pressure that, in the end, leaves him standing. --Jeff Silverman--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
Boxing can be an elegant sport. Seldom do physical skill, intelligence, courage, and tactics converge in other sports as they often do inside the ring. But outside the ring, the human toll can be exacting in damage that goes far beyond broken noses and concussions. Rendall, a British boxing writer and sometime manager, trains his eye beyond the ropes. The boxing industry, he argues, is based on the disposability of its only commodity--the fighters--and the invincibility of its most unsavory element, the promoters. Rendall approaches the sport by tracing the career of Colin McMillan, currently the world featherweight champion. He wasn't always a champ. Rendall describes McMillan's rise to the top, fighting "smokers" in England and eventually progressing to undercards in Las Vegas. The journey in journeyman can't begin to suggest the frustrations and setbacks along the road to a championship for a kid who doesn't have the backing of a major promoter. Maybe at one time boxing was filled with "colorful" characters, or maybe that was just the way the Hemingways and Mailers chose to present them. But in Rendall's view, the sport is now populated by sharks, piranhas, and tasty little boxers, prime for devouring. This is a wonderful book, one that takes readers deep into the heart of a world that will appall even longtime fans. The very best book on boxing in many a year. Wes Lukowsky

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Here's the link. You don't have to like boxing to like this book. The author himself veers between adoring and despising it, and sees it from all sides as few people can or do.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/088001685X/qid=1128649422/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-5708906-8151868?v=glance&s=books

[TheMainEvent]

[ QUOTE ]

heartbreaking work of staggering genius by dave eggers.

[/ QUOTE ]

"You shall know our velocity" is good also