Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

Sorry if it's been done.

Most interesting (that book you couldn't put down until you were finished) Fiction and Non-Fiction book you've ever read?

For me:

Fiction - Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Non-Fiction - The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

The last book I read was good. It was 8 years ago. "Makes me Wanna Holler" by Nathan McCall.

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. I read it like 8 times in the two years after graduating college. Haven't read it recently but its a brilliant novel. There must be 150 charecters with about 12 interweaving plotlines including lots of sex, drugs, international intrigue, revisionist history, conspiracy theory, smugglers in golden submarines (well, only one really) and talking dolphins.

The whole trilogy is published in one volume about 1400 pages long and the first time I read it all the way through I cleared it in about 4 days; the first book is very fast paced and jumps all over the place so you have to promise yourself that you'll read at least 100 pages in the first sitting and not worry about comprehending anything - cause you won't.

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

http://www.ruthlessreviews.com/pics/soundfury.gif

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

I'm not a big reader, but I always thought City Come A-Walkin' was a pretty interesting techno-thriller or whatever the genre is...

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Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

THe Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, its a great read

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

Choke by Chuck Palahniuk...very strange and interesting.

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Choke by Chuck Palahniuk...very strange and interesting.

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the same could be said about his other books too

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

As somebody who usually reads fiction, I picked up Global Brain by Howard Bloom, on a recommendation of someone here on OOT.

Practically every page, I put the book down to think about what I had just read.

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

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THe Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, its a great read

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I absolutely loved that book, but I just picked up Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. They have a website, it's interesting, go check it out.

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

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Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.

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I just started this. It is a bit of "datamining," per se (as is Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, which I recommend), but it is still a very fun read. Interesting stuff.

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

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[/ QUOTE ] http://www.ruthlessreviews.com/pics/soundfury.gif

Hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahaha.

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

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Not THE most interesting, but intriguing.

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

Six Easy Pieces by Richard P. Feynman

If you arn't that interested in the amazing world around you, at least read his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman". The guy is a genius in many ways, and they are both VERY interesting...

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Sorry if it's been done.

Most interesting (that book you couldn't put down until you were finished) Fiction and Non-Fiction book you've ever read?

For me:

Fiction - Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Non-Fiction - The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

[/ QUOTE ]

Pretty much anything by Daniel Quinn. I'll let others elaborate.

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

Ishmael. Reading about why humans are dominant over animals is great. It made me ponder everything for about a month.

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

Life of Pi by Yann Martel is something special.

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Wow, sounds cool. I'm going to have to buy that. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut. need to reread that one again. i also really really enjoyed the great gatsby

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

Sperm Wars, by Dr. Robin Baker. Explains why women act like whores and why a few men are doing most of the procreating.

Here's to reproductive success!

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Fiction: Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged
Nonfiction: The Smartest Guys in the Room by some Fortune reporters (it's about the fall of Enron.)

Will

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

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Well probably not the most interesting but it was extremely interesting and it came to mind.

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

two books i read as a kid, showed the me the power of a good book.

mrs frisby and the rats of nimh
redwall

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

http://www.booksamillion.com/bam/cov...0465026567.jpg

~D

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

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Amazon.com
Twenty years after it topped the bestseller charts, Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is still something of a marvel. Besides being a profound and entertaining meditation on human thought and creativity, this book looks at the surprising points of contact between the music of Bach, the artwork of Escher, and the mathematics of Gödel. It also looks at the prospects for computers and artificial intelligence (AI) for mimicking human thought. For the general reader and the computer techie alike, this book still sets a standard for thinking about the future of computers and their relation to the way we think.

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May have to get this one.

-Zeno

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

Fiction: the crying of lot 49 - thomas pynchon
Nonfiction: when genious failed - roger lowenstein (the story of long-term capital management)

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

[ QUOTE ]
http://www.booksamillion.com/bam/cov...0465026567.jpg

~D

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I don't think I've ever gotten more than halfway through that book, but it is incredible all the same.

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

Good book. Watzlawick's other books are also good reads. Just about all of them deal with paradoxes in communication resulting from the creation of categories. _Change_ is another interesting book by him in this general area.

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

Fiction: The Wheel of Time series, all 10 ( so far), by Robert Jordan. I've read them so many times, I've replaced each book at least once.

Non-Fiction: Down to This. Can't remember the authors name. About a guy that spends a year living in Tent City in Toronto, just before they all got evicted. Fabulous.

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

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May have to get this one.

-Zeno

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Especially since your SN is 'Zeno'...

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Choke by Chuck Palahniuk...very strange and interesting.

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Um, isn't that the short story where he gets his guts sucked out of his [censored] by a pool filter? Or am I thinking of another Chuck Palahniuk gem?

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

Fiction - Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Non-Fiction - Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstader

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

Fiction - Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (thought I was the only one)
Non-Fiction- Book of the Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi

found a cool online text of Musashi's book, if anyone's interested enough to read it but cheap enough not to buy it
Go Rin No Sho

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

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Illuminatus! Trilogy by Fnord! and Fnord!.

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FYP

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

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Hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahaha.

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What's so funny? Couldn't stumble through the first section, eh?

Re: Most Interesting Book You\'ve ever Read?
 

These are great threads except I end up spending a lot of money at Amazon for books I have no shelf space for.

I can't say what the most interesting is, but here are some good ones:

"The Nature and Power of Mathematics" by Donald M. Davis link - This book requires nothing post algebra. Instead of broadly covering math, it goes in depth into three topics: non Euclidean Geometry, Fractals, and Number Theory as it applies to public key encryption. Great stuff, easy to read.

"Conned Again Watson" By Collin Bruce link - This goes into a lot of neat critical thinking stuff in the guise of Sherlock Holmes stories. Good for people who have math phobia, but still insightful enough that most people will pick something up from it.

Two I have great hope for that I just got are "Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases" and "Choices, Values, and Frames". These are collections of articles edited by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (the former also has Paul Slovic as an editor). link and link - These are about how people make decisions, and how they screw them up. It is the work that started behavioural finance. Kahneman won a Nobel prize for the work (I believe Tversky was already dead by then, and they don't give Nobel prizes posthumously past the year of your death.) I have read some of their articles already, and they are very good. They are the sort of thing you think "I would never be stupid enough to do that" then you read some of the examples and go "DOH!"