Good Reading

[elwoodblues]

Just curious about everyone's favorite (non-poker related)
pleasure reading?

Mine (just to start things off):

Favorite book - Johnny Got His Gun (I try to read this once a year or so)

I really like the Vince Flynn novels (the first one was just okay ---- his stories get progressively better.) Flynn writes about similar themes as Clancy (though, I tend to like the Mitch Rapp character in Flynn's novels better than Jack Ryan in Clancy's).

I've been reading and enjoying the James Patterson novels (movies Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider are based on his books). The only thing that bothers me is that he seems to always want a twist ending and the twist is almost always that it's a bad cop who's the real killer.

Philip Dick novels (writer of Minority Report - I think he also wrote Blade Runner and Total Recall). I read the book "A Scanner Darkly" a while back and highly recommend it. Basic plot is about an undercover narc agent who is taking drugs and begins informing on himself because of the effects of the drugs. It has some truly hilarious scenes (during one scene a couple of guys high on drugs think that someone stole 3 gears off of their 10-speed bike because there are only two in the front and 5 in the back).

Larry Millett's Sherlock Holmes novels...set in historic St. Paul, MN so if you are from around here, they are kind of fun to read.

[Utah]

Some recent favorites:

1) Blind Man's Bluff - About submarines during the cold war
2) The Last Steps - About the 1978 American K2 Expedition.
3)Fermat's Enigma - Who thought a book about a math puzzle could be riveting
4)Prisoner's Dilemma - Great primer on game theory and the WW2 stuff is fascinating and terrifying. This book made me think about current events much differently
5) God and the New Physics - Very cool how religon is tied into modern physics
6) The compleat Strategyst - The 1954 classic from RAND
7) One Day in September - Gripping account of the 1972 Massacre in Munich

Kiss the Girls was a great easy read, even though you need to suspend belief several times. The scene with the snake is great. Unfortunately, I thought Along came a spider was boring.

[bernie]

the davinci code.

im just about done with it. fantastic book. really makes one think a little.
-----------
marine sniper:23 confirmed kills.

great book about one of the greatest snipers in history.
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supercasino

rise and fall and rise again of the Luxor casino (via circus circus) shows just how greedy and desperate modern big casinos are. great substory:shauna the whore.

b

[Roark]

Those who enjoy Clancy may also like the Blackford Oakes series by William F Buckley Jr.

[ACPlayer]

Recent reading: Losing Nelson (Unsworth)
Best books read this year: Life of Pi (Martell), Disgrace (Coetzee)
Bonourable mention: Waiting (Ha Jin)
For the political minded I browsed at Barnes and Noble but did not buy: The Politics of Anit-Semitism. I may yet buy it.