I am currently working on the last of the eragorn books. I can't find it around me so I don't know it's name. I also read the new JK Rowling book, Tales of Beedle the Bard.
i've heard great things about this book but never actually went to the bookstore to pick it up.. now that summer's here.. great opportunity to sit down with a good book.. =D
I read this recently, it's very enveloping at 500+ pages. I was kind of sad when it was over, cause you get so into the story since it is so long.
SAS survival guide, blackwater, catch 22.. are all of them worth buying?
anyone read watchman?
i've read catch 22, was a pretty interesting book.
if the SAS survival guide your talking about is the one written by john wiseman then yes its a good book. Just to let you know this is more of a reference guide and has no story line. He does cover some interesting stuff though like survival kits, emergency preparedness and other things. if you combo that book with a field guide to north american edible plants and bushcraft by mors kochanski your outdoor knowledge base would be pretty well set.
havent read blackwater so ya.
i finished into the wild by Jon Krakauer, was pretty good book.
I'm into the light, chick-flick reads, so I'm reading Cocktails for Three by Madeleine Wickham. I had no idea she was Sophie Kinsella from the Shopaholic series (so good!)
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway. There's a reason he's a legend. This books is amazing. It's written in his trademark style of prose, and the dialogue could be criticized in that people speak more plainly, honestly and poetically than they really would, but it's still a revelation of war, human nature and love. His best book, IMO.
I find Hemingway too be kind of overrated. Ive only read "In our time" and thought it was decent at most. Mostly just a collection of abstract short stories. Im reading "Brothers Karamazov" right now and its a thousand times better than anything Hemingway ever wrote. I heard Hemingway actually admitted he would never be as good as Dostoyevsky.
I just finished reading "Blindness" and "Death with Interruptions" by Jose Saramago. These books are fricken awesome. His writing style is unique, and it does take a little while to get used to it. I'm looking forward to reading "Seeing".
I don't understand why everyone here liked catch 22 so much. I've read the first ~50 pages and find it to be really dull. Its been lying on the floor for about a month since I last picked it up lol.
Also someone help me find this book! The back cover said something about a storyline of sigmund freud coming to America and seeing stuff so horrible he refused to ever come back. its been a good 3-4 years since i saw this in chapters...wouldve got it than but this was back when i was broke as a joke
Also someone help me find this book! The back cover said something about a storyline of sigmund freud coming to America and seeing stuff so horrible he refused to ever come back. its been a good 3-4 years since i saw this in chapters...wouldve got it than but this was back when i was broke as a joke
1.) The Husband by Dean Koontz. -This is a new yorks times #1 bestseller. It's plot is thrilling and it's a great read. Lots of action and drama and suspense. I won't ruin the plot for you guys but it's worth the read i suggest.
2.) Blown Away by Shane Gerike - easy read, lots of action and mystery and great pace throughout the novel. The plot has quite a few turns and it's plot develops quite well.
I have more but i got to find them off my shelf first. Until then happy reading :)
It's the third installment in the Wicked series. "Wicked" was the best book out of the three so far. I find that "Son of a Witch" and "A Lion Among Men" get more interesting nearing the end of the book, like 1/4 towards the end of the book. I also really hate the back and forth, non-chronological way that the book is written in. But, overall, a good read since I'm a huge fan of this series.
Currently re-reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke.
Also reading Sara Gruen's Water For Elephants.
Ermmm about to re-read Harry Potter before the movie is out.
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Also, @ Nicole, if you like Sophie Kinsella type books, you'll definitely love Emily Griffin's work. You might have heard of Something Borrowed, Something Blue, Baby Proof, and Love the One You're With.
All of them were really great reads. Once I got through Something Borrowed, I couldn't wait to get Something Blue, mostly because one directly follows the other.
You list and rate books you've read and it recommends similar authors.
Well.. the recommendation thing isn't the greatest at the moment, but I'm just using it to track what I've read.
maybe you should recommend this to Simon and have him integrate it to talksfu.. i think it'll be a good thing since we have members here to read and review regularly..
I feel like a disturbed individual already for having read American Psycho.
And then for WANTING to read 120 Days... and The Girl Next Door.
There is a short by Chuck Palahniuk in his collection of "Haunted" that should be on that list. It involved a boy jerking off in the pool while getting his ass sucked out by the drain pipe. Eventually his intestines got sucked out as well. It's very graphic, as those of you who read Chuck might already know.
maybe you should recommend this to Simon and have him integrate it to talksfu.. i think it'll be a good thing since we have members here to read and review regularly..
That's a good idea...I didn't realize how many book enthusiasts we had on talkSFU. I've been adding a lot of new features over the past week so I don't think I should add any more yet, but this is definitely something I'll look into developing for the future.
If anyone is interested in doing book reviews from time to time (in article format) shoot me a PM and we can talk about getting you published on the main page of the new site (http://news.talksfu.ca). This would be a great addition to talkSFU 3.0 and it would help attract even more book lovers to the site.
I haven't read but I've seen Blindness, Requiem for a Dream and Naked Lunch. I've read The Road, American Psycho and The Girl Next Door. The last two were really disturbing, but the Road wasn't really. It was bleak and depressing though.
I also agree with the suggestion of Haunted. Glamorama (same writer as American Psycho) is also pretty disturbing.
Snow Crash: I am a huge Neal Stephenson fan, and I was not disappointed. It's very different than how I had come to think of him, which was shaped by the book I read first, Cryptonomicon. It's an odd book, that survives more on Stephenson's endless wit and imagination, and ability to go on 4-page tangents about nothing and still be interesting and hilarious, than it does on the strength of the plot or characters. Ultra-entertaining, but overall inferior to his more ambitious stuff like Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle, and not as funny as his pure-comedy stuff like The Big U, and not as insightful as his more navel-gazing stuff like "In the beginning... was the command line." It's like a Crichton novel, but far better written and with far more substance. Also, it's interesting from a purely historical point of view, since it had such a huge effect on sci-fi, and on the way we view virtual worlds, in general.
Microbe Hunters: Incredibly entertaining. Amazingly so, actually, considering that it's a series of short biographies of scientists. But Paul de Kruif manages to make each of these guys into characters in the most literal sense — he really tries to make them into quirky, flawed, almost manic searchers. It is filled his crazy anecdotes, like the old professor who did not believe that a microorganism caused cholera, and so drank an entire vial of the cholera bacteria to prove it — and survived! Four of his protege's then did the same, to prove once and for all that cholera did not come from a bacteria, and all four of them subsequently died of cholera. To this day, nobody knows how the old man survived. The book is packed with stuff like that, clashes of personalities, etc. Kruif really admires these guys, and thinks of them as genuine heroes. It was written in the 1920's, and so it's also fascinating to hear his talk about, say, malaria, from such an early perspective.
Big Bang: Simon Singh is, quite simply, the best popular science writer alive. The Code Book is still his best, though Fermat's Enigma is great, too. And Big Bang is a continuation of that trend. Complete, yet easily approachable, it hits his trademark balance of history and math, story and science. He also somehow manages to make the more modern stuff just as interesting as the ancient stuff, which is difficult since the KOBE mission to measure cosmic background radiation isn't as intrinsically fascinating as Eratosthenese's ability to measure the diameter of the earth, moon and sun, and the distances to the moon and sun, all using only sticks, shadows, a sextant and trigonometry. Highly reccomended,
Comments
i enjoyed them
currently reading, Traders, Guns, and Money
if the SAS survival guide your talking about is the one written by john wiseman then yes its a good book. Just to let you know this is more of a reference guide and has no story line. He does cover some interesting stuff though like survival kits, emergency preparedness and other things. if you combo that book with a field guide to north american edible plants and bushcraft by mors kochanski your outdoor knowledge base would be pretty well set.
havent read blackwater so ya.
i finished into the wild by Jon Krakauer, was pretty good book.
I'm reading Civilization and its Discontent by Sigmund Freud.
GOOSEBUMPS!, Pet Sematery by Stephen King, Pay it Forward, Catherine Ryan Hyde...
*cries in corner*
I just finished reading "Blindness" and "Death with Interruptions" by Jose Saramago. These books are fricken awesome. His writing style is unique, and it does take a little while to get used to it. I'm looking forward to reading "Seeing".
I don't understand why everyone here liked catch 22 so much. I've read the first ~50 pages and find it to be really dull. Its been lying on the floor for about a month since I last picked it up lol.
Soak in the literary goodness!!
The back cover said something about a storyline of sigmund freud coming to America and seeing stuff so horrible he refused to ever come back.
its been a good 3-4 years since i saw this in chapters...wouldve got it than but this was back when i was broke as a joke
1.) The Husband by Dean Koontz.
-This is a new yorks times #1 bestseller. It's plot is thrilling and it's a great read. Lots of action and drama and suspense. I won't ruin the plot for you guys but it's worth the read i suggest.
2.) Blown Away by Shane Gerike
- easy read, lots of action and mystery and great pace throughout the novel. The plot has quite a few turns and it's plot develops quite well.
I have more but i got to find them off my shelf first. Until then happy reading :)
It's the third installment in the Wicked series. "Wicked" was the best book out of the three so far. I find that "Son of a Witch" and "A Lion Among Men" get more interesting nearing the end of the book, like 1/4 towards the end of the book. I also really hate the back and forth, non-chronological way that the book is written in. But, overall, a good read since I'm a huge fan of this series.
Also reading Sara Gruen's Water For Elephants.
Ermmm about to re-read Harry Potter before the movie is out.
-------------
Also, @ Nicole, if you like Sophie Kinsella type books, you'll definitely love Emily Griffin's work. You might have heard of Something Borrowed, Something Blue, Baby Proof, and Love the One You're With.
All of them were really great reads. Once I got through Something Borrowed, I couldn't wait to get Something Blue, mostly because one directly follows the other.
MUST READ!
You list and rate books you've read and it recommends similar authors.
Well.. the recommendation thing isn't the greatest at the moment, but I'm just using it to track what I've read.
The next few weeks are going to be interesting.
the thing i like about jose saramago is all his books are basically an analysis of humans behaviour in times of turmmoil
And then for WANTING to read 120 Days... and The Girl Next Door.
There is a short by Chuck Palahniuk in his collection of "Haunted" that should be on that list. It involved a boy jerking off in the pool while getting his ass sucked out by the drain pipe. Eventually his intestines got sucked out as well. It's very graphic, as those of you who read Chuck might already know.
If anyone is interested in doing book reviews from time to time (in article format) shoot me a PM and we can talk about getting you published on the main page of the new site (http://news.talksfu.ca). This would be a great addition to talkSFU 3.0 and it would help attract even more book lovers to the site.
I also agree with the suggestion of Haunted. Glamorama (same writer as American Psycho) is also pretty disturbing.
Microbe Hunters: Incredibly entertaining. Amazingly so, actually, considering that it's a series of short biographies of scientists. But Paul de Kruif manages to make each of these guys into characters in the most literal sense — he really tries to make them into quirky, flawed, almost manic searchers. It is filled his crazy anecdotes, like the old professor who did not believe that a microorganism caused cholera, and so drank an entire vial of the cholera bacteria to prove it — and survived! Four of his protege's then did the same, to prove once and for all that cholera did not come from a bacteria, and all four of them subsequently died of cholera. To this day, nobody knows how the old man survived. The book is packed with stuff like that, clashes of personalities, etc. Kruif really admires these guys, and thinks of them as genuine heroes. It was written in the 1920's, and so it's also fascinating to hear his talk about, say, malaria, from such an early perspective.
Big Bang: Simon Singh is, quite simply, the best popular science writer alive. The Code Book is still his best, though Fermat's Enigma is great, too. And Big Bang is a continuation of that trend. Complete, yet easily approachable, it hits his trademark balance of history and math, story and science. He also somehow manages to make the more modern stuff just as interesting as the ancient stuff, which is difficult since the KOBE mission to measure cosmic background radiation isn't as intrinsically fascinating as Eratosthenese's ability to measure the diameter of the earth, moon and sun, and the distances to the moon and sun, all using only sticks, shadows, a sextant and trigonometry. Highly reccomended,