The Great Books! ( And What Are You Currently Reading? )

[venicia777]

hmm!! something just for me. i have too many books for me to remember them. well, it is better i write what i am reading now. just this weekend i finished reading John Steinbecks East of Eden- classic book of human nature

and now i am in the middle of The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. will post more  when i start new ones

[Galth]

I'm kinda a fantasy-only nerd, but i've read
1. Terry Goodkind: Sword of Truth series 1-9 + prologue
2. Robin Hobb: 3 Trilogies so far + the first book of the new series + prologue
3. currently reading the Robert Jordan: Wheel Of Time Series ( book 4 of 11 or something so far)
4. his dark materials, beginning to see a theme here ( note: if you havn't, READ THIS SERIES, only 3 books, for older children but really easy to read while still including serious and potentially difficult subjects )
5. Harry Potter 1-6 ( i agree with whoever it was that said it, they are pointed to a growing ( in age ) audiance, and books 4 and 6 are just BRILLIANT where 1-3 are more children's books, allways read before you go to the movies if you can )
6. LoTR, who hasn't?
7. Dracula by Bram Stoker
8. 'bout 20 stories by Edgar Allan Poe ( 19th century 'horror' that's actually really philosophical and difficult sometimes... brilliant )
9. dan brown, though not per se so good a book, the theorie is really interesting, bernini > da vinci ( have not read juvenalis yet...)
10. fahrenheit 451 // 1984 // animal farm // the moonstone // robinson crusoe // lord of the flies
11. Ender series, by Orson Scott Card

those are about the more important ones i've read so far, at the moment reading the boring dutch literature for dutch class, but then i'll go back to english literature and fantasy asap

EDIT: and yeah, bartimaeus is fun to, read 1+2 so far, is the third released yet? though not that great a book, really amusing, real original look at wizards and spirits... and totally forgot about the Weiss and Hickman 'Gate of Death' ( dont know the english name, read it translated, bad khaludh - i mean the one with haplo and alfred ) series!! That's just sooooo good it hurts!

Ah yes, and NJT if you liked Animal Farm, you MUST read the classic... 1984, by Orwell too, but not in fairytale format.

and off course, nobody's perfect, i've read waaaay to much goosebumps and such series not too long ago *blinks at some line of books with RL STINE on thecover right behind him on the shelf and ignores them...*

[aburame]

Khaludh ~ they just came out with the 3rd one, it's only in hardback. I agree, they're not great by a long-shot, but I think they're quite entertaining. Yes, REPRESENT DARK MATERIALS!!! Those books are so amazing. I recommend them to anyone and everyone, if they've never even read a fantasy book it doesn't matter they HAVE to read those.

Farenheit 451 and the Orwell books are also wonderful. I have a thing for dystopia books, I admit. In that vein, have you ever read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley? It reminds me a lot of 1984 and such. Good stuff. Also, if you like fantasy and Farenheit, try reading more by Ray Bradbury. He's a wonderful author~

Also, have you ever read The Dark Is Rising? That's another great fantasy series. Fun stuff!

[Galth]

ow, there's just so much i have to read... and yes, i ALMOST read Brave New World, like my hand was already grabbing it in the library when i remembered i was reading 3 other books real slowly at the same time then, so it's on the amazingly large 'to-read-list' about 'the dark is rising', i cannot say i have ever heard of it, what's it about? ( glancing at 3000 pages of robert jordan looking angry to me over my back... i may not want to know...)

And like ...njt?... said before, read The Hitchhikers Guide! i've only heard very little from the story ( read: the jokes, by little annoying brother) but from that i see that it just ROCKS!!!

other amusing series ( but not neccisarily - yes, i know it's spelled wrong, but where...?- so great)
1. keys to the kingdom by garth nix 3/7 released - really original easy reading childrens book's
2. raymond e. feist's books  ( imho not so great, as in: good story, but little talent for writing itself - though his fans will lynch me if they see me  )
3. julian may's series ( first series in english probably called 'the land of many colours', the books with firvulag and tanu and everything he wrote related to this series)
4. roger zelazny's Amber series ( like in genius! -  but chaotic storyline sometimes...) HOW COULD I 'A FORGOTTEN ABOUT THAT ONE!!

and i admit i read way to many books translated into dutch, so i'll wait for the translation of bartimaeus3 anyway...

[Dragonzair]

Woohoo!

I just got the 5th installment of Chronicles of Narnia. I love it. XD I'm tempted to buy the last two, but I'm kind of out of cash, so I'm just going to try looking for ebooks.

[Galth]

Just read Il Dottore Zhivago ( Doctor Zhivago, the anti-communism russian book earning itself a nobelprice for world literature but declined it because of pressure by the russian government at the time )... in dutch again and now reading The life and strange surprizing adventures of Robinson Crusoe of york, mariner: who lived eight and twenty years all alone in an un-inhabited island on the coast of America, near the mouth of the great river Oroonouqe; having been cast on shore by shipwreck wherein all the men perished but himself with an account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by pyrates in english  , brave new world will be next on my list after the medieval story 'van den vos reinaerde' ( reinaart the fox, dunno if you all-over-the-worlders know it... ), aburame, ( btw, aburame as in: shino's last name? or am i remembering things wrong...)

[i]Yep. Aburame is Shino's last name. XD - DZ

sidenote: Gotta love those old books titles!!

[Anax]

@Khaludh & Aburame --> So many "His Dark Materials" fans!

@Khaludh -->
i) I was the one to mention the growing audience in the Harry Potter books
ii)LotR? Haven't read it! I have read Silmarillion and The Hobbit though... even deciphered the dwarf runes instead of turning the page and having the code revealed (it's so funny if you think that I coudln't wait to find out if the code is given and still went to the trouble of deciphering ).
iii) Dracula... So much potential, so lame ending! It seems to be that

Bram Stoker had made Dracula so strong he was practically unbeatable, so in the end he just devised a stupid plot tool of Dracula actually being an idiot and had also had him killed in less that half a page... So lame that I almost threw the book in the fireplace. Too bad I don't have a fireplace.

Currently reading Zen Buddism and Psychoanalysis and loving it! (reading in Greek and haven't read much, just started yesterday and I'm undergoin a period not favorable for reading) had it been Harry Potter 7 and I had started yesterday I'd probably be reading still

[devo]

Farenheit 451 and the Orwell books are also wonderful.

I just started Farenheit 451. Bradbury is simply an amazing author; his imagery is just so beautiful and perfect, some of the best I've ever read.

[Galth]

Mostly at Anax...

You probably all know how much i like to mention i'm dutch ( yes, i am ), so i would like to point this thing out about bram stoker's dracula ( one of my favourites ), there is this witchhunter by the name of Van Hellsing, of which even you not-dracula-readers have heard of, who, in the book, is dutch too, or at least, that's what stoker says him to be, but he in fact speaks german, like "Gott im Himmel!" and such phrases, when they need a foreign sentence once in a while, this is because stoker did not know the language, and thought dutch to be the same or similar to german, which is not the case, for the people that know the languages, this is very funny in the book

@devo - yeah, he's a great writer, but i remember fahrenheit being a little small book for a great classic... ( only flaw in this book but for the fact it does not have pirates in it? )

[Anax]

@Khaludh --> Yeah, I thought "Dutch" was the German way to say "German" Don't lynch me

They call their language 'deutsch' - K

@The Rest of the World --> Dracula isn't a bad book! It's a marvelous tale with an ending as sudden as dying at the guillotine... I guess I never moved past that

[chunks]

The chosen by chaim potok a story about a couple of jewish boys, one with a crazy gift of remembering everything he reads and can repeat it back to word for word. He goes off to even learn German to just to read works done by a famous german psychiatrist but I forget the name right now... you can find this book on amazon for a quarter(25 cents). I liked it because his ability to remember things sooo easily and how he could learn German in one sitting... pissed me off... hehe

Yeah I liked this book for somewhat the same reasons.

When I was younger my favourite fantasy books were Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept series and his Xanth novels. Louis L'amour's Last of the Breed is also good.

[Kickmeister]

Haven't anyone read Dostojevskij? Check out "Crime and Punishment", it is really great!

[kadoman]

The Outsiders, by S.E Hinton. I've read it before when I was at school, but haven't read it for well over 10 years (er...yeah, I'm that old) and it is fantastic. I am getting so much more out of it then I did when I was a teenager (typical!).

Highly recommend it.

[Miso]

At the moment I'm reading Book 3 of Star Wars: New Jedi Order.



Yay...Star Wars rulez!
But I'm not too sure about this series. It's not as good as Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy...hmmz

[asmo]

I'm currently reading "Why the West has won - Carnage and Culture from Salamis to Vietnam" by Victor Davis Hanson, one of the best historians out there. Different from the usual history books this one is actually very readable and far from boring. I can only recommend it, even for people who are usually not interested in politics.

I've also just ordered "300" by Frank Miller, the author of the Sin City graphic novels (awesome movie btw)