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Discussion => Philosophy, Economics and Justice => Topic started by: titsmcgee123 on July 08, 2013, 01:47 am

Title: Recommend some novels?
Post by: titsmcgee123 on July 08, 2013, 01:47 am
Well I'm interested in hearing some of your favorite Novels... I just finished Brave New World and HOLY FUCK that book is just tremendous
If anyone has any novel specifically that deals with coming up from a broken home gets a +1
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: BoxofShapes on July 08, 2013, 03:50 am
Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami

Not really sure if the kid in the story comes from a destitute home, but he runs away from it none the less.  I'm not really a person to reread a book but I've read this three times, which tells you how in love with this book I am. 

Wind Up Bird Chronicle is a better start to his writing style tho.  I almost got fired from my job at the time of reading cause I wouldn't put the damn thing down.


Also.....

Special shout out to House of Leaves.  It's like a much more evolved version of Be Here Now.  Less hippy, and an actual plot, but even that is selling it short.  This literally changed reality around me when I was reading it.  Not really about a broken home either.... more like an altered home.  The time of my life and what this story did for me is unforgettable.  Maybe it's just me tho.
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: joywind on July 08, 2013, 03:51 am
night land by william hope hodgson
voyage to arcturus by david lindsay
last and first men by olaf stapledon
odd john by olaf stapledon
c.s. lewis novels
h.p. lovecraft short stories
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: soviet on July 08, 2013, 08:13 am
1984 by George Orwell...i'd be surprised if you haven't read this

Free Will by Sam Harris (may make you question your existence)

The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

White Fang and/or Call of the Wild by Jack London
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: Hungry ghost on July 08, 2013, 01:42 pm
The Passage by Justin Cronin.    Its like Stephen King at his coked up best.  I don't want to spoil it by revealing anything about the plot but it is a superb book. He's written a sequel 'The Twelve' and its going to be a trilogy eventually
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: modziw on July 08, 2013, 02:15 pm
Stanislaw Lem, The Futurological Congress

Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea + Snows of Kilmanjaro (Short Stories) + A Farewell to Arms + Islands in the Stream (after you appreciate his style)

Standard Must Reads: The Catcher in the Rye,  The Grapes of Wrath, Catch 22, Slaughterhouse 5, Animal Farm

Shakespeare, Turgenev, Poetry by Emily Dickinson.

There have been books written since 1970 but I just can't think of any.


Modzi
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: therabbithole on July 08, 2013, 06:17 pm
I've just read "The Court of the Air" by Stephen Hunt. First of the series of Victorian style steam-punk novels series. You could call it teen-fiction, but they never had fiction like this when I was a teen!
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: fatslimback on July 08, 2013, 08:03 pm
Ham on Rye by Bukowski is one of my faves.  The Road by Cormac McCarthy is astonishing. Let The Right One In is also fantastic, the film doesn't do it justice.   
     
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: LordEddard on July 08, 2013, 11:26 pm
Stanislaw Lem, The Futurological Congress

Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea + Snows of Kilmanjaro (Short Stories) + A Farewell to Arms + Islands in the Stream (after you appreciate his style)

Standard Must Reads: The Catcher in the Rye,  The Grapes of Wrath, Catch 22, Slaughterhouse 5, Animal Farm

Shakespeare, Turgenev, Poetry by Emily Dickinson.

There have been books written since 1970 but I just can't think of any.


Modzi

Just finished "Catcher and the Rye" yesterday. Holden really has his shit together.
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: The Missus on July 09, 2013, 12:05 am
Snuff
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: zxydwx3 on July 09, 2013, 12:24 am
I'm not going to go back and forth from my laptop desk to my library, but I will list a few authors that I quite enjoy. I'm a voracious reader, and several of the vacations I take each year are to catch up on reading. I'll go somewhere tropical by myself a couple times each winter with a stack of books to just relax and read.

In no particular order, I enjoy reading the works of:

Wilbur Smith
Michael Connelly
Elmore Leonard
David Baldacci
Jeffrey Deaver
Kathy Reichs
Stephen Frey
Michael Crichton
John Grisham
Alex Rutherford

If you're looking for specific book recommendations, I'd be willing to pull a few off the shelves in my library to list my most favorite titles. These are fairly mainstream authors though, but let me know.

Also, OP, if you want to send me a PM about your additional question, I might have some books you'd find interesting, as family law and the reform thereof is a particular interest of mine.
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: MrGonzo on July 09, 2013, 01:36 am
Island- Huxley. Pretty much the opposite of brave new world. I enjoyed both a lot  ;D
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: Hungry ghost on July 09, 2013, 07:02 am
Ah, Huxley.... I sometimes long for the decadent country house lifestyle he describes in "crome yellow"....the reality is that my ancestors at this time were miners,  potato merchants, and domestic servants, and even the servants masters were people who Huxely would have regarded as barely gentlemen.
(Go on, dox my geneology!)
         "After many a Summer " is another good SF book he wrote, although it could have made a better SHORT story. 
        "Ends and Means" is an interesting book, advocating solving the worlds problems (interstate violence) by addressing the individual through meditation and mysticism. Slightly ill timed (1937)
          "Island"? Those birds chirping "attention" to constantly remind one of the 'now' make me want to wring their necks! 
       Huxley was basically an elitist who would have been horrified at the use ofLSD by prole scum like us.
         One thing i notice in his books is the inclusion of long passages of French, Italian, German and Latin and Greek, without translation. The assumption being that if you were reading a novel in those days, you had received sufficient education to understand these.
            I don't want to cone down to hard on Huxley, I read most of his books as a teenager. Brave New World is a much more accurate description of the future than 1984, I think. But, like Jack Kerouac, as time has gone on, I like him less and less. (I mean I dislike Kerouac, I have no information regarding his feelings on Huxley) Kerouac comes off as a self pitying drunk.
           Recently, his wife/girlfriend revealed that the famous scroll of On the Road, (purportedly scrawled in three weeks of Benzedrine fury) in fact was the product of months and months of agonized reediting.
          Its Orwell and Burroughs for me I'm afraid
           I really wish Burroughs had stuck to the dry style of "junky" ("You are both motherfuckers" Her tone was matter if fact as if referring to actual incest)
His later 'cut up' work ( Naked lunch,  Soft Machine) while full of memorable imagery, never really worked for me.
           I would recommend Junky, and Ah Pook is Here, to blow your mind


Non fiction: 1491. And sequel 1493 by Charles C Mann. These accounts of the Americas immediately before, and then after the European contact, are endlessly fascinating to me.
         Did you know that Squanto the freindly English speaking indian, who helped the colonists, had actually chosen his name after coming back from years overseas (kidnapped by sailors )to find his homeland a bone strewn, smallpox devestated wilderness, and his name actually meant something close to "Wrath of God"?
        The tales of Maroon communities (of escaped slaves and local Indians) are equally amazing. Apparently many Indians first contact was with escaped Africans rather than Europeans.
        There is surprisingly little information in popular culture about the early days of this huge, world changing event (the Columbian exchange).
         
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: SealTeam6 on July 09, 2013, 08:08 am
The Kite Runner
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: zapatista36 on July 10, 2013, 02:34 am
Pimp by Iceberg Slim - can't get a more broken home than his was
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: Hungry ghost on July 10, 2013, 11:05 am
Ham on Rye by Bukowski is one of my faves.  The Road by Cormac McCarthy is astonishing. Let The Right One In is also fantastic, the film doesn't do it justice.   
   
The Road, wow! I read it in one sitting and cried properly like for several minutes at the end, don't think I have ever been so emotionally affected by a book.

Neal Stephenson is a good author for interesting ideas. Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Reamde, all good books.
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: SealTeam6 on July 10, 2013, 02:50 pm
Ham on Rye by Bukowski is one of my faves.  The Road by Cormac McCarthy is astonishing. Let The Right One In is also fantastic, the film doesn't do it justice.   
   
The Road, wow! I read it in one sitting and cried properly like for several minutes at the end, don't think I have ever been so emotionally affected by a book.

Neal Stephenson is a good author for interesting ideas. Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Reamde, all good books.

I picked "The Road" up recently, gonna bump it up my reading list thanks to you folks
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: fatslimback on July 11, 2013, 06:46 pm
Ham on Rye by Bukowski is one of my faves.  The Road by Cormac McCarthy is astonishing. Let The Right One In is also fantastic, the film doesn't do it justice.   
   
The Road, wow! I read it in one sitting and cried properly like for several minutes at the end, don't think I have ever been so emotionally affected by a book.

Neal Stephenson is a good author for interesting ideas. Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Reamde, all good books.

I picked "The Road" up recently, gonna bump it up my reading list thanks to you folks

I'm the same dude, full on waterworks at the end. I was just blown away by it. Get it read Seal.   
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: adamiz on July 11, 2013, 06:56 pm
Illusions by Richard Bach

It about a Messiah who doesn't want to be really a Messiah.

Wonderful book with wonderful quotes. And as a matter of fact I just figured out what to put in my signature :P
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: SealTeam6 on July 11, 2013, 07:10 pm
Will do Fatslim.

That illusions book may have to come right after "The Road".
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: bealzebobs on July 12, 2013, 01:26 pm
Ham on Rye by Bukowski is one of my faves. 

It is a brilliant read. Papillon by Henri Charriere is really good. The trainspotting trilogy by Irvine Welsh (skag boys, trainspotting, porno) is superb, in fact i love pretty much everything he has written.
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: Hungry ghost on July 12, 2013, 04:31 pm
I dunno, the rest of Irvine Welsh I think could reasonably be entitled "stuff that wasn't good enough to go into trainspotting" . I mean he tried to branch out with Acid House and Marabou Stork, but he seems just to have settled for giving us what we want : more 'the sweat was lashin offay Sick boy, ahm no sick meself , no yet, but its in the post'
       Trainspotting was phenomenal though. I've always been the literary type but it was the first time I remember there being this buzz about a BOOK. I read the first page and was begging my mate to let me read it because I knew he'd take months whereas I could suck it down in a few days. In the end I got it from the library (remember those? Now I get all my books for free online!) and it was a dark and unsettling read.....is this what we are really like? The film was ok but the book has so much much more
       I've read all his other stuff since but I kind of feel, like so many authors, (and bands and directors etc.) his first work he had spent his life up until then creating, and then the second, and third, are produced under pressure and to a deadline.
        Some artists manage to get out from under the shadow of their first work, but precious few. I don't think Welsh is one of them, although I continue to read his stuff.  It was satisfying to find out what happened to the characters after, then before, but.....I can read about Scottish smackheids all day, but I don't think he's got anything else to give. Still, easy for me to criticise. I'd be happy to have produced one Trainspotting.
        This syndrome is particularly noticeable with rappers/ hip hop groups. The first album is like the stuff they have been working out since they were teenagers. The second is made in a year in a studio with shitloads of coke and loads of yes men.
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: SealTeam6 on July 14, 2013, 04:31 am
The novel I'm reading right now is "The Judas Strain" by James Rollins.  It's one of those fast paced novels filled with secret societies, religious occult, and elite government agents battling to save the world.  I'm half way in and it's been a solid read, I would recommend it if you are interested in that type of book.
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: jackofspades on July 14, 2013, 07:52 am
Im currently reading "1984" by G. Orwell for my very first time! i literally just started it and am only a few pages in.

I recommend "Democrips and Rebloodlicans" by former navy seal/governor Jesse Ventura.
and

Ive heard "the fountainhead" by ayn rand is good but i have yet to read that one as well!
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: turdburglarSandwich on July 14, 2013, 08:46 am
Illusions by Richard Bach

It about a Messiah who doesn't want to be really a Messiah.

Wonderful book with wonderful quotes. And as a matter of fact I just figured out what to put in my signature :P

This. I have read all of his other books and been profoundly affected by this one, and the Bridge Across Forever the Most.

In the vein of Richard Bach is Hugh Prather. He wrote Notes to Myself, among other books. They have the notes he keeps writing as he finds his way in the world of functional adulthood. My favorite from Notes, "If the desire to write is not accompanied by writing, the desire is not to write."

In the fiction world, I love alternate histories, scifi, and military sci fi. So David Webber with his Honor Herrington series rocks my world. Then there is Robert Jordan's the Wheel of Time books. I would have had that man's bastard two headed fuzzy kittens but he died in 2007.

If you have never read any Terry Pratchett, what are you waiting for, the man has Parkinson's and won't be writing or even wiping his own ass very much longer.
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: aredhel on July 14, 2013, 06:20 pm
Illusions by Richard Bach

I love this one !

Ok, I checked my library and these novels impressed me lots:

Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon, Classic SF - a history of the evolution of intelligent beings in the universe

Ayla by Jean M. Auel - immerses you into life in ice age europe, there's a few volumes been appearing, the first two "The Clan of the Cave Bear" and "The Valley of Horses"

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende - not just a children's book, it's an adventurous journey into the realm called "phantasia" and back. (was there a movie ? skip that crap ! sux! the novel is great !!)
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: semi_feral_human on July 16, 2013, 12:21 pm
Breakfast of Champions and God Bless You Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut
Most anything by Percival Everett
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: enpiping on July 20, 2013, 05:15 am
David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" (huge, but worth it)
J.G. Ballard's "Cocaine Nights"
Mordecai Richler's "Barney's Version"
Jay McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City"
Paul Auster's "The Brooklyn Follies"
Thomas Pynchon "Crying of Lot 49" (interesting stuff about an anonymous postal service in it, too)

Got lots more, but those are some pretty solid works.  Also seconding some of the Vonnegut mentioned--pretty much anything by him.
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: fatslimback on July 20, 2013, 07:33 pm
David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" (huge, but worth it)
J.G. Ballard's "Cocaine Nights"
Mordecai Richler's "Barney's Version"
Jay McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City"
Paul Auster's "The Brooklyn Follies"
Thomas Pynchon "Crying of Lot 49" (interesting stuff about an anonymous postal service in it, too)

Got lots more, but those are some pretty solid works.  Also seconding some of the Vonnegut mentioned--pretty much anything by him.

I've only ever read one Vonnegut novel- Slaughterhouse-Five and it was a good few years ago now. His depiction of the fire bombing of Dresden and it's aftermath, which he witnessed, is one of the most harrowing accounts of war I've ever read. A portrayal of just how cruel humanity can be. Everyone should read it.       
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: enpiping on July 20, 2013, 09:17 pm
David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" (huge, but worth it)
J.G. Ballard's "Cocaine Nights"
Mordecai Richler's "Barney's Version"
Jay McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City"
Paul Auster's "The Brooklyn Follies"
Thomas Pynchon "Crying of Lot 49" (interesting stuff about an anonymous postal service in it, too)

Got lots more, but those are some pretty solid works.  Also seconding some of the Vonnegut mentioned--pretty much anything by him.

I've only ever read one Vonnegut novel- Slaughterhouse-Five and it was a good few years ago now. His depiction of the fire bombing of Dresden and it's aftermath, which he witnessed, is one of the most harrowing accounts of war I've ever read. A portrayal of just how cruel humanity can be. Everyone should read it.       
It's definitely a great book.  I think Breakfast of Champions is my favourite though--check it out.
Title: Re: Recommend some novels?
Post by: schuldig on July 20, 2013, 09:55 pm
The Master and Margarita
Confessions of Felix Krull
Crime and Punishment
Illiad and the Odyssey

are just a few of my favourites.