Silk Road forums
Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: Mashman on September 07, 2012, 11:26 am
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Alright lets see if this one takes off ???
Favourite book is dante's inferno - in translation
Just started reading mrs dalloway by virginia woolf. Swear down if you want to understand how women think you gotta read it.
Do share ;D
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The Dark Tower
Greatest book series of all time.
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Just finished The Stand this morning it was solidly decent.
Grapes of wrath is my favorite book, I've read it 4 or 5 times and always enjoy it.
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I just read slaughterhouse five by Kurt Vonnegut. It was excellent. My favorite book is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein. Best science fiction writer ever IMO.
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No question right now, "Altered Carbon" by Richard K. Morgan. Highly, highly recommended. (As are the two others in the Takeshi Kovacs series.)
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Some good recommendations coming in. I'll give a couple mine and some thoughts:
Dark Tower series--rather good but I always get bitter at a long series. I think it could have been shorter and the ending is...well, Stephen King. Glad I read it but I hear he's going to redo the whole series (perhaps playing off the ending of the seventh--I haven't looked into it since i heard about this months ago) which gives me mixed feelings.
Dante's Inferno was an amazing read. I didn't quite enjoy Purgatorio and Paradiso in the same way. They just didn't have the same...tragic beauty to it? It didn't capture me the way Inferno did.
On this same vein of books--it's hard not to recommend The Odyssey. It's quite the read but you can really see the genesis of a lot of story archetypes that exist today.
My latest (non scholarly) read was Fevre Dream by George RR Martin -- A vampire book published in this generation that doesn't kill the history of the mythos while taking it in a whole new spin.
Left-field recommendation: Elizabeth Kostova -- The Historian. A good read. I don't like to call favorite books because I'm fickle but this is a nice story based off the original Stoker mythos of vampires. The writing could be a tad on the juvenile (I must have read it a decade or so ago) but I felt it a compelling tale at the time I read it.
Hmmm...my mind's blank but if people keep generating interest in this thread I'm sure I'll remember some other books.
Cheers!
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Vurt by Jeff Noon
If you like drugs and sci fi then you have to read this book, :)
Plot - copied from wikipedia
Vurt tells the story of Scribble and his "gang", the Stash Riders, as they search for his missing sister/lover Desdemona. The novel is set in an alternate version of Manchester, England, in which society has been shaped by Vurt, a hallucinogenic drug/shared alternate reality, accessed by sucking on colour-coded feathers. Through some (never explained) mechanism, the dreams, mythology, and imaginings of humanity have achieved objective reality in the Vurt and become "real".
Before the novel begins, Scribble and his sister-lover take a shared trip into a vurt called English Voodoo, but upon awakening Scribble finds his sister has been replaced by an amorphous blob that Mandy, a fellow Stash Rider, nicknames "The Thing from Outer Space". From that point on, Scribble is on a mission to find another copy of the rare and contraband Curious Yellow feather (found within English Voodoo), so that he can exchange The Thing for Desdemona.
:)
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Anything by Will Christopher Baer; currently stumbling through Gravity's Rainbow (by Thomas Pinchon).
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The Dark Tower
Greatest book series of all time.
I wonder why a series of movies hasnt been made yet. Nearly, if not all of Kings work has seen some kind of TV adaptation.
As for now i am reading The Lost Symbol. Yeah yeah its Dan Brown i know, but its pretty interesting.
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Vurt by Jeff Noon
If you like drugs and sci fi then you have to read this book, :)
Plot - copied from wikipedia
Vurt tells the story of Scribble and his "gang", the Stash Riders, as they search for his missing sister/lover Desdemona. The novel is set in an alternate version of Manchester, England, in which society has been shaped by Vurt, a hallucinogenic drug/shared alternate reality, accessed by sucking on colour-coded feathers. Through some (never explained) mechanism, the dreams, mythology, and imaginings of humanity have achieved objective reality in the Vurt and become "real".
Before the novel begins, Scribble and his sister-lover take a shared trip into a vurt called English Voodoo, but upon awakening Scribble finds his sister has been replaced by an amorphous blob that Mandy, a fellow Stash Rider, nicknames "The Thing from Outer Space". From that point on, Scribble is on a mission to find another copy of the rare and contraband Curious Yellow feather (found within English Voodoo), so that he can exchange The Thing for Desdemona.
:)
Tat sounds interesting as hell!
I think the last book I completed was Hellstrom's Hive by Frank Herbert.
That shit was intense once it got going.
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Frank Herbert is interesting as hell himself. Did you read any of the Dune books?
The movie is a shallow, shallow interpretation.
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Nah, never read the books or saw the movie.
If anyone likes really dry, political books.. I recommend anything by Zibigniew Brezinski. He wrote one about how technology will and can be used against us. Very smart dude. Even though I think he is a ruthless sociopath.
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Sounds interesting enough. ;D
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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
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Some of these sound really good. Will have to check them out once i get through the stack i got atm.
Wondering if anyones read arabian nights and wht they think? Thats the next on my list.
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Currently reading IQ84 by Haruki Murakami
Don't know what my favorite book is but Favorite authors (fave book in parenthesis):
Kurt Vonnegut (Sirens of Titan)
Milan Kundera (Unbearable lightness of Being)
William Gibson (Neuromancer)
Paul Theroux (Hotel Honolulu)
Philip K. Dick (Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick)
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Just finished reading " The executioners men" which is a new book that just came out all about the Los Zetas cartel. very very interesting and actually has good info that most people dont know. a must read for anyone who is interested in the situation in mexico and cartels, etc
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currently reading Russia: A 1000 year chronicle of the wild east by Martin Sixsmith
i'm a history nerd....
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If you like history, look up a book called Gods War. Its basically about the crusades and why we are hated so much by the east.
VERY interesting. Remember the movie Kingdom Of Heaven?, its like that but with four sequels. 8)
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citezen X
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Anything like American History X ???
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ralph, bro, wtf did you do to get -100 karma?????
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I just finished reading the new Stephen King book, 11/22/63. It is very good although it gets a little slow at times. It is very different than his usual books in that it is not a horror book.
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Any clues as to what its about without particular spoilers mate??
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19884 or a child called it.. oo or the Alchemist
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50 shades of grey.
;)
sdesu
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ooh kinky 8)
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jack kerouac "On the road"
Charles Bukowski "Post office"
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Haruki Mirakami - The Wind Up Bird Chronicles
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The Diving Bell and The Butterfly
A Brief History of Time
both were written by people with locked-in syndrome. One had a stroke that paralyzed him and the other has been paralyzed by ALS for a long time now
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I can't believe Terry Pratchett wasn't mentioned, funniest books i have ever read.
Also they don't use any swear words but it makes you think it does in really smart ways, which i like in books (no vulgar language, but possible allusions to it).
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You mean like the use of the word "frak" in BSG or "smeg" in Red Dwarf???
Very clever usage of bad words in good ways 8)
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Nah, you know those are swear words.
He had this character I'll copy paste the wikia article, the book its from is called 'The Truth':
"Mr Tulip (other names unknown) is, along with Mr Pin, a member of the New Firm, a duo of interloping criminals in the The Truth. He is something of a contradiction: a remorseless killer with refined soul of a true fine-art connoisseur. He is differentiated from a common criminal by his habit of removing works of art from houses before committing arson, the ability to distinguish between priceless works of art and common forgeries, and an encyclopaedic knowledge of hundreds of years of great artists, artisans and their works. He is the muscle of the New Firm, and though an instinctive killer, recognises Mr Pin's cognitive skills, and leaves the thinking to him. He also suffers a mild speech impediment, causing him to often insert "—ing" mid-sentence (the suffix of an action verb without the verb itself). This hints that Mr Tulip's parental figures have left a lasting impression on his psyche, as he is someone who WANTS to swear but has been taught not to. It is also likely a commentary on the use and censorship of the swear "fucking" in dialogue.
One major problem with Mr Tulip is not that he has a drug habit as such, but that he WANTS to have a drug habit, and has a tendency to buy and consume anything sold in little brown bags. Unfortunately he also has the ability to unerringly buy from the one man selling oven cleaner or chalk dust amid an entire city of filled with purveyors of illicit narcotics, hallucinogens and stimulants. His primary skill in the New Firm is his apparently unlimited supply of anger, and that he has turned mindless violence into an art form.
Mr Tulip's past is hinted at being dark and fearful, a place even Mr Tulip is afraid to remember, but one of the memories he does have of his youth is the belief that as long as you have a potato, you'll be okay when you die. There are some hints that his family suffered from famine and he overheard that if there are potatoes to eat, the situation is not hopeless. His belief in this is quite firm, as "since they've believed it for centuries, it must be right". He is killed by Mr Pin near the end of the novel and used for a life raft as molten lead flows around the pair. Unfortunately, Mr Pin also steals his potato shortly before killing him, but Mr Tulip manages to retain the memory of a potato in the afterlife and Death allows him to reincarnate as a woodworm: the only woodworm to think 'this is —ing good wood!' "
But closer to the end of the book you realise that he isn't swearing rather curses in only one way, by saying "-ing". (The dash is an actual silence, not a censored syllable.)
Also there is an ongoing joke in the book series where some tyrant's of a bygone era were killed by being hung by the "figgin" its not mentioned where exactly the figgin is on the body but sounds like you certainly don't want to be hung by it.
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The 50th Law of Power
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Flann O'Brien - The Third Policeman
Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Charles Bukowski - Ham on Rye
Any other titles by these writers are also fantastic, these just happen to be my own personal favourites.
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Haruki Mirakami - The Wind Up Bird Chronicles
That was a very strange book. I enjoyed it, but I'd hardly call it my favorite.
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"Dune" by Frank Herbert literally the god father of modern Sci-Fi.
It's so good I put my name behind it ;)
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ilove those books that have the illustrations..
i think i seen some that have dinosaurs souped up with weapons.. and other illustrations show the armor that the people have from thier shoes to their weapons
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Whats all the hoo-haa about this book 50 Shades of Grey out recently??
I keep hearing about it on the fucking radio but have to turn it off because it annoys me.
Can someone help me relive my frustrations before i have to go and buy the fucking book lol.
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I've been reading The Pillars Of The Earth.
Fucking good so far.
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The Giving Tree
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Clifford the big red dog.. or them Bears or something. haa :P
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HOLY FUCK
Pillars of Earth starts on More4 tonight as part of an 8 part drama.
WTF do i do.
I am so enjoying the book. Ughh, why do they have to do this shit.
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Currently reading a Game of Thrones after watching the first two seasons. Hopefully the rest of the books stay just as good.
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Wasnt Sean Bean in the game of thrones?? I fucking love that guy.
Not in any homo way of course :P