Take a Recommendation, Leave a Recommendation!

Post by **Crucifer** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 9:21 pm

Orwells 1984. You won't enjoy anything nearly as much for about a week after it, but while you're reading it you won't want to do anything else...

Post by **Inanna** » Sun Jan 20, 2008 10:32 pm

Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street series. There are three books originally written as a weekly (or daily) installation for a newspaper. What are they about? Well, life, I guess. Though being Alexander he is able to bring in philosophical discussions all the time.

Post by **Lurker** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:14 am

I'm not sure if you are interested with mine but I recommend:

The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas Friedman
It's about globalization stuff. I'm sure Jnyusa has read it. A must read!!!

How to Know God: The Soul's Journey Into The Mystery of Mysteries by Deepak Chopra

The Takeover by Stephen Frey
I love Stephen Frey's books! He is like John Grisham to lawyers, he is to investment bankers.

Non Fiction:

Jack Welch and the GE Way

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
The book shares thematic elements with Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince. It takes the form of a manual which provides laws for those who seek to increase their power in life. The work aims to illustrate that "certain actions always increase one's power ... while others decrease it and even ruin us." The work has become very popular among hip hop artists and producers.
I love this book!!! A few of the stuff he recommends kinda' clashes with my ethics and morals but still, it's very useful when you are dealing with difficult bosses, co-workers and subordinates.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal
I'm not very fond of the guy but I like reading his books.

As you can see, I love reading business books.

Princess got a Hillary Clinton bio book as a Christmas gift. I think I'm tempted to read it.

Post by **Erunáme** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 5:08 am

Lily Rose wrote:Anybody who has not read Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gamain should.

Anyone else read this book? I found the beginning to be quite enjoyable but got very bogged down in the middle, then the end picked up again. I have very mixed feelings about this book and makes me a bit wary of picking up anything else by either author, although I did enjoy Stardust.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 7:30 am

I have that book and have never succeeded in reading it, classic though it may be.

Mr. Prim for a while there was giving me a relentless stream of Funny Science Fiction, and the fact is that I don't, really, enjoy that very much at all. I like SF for the drama, the operatic excitement, the larger-than-life characters—which Funny SF is built around deflating and leaves me feeling, all in all, rather . . . deflated, since I write the stuff and like to be able to take it seriously, at least while I'm actually working on it.

For some reason Hitchhiker's does not fall under this Umbrella of Gloom—I think because Adams wasn't winking at people; his humor didn't require smirking about the genre. He worked with it and made it enormously funny. I think that was because much of the humor derived from ordinary people discovering that some rather frightening SF cliches were, well, true—rather than from SF geeks discovering that they've been idiots all along.

Post by **Padme** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 5:46 pm

narya wrote:Pearly Di, Hoeg's book was called Smilla's Sense of Snow in America, and I, too, recommend it.

I just finished Bram Stoker's Dracula. Started off well, but dragged a bit at the end (reminded me of Harry Potter's endless camping trip).

Off the top of my head ... what else have I read in the past few years ... hmmmm.

Laura Escobal's Like Water for Chocolate. I love Latin American fantasy - it's very different than North American fantasy.

Ellen Kushner's The Priviledge of the Sword, and Thomas the Rhymer. OK, so I like North American fantasy, too, especially when set in sorta-England , and I met and swooned for this author and her partner - Dehlia Sherman - last year.

Sue Monk Kidd's The Mermaid's Chair. Her writing is so lyrical.

Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union. What would have happened if 3 million Jews had gone to Sitka, Alaska, in 1945, and now it's present day and they all speak Yiddish and live in a special enclave that is going to revert back to America soon? A very different murder mystery.

George RR Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series. More NA fantasy set in sorta-England. With dragons! I'm impatiently awaiting the final book.

The Dalia Lama's Compassion. Yes, I'm eclectic. I'm very drawn to His Eminence's writings.

Temple Grandin's Animals in Translation and Thinking in Pictures. Another look into the autistic mind, though harder to read than the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.

Just finished a book my mom lent me - Jame's Patterson's Susan's Diary for Nicholas. A real tear jerker romance, with a good central message: The Lesson of the Five Balls. You have 5 balls to juggle during your lifetime, Work, Family, Friends, Health and Integrity. Work is a rubber ball. The others are glass. You do the math.

Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Gave me a much better appreciation of my Afghani co-worker. Life really is different, out there.

Dean Koontz's Velocity. Part of me was unable to put down the book, which is about someone who is slowly terrorizing the protagonist. The other part of me was saying "Why are you letting this author slowly terrorize you?"

There are lots more, but my mind's a blank right now.

I would agree with Narya's recommendations and add

The pillers of the Earth, by Ken Follett. I haven't read World Without End yet.

And

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series.

Post by **Lurker** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 5:41 am

Thanks for recommending Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet, Padme. I forgot to post that.

I haven't got hold of World Without End yet. I will check the used bookstore.

Padme, I recommend you read A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follet. One of my faves as well. It's about the fall of the markets in England and stuff. Pillars was architecture, this is economics.

Post by **narya** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 6:10 am

Padme wrote: I would agree with Narya's recommendations and add

The pillers of the Earth, by Ken Follett. I haven't read World Without End yet.

And

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series.

My daughter read several of the Chronicles and did not recommend them, and I tend to have the same taste as she does. I might try one on the strong recommendation that you like what I like.

Ken Follett's genre is listed as "techno-thriller" in Amazon, so I will have to check that out, too.

Post by **Faramond** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:25 pm

R. Scott Bakker

The Darkness That Comes Before
The Warrior-Prophet
The Thousandfold Thought

It is the story of a holy war.

Post by **Northerner** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 9:17 pm

Has anyone read Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale? This is one of my favorite books, one that I return to again and again. I admire some of his other books, but this is his best, I think. I'll warn you that it's in a magical realism style, if that's not your cuppa, but it's a magnificent tale! What's it about? Hell if I know. Love, beauty, sacrifice, time travel, impossible flights and bridges. The writing is poetic.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 9:58 pm

I have Winter's Tale, Northerner, and have tried several times to read it, but never manage to finish. I completely agree that the writing is beautiful, and some of the images still haunt me—but somehow I never got quite worried enough about the characters to be drawn through to the end.

Post by **Impenitent** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 12:49 am

Has anyone read "The Well at the World's End" by William Morris? One of the earliest - maybe the earliest? - fantasy novels written in English.

I read it when I was about 15, and it enchanted me, I was so taken by the other-worldly romance of it. However, I haven't been able to get my hands on a copy ever since, and now I have only this early impression to go on.

EDIT: I've found it at Project Guttenberg and will now be able to re-read it - I'm really looking forward to it, albeit with a slight touch of apprehension in case my adolescent impressions are completely washed away by my adult reading.

In case anyone else is interested:

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin ... up?num=169

Post by **narya** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 3:48 am

Impenitent wrote:I'm really looking forward to it, albeit with a slight touch of apprehension in case my adolescent impressions are completely washed away by my adult reading.

That happened to me when I read Gone With the Wind, for the second time, as an adult, and realize what a little twerp the protagonist was.

Post by **narya** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 1:33 am

Ah, just finished "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult. I highly recommend it. I'm still sniffling from the ending. Premise of story: Parents have two kids, the younger one gets a particularly nasty form of leukemia at 2 years old, so they conceive third kid (with a little help from in vitro fertilization and testing) to get an almost perfect donor match. At 13, donor kid decides enough is enough. She's donated blood products and marrow several times to her frequently relapsing older sister. Now she puts her foot down at a kidney. What is the right thing to do? The story goes to a different character's point of view with each chapter, and does a great job of seeing the problem from all angles.

Post by **Folca** » Sun May 11, 2008 10:28 pm

Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less by Jeffrey Archer

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

The Bourne Identity, The Road to Gandalfo, The Road to Omaha by Robert Ludlum

Post by **Crucifer** » Sun May 11, 2008 10:44 pm

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Most definitely.

The first thing I thought of when I saw your avatar, Folca, was that it was Bill Bailey...

I would like to recommend Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Neitzchse. It's quite interesting.

Also Chapman's Homer is a fascinating read, but be ready for a long haul...

Sun Tzu's Art of war is another very interesting read.

Post by **Folca** » Wed May 14, 2008 6:36 am

Sun Tzu is a great choice. Also, for those either in public service or the military, or closely tied to people in those fields,

On Killing and On Combat by Dave Grossman

They are very enlightening books but certainly not for casual readers but a must read for those who may unfortunately have to use violence in their employment.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Wed May 14, 2008 6:39 am

Post by **Impenitent** » Wed May 14, 2008 9:30 am

No bloodshed and gore in copyediting, eh?

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Wed May 14, 2008 2:51 pm

I rarely need to go so far as murdering an author, though the impulse is often present.