Book recommendations?

[MDC 5,915]

Really fell out of my habit of reading this year and I need a good book to get back into it. I like short stories, mysteries, literary fiction, etc. really anything well-written where something happens. I'm not a big fan of mass market thrillers or for whatever reason, books about war. No idea why, just doesn't do it for me. I do like nonfiction and thought about picking up something by David McCullough.

 

Any suggestions? Thanks.

[Toro 1]

Really fell out of my habit of reading this year and I need a good book to get back into it. I like short stories, mysteries, literary fiction, etc. really anything well-written where something happens. I'm not a big fan of mass market thrillers or for whatever reason, books about war. No idea why, just doesn't do it for me. I do like nonfiction and thought about picking up something by David McCullough.

 

Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

Obama's book.

 

From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman. I am halfway through it and it is changing a lot of my preconceptions about the middle east.

[Snoopy1 0]

I'm reading Playboy right now.

[MDC 5,915]

I'm reading Playboy right now.

 

Playboy runs some pretty good fiction and features really well-written articles.

 

all the teets and muff don't hurt, either

[Snoopy1 0]

Lately I've found myself reading a lot of Michael Connely, just straight up pulp fiction, detective/cop books.

[itsbigmoni 1]

Theres a whole thread on this. Just search for favorite books. But yea, it totally depends on what kind of book you're looking for.

 

If you want a real easy fiction read, John Grisham isn't bad. He wrote the book that inspired the movie with Samuel Jackson and Mathew McConeheigh or however you spell his name. You know, "Yea i believe they deserved to die and i hope they burn in hell." But his books get repetitive after a few.

 

Favorite fiction books for me either Puzo or Clancy. I read godfather before watching the movie and it made the movie only decent. The book is hella focking bad ass though. I also liked the last don by him. His non mafia books aren't all that great. Well, my brother loves them, but to me they're too slow and sometimes he gets wayyyyyy too descriptive for my tastes. But thats the exact reason my brother liked em.

 

But yea, Tom Clancy is the shiznit too.

 

I've barely started getting into non-fiction recently and have only read tipping point and a lil bit of Blink. Freakanomics is up next.

[Groundhog 24]

"The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell is a fascinating read.

 

also, a thumbs-up to the earlier suggestion of From Beirut to Jerusalem. This is the definitive guide to the Middle East conflict.

[Patriotsfatboy1 1,432]

Velocity by Dean Koontz

[Ignition Technition 0]

The Los Angeles Diaries: A Memoir

by James Brown

 

NOT the musician.

 

From Publishers Weekly

Novelist Brown (Lucky Town; Hot Wire; etc.) mines the explosive territory of his own harsh and complicated life in this gut-wrenching memoir. The youngest child of a mentally ill mother and an absent father, Brown (b. 1957) grew up in the shadow of Hollywood with two older siblings: a brother, a moderately successful actor until his suicide at 27, and a sister who also dreamed of acting but took her life at 44. Brown's tales are harrowing: at five, he and his mother traveled from their San Jose home to San Francisco, where she set an apartment building ablaze. Arson couldn't be proven, but she was imprisoned for tax evasion. At nine, he shared his first drink and high with his siblings; when he was 12, a neighbor attempted to molest him; by 30 he was an alcohol- and cocaine-addicted writer-in-residence. During his marriage's early years, Brown often left his wife to feed his addictions, repeatedly promising her he'd reform. Desperate to fuel his writing career, he attempted screenwriting, but everything he pitched seemed too dark. Brown's genius compels readers to sympathize with him in every instance. Juxtaposed with the shimmery unreality of Hollywood, these essays bitterly explore real life, an existence careening between great promise and utter devastation. Brown's revelations have no smugness or self-congratulation; they reek of remorse and desire, passion and futility. Brown flays open his own tortured skin looking for what blood beats beneath and why. The result is a grimly exquisite memoir that reads like a noir novel but grips unrelentingly like the hand of a homeless drunk begging for help.

 

 

http://www.amazon.com/Los-Angeles-Diaries-...r/dp/0060521511

[SUXBNME 1,346]

Anything By Vince Flynn

 

Snoopy should read his work also, it just might help save the 2 of you from turning into total nutjobs

[naomi 343]

1984 if you've never read it. Outside of the sort of prophetic nature and warning against a Big Brother like government, it's an entertaining story. Can't dissapoint.

 

Another good one from Orwell that has some quality that makes it memorable:

 

Coming Up for Air

 

Insurance salesman George "Fatty" Bowling lives with his humorless wife and their two irritating children in a dull house in a tract development in the historyless London suburb of West Bletchley. The year is 1938; doomsayers are declaring that England will be at war again by 1941.

 

When George bets on an unlikely horse and wins, he finds himself with a little extra cash on his hands. What should he spend it on? "The alternatives, it seemed to me, were either a week-end with a woman or dribbling it quietly away on odds and ends such as cigars and double whiskeys." But a chance encounter with a poster in Charing Cross sets him off on a tremendous journey into his own memories--memories, especially, of a boyhood spent in Lower Binfield, the country village where he grew up. His recollections are pungent and detailed. Touch by touch, he paints for us a whole world that is already nearly lost: a world not yet ruled by the fear of war and not yet blighted by war's aftermath:

1913! My God! 1913! The stillness, the green water, the rushing of the weir! It'll never come again. I don't mean that 1913 will never come again. I mean the feeling inside you, the feeling of not being in a hurry and not being frightened, the feeling you've either had and don't need to be told about, or haven't had and won't ever have the chance to learn.

[ArnieBragg 1]

1776 by McCullough is pretty good.

 

You're a Lethem fan yes? I assume you have already read A Fortress of Solitude.

[Giants Fan 85]

Real World Print Production by Claudia McCue

 

 

(I don't have time to read fiction)

[SUXBNME 1,346]

Real World Print Production by Claudia McCue

 

 

(I don't know how to read)

 

Fixored

[MicktheGreat 1]

Really fell out of my habit of reading this year and I need a good book to get back into it. I like short stories, mysteries, literary fiction, etc. really anything well-written where something happens.

 

Any suggestions? Thanks.

Short Story Collection Suggestions:

anything by Hemingway

The Watch by Rick Bass

The Half-Mammals of Dixie by George Singleton

The Question of Bruno by Aleksandar Hemon

Cathedral by Raymond Carver

 

I've read some-to-all of these collections. They're very good, IMO. I didn't mention a specific collection by Hemingway; but you should be able to find one (I like his short stories MUCH more than his novels).

[Hurricane Ditka 0]

Read the bible.

[sheadtoo 1]

I got two for you both different

Kitchen Confidential semi- life story of Anthony Bordain

Round Ireland with a fridge...I don't remember who wrote it but good read anyway

[MDC 5,915]

Short Story Collection Suggestions:

anything by Hemingway

The Watch by Rick Bass

The Half-Mammals of Dixie by George Singleton

The Question of Bruno by Aleksandar Hemon

Cathedral by Raymond Carver

 

I've read some-to-all of these collections. They're very good, IMO. I didn't mention a specific collection by Hemingway; but you should be able to find one (I like his short stories MUCH more than his novels).

 

Thanks. Already read the Saunders and Carver ones and probably every story by Hemingway, but I haven't read anything by Rick Bass or Hemon, maybe I'll check them out.

 

Thanks all for the suggestions. I just rediscovered a $50 B&N gift card from Christmas and think I'll go spend it.

[frank 2,154]

1984 if you've never read it.

 

 

 

 

 

Also,

 

 

 

The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

[lechuza 0]

the killer angels