What Are Your Favorite Books?

[Chad]

"Into the Wild" is great. The movie wasn't bad either.
Continuing the military theme of Sun Tzu, most anything on Machiavelli (The Prince) is a good read. Obviously, both Sun Tzu and Machiavelli can be applied to more than military ventures.

[jennypenny]

>>Obviously, both Sun Tzu and Machiavelli can be applied to more than military ventures.

...like high school
"Into the Wild" reminded me of "Into Thin Air." I love books like that--"Silence of the Lambs" and "Jaws" also come to mind--that everyone reads and passes around. I think it's fun when a book appeals to everyone and it ends up being a collective experience. It doesn't happen very often. (now everyone talks about shows like Idol that way, not books)

[Chad]

Definitely high school. Especially, Machiavelli.
The most recent collective book experience was Harry Potter. It was fun to see all the kids so pumped about reading. It really was a fun read even for adults.

[GPMagnus]

@ jennypenny Krakauer wrote both Into the Wild and Into Thin Air I love his style of writing - it makes me feel as if I am *there*
@Chad Machiavelli is good, no doubt!

[frygirl]

tao te ching

[tylerrr]

at the library today, I just picked up "How to Live Well Without Owning a Car".
I also picked up a Murakami book "After the Quake".

[m741]

Nice! After the Quake is a collection of short stories... let me know what you think.
I'll second Harry Potter. I was the right age to read these books as a kid (though they were a guilty pleasure for me). Now I've found Harry Potter to be a great way to learn another language. They're engaging books and the writing is relatively straightforward. You can buy the ebooks online in French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

[Marlene]

+1 to most of the above &
Terry Pratchett should be given the Nobelprice for peace in my opinion. (on peace: Thud!, for boys: Only you can save mankind, for James Bond lovers: Nightwatch, for the Nerds: Going postal, for the girls: I shall wear midnight, Anty-royalists: Feet of Clay,...),
Suzette Haden Elgin for Ozark level-headedness coupled with language (Native tongue) / magic (Ozark triology)
Enjoyed Raimond E. Feist/ Jenny Wurtz Empire Triologie (Young girl in fantasy-asiatic setting finds herself becoming the head of a great family and has to plot and plan politically and financially for her survival)
Mattew W. Stover - Heroes die - A kind of Hollywoodesque actor in an almost overshot world that feeds entertainment to the masses through adventures on another world - er - you need to read it, it´s great if you like fantasy coupled with tech.

[Felix]

Okay, here we go in order of life-changing significance:
- 7 habits of highly effective people (best book ever, replaces an entire library of similar books - surprisingly deep for a book of that title)

- When i say no, I feel guilty (how-to on being assertive)

- Anything by Robert Anton Wilson - especially Quantum Psychology - he's my favourite philosopher

here's a link to his Rich economy, which was requested:

http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/rawilson.html

It was referenced in the Schrödinger's Cat trilogy as being implemented by a president

- the teenage liberation handbook is great on homeschooling and (re)learning to learn in general

- Anything by Epicurus

- YMOYL and ERE are in there, too, of course, even though I also really like "Work less play more" by Steven Catlin, which has a very relaxed approach to all of this

- Brave New World for a brilliant reductio ad absurdum of modernism/consumerism/technological utopianism in general showing its inherent emptiness - way more accurate and relevant than 1984, I think.

[jennypenny]

Spartan_Warrior's post on the "version of history" thread inspired me to bump this thread for the newer forumites. I'm always looking for new books to read. Book recommendations are one of my favorite parts of this forum. (fiction and non-fiction)

[Chad]

Spartan_Warrior's post on the "version of history" thread inspired me to bump this thread for the newer forumites. I'm always looking for new books to read. Book recommendations are one of my favorite parts of this forum. (fiction and non-fiction)

Yep, I always enjoy hearing what others like and a little about why. Even if I disagree! The "classics!"

Recently, I found the Wool series by Howey to be an interesting read. Plenty of curveballs and slightly scary plot. Not scary in the horror sense, but in the "this might be possible" sense.

[7Wannabe5]

Great or Interesting Novels About Love and Money:

1) Bleak House-Dickens
2) Germinal-Zola
3) A Man in Full-Wolfe
4) Persuasion-Austen
5) Rabbit is Rich-Updike
6) Vanity Fair-Thackeray
7) Buddenbrooks -Thomas Mann
8) The Adventures of Augie March-Saul Bellow
9) The Beans of Egypt, Maine- Chute
10) The Little Disturbances of Man-Paley (short stories)
11) The Shadow Knows-Johnson
12) Song of Solomon-Morrison
13) House of Sand and Fog- Dubus
14) The Woman in the Dunes-Abe
15) Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch-Rice
16) Cold Comfort Farm -Gibbons
17) Children are Diamonds -Hoagland
18) Quo Vadis -Sienkiewicz
19) Earthly Possessions- Tyler
20) The Debt to Pleasure - Lanchester
21) Charity Girl - Heyer
22) Rich Man, Poor Man -Shaw
23) White Noise -DeLillo
24) O Pioneers!- Cather
25) Ragtime- Doctorow
26) Nobody's Fool- Russo
27) All the King's Men- Warren
28) The Sirens of Titan- Vonnegut
29) The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster- Brautigan
30) Republic of Love- Shields

...of course, all novels are about love and money so I could just go on and on and on.

[walker]

Thanks @jennypenny for bumping! So many old favorites and great new recommendations.

Category: Going to Extremes

Nonfiction:

The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch, Lewis Dartnell - Thoughts on how to reinvent agriculture and industry after a global pandemic.

Mean and Lowly Things, Kate Jackson - Collecting snakes for a year in the Congo, for science.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennett - Explains how the theory of evolution destroyed and created entire worldviews.

Fiction:

The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov - Struggling to follow the creative path in Stalin's Russia.

Ghostwritten, David Mitchell (and also Cloud Atlas) - A bleak but elegantly-written view of humanity.

Oryx & Crake/Year of the Flood/Maddaddam, Margaret Atwood - Turns out permaculture *will* save the world.

[GandK]

In terms of books that stayed with me after I read them, and/or books that I enjoyed enough to read multiple times, the top ten are here:

1. Walden (Henry David Thoreau)
2. Illusions (Richard Bach)
3. Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis)
4. The Purpose Driven Life (Rick Warren)
5. The Forest For The Trees (Betsy Lerner)
6. The Collected Works of Jane Austen
7. Middlemarch (George Eliot)
8. The Name Of The Rose (Umberto Eco)
9. The Far Pavilions (M.M. Kaye)
10. The Heritage of Shannara series (Terry Brooks)

Special mention to Patricia Cornwell's "Postmortem," which scared me so badly when I first read it that I developed a mild phobia of pancake syrup afterward. I guess it stuck with me too.

[jacob]

I'm currently reading my way through the bibliography in Charles Hugh Smith's Survival+ book. Oh, and by the way, I'll add Survival+ to the list as well as its bibliography.

[Dragline]

Oldest favorite book (from childhood, still appreciated as a parable of irrationality and status anxiety):

"The Sneetches and Other Stories" by Dr. Suess

Just call me "Zanzibar Buck-buck McFate!"

[slimicy]

Books/series that I've read more than 5 times:

Hyperion Cantos - Dan Simmons
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
The Belgariad/The Mallorean - David Eddings
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Hobbit/Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Recent reads I'd highly recommend:
NOS4A2 - Joe Hill
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
The Stand - Stephen King

[steveo73]

The Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan

I love fantasy but it has to be done well and consistently well. I read this and it just went to crap at some point.

I don't know what are my favorite books but I read all the time. If you are into ERE I think the Reacher books are great. If you are into fantasy I really like Brandon Sanderson. If you are into self-help the stoic book that MMM reviewed is fantastic. Jack London books are great but I read them when I was about 10. I loved "The Fountainhead" and definitely some of the other books that Rand wrote.

John Connelly writes great books. Michael Connelly does as well. Jane Austen writes really well as well but I can't see myself reading them again.

[jennypenny]

Has anyone read The Pines? I was on the fence, but then I saw the mini-series was coming out and wanted to read the book first. Someone who read the series told me to at least read the first book before the movie comes out.

I'm also intrigued by the fan fiction component.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=lp_61185870 ... 2656894011