OT: The Good Book/General Reading Thread

[big3_8_19_21]

Did I miss it, or do we really not have one of these yet?

Just finishing up World War Z.



Highly recommended. If you like zombies, you'll love this. However, if you like zombies, there's a good chance you've already read it. They're making a movie out of it, and I don't see how they can do it with a book written as a series of interviews...I guess...they could do a series of interviews.

The Zombie Survival Guide was good, but this was far better, I thought.

My dad suggested Jack Reacher series by Lee Child. Anyone read any of it?

Also, I suppose graphic novels are fair game. Watchmen and V for Vendetta: recommended. Both are better than their movie versions. It's been a while since I read it, but I recall enjoying the Rising Stars series.

On my to read list:
Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and Other Delusions by James Randi
Lush Life by Richard Price
Zombie Spaceship Wasteland by Patton Oswalt
The Last Christmas by Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan and Rick Remender (graphic novel)
Batman:The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland (graphic novel)

[Esohny]

Like a great movie or TV thread, I could go on forever here.

But I am reading "Undaunted Courage", a book about the Lewis and Clark expedition by Stephen Ambrose (the author of "Band of Brothers" which the HBO series was based on). Really enjoying it. If you like American history, particularly WW2, I'd recommend his stuff (besides Band of Brothers, Citizen Soldiers and D-Day are great too).

[big3_8_19_21]

I've always been interested in WWII, but I've never read as much about it as I would have liked. I was thinking of starting out with A Short History of World War II by James L. Stokesbury to get a good base, then move on to some Stephen Ambrose books as well as The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang (any comments on this one? Is it any good?), I don't know what else.

[teven_1]

currently reading "the breaks of the game" The famous book about the Portland Trailblazers. So far pretty interesting.
I also am planning to read "Play their Hearts out" the new book about the dark side of youth basketball.

[Devilzsidewalk]

Tau Zero

[SSUBluesman]

LOL I just started World War Z last night. I've got Orwell's "Essays" that I'm slowly treading through before bed. I finished up "A Moral Reckoning" (ugh) and will be dropping it off at the library and picking up "American insurgents, American patriots: the revolution of the people" which I ordered in after reading a review of it in The New Yorker. After I finish that I'm going to break into some of the books I got for Christmas. I'm trying to get down to (not including computer books) one non-fiction and one fiction at a time (along with the Orwell collection). My to do list:

Fiction:
"American Psycho"
"Infinite Jest" (after my grandma reads it)
"The Death of Ivan Ilyich and other stories" (re-read)

Non-Fiction:
"Turkmeniscam"
"Propaganda: The formation of Men's Attitudes"
"The Anarchist in the Library"

Magazines/Journals:
Harper's
The New Yorker
Foreign Affairs
Critical Review

I'm going to drop The New Yorker for The New York Review of Books when the subscription is up. I would order The Economist in from the library but it would always be (at least) a week behind and some of the reporting on the U.S. was off, if not complete bull****. I read it more for the international/economic news, however I was wondering what quality of reporting I was getting there.

[horaceworthy]

currently reading "the breaks of the game" The famous book about the Portland Trailblazers. So far pretty interesting.
I also am planning to read "Play their Hearts out" the new book about the dark side of youth basketball.

Thoroughly enjoyed that book, and managed to resist googling most of the players to see what became of them until after I'd finished reading it.

[stiles21]

Anyone read "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs", from Chuck Klosterman? The book is real funny and it's good for people with short attention spans, each chapter is an short essay about something completely random mostly pop culture stuff, everything from The Sims to Star Wars to Saved By the Bell.

Also "Eating the Dinosaur", (same kind of book from the same author) is good too.

[Esohny]

Anyone read "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs", from Chuck Klosterman? The book is real funny and it's good for people with short attention spans, each chapter is an short essay about something completely random mostly pop culture stuff, everything from The Sims to Star Wars to Saved By the Bell.

Also "Eating the Dinosaur", (same kind of book from the same author) is good too.

I've read those. He's a pretty entertaining writer. He also wrote Fargo Rock City, Killing Yourself to Live, and Chuck Klosterman IV which are similar to the two you mentioned, and he wrote a novel called Downtown Owl that is obviously based on his experiences growing up in North Dakota that was solid. I'd recommend them, particularly his pre-novel books.

[Calinks]

I just ordered my first E-reader and it should be here this week. I am currently reading through.

The Walking Dead series: Now up to volume 10!

Woken Furies: From the Takeshi Kovacs novels

Mass Effect: Retribution: Hey I love Mass Effect what can I say?

I should check out that zombie one.

I haven't read a good basketball book in years either so I might have to check out one of those.

[younggunsmn]

I read "Diary" by Klosterman which was interesting albeit pretty warped. Fight Club was a great movie (based on his book).

Just finished A Brief History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell, and The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking. Cosmology and theoretical physics, dumbed down for non egg-heads, wihout going into any of the complex math behind it. I'm still trying to wrap my head around quantum theory. Found the first 2 books combined in an illustrated edition at Barnes & Noble fo $14.99, which is a great deal. There wasn't a whole lot in The Grand Design I hadn't read in the other 2.

I've read 1984 by Orwell, and The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, and We The Living by Ayn Rand.

"End The Fed" and "The Revolution" by Dr. Ron Paul (see sig).
"The Creature from Jekyll Island" by G Edward Griffin is on my short list of books to read.
It's about the Federal Reserve System and its founding.

"The Trial" and
"Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka (some pretty weird and dark stuff layered in metaphor). The Germans of the late 19th and early 20th century wrote some really depressing stuff.

"The Silmarillion" by Tolkien is a great read for anyone who enjoyed Lord of the Rings. It's set in the same universe, but on a larger scale. He never finished it, but his kid pieced together the pieces he had written before he died.

I read "The DaVinci Code" and the other 2 Dan Brown books. He's a terrible writer, but he throws a ton of interesting historical and scientific info out there.

At the behest of my wife I read all 7 Harry Potter books and the 7 book Dark Tower series by Stephen King. All good reading.

But my guilty pleasure is Star Wars books. I've got over 50 of them.

[stiles21]

Anyone read "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs", from Chuck Klosterman? The book is real funny and it's good for people with short attention spans, each chapter is an short essay about something completely random mostly pop culture stuff, everything from The Sims to Star Wars to Saved By the Bell.

Also "Eating the Dinosaur", (same kind of book from the same author) is good too.

I've read those. He's a pretty entertaining writer. He also wrote Fargo Rock City, Killing Yourself to Live, and Chuck Klosterman IV which are similar to the two you mentioned, and he wrote a novel called Downtown Owl that is obviously based on his experiences growing up in North Dakota that was solid. I'd recommend them, particularly his pre-novel books.

I read C.K IV but I didn't think it was as good as the other 2 and I just got "Fargo" and "Killing yourself to Live" for Christmas but I have never heard of "Downtown Owl" I might check that out.

[Esohny]

I read "Diary" by Klosterman which was interesting albeit pretty warped. Fight Club was a great movie (based on his book).

I believe you're thinking of Chuck Palahniuk.

I've read 1984 by Orwell, and The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, and We The Living by Ayn Rand.

What did you think of the collected works of Ayn Rand? I agree with the philosophy, but I don't love the actual fiction, particularly Atlas Shrugged.

[Esohny]

Anybody have any basketball coaching/strategy books that they'd recommend?

[big3_8_19_21]

I've been meaning to read some Chuck Klosterman books for a while now, but they'll have to wait.

I just put in an order to Amazon for 5 books:
A Short History of World War II by James L. Stokesbury
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang (another WWII book)
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris
The Last Christmas by Brian Posehn - graphic novel by one of my favorite comedians about a zombie apocalypse. Awesome.

I also saw Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris at Sam's Club today, but I didn't get it, so I'll probably go back and get that too. I had to order The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex to read first though, since Colonel Roosevelt is the the final book of the 3 about Teddy Roosevelt.

I also plan on getting Zombie Spaceship Wasteland: a book by Patton Oswalt when that comes out. Patton Oswalt is another one of my favorite comedians, so that explains that.

[younggunsmn]

I read "Diary" by Klosterman which was interesting albeit pretty warped. Fight Club was a great movie (based on his book).

I believe you're thinking of Chuck Palahniuk.

I've read 1984 by Orwell, and The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, and We The Living by Ayn Rand.

What did you think of the collected works of Ayn Rand? I agree with the philosophy, but I don't love the actual fiction, particularly Atlas Shrugged.

Yes I was thinking of Palahniuk, thanks. Been a while since I read that.

Rand's actual writing skill isn't terribly impressive, and her heroines are kinda masochistic, but that's not where the value in her work lies. I think the characters and plot are there primarily to serve her philosophy. Anthem (only 100 pages or so) actually is pretty condensed and
well written. We The Living is amazing as an account of early Soviet Russia (she grew up there). I had never heard of a Primus (other than the band) before reading it. I guess whether or not you like The Fountainhead depends on how well you can identify with Howard Roark. The characters themselves are much stronger in The Fountainhead.

Atlas Shrugged I think is just too long and ambitious. It starts out strong, but really drags at the end. Most people won't want to sit through a 100 page monologue which is basically a lesson in her philosophy, but some of the shorter eariler monologues (particularly Francisco's money and love speeches) are really where the heart of the book lies. The Fountainhead is how her philosophy applies to an individual, Atlas Shrugged applies it to an entire society, so there is a lot more ground to cover. But I've heard many people complain that it's a real slog to push through the last 300 or 400 pages.

I can't agree exactly with some parts of her philosophy (like pure atheism, which is only explored tangentally in Atlas Shrugged and not at all in the other 3), but what I did agree with really stuck with me. You can't read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and not think differently about Love, Money, Self-Esteem (and where it comes from), crony capitalism, or why some people look for weakness in their friends and lovers and others look for strength.

Some people will read her work and hate it. Others will swear by it. Her strength definitely isn't flowing language, desciption, or plot.

[Tha Juice]

I'm about to start "The Winner" by David Baldacci.

I just got quite a few books that were my Grandfathers from my Grandmother after he passed away. Most of them are by James Patterson. Some of the titles include: "Cat & Mouse", "1st To Die", "Jack & Jill", "Four Blind Mice", "Tick Tock". If anyone has read any of these which one would you recommend reading first?

EDIT: Great thread as well!! I'll definitely have to check out some of the books that have been mentioned.

[big3_8_19_21]

for those who like graphic novels: just read Black Summer. It's pretty short. Only took maybe 2 hours and I'm not a fast reader at all. It's good though. Here's my review, NO SPOILERS, only specific plot points I'll give is what you get in the first couple pages, or just by looking at the cover: It's a superhero vigilante comic. A group of individuals with the technical know-how become imbue themselves with super-human abilities and set out all generally in the name of good, though their individual desires are revealed throughout the story. It starts off with one of them covered in blood announcing at what was supposed to be a presidential address that he has killed the president, vice president and several members of the secret service (out of necessity to accomplish his goal) because he proclaimed that the presidential administration itself was criminal and the American peoples' freedom was at stake. The rest of the group of super-people (called "guns") were not aware of his plot previously and the story progresses as the government responds and the guns attempt to work their way to solve the situation. It examines topics like the nature of justice and what constitutes it, when does justice cease to be justice at all, and who gets to decide. It also illustrates a catastrophic fictional event caused and augmented by all sides trying to make the correct choices.

Pretty interesting read for those who enjoy superheros and graphic novels...

[revprodeji]

I have approx 600 books, but they are all theology.

[funkatron101]

I have approx 600 books, but they are all theology.

are they leather-bound and does your apartment smell of rich mahogany?