FOT Forum

FOT Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: kimota on March 10, 2008, 12:09:52 PM

Title: Book you love
Post by: kimota on March 10, 2008, 12:09:52 PM
The author's thread is great, now which book would you recommend?

The Secret Life Of Dust by Hannah Holmes is probably one of my favorite non-fiction books.  In laymen's terms, she discusses: the sceince of dust, various ways dust impacts all of our lives, the planet and the universe.  It is a very eye opening book and you won't see the world the same way after reading just the first few chapters.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: kimota on March 10, 2008, 12:12:02 PM
and is anyone on Shelfari?

Here's my shelf if anyone is interested.  Maybe we could get a FOT group there?
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: samir on March 10, 2008, 12:34:43 PM
http://www.shelfari.com/samirmathur/shelf

In other news, it's a little disconcerting to see the word "rapist" below my name on here now.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: kimota on March 10, 2008, 12:39:05 PM
yeah, how did that happen?  I saw other people had Oswalt-isms under their names as well. 
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Josh on March 10, 2008, 12:53:06 PM
In other news, it's a little disconcerting to see the word "rapist" below my name on here now.

It's an oft-overlooked clause in Megan's Law, you prevert.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: yesno on March 10, 2008, 01:25:54 PM
"Experience," which is Martin Amis' memoir, is really good.  He's a okay novelist but a great stylist.

"A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter Miller is a great post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel.

Tom and people on this board seem to be somewhat ambivalent about him and his new memoir, but "Pure Drivel" by Steve Martin remains one of the funniest collections of little bits and pieces I've ever read.

And while I'm talking comedy, it still amazes me how many people there are who are really into comedy writing that haven't read P.G. Wodehouse yet.

It's a shame that Mark Leyner hasn't written a novel in 10 years. 
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Spoony on March 10, 2008, 01:34:12 PM

And while I'm talking comedy, it still amazes me how many people there are who are really into comedy writing that haven't read P.G. Wodehouse yet.


I never read his Wooster & Jeeves series, but I have watched all the episodes on Masterpiece theater. I have a really hard time watching House because I can't buy the gristled Chicago doctor he's trying to play. I would love to see an episode where Stephan Fry turns up as a patient. They throw on straw hats and start a detective agency. Or maybe Hugh Laurie gets hit on the head and thinks he's a wealthy English gad-about. "This ol' chap came in with a bruised noggin' and he said 'what-ho,' and I said 'what-ho,' and I send him home."

C
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Spoony on March 10, 2008, 01:35:18 PM
I didn't mean to make that whole thing a quote. Sorry. I'm still learning this 'internet' that we are upon.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: jane on March 10, 2008, 05:52:53 PM
I really liked a book called Henry Kafka and Other Stories.  I liked it because it was playful and sort of surreal, and contained stories about unusual things that happened to people.  I also liked it because the writer is a local Toronto guy and the stories take place in familiar places, like the Neville Park streetcar. The fact that I'd been to the locations he mentions made the stories more vivid, somehow.  I think I bought my copy off of him on a street corner on a really cold winter day.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: dave from knoxville on March 10, 2008, 05:55:48 PM
My favorite book of all time is Raymond Smullyan's To Mock a Mockingbird. It starts with simple harmless logic problems in an almost fairytale setting, but if you stick with it, it eventually steers you right into the heart of Godel's Theorem. I believe that I have spent at least 200 hours with this book since I met the great man at a Godel Escher and Bach symposium around 1980.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Julie on March 10, 2008, 06:25:15 PM
I think it's a tie between A Death in the Family by James Agee, The Stranger by Camus, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, Villette by Charlotte Bronte, and White Horse Rider by some German. I know Sorrows of Young Werther and White Horse Rider aren't really books, but I think they count anyway.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: bruce on March 10, 2008, 06:39:08 PM
and is anyone on Shelfari?

Here's my shelf if anyone is interested.  Maybe we could get a FOT group there?
I would but I've got way to many books to list.

here are mine: The Stranger - Camus (read it every couple of years since HS), The Long Goodbye - Chandler, and the two volume Elvis bio
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: emma on March 10, 2008, 07:45:04 PM
(Current) Desert Island Top Five:
Nine Stories - J.D. Salinger
Dubliners - James Joyce
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung - Lester Bangs
Harriet The Spy - Louise Fitzhugh
and if poetry counts, Airstream Land Yacht by Ken Babstock.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Beth on March 10, 2008, 08:32:33 PM
Edith Wharton-"The Age of Innocence"

Virginia Woolf-"Mrs. Dalloway"

Charlotte Perkins Gillman-"The Yellow Wallpaper"

James Joyce: "Dubliners"

Jonathan Safran-Foer- "Everything is Illuminated"

I also love to read and re-read "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott and "The Secret Garden" and "A Little Princess" by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Also, a friend just gave me "The Alchemist" to read, and I really liked it. It just made me feel good.

)
(I know this thread is called "book you love" but I couldn't pick just one, durnit!!)
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Gilly on March 10, 2008, 08:38:18 PM
Alice in Wonderland and Anansi Boys
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: pmart on March 10, 2008, 09:56:40 PM
The Stars at Noon by Denis Johnson is still one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. Ask the scores of Midwestern Freshman English majors I used to subject to it...

The Sportswriter by Richard Ford hit a little close to home when I moved to NJ.

As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem.

Pieces by Robert Creeley.

And I second The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler.

-p
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Swami on March 10, 2008, 10:56:54 PM
Confederacy of Dunces (J.K. Toole), Sex (Madonna), The Corrections (Franzen), 1/8 of Gravity's Rainbow (Pynchon), Ulysses , 1/10 of Finnegan's Wake (Joyce) That's about as far as I get . . . stupid A.D.D.
Cane (Toomer), Augie March (Saul Bellow), Most Of T. Coraghessen Boyle, Jesus' Son (Johnson), Fat White Vampire Blues (Andrew Fox), Flannery O'Connor, N.Y. Mets Yearbooks 1962-present, Blood Meridian/All the Pretty Horses (McCarthy), Robert Caro's "LBJ" books, Tim O'Brien's 'Nam Stuff. Dharma Bums (Kerouac. . . sentimental reasons; read it in the bathroom during "light's out" while in Basic Training back in '85. . .I took the beatnik thing a little too far)
And don't get me started on poetry. Or lit I HATE.





Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Shaggy 2 Grote on March 10, 2008, 11:39:49 PM
I think it's a tie between A Death in the Family by James Agee, The Stranger by Camus, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, Villette by Charlotte Bronte, and White Horse Rider by some German. I know Sorrows of Young Werther and White Horse Rider aren't really books, but I think they count anyway.

Julie, you have to be messing with us.  No one has ever read The Sorrows of Young Werther.  I adapted it and I never even finished it.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: dania on March 10, 2008, 11:41:14 PM
Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything
Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Dave Eggers' And You Shall Know Our Velocity
Richard Brautigan's In Watermelon Sugar
Anything by Daniel Clowes or Matt Brinkman,
There's so much more. 
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: yesno on March 11, 2008, 01:11:02 AM
I think it's a tie between A Death in the Family by James Agee, The Stranger by Camus, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, Villette by Charlotte Bronte, and White Horse Rider by some German. I know Sorrows of Young Werther and White Horse Rider aren't really books, but I think they count anyway.

Julie, you have to be messing with us.  No one has ever read The Sorrows of Young Werther.  I adapted it and I never even finished it.

I've read Sorrows.  It's pretty short.

When I graduated college I had a span where I just dove into classics I'd been putting off.  I read Sorrows, the Aeniad, Paradise Lost, etc.

Now, I read sci-fi novels and boring government reports.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Shaggy 2 Grote on March 11, 2008, 11:04:12 AM
I think it's a tie between A Death in the Family by James Agee, The Stranger by Camus, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, Villette by Charlotte Bronte, and White Horse Rider by some German. I know Sorrows of Young Werther and White Horse Rider aren't really books, but I think they count anyway.

Julie, you have to be messing with us.  No one has ever read The Sorrows of Young Werther.  I adapted it and I never even finished it.

I've read Sorrows.  It's pretty short.

When I graduated college I had a span where I just dove into classics I'd been putting off.  I read Sorrows, the Aeniad, Paradise Lost, etc.

Now, I read sci-fi novels and boring government reports.

I know, I was joking/lying.  I actually adapted Schiller's Mary Stuart, which I did read.  There are a few references to Sorrows in it, but I never bothered to read it.  I've read Thomas Mann and Nietzsche and listened to Wagner and watched a bunch of Herzog movies, surely that's enough!

Speaking of book recommendations: I spent an entire semester of grad school reading Mann - about a half a dozen of the short stories, and The Magic Mountain.  Do it!  I was like "ew boy" at first, but I'm really glad I did it - it changed my writing permanently, in a good way, and is something I never would have done on my own.  Nobody reads him anymore, except for "Death in Venice," but it's pretty great.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: B_Buster on March 11, 2008, 11:13:52 AM
Julie, you have to be messing with us.  No one has ever read The Sorrows of Young Werther.  I adapted it and I never even finished it.

Not only have I read it, I didn't even commit suicide after I finished.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: B_Buster on March 11, 2008, 11:16:51 AM
Speaking of book recommendations: I spent an entire semester of grad school reading Mann - about a half a dozen of the short stories, and The Magic Mountain.  Do it!  I was like "ew boy" at first, but I'm really glad I did it - it changed my writing permanently, in a good way, and is something I never would have done on my own.  Nobody reads him anymore, except for "Death in Venice," but it's pretty great.

I thought The Magic Mountain was a snooze. All that wrapping themselves in blankets business. C'mon, man, get on with it!

The part where he got out the records was pretty cool though.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: dave from knoxville on March 11, 2008, 11:24:10 AM
I finished Cormac McCarthy's Outer Dark; it was a laugh riot! Actually, there were a couple of funny scenes, in an unsettling way (the pig stampede, the protagonist's encounter with a horse on a current-ferry and its aftermath.) I imagine that the fleeting scene with the infant will bother most of you as much as it did/does me, though. I expected nothing of the sort, but I don't have much trouble classifying that thing as straight gothic horror, now that I am finished. I am told to expect to be sickened by his next, Child of God (apparently SOME of my less enlightened friends have a little trouble with necrophilia.)

But before I get to that, I have accepted Sarah's invitation to read Michael Malone's Handling Sin, which is deliciously close in ambiance to the George Singleton I keep shamelessly promoting (no, I am not related to him, except in the way that all southerners are related by blood to all others.)

I love that you people are diversely well-read; you're helping me stave off my midlife crisis by keeping my brain clicking.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Shaggy 2 Grote on March 11, 2008, 11:31:37 AM
AP Mike with the Teutonic art fetish!

Speaking of book recommendations: I spent an entire semester of grad school reading Mann - about a half a dozen of the short stories, and The Magic Mountain.  Do it!  I was like "ew boy" at first, but I'm really glad I did it - it changed my writing permanently, in a good way, and is something I never would have done on my own.  Nobody reads him anymore, except for "Death in Venice," but it's pretty great.

I thought The Magic Mountain was a snooze. All that wrapping themselves in blankets business. C'mon, man, get on with it!

The part where he got out the records was pretty cool though.

Yeah, and the crazy duel over nothing between the romantic guy and that weird communist medievalist was pretty fun.  But you're not alone in your assessment - part of the fun of this class was watching the screenwriters in the class squirm in visible pain over the 700 pages of nothing happening.  Maybe it's best to start with the stories, or with Buddenbrooks, which at least has a plot.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Julie on March 11, 2008, 09:02:59 PM
I think it's a tie between A Death in the Family by James Agee, The Stranger by Camus, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, Villette by Charlotte Bronte, and White Horse Rider by some German. I know Sorrows of Young Werther and White Horse Rider aren't really books, but I think they count anyway.

Julie, you have to be messing with us.  No one has ever read The Sorrows of Young Werther.  I adapted it and I never even finished it.
then I'm sending you into space!!! I cried when I read that!
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Shaggy 2 Grote on March 11, 2008, 11:28:51 PM
I think it's a tie between A Death in the Family by James Agee, The Stranger by Camus, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, Villette by Charlotte Bronte, and White Horse Rider by some German. I know Sorrows of Young Werther and White Horse Rider aren't really books, but I think they count anyway.

Julie, you have to be messing with us.  No one has ever read The Sorrows of Young Werther.  I adapted it and I never even finished it.
then I'm sending you into space!!! I cried when I read that!

Send me into space if you must, but don't cry.  I was just kidding.  Look:

I know, I was joking/lying.  I actually adapted Schiller's Mary Stuart, which I did read.  There are a few references to Sorrows in it, but I never bothered to read it. 

"It" meaning my play, which I now realize was unclear.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Sarah on March 12, 2008, 06:21:47 AM
You never read your own play, Jasong?  Shame on you.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Shaggy 2 Grote on March 12, 2008, 09:54:45 AM
The first "it," I meant.  Though there are other plays of mine about which that is definitely true.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Julie on March 12, 2008, 12:16:03 PM
Julie, you have to be messing with us.  No one has ever read The Sorrows of Young Werther.  I adapted it and I never even finished it.

Not only have I read it, I didn't even commit suicide after I finished.

did you think it was as funny as Strozcyck?
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Julie on March 12, 2008, 12:19:35 PM
I think it's a tie between A Death in the Family by James Agee, The Stranger by Camus, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, Villette by Charlotte Bronte, and White Horse Rider by some German. I know Sorrows of Young Werther and White Horse Rider aren't really books, but I think they count anyway.

Julie, you have to be messing with us.  No one has ever read The Sorrows of Young Werther.  I adapted it and I never even finished it.
then I'm sending you into space!!! I cried when I read that!

Send me into space if you must, but don't cry.  I was just kidding.  Look:

I know, I was joking/lying.  I actually adapted Schiller's Mary Stuart, which I did read.  There are a few references to Sorrows in it, but I never bothered to read it. 

"It" meaning my play, which I now realize was unclear.
see what happens when you don't finish reading something? it's a good thing tom hung up on me.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: masterofsparks on March 12, 2008, 12:34:57 PM
see what happens when you don't finish reading something? it's a good thing tom hung up on me.

Cool it, honky lips.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Julie on March 12, 2008, 12:39:13 PM
Cool it, honky lips.
[/quote]
I'm so proud of the new star.
Title: Re: Book you love
Post by: Putin on March 12, 2008, 02:13:12 PM
i'm really into william blake lately. so i guess to name a book, it's mostly Songs of Innocence and of Experience right now.