Book you love

[kimota]

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.

[kimota]

and is anyone on Shelfari?

Here's my shelf if anyone is interested.  Maybe we could get a FOT group there?

[samir]

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.

[kimota]

yeah, how did that happen?  I saw other people had Oswalt-isms under their names as well. 

[Josh]

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.

[yesno]

"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. 

[Spoony]

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

[Spoony]

I didn't mean to make that whole thing a quote. Sorry. I'm still learning this 'internet' that we are upon.

[jane]

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.

[dave from knoxville]

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.

[Julie]

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.

[bruce]

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

[emma]

(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.

[Beth]

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!!)

[Gilly]

Alice in Wonderland and Anansi Boys