Give A Hoot. Read A Book!

[Veganpunk]

Slapstick was really good. I like Eragon too. It's such a Tolkien rip off, but considering the dude was 15 when he wrote it is pretty amazing.

[VBSnus]

I absolutely LOVED the Dark Tower series. The ending was lackluster, but overall it was amazing. Also love:

The Stand (swine flu, swine flu...err, Captain Tripps!)
The Shining
Well...all of them really.

Douglas Adams - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (of course)
Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time (hopefully Brandon Sanderson does well on the final book since Mr. Jordan died)
Robert Asprin's MYTH Series (before Jody Lynn Nye made it awful)
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Dragonlance series
Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series
Glen Cook's Black Company series
Stephen R. Lawhead's King Raven series (a Welsh version of Robin Hood)

Other notables:
Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club
Alex Garland - The Beach
Any H. P. Lovecraft book (IA! IA! CTHULHU FTAGN!)
Robert Anton Wilson - Illuminatus Trilogy
Poetry by William Butler Yeats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I'm writing two books right now...one is a mafia comedy, the other part of a fantasy trilogy.

[Veganpunk]

The ending of The Dark Tower was kinda lackluster. Yes The Wheel Of Time is amazing. The tenth one was a letdown, but he picked it right back up with the 11th.

[Redbeard]

12th Wheel of Time book. "The Gathering Storm," to be released Oct. 27th. From the reviews I've read, it's supposed to be paced more like books 4-7 than the later ones. Supposed to be lot more action than the last couple of books. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up in these last three books.

[chadizzy1]

A few...

Plato - Complete Works (the translations in this are on POINT, and the best I've seen)
Voltaire - Candide
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Essays and Lectures
CS Lewis - Mere Christianity
Karl Marx - Das Kapital (Read it for PolSci, but still think it's a great book and good way to inform yourself about capitalism.)
Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, Writings of Nietzsche
Tom Morris - If Aristotle Ran General Motors, a GREAT read. I think Obama should issue it to all these corporations that are getting bailed out. (has anyone else read this?)
Dante Alighieri - Divine Comedy
Epic of Gilgamesh
Metamorphoses (Ovid) - A great mythology story dealing with creation with an underlying theme of love, it's a great read.
Paradise Lost - John Milton (subsequently, Paradise Regained)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Faust
Lord Byron - Don Juan

[Ainkor]

Anything by Dean Koontz (my guilty pleasure reading)

I read the whole Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind (great series, if a bit drawn out with an interesting moral message)

All of Stephan Baxter's books. Great reads, complex story lines and very technical.

I devoured Dan Brown's newest book, The Lost Symbol. It really felt like American Treasure 3 though, a bit too forced.

One of the most interesting books I had read recently was Childhood's End by Sir Arthur C. Clarke. If you like Sci-Fi, read it. Hell, even if you don't read it anyways

I mentioned that I don't just read, I devour books. I read at about 100 pages an hour for pleasure and about 1400-1600 when speed reading work stuff

[Bazzah]

Favorite Books:
The Alchemist- Paulo Coelho
Calvin and Hobbes "Lazy Sunday"- Bill Waterson

Favorite Authors:
Mark Twain
Kurt Vonnegut
Aurthur Connan Doyle

Philosophers:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
John Locke

Series:
Harry Potter series- J.K. Rowling
The Dragon Lance series- Weis/Hickman
Forgotten Realms- R.A. Salvatore

Other good books:
Guns Germs and Steel- Jared Diamond
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly-Anthony Bourdain

[Veganpunk]

12th Wheel of Time book. "The Gathering Storm," to be released Oct. 27th. From the reviews I've read, it's supposed to be paced more like books 4-7 than the later ones. Supposed to be lot more action than the last couple of books. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up in these last three books.

That's awesome. But I thought they were gonna tie everything up with one book. Oh well, more Wheel Of Time is always good.

[Ulsterman]

The Damage Done - Warren Fellows.

Das Boot

Somme Mud - Edward Lynch

[Redbeard]

12th Wheel of Time book. "The Gathering Storm," to be released Oct. 27th. From the reviews I've read, it's supposed to be paced more like books 4-7 than the later ones. Supposed to be lot more action than the last couple of books. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up in these last three books.

That's awesome. But I thought they were gonna tie everything up with one book. Oh well, more Wheel Of Time is always good.

Jordan had hoped to tie everything up in one book. However, as he got closer to his death, even he started to hedge and say it may take two books. As Sanderson got to the task of writing and drew close to completion, it became rather apparent that there was far too much information to be contained in book.

For more info in the series' conclusion, read this.

[Jason]

Where's the love for Kurt Vonnegut??? 8)

i have slaughterhouse five and slapstick, but i have so many books to read i havent gotten around to them yet.

They are good ones. I really like Slaughterhouse Five........Vonnegut had a unique, tongue-in-cheek kind of humor that made for a very entertaining read. I have not read that book in years; I googled the quotes and it made me want to go find it again.

Here's one:

"It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:
American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed."


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I also liked the movie, although it obviously couldn't touch the book. Movies rarely do.

[cobrageezer]

In no order 8)
Aurthur Conan Doyle
Alistiar Maclean
Jack Higgins
Tom Clancy
Clive Cussler
Dennis L. McKeirnan
Laurie R. King
Andre Norton
Harold Coyle
Ayn Rand
Bernard Cornwell
Harry Turtledove
Stephen Ambrose
Zane Grey
Louis L'Amour
Vardis Fisher
8)
J.R.R. Tolkien (how did I space him out)

[Sigg]

You guys have inspired me. I picked up the Dark Tower set (first 4 books) many months back but managed to get distracted with other things going on at the time and lost focus shortly after starting the second book.

Decided to start over from the beginning last night and I'm already half way through The Gunslinger and really digging it so far.