i used to read. a lot. just did. but for some reason i seem to have stopped somewhere along the way. not entirely stopped per se, but i only seem to finish a few books a year these days. and i keep meaning to get back to it.
once i finish watching buffy (i'm in season 3 now, but it's moving pretty quickly), i'm back on the book wagon. so here's where you people come in. i need some suggestions. here's a bit of info for you though: if it has a bronte, austen, or lawrence involved, i ain't buying. high school reading list stuff isn't going to work for me at the moment -- right now i'm looking for some entertainment. it doesn't have to be laugh-out-loud funny or anything (see below), but this is reading for enjoyment time. oh, and i'm also a sucker for good non-fiction and biographies.
i'm taking suggestions now, and then will most likely go out and use my usual xmas gift cards to stock up on some reading for '07, so get 'em in, folks!
and my suggestion for you all: happinessTM by will ferguson. i completely forgot how much i loved this book until i lent it to jason and started rereading it in the car.
14 Comments:
I'm not good at this. I'm the cliche' reader. Palahniuk, Larry Brown, Coupland, etc.
Biographies:
River of Doubt, about Theodore Roosevelt; I loved Johnny Cash autobio, Cash was very readable; McCullough's John Adams is the best one I ever read. I also really liked Klein's bio of woody guthrie. Fred's older brother in college, likes Bill Bryson books for humor, also Sarah Vowell, Assasination Vacation and Eats Shoots and Leaves.
OK, here goes:
"3 Men in a Boat" - Jerome K. Jerome
"Carry On Jeeves" - P. G. Wodehouse
"Farewell My Lovely" - Raymond Chandler
"Fermat's Last theorum" - Simon Singh
"The Count of Monte Cristo" - Alexandre Dumas
"Lost Worlds" - Michael Bywater
"The Man Who Was THursday" - G. K. Chesterton
"The Old Man and the Sea" - Ernest Hemingway
"Rubicon" - Tom Holland
"Ubik" - Philip K. Dick
"Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" - Richard P. Feynman
"Dickens" - Claire Tomalin
"The Clerkenwell Tale" - Peter Ackroyd
It might be a bit English-centric but there's some wonderful stuff in there.
you guys are the best! i don't mind the english-centric list at all -- i think i just have an aversion to "feminist" period pieces.
keep em coming!
Hmm... everything I read is pretty nerd-centric.
For example I highly recommend Alan Moore's "The Watchmen", of course it's a graphic novel, so I don't know how you feel about comics.
Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" comics/graphic novels are the bestest in the world.
I've also been reading all of the New Jedi Order series of the Star Wars books. I like them quite a bit.
I also like to reread Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels, especially "Without Remorse".
Hmm, I really enjoyed What Was She Thinking: Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller.
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
Those are a few novels I enjoyed this year.
sophie: notes on a scandal was already on my amazon wish list, so now i can move up it's priority. i bought case histories a few months ago, but haven't started it. i should do that...
thanks!
Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman was pretty good ADD reading. Snippets of trivia completely made up by the author. Easy to put down and pick up again. His section about hobos is particularly funny.
i liked the hodgman book. he did an event down in austin a month or so back. nice guy.
i enjoyed Bel Canto as well. The Cheese Monkeys is also recommended. Those were both book club selections for the Bitches. I'll look into some others. Oh! I know, Kitchen Confidential. Gotta read that.
If the seventh Harry Potter book comes out in 2007, I better go back and read the whole series before it arrives . . .
you should anyway.
A lot of people loved Kitchen Confidential. I should add that to my list.
What Was She Thinking has been on the B&N cutout tables. I got it in hardback for $5. I saw a trailer for a movie recently that looks like it must be the same story but it has another name.
I didn't think I'd like Bel Canto but I loved it.
Case Histories was hard to get into but it got better.
I also liked Stuffed. I can't remember the author. It's a memoir of a woman growing up in a restaurant family.
Here are some of the fiction books I've enjoyed this past year. I think you may like them, too.
"The Driver’s Seat" by Muriel Spark
"Silk" by Alessandro Baricco
"The Death of Ahasuerus" by Pär Lagerkvist
"Life of Pi" by Yann Martel
And one non-fiction book:
"A History of the World in Six Glasses" by Tom Standage
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