Books

[Doc]

About to read Game of Shadows, about Barry Bonds. Should be good.

[kite200]

I have tons of books on ebay right now so if you like them bid!

http://myworld.ebay.com/kite200

[manuel]

I'm reading books on babies right now. That's how things chance in a matter of days...

[Rogles]

Books, eh? i really enjoyed 1984; I saw it as a reflection of the modern Christian church. I really like Larry Niven's stuff, as it's realistic science fiction, not like Star Wars. Terry Pratchett is just plain weird. He's got a whole universe. There's a turtle riding through space. It has four elephants on its back. On the four elephants' backs is the Discworld... Which is a really big disc. I like it...

[nurd]

I like A Clockwork Orange.

[shoggoth80]

There are many great reads out there.
Robert E. Howard's stuff is particularly addicting.

I read a fair bit of Forgotten Realms, and Warhammer 40K books... most titles have been great worlds to sink yourself into for a while.

I'll second 1984, AND A Clockwork Orange. I'll also drop a note for All Quiet on the Western Front.

If you like sorta serial/pulp fantasy... Fritz Lieber is pretty awesome.

[manuel]

I made a thread with the same title a long time ago.
Please do a little search before opening new threads.
I'll merge the 2.

[nintendodork]

I don't really like books, even though I'm in an advanced English class
I don't read unless I absolutely have to...and if I do, I make sure I find a book that I will remotely enjoy...
A couple of years ago, I read Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie and the other two books that author wrote...I liked his books when I was younger.  Right now. I'm reading Slash; a biography about the famous guitar player.
Fun fact: He drank, smoked, did drugs, and had sex all when he was only 12

[UglyJoe]

Been reading Brave New World during my lunch breaks.  Started reading scans of The Watchmen just recently.

[nintendodork]

My friend read The Watchmen...
I think I'll read that next time I have to read something..

[zombiepowder]

"Watchmen" is really good... it's quite a complex comic

also almost finished with

"Less Than Zero" by Brett Easton Ellis (author of "American Psycho")

interesting read....

[Agent X]

I do a lot of reading... and I mean A LOT of reading. 
Have done so since March 1990, when I picked up this book:



It was indeed "Book #3" in a Men's Adventure Action/Sci-Fi series
but got me hooked at age 11.  One month later I managed to track
down Book #4 (below):


And basically that was it.  I was 12 years old, and no longer interested
in reading the bullshit that my Junior High School's Curriculum expected
of me, and would only read this kind of stuff.  By the time the Summer of 1990
happened upon me I was looking for Book #1  and Book #2 of the series (as the
series at that time for STEELE was only at book 5), but the B. Dalton Books didn't
have any available.  Instead, I discovered the following series...

THE WINGMAN
-----------------------------



and the book above clocked in at a whopping 460 pages long!  But I was visiting
my grandmother in a sleepy town on the Texas border and had nothing better to
do, so I finished the whole novel between 1PM and like 3AM.  Went back the next
day (to the B. Dalton Books) and purchased both books #2 and #3...



Shortly put the series dealt with a post nuclear world, where America had been
back stabbed and we were united no more.  Hawk Hunter and a bunch of others
basically fight from the skies and ground "New Order America" and everyone from
the Commies to the Fourth Reich Nazis, to New Age Vikings in Submarines etc.
Totally nuts but highly entertaining, but much to the chagrin of my teachers there
were also "Bed Scenes" that had more than explicit articulation of sexual encounters,
but I managed to still get them to agree to let me read and do book reports on THE WINGMAN.
The series would go on for 16 books in all, which I own every one of.

As of right now in 2009 I'm currently reading (as of today) the following:


from a kick ass violent Western series of 61 novels (49 published in the USA)
compliments of a British author named Terry Harknett under his pen name
here of George G. Gilman

...and Book #11 of


which is about the US Army's small group of "Recon" guys in the Pacific theatre
of World War 2.  All fictional but based on actual accounts between Americans and
the Imperial Japanese Army.  All these books have been Out-of-Print for at least a
decade or more, but outside of retro gaming, my real passion is collecting and reading
all of this stuff.  In fact I prefer it over watching movies 90% of the time really.  I will say this
though, anyone who liked either ROBOCOP and/or THE TERMINATOR should probably
track down the STEELE series, not at all hard to find through ABEbooks.Com or eBAY,
though books 1-6 are the best by J.D. Masters.  Books #7 and #8 by some other dude
named S.L. Hunter sucked royal ass.

The Steele series books 1-6 are below if anyone might find any of this interesting...




Seriously the above series is *AWESOME*  And goes much further into detail than
Terminator or RoboCop ever did.  Just something to think about.

[son_ov_hades]

Being a history major I read a lot. I'm currently reading "The Birth Of Tragedy & The Genealogy Of Morals" by Friedrich Nietzche, and in the past month or so I've read:

"The Origins Of The Modern World" - Robert B Marks
"Mayflower" - Nathaniel Philbrick
"The Communist Manifesto" - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
"Time, Work, and Culture In The Middle Ages" - Jacques Le Goff
"Facing Racial Revolution: Eyewitness Accounts of The Haitian Insurrection" - Jeremy D. Popkin

[Agent X]

"The Communist Manifesto" - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

I haven't read that in probably 14 years or so, probably should again though.  As a "Historian" (self study, not recognized) myself, especially of *Military History* I have found both Guerrilla Warfare by Ernesto CHE Guevara and The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by Major T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) to be Very fascinating works as well.  Deep insight, even if as of 2009, a lot of what was written (moreso in the case of Che Guevara) is outdated.  A lot of the troops fighting in the  middle east today would do good to be handed out "The Seven Pillars" by T.E. Lawrence if it could be found easily, but it cannot.  It was a limited publication and (at least for me) the only copy I ever had the privilege of reading was someone else's whom they paid a whopping $2,000USD for.  Very old indeed.  I wish someone would scan page for page that particular book, unless some UK publisher has done reprints I don't know about?  In my studies however, I cannot find anything of the like. If for some reason you've never read Che's work, I'd highly recommend trying to locate THIS ONE:



It's got the "A Method" revision and case studies included concerning rural/agrarian as well as urban "irregular" activities and proliferation of Guerrilla Warfare overall.  I don't know how hard it is to find these days, but compared to the soft cover version that can be had through Amazon.Com currently, it's a much more in-depth read.  Also his Biography (Che Guevara) is interesting as heck, but hella long to read:



This might not be you're cup of booze laced java at all, but if you did enjoy reading "The Communist Manifesto" you'd probably get a lot out of the works I've mentioned.

Going back onto the more fiction stuff I also recommend people look for the following...


Only way to describe this series is to say it's a cop action/drama of contemporary violence meets a near future post societal economic collapse setting.  In fact the preface to SWAGTOWN (Book #1), is highly disturbing, because it paints a very EXACT picture of just how destroying the global economy via terrorism from highly motivated groups where only 2 bullets are ever fired... would work.  Of course it's little more than an excuse for the main character himself Swag to do his stuff, where everyone is an opportunist and nothing is what it seems.  Highly recommended, seeing as how it's only a 3-Part series.

The other one is...



Post Nuclear (A Meteorite struck Earth, no ICBMs and WW3 here) action series that combines the high octane insanity of MAD MAX with Mysticism and the Gun Frontier of the American Old West with Native Americanisims and equal parts George Orwell's 1984.  Again, a 3-Part series from the early 90s.  Highly recommended.

[son_ov_hades]

I've never read Che Guevara, but I don't have any time to read unless it's for class. Maybe I'll check it out this summer, thanks for the recommendation.