What are you reading? The book thread.

[datsunfreak]

Almost forgot about this little jewel ;)

 

 

My favorite humorist/author is David Sedaris.. Great inscription...    :rofl:

 

 

About to finish "The Areas of My Expertise" by John Hodgman. About to start "I Was Told There'd Be Cake" by Sloan Crosley. I like humorous essay writing these days.  

 

Used to be a big Kurt Vonnegut fan (love satire), read everything of his. 

 

Also got "Midnight's Children" and "The Moor's Last Sigh" by Salman Rushdie for Christmas. Will be my first real "novel" in many years...

[Cleopatra Jones]

I'm reading KISS Behind the Mask right now. Interesting read so far. Peter Criss had drumming lessons from a legend, Gene Krupa. Paul Stanley has no hearing in his right ear. Paul completely disliked Gene when they first met which I'm sure was completely warranted. I'm only 1/4 through it right now. It is interesting to read how they all met and what they went through in the beginning. How methodical they were with getting started and the two guys at Casablanca who believed in them so much they put all their own money in to finance them. Big leap of faith right there.

[Ratwagon1600]

The Iceman.

 

Story about an American Mafia contract killer named Richard Kuklinski.

 

Pretty serious guy!

[Son_of_a_Datsun_Guy]

This could be interesting. I'm an English major...

 

Favorite authors are Bradbury, Steinbeck, Huxley, and Cormac McCarthy... his stuff's really depressing but I think he hits some points of human nature that are often left out of literature. 

 

 

Currently reading the Grimm fairy tales, I've got a big anthology of them in both German and English to go along with my German college curricula. (I also took Japanese in high school, but never really got very good at it, I can do basic sentences and work out what's written on labels and websites) 

 

Favorite book to date is Brave New World. I think that it will become more and more powerful with each generation as more of Huxley's "predictions" become things that children grow up with. Scary stuff when you really think about it. 

 

Sci-fi is where it's at though. 

[Tristin]

This could be interesting. I'm an English major...

 

Favorite authors are Bradbury [...]

 

Ray Bradbury did a reading at a local bookstore while I was in high school. I have a signed copy of Fahrenheit 451 at my parents place... 

[Son_of_a_Datsun_Guy]

I saw that post earlier, hit one hell of a jealousy pang. Read that book for the first time in 8th grade, one of my favorites, even though everyone else in the class hated it. 

[Tristin]

Yeah Id like to find it and actually hang onto it. I have a couple boxes still at my parents after I left for the Service. Would like to add it back into my collection. Although I truly enjoyed the book, I only went for extra credit (as it was offered if you attended), but had a great time. Not a lot of people showed up, so it was a pretty intimate reading. Great guy for the couple minutes I met and spoke with him. 

[]2eDeYe]

Snow crash by Neal Stevenson is my favorite audiobook (if that counts) a great story!!

 

 

Neal Stephenson

 

Snowcrash and The Diamond Age are two strong modern SciFi books

 

Gonna have to check these out.

 

 

 

Yeah Id like to find it and actually hang onto it. I have a couple boxes still at my parents after I left for the Service. Would like to add it back into my collection. Although I truly enjoyed the book, I only went for extra credit (as it was offered if you attended), but had a great time. Not a lot of people showed up, so it was a pretty intimate reading. Great guy for the couple minutes I met and spoke with him. 

 

That is awesome.

 

 

I started reading a biography about Teddy Roosevelt, then I got the Timothy Zahn Star Wars trilogy for Christmas so I started in on those. :D

[GRpufnstuf]

"Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman" is an anecdotal biography of Richard Feynman. My wife doesn't like it but I have read it 3-4 times

 

I just finished "Please Kill Me; The Uncensored Oral History of Punk" by legs McNeil. It tells the story of early 'punk' starting at MC5 and Iggy Pop late 60's early 70's.

It's written in an interesting way. Each chapter is a collection of quoted stories from people who were there so you get many different sides of the same story.

[Mikeystoy]

In feburary of '95 My buddy Mark and I jumped into my '78 MkI Fiesta and headed east from San Diego. I had $100, a jar of peanut butter, and a loaf of white bread.

I made it to Ruston, La where Mark got tired of the road and turned himself in as a runaway so he could go back home. (I was 18, he was 17)

In Beaumont, Ms the carrier bearing mount broke and I "fixed" it with a co-tanger. I ran out of money in Jackson and sold my tools.

I sold my new timex wristwatch in De Funiak Springs and got to Inverness, Fla.

I made a couple of phone calls and met Piers Anthony in the flesh. Here's this guy in blue jeans and a sweater, driving a brand new Ford Aspire Sport, taking me to dinner at Wendy's!!!

It was, HE was pretty damn cool; still one of the highlights of my life, I showed him some of the things I was writing, he amde some suggestions. He told me of some other genres he was branching out in, he gave me a copy of "Tales from the great turtle" and signed it.

I still have it to this day.

[OneFastRat]

Wolves of the Calla by Steven King

[Aaron Datsun]

I just finished reading Isaac Asimov his robot books through the foundation series. It was 4600 pages of reading and was amazing. Then Christmas I read Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. Now I am reading Jurassic Park. I am attempting to read the top 50 Sci-Fi books of all time so far all have been very good.

[willz]

Shop class as Soul craft: an inquiry into the value of work

by Mathew B. Crawford

 

 

amazing book and totally geared towards our kind of people who take pride in being handy as f*ck

[Cleopatra Jones]

77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz. Just finished reading Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis. The movie is better.

[russaroll]

Choke

Cuck Palahniuk

[hobospyder]

The sword of shannara trilogy by Terry brooks

[Mattndew76]

Odd Thomas and Throw Them All Out.

[smoke]

I like odd Thomas.

I found a really old copy of Moby Dick at a garage sale the other day, early 1900s. It's a heavy bugger. 

I have never read the full 2000 page version before, just the chopped up one they made us read in school. I'm pretty close to done with it. Really is a great book.

[datzenmike]

I just finished reading Isaac Asimov his robot books through the foundation series. It was 4600 pages of reading and was amazing. Then Christmas I read Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. Now I am reading Jurassic Park. I am attempting to read the top 50 Sci-Fi books of all time so far all have been very good.

Hopefully includes the Dune trilogy but not the stuff by Brian Herbert.

Also...

 

2001 a space odyssey

Ringworld (or just about anything by Larry Niven)

The Light of Other Days by Arthur C Clark

The Thing by John W Campbell

[]2eDeYe]

American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America

[smoke]

Have not read it. How does that compare to Howard Zinn's book?

[]2eDeYe]

Not sure, I will have to read that one next.

 

This one has stories about the witch trials and puritanism. I am currently reading about William Penn and his heresy as a Quaker. Good stuff so far, still in the 16th century and about halfway through.

[smoke]

Dude...seriously do. It will probably fuck you up a little at first.

[]2eDeYe]

It's now on the list. :)

[a.d._510_n_ok]

recently finished Hunter S. Thompson's "Hell's Angels" book. it was very good and followed his changing perception of them from positive to negative. throughout the book he mentions a book called "A walk on the wild side" by Nelson Algren which centers around a fictional character named Dove Linkhorn who is convinced that he was born too late, no one can see his greatness, the world is out to get him, etc. Reading the two back to back kinda makes a person who feels themselves to be an outsider insofar as mainstream society do a personal re-eval - it did me anyway.

 

I am about 1/2 way through "Lost Prophet - the life and times of Bayard Rustin". Rustin was a black, gay, Quaker American civil rights pioneer who learned non-violence from Ghandi and taught it to MLK, Jr. Without going into great detail, his inability to keep it in his pants and a brief flirtation with communism in the 1930s kept the dude from getting as much glory as he should have - great read so far!