Favorite Book and/or Author

[Tom Earp]

W.E.B. Griffen. Three Story Trilogy! Army, Marines, and Philly PD!

Cant remember the other one but love it too!

Just love to read! Gradiated, so reading is good!


Read for enternment, not beeecause I have to for class in the AM! You will too in your maturing years! If ya'all get there!!

[valkyrie]

Originally posted by cuaphi
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

I am so glad that you mentioned this! I think it's one of the best books ever written. His newer one, You Shall Know Our Velocity is also amazing. I think he is one of the best writers of our time.

I also love The Catcher in the Rye and On the Road.

[agger_rob]

Originally posted by cuaphi
Books I've read recently...Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers....

I loved this book. He's got a new novel out called "You Shall Know Our Velocity" that's really good too.

Other books I really liked:

New books:
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Lit Life - Kurt Wenzel
If Men Were Angels - Reed Karaim
The Fundamentals of Play - Kaitlyn Lacy
Pure Drivel - Steve Martin
Empire Falls - Richard Russo
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People - Toby Young
The Best a Man Can Get - John O'Farrel
Cash - Johnny Cash
Among the Heroes - Jere Longman
Ganster - Lorenzo Carcaterra
The Final Season - Tom Stanton
Dino - Nick Torshes
The Rules of Attraction - Bret Easton Ellis
Jennifer Government - Max Barry
Shopgirl - Steve Martin

Classics:
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The Great Gatsby
Of Mice and Men
Lonesome Dove
The Time Machine
Catch 22
Fahrenheit 451
A Confederacy of Dunces

[sugar and spice]

Originally posted by KSig RC
Whoa, you liked The Faerie Queene, but don't like Paradise Lost? Interesting . . . I find the Faerie Queene droll and uninteresting for the most part. Its didacticism makes me want to kick my own ass.

I'm finishing my English (American Lit) degree this year, so I've done extensive reading in the catagories most have picked from, and I'll agree with most all - good selections guys(although Brave New World is potentially the most overrated book ever, in my opinion - Aldous Huxley was a fucking moron).

My favorite "book" of all time would be Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn - although it's more of a full-length essay. My favorite piece of literature of all time would probably be Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" - although I'm not the beatnik epicurian hippy that would make me seem.

In a more "classic" sense, I'll posit that the best (modern) book written would be Moby-Dick, because it never strays from the goals, themes, and style Melville intended (note that Fitzgerald was about there with Gatsby too), although it's not the most interesting read in parts.

For entertainment, however, I stick to things like our good ol' coked-up buddy, Sherlock Holmes, and brain candy. Good stuff.

I LOVED The Faerie Queene and couldn't stand Paradise Lost -- but I was the only one in my entire class that liked Faerie Queene better. My professor hated me for it too; he was under the impression that Milton was God. Personally, I had to read Paradise Lost out loud just to keep from falling asleep.

I'm pretty sure that it would be fairly rewarding if only I could get into it . . . I liked certain things that Milton did with language -- I just can't get into it. I am a much more visual reader than verbal, too, so imagery appeals to me more than language does.

I love Sherlock Holmes, too. I found a hardcover edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes at a garage sale for three dollars this summer, and that made me so happy.

[FiReKraCkEr]

My fave books are....

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
White Oleander by Janet Fitch
Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Ten Thousand Sorrows by I forget who

[sororitygirl2]

I really like Julia Alvarez as an author... she wrote "In the Name of Salome," "In the Time of the Butterflies," and "We were the Garcia Girls."

All time favorite book is probably "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath. I also like "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac.

I couldn't help but compare "White Oleander" and "She's Come Undone" when I read them for some reason. The movie of "White Oleander" was such an injustice though!

Edited to add:

I also really like Michael Chabon lately (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay).

[MooseGirl]

Originally posted by equeen
The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

Oh my! I saw the thread title and knew this is what I was going to post! I haven't read it in years, but back inhighschool i read it around 3-4 times....


Of course, my current fav is Harry Potter series! I think i'm attracted to them just cuz it's soooo easy to read compared to the texts from university.

[AlphaSigOU]

Originally posted by Tom Earp
W.E.B. Griffen. Three Story Trilogy! Army, Marines, and Philly PD!

Cant remember the other one but love it too!

Just love to read! Gradiated, so reading is good!


Read for enternment, not beeecause I have to for class in the AM! You will too in your maturing years! If ya'all get there!!

Yo, Tom!

The other series is about the OSS (Office of Strategic Services - predecessor to the CIA) in WW II. Griffin (real name: William E. Butterworth) is a good author and a hell of a nice guy to boot! He calls it the 'Argentine series', for lack of a better title.

I think the 'Brotherhood of War' series (the Army series) has pretty much run its course, unless Griffin writes a 'filler' novel that covers the gaps in time in some of the original books.

'The Corps' suddenly jumped to the Korean War... I was looking forward to seeing the rest of McCoy, Pickering and company survive through the rest of WWII.

'Badge of Honor' is pretty decent, though the original books were written in the early 70s and appear somewhat dated.

But I still prefer to kick back and relax with a James Bond novel. (And a martini, shaken not stirred.) Can't beat Ian Fleming, John Gardner wasn't bad, and Raymond Benson is improving.

[cntryZTA5]

My favorite book is a historical novel--
The Killer Angels by Michael Sharaa (it was made into the movie Gettysburg).


My favorite books for a quick and fun read are the Harry Potter series!

[adduncan]

Fave Author: C. S. Lewis. His work goes waaaaayyyyy beyond "Narnia".
Case in point: Favorite Book: "The Screwtape Letters". Very off the wall POV--you get shivers down your back reading it.

Best Book To Bring With You to Jury Duty:

The Runaway Jury, by John Grisham.

hehehehehehehehh..........

Adrienne (PNAM-2003)

[DWAlphaGam]

Originally posted by sugar and spice
I LOVED The Faerie Queene and couldn't stand Paradise Lost -- but I was the only one in my entire class that liked Faerie Queene better. My professor hated me for it too; he was under the impression that Milton was God. Personally, I had to read Paradise Lost out loud just to keep from falling asleep.

I took a whole class on Milton, which basically consisted of reading all of Paradise Lost and a little bit of Samson Agonistes (can't remember if I'm spelling that correctly). It was my favorite class of all time. We had the greatest arguments about everything from the existence of God to feminism. So fun!

I didn't read that much of The Faerie Queen. My intro Brit Lit class was a bunch of slackers and refused to read anymore than about 1/4 of it, so the prof decided that we should move on to something else. I was very happy to do that because I couldn't get into it, either.


By the way, here is my wish list at B&N right now:

Bell Jar-Sylvia Plath
A Room of One's Own-Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway-Virginia Woolf
Joy Luck Club-Amy Tan
Atlas Shrugged-Ayn Rand
Tar Baby-Toni Morrison
Sula-Toni Morrison
Martian Chronicles-Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451-Ray Bradbury
Herzog-Saul Bellow
Chronicle of a Death Foretold-Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Love and Other Demons-Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Autumn of the Patriarch-Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Tess of the D'Urbervilles-Thomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure-Thomas Hardy
Portrait of a Lady-Henry James
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn-Mark Twain
Uncle Tom's Cabin-Harriet Beecher Stowe
Silas Marner-George Eliot
Absalom! Absalom!-William Faulkner
Of Human Bondage-Somerset Maugham
Dante's Inferno
A Tale of Two Cities-Charles Dickens
Great Expectations-Charles Dickens
The Jungle-Upton Sinclair
On the Road-Jack Kerouac
Grapes of Wrath-John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men-John Steinbeck


That's going to take a long time to get through!