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Tom Pitt

Tom Pitt

Well-Known Member
I am looking for some solid suggestions in re books to read. Historical fiction, personal growth, fiction. Any suggestions pertaining to these genre's would be ideal but if you have a book you think is a must read of another genre, feel free to propose it.



Books I'd recommend right now

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Sunny's Blues by James Baldwin

The Tools by Barry Michaels and Phil Stutz
 
Think this thread kinda already exists but who cares. Read the Flashman books they're some of the best historical fiction going round. Flash at the charge, flash in the great game and flash and the dragon are my favourites.
 
Rubashov said:
Think this thread kinda already exists but who cares. Read the Flashman books they're some of the best historical fiction going round. Flash at the charge, flash in the great game and flash and the dragon are my favourites.
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Thanks for the suggestions. I looked for a books thread, but didn't see one. Perhaps I missed it. Mods please merge if this is an issue.
 
I had a friend who was a readoholic and read a bunch of books his whole life and when I asked him his favorite books he said the Wheel of Time series if you like epic fantasy fiction type. Did anyone else here about that series? It is a huge time investment.
 
Rumor has it new Jazz member Ekpe Udoh does a book club thingy. Look into that.

Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed reading both Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy.
 
Jack London "Sea Wolf". Read it like 100 times and still find it amazing.
 
The Blue Elephant said:
I had a friend who was a readoholic and read a bunch of books his whole life and when I asked him his favorite books he said the Wheel of Time series if you like epic fantasy fiction type. Did anyone else here about that series? It is a huge time investment.
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It amazes me how famous WoT is. It speaks to the state of fantasy fiction. I would not recommend it to a well-read adult.
 
Tom Pitt said:
I am looking for some solid suggestions in re books to read. Historical fiction, personal growth, fiction. Any suggestions pertaining to these genre's would be ideal but if you have a book you think is a must read of another genre, feel free to propose it.



Books I'd recommend right now

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Sunny's Blues by James Baldwin

The Tools by Barry Michaels and Phil Stutz
Click to expand...

Blackout/All Clear are pretty fun. They're not strictly historical fiction, since they involve time travel, but they take place during WW2.
 
Tom Pitt said:
I am looking for some solid suggestions in re books to read. Historical fiction, personal growth, fiction. Any suggestions pertaining to these genre's would be ideal but if you have a book you think is a must read of another genre, feel free to propose it.



Books I'd recommend right now

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Sunny's Blues by James Baldwin

The Tools by Barry Michaels and Phil Stutz
Click to expand...

The owners manual of any new vehicle.
 
Hekate said:
Lol, wut?
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What? It's a poorly written series. No real sense of threat. The main characters are teenage bumpkins. Entire books can be skipped with a 2 paragraph summary. Aside from the richness of the world, which is still overstated, the series has little going for it. If you haven't read a lot, and you mostly read fantasy, then maybe it's for you. I don't know. But I wouldn't recommend it.
 
Siro said:
What? It's a poorly written series. No real sense of threat. The main characters are teenage bumpkins. Entire books can be skipped with a 2 paragraph summary. Aside from the richness of the world, which is still overstated, the series has little going for it. If you haven't read a lot, and you mostly read fantasy, then maybe it's for you. I don't know. But I wouldn't recommend it.
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I don't know if I have read a lot but I always have some books I have to read. And I have read more than just fantasy.

I don't think the worldbuilding is overrated. It's richer than any I have read except anything Tolkien. It's long and tedious at times I guess especially books 7-10 but even in the 10th book which is considered the most boring and slow, I found things that I enjoy reading about.

May be I am just too focused on worldbuilding that I don't give the same importance to other aspects of it. And the journey of characters is enough for me. I don't know, I wouldn't recommend it to everyone as well, it just wouldn't be on the basis of it being bad written.
 
My favorites are everything Vonnegut, Galapagos being my very favorite. Another favorite author is John Updike, the Rabbit series is great, and I liked both Witches and Widows as well. Another alltime favorite book is Johnny Got His Gun.

On the WOT: I really enjoyed it in junior high/early high school, and it's pretty solid for fantasy, but I'm a bit low on the genre as a whole recently. World building is it's strength, but doesn't match Tolkien in that regard (The Silmarillion is actually my favorite Tolkien).

Some of my favorite fantasy/sci-fi types are:
Stranger in A Strange Land
American Gods (Gaiman's Sandman comics were great too)
The Dispossessed
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
 
Eminence said:
My favorites are everything Vonnegut, Galapagos being my very favorite. Another favorite author is John Updike, the Rabbit series is great, and I liked both Witches and Widows as well. Another alltime favorite book is Johnny Got His Gun.

On the WOT: I really enjoyed it in junior high/early high school, and it's pretty solid for fantasy, but I'm a bit low on the genre as a whole recently. World building is it's strength, but doesn't match Tolkien in that regard (The Silmarillion is actually my favorite Tolkien).

Some of my favorite fantasy/sci-fi types are:
Stranger in A Strange Land
American Gods (Gaiman's Sandman comics were great too)
The Dispossessed
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. You can easily skip the first 3 books, he was really feeling it out at that point, and it's not really a sequential narrative.

http://i.imgur.com/apCXh4h.jpg
 
Anyone ever read McCarthy's Blood Meridian? It's generally considered his masterpiece, an infinitely tougher read than the simple The Road and No Country for Old Men, and is begging to be made into an 8-12 episode mini-series on HBO.
 
I think the most captivating fiction I have read lately is The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder. Got hooked from the first page.
 
Wes Mantooth said:
Anyone ever read McCarthy's Blood Meridian? It's generally considered his masterpiece, an infinitely tougher read than the simple The Road and No Country for Old Men, and is begging to be made into an 8-12 episode mini-series on HBO.
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I'm not a huge fan. I did find the writing to be a bit of a slog, and I'm not a huge fan of stories that try to stay ambiguous to the end (though that's kind of McCarthy's thing). It is a pretty dang good book, but I'm just not sure it was worth the effort (Pynchon makes me feel similarly - good to great books, but I always wind up feeling I could have done something better with my time).

And on a different note, I enjoy almost anything by Heller as well (I'm sure everyone remembers Catch-22 from high school english).
 
Eminence said:
Some of my favorite fantasy/sci-fi types are:
Stranger in A Strange Land
American Gods (Gaiman's Sandman comics were great too)
The Dispossessed
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Click to expand...

Stranger in a Strange Land is one of those books I read as a kid and really loved. Same with Asimov's work. Lots of innovative ideas that I look upon fondly since they were my entry into the genre. But really, all of the ideas in them have since been explored more deeply and with more nuance. Nowadays, I'd much rather read, say, Banks' Culture series, over something like Foundation.

The Dispossessed is great. The book imagines an interesting society, for sure. Some kind of highly automated Marxist-anarchist civilization? Really cool.

American Gods was okay for me. I heard so much about it, and when I finally decided to read it, it felt a bit underwhelming. There is nothing specifically wrong with it. Just that I was never sold on its mythos, so it was hard to get into. Enjoyed some of the reflection on American culture.

Hitchhiker's is hilarious.
 
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