I always enjoy getting book recommendations...so I figured, why not?
I'm reading "In the Presence of My Enemies" by Gracia Burnham, an American woman held hostage by the Islamic extremist group Abu Sayyaf in the Philipines. Her story is very inspiring, but I sometimes wish it was more detailed.
Anyone else?
-NoNamer
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Geeky book reviews: http://themodernreader.blogspot.com
0 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 13 18
I just started "Rhett Butler's People" by Donald McCaig last night. No idea yet if it's any good or not. I LOVED Gone With the Wind, so when I saw this one, I had to pick it up and give it a try.
Before that I read Jurassic Park, just for the heck of it. I've seen the movie (well, movies) so I thought I would give it a look. It was...eh...pretty much what I expected.
0 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 13 31
the Canterbury Tales in traslation, and them I am going to tackle them in the original...
86,604 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 13 51
William Johsntones Matt Jenson here
monbade
50,478 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 14 11
I just finished Burned by Ellen Hopkins this morning. Now starting on Phantom Prey by John Sandford
----------Stefani
"People don't like the truth, it forces them to accept what they are instead of what they wish they were." Steve Kerr-Robinson (aka, love of my life)
50,038 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 14 36
If no one's read The Fortunate Pilgrim by Mario Puzo, I HIGHLY recommend. Same writer of The Godfather, but this one is apparently what he considers his "best and most honest work." True enough. I could hardly keep away from it and was rather sad for it to end.
Not really sure how to describe it, but it's pretty much the chronicles of Lucia Santa, an Italian immigrant, and how she raises 6 children all by herself in the midst of the Great Depression in New York.
0 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 15 21
I'm currently reading Lucky by Alice Sebold. Next on my pile o' books is Wonder When You'll Miss Me by Amanda Davis.
20,334 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 15 27
The Last Herald Mage Trilogy by Mercedes Lacky
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"I don't care about breeding. A sword doesn't need a fine lineage, it just needs to be sharp" ~ Luca Blight
50,143 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 16 00
I'm currently reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
Other books on my desk:
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (which, funnily enough, references Great Expectations)
It's set on an island, isolated and threatened by war. The lone teacher on the island reads them Great Expectations every day.
10,332 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 15 57
Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter. Hard sci fi set in Earth's very distant future.
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I have no signature; I make empty space my signature.
50,019 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 15 58
I just finished Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, the book that the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is based on, and OH MY GOD it was amazing. Even though the characters and situations are wildly different from each other, I think I love Jessica Rabbit and Eddie Valiant even more than I did before.
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oct. 9, 2008 - 16 32
Yeah, I definitely enjoyed the book more than the movie (I always do, actually.) I'll have to read Lost World, too. I don't really even remember the movie Lost World, so maybe that will make the book that much better, that I don't know what's coming. I think that's why Jurassic Park wasn't better for me. I knew more of the things that were going to happen.
"Don't get it right, just get it written." - James Thurber
50,136 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 19 06
I'm currently reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
Other books on my desk:
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (which, funnily enough, references Great Expectations)
It's set on an island, isolated and threatened by war. The lone teacher on the island reads them Great Expectations every day.
I read Great Expectations a couple years ago and actually enjoyed it a lot, which surprised me because I didn't like Oliver Twist at all.
Currently I'm reading the first volume of Peter C. Newman's Company of Adventurers about the Hudson Bay Company. Not as boring as it sounds, but boring enough that I actually get homework done.
12,022 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 19 45
The Red and the Black by Stendhal (oh god i've been reading this since august uggghhh)
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass (rereading, it rules)
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway (probably not the book i should have chose for my first foray into Hemingway but i'm liking it anyway [chapter 10, holy crap])
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (yay election season whooo!)
0 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 20 00
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada. Very twisted book and I am really enjoying it.
----------50,979 / 50,000
oct. 13, 2008 - 04 51
I DO read The Economist and the NYTimes.
No-No Boy by John Okada.
The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley.
Under the Tuscan Sun by Audrey Wells.
The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I
Wicked by Gregory Maguire.
----------"Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing."
- Margaret Chittenden
55,190 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 20 21
I just started reading The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman. The premise was what got me interested - what would happen to the planet if humans just vanished. It hasn't disappointed yet.
----------The JackalCat Scribe: My Writing Blog
50,191 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 20 56
I'm in the middle of three books:
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
Brisingr by CP
Inkspell by Cornelia Funke
All are great. :D Inkspell and Plot more than Brisingr, but I'm enjoying the latter as well.
----------The Stranger: He wants your soul.
http://www.freewebs.com/soulcollectors/index.htm
70,464 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 21 10
All Quiet On the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque for my WWI class. And it's an original 1929 printing! It's kind of amazing and I love it.
That, and a ton of text books. Sigh.
----------------------
What am I doing still awake?
...Oh wait.
53,010 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 21 22
Good Omens ~by~ Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
+One of the best books ever! I'm reading it for the 4th? 5th? Time, and it still rocks.
++Do not read if you are religious, and have no sense of humor.
Sahara ~by~ Clive Cussler
+The movie version (Matthew McSomething or other, (Don't know how to spell his name/ don't have time to look it up tonight) and Penelope Cruz) SUCKS!
Or, at least it will, once you've read the book.
Than you will understand how great it is.
----------...Und so ging sie in den Bereich der Einbildungskraft...
0 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 21 24
+The movie version (Matthew McSomething or other, (Don't know how to spell his name/ don't have time to look it up tonight) and Penelope Cruz) SUCKS!
Or, at least it will, once you've read the book.
Than you will understand how great it is.
I've never read the book, but you're right, the movie was terrible! I would hope the book is better. It would have to be...
"Don't get it right, just get it written." - James Thurber
50,399 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 21 40
Wow, everyone seems so ambitious in their reading. I'm reading Brisingr by Christopher Paolini. If I finish it before November then I'll be moving to The Dragon of Despair by Jane Lindskold.
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oct. 9, 2008 - 22 12
Funnymen by Ted Heller, son of Joesph, very good so far and Bill Bryson's A Short History Of Nearly Everything, the universe explained simply.
33,167 / 50,000
oct. 9, 2008 - 23 01
Nothing. I should probably do something about that, but I've been too lazy to take a trip down to the library recently, and I don't feel like rereading stuff I own (I'm not big on rereading). The last thing I read was... you know, I'm not even sure. I've been reading a fanfiction (a very good fanfiction), but that's it.
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NaNo Project '06 - Untitled (Fantasy) - dismal failure
NaNo Project '07 - Crescendo in C (YA) - WINNAR!
NaNo Project '08 - Frost (Fantasy)
53,129 / 50,000
oct. 10, 2008 - 00 12
I've just finished How many socks make a pair? It was a very funny book on everyday mathematics, written by Rob Eastaway.
----------Percussus resurgio
NaNoWriMo History: 2008 - Keldostri Acaleros (Won - 53129 words)
67,403 / 50,000
oct. 10, 2008 - 00 29
I'm re-reading Hitomi Kanehara's "Snakes and earrings" for the umpteenth time, along with "No Plot, No Problem", a Norwegian trash novel, and "Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists & Other Sex Offenders".
Nice mix, no?
----------NaNo '05: Growing Up Lonely
NaNo '06: Three
NaNo '07: Yellow flowers and a bag of bones
NaNo '08: Yakuza Starfish
51,504 / 50,000
oct. 10, 2008 - 02 56
I just finished 'Wild Swans' by Jung Chang (again) a beautiful but sad story about the changes in China under the Communists.
Now reading His Dark Materials (again), The Odyssey and puzzling through Marcus Aurelius!
All good books, but I do let myself in for it, sometimes. >_<
----------2007: The Darkest Twist (Fail)
2008: The Words Between (Win!)
50,118 / 50,000
oct. 10, 2008 - 04 18
Deus Irae by Philip K Dick and Roger Zelazny.
It's pretty freaking weird. There's a painter with no arms trying to find the guy who blew up the world so he can paint him for a religious group that worships him as the "God of Wrath." It's turning into an epic-hero-quest kind of thing.
----------{Wherever you go, there you are...}
413 / 50,000
oct. 10, 2008 - 05 22
Possible Side Effects by Augesten Burroughs (whose name I probably just butchered)
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton for my Lit class
(the Twilight series... even though it is bad for my health)
Sort of reading
The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde, though I much prefer Thursday to Jack...
and, of course, text books about random stuff that I really could not care less about...oh well, such is the life of a college student.
----------2006 - No Title... didn't get very far... let's just leave it at that
2008 - Brilliantly Unscrewed (working title, likely to change)
0 words down, 50,000 to go
413 / 50,000
oct. 10, 2008 - 15 17
*bumping thread*
----------2006 - No Title... didn't get very far... let's just leave it at that
2008 - Brilliantly Unscrewed (working title, likely to change)
0 words down, 50,000 to go
0 / 50,000
oct. 10, 2008 - 15 35
I recently read "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. I was very disappointed with it. I love post apocalypse literature, but this novel did nothing for me. The plot never really went anywhere, any messages delivered were ones I'd gotten a long time ago, and aside from depicting a world struck by a meteor, it never really did anything new.
----------It was praised by critics, as are most books I don't actually like. So I guess that I have no appreciation for anything with any literate merit. No, I like punchy, mainstream crap like Stephen King. Yeah, I liked Cell.
I'm a horrible person.
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Bloodcider's Blag