favorite books

what are some of ur favs?

here's mine-
1. Dune - too bad all the movies suck
2. the Two Towers
3. Outcast of Redwall - anyone else familiar with this series?
4. the hitchhiker's guide trilogy
5. the Catcher in the Rye

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"Who comes at 12:00 on a Sunday night to rent Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid?"
-Hollywood Video rental guy to me

Ronald Rabbit is a Dirty Old Man
The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams
Get Shorty
Maximum Bob
Fletch Won
Fletch
The Rest of the Burglar Series
Most of the rest of the Fletch series (not so much Son of Fletch, though).

All I can think of right now in the fiction realm.

I really enjoyed:

The Green Mile

The Silence of the Lambs

The Falcon's Malteser
This one's a kid's book, but I had the absoloute best fun reading it.

The Beach
Why did they ruin the film with that ENDING?! And running through the jungle like a video game!? It could have been brilliant.

The Tesseract
Same author as above.

Alice in Wonderland
I would argue that this is the most subtle and symbolicly non-children children's book in the world. Melancholy, dark, disturbing, brilliant, and peverse.

The Two Towers
The Best of the three LOTR books.

To Kill A Mockingbird
This is the only book I read for school that I grew to love. It has become quite a part of my life, my little torn up book. It has some great lessons, and is beautifully written.

Boy: Tales of Childhood
&
Going Solo
I consider thest to be the one book, Roald Dahl's autobiography. It is a masterpeice, and next to the Beach I would have to say that these are my favorite two books I have ever read. The can take you from wherever you are and take back to your own childhood, or your own pain and suffering, your own family. It is beautifully written, witty, smart, funny, charming, and overall heartwarming. These books I can read over and over again.

Blinky Bill
Another book that holds a place in my heart because of my childhood. I suggest anyone, especially non-Australians -- read this. The reult is just magical.

The "Asterix" Series
'Nuff said!


And of course, me being me, I read countless film reviews, film magazines and even more filmmaking books. One of the best, although I don't like his films a great deal is Rodriguez' Rebel Without a Crew.

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www.esotericrabbit.com

For starters...

• everything Kurt Vonnegut ever wrote
• everything John Gardner ever wrote
• everything P.K. Dick ever wrote
• everything David Markson ever wrote
• everything Paul Auster ever wrote
• everything Jim Thompson ever wrote

But if I was forced to pick only a couple from each writer...

• Player Piano & Slaughterhouse-Five or: The Children's Crusade (Vonnegut)
• Grendel & October Light (Gardner)
• Valis and The Man Who Japed (Dick)
• Reader's Block & This Is Not a Novel (Markson)
• The New York Trilogy & The Music of Chance (Auster)
• Pop. 1280 & The Killer Inside Me (Thompson)

Other favorite novels...

• Catch-22, Joseph Heller
• Vineland, Thomas Pynchon
• A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters, Julian Barnes
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kessey
• Birdy, William Wharton
• Conversation in the Cathedral, Mario Vargas Llosa
• The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
• As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner

That makes a nice round 20 fiction picks from me!

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

"The Tesseract"? Does that book feature a Mr. Charles Watson, by any chance? That dude wrote "The Beach," too? And yes, the video game thingamajig made me laugh out loud; I couldn't believe how ridiculous it was.

A few of my favorites (sorry; they're not all fiction):

• "The Screwtape Letters," by C.S. Lewis
• "The Chronicles of Narnia," ditto
• "Animal Farm," by George Orwell
• "Radicals & Visionaries," by Thaddeus Wawro
• "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, " by J.R.R. Tolkien
• "The Tipping Point," by Malcolm Gladwell
• "Organizing Genius," by Warren Bennis & Patricia Ward Biederman
• "The American Leadership Tradition," by Marvin Olasky
• "Why I Am Not A Christian," edited by Bertrand Russell

The first one on there may be my favorite book of all time. The concept is original and interesting, and the book is wonderful. "Animal Farm" I've read anywhere from 6 to 10 times (I've honestly lost track). It's so simple...an incredibly light read; but it is not boring.

The last one on the list I read years ago, and don't remember as many specifics as I'd like. I hope to read it again sometime fairly soon. I listed it here despite having forgotten a good deal of it because I remember being quite glad that I'd read it, for one reason or another. I do dislike the fact that it is, essentially, just a collection of essays, however. Books like that always sort of bug me, if only because the essays sometimes overlap, repeating certain concepts or points.

Speaking of points, "The Tipping Point" is a must-read for anyone in a management position of any sort, IMO. It really paints a remarkable picture. I have to wonder to myself now and then: where is my "tipping point"? On a related note, even though I've only read a little bit of it, I recommend "The 80/20 Principle." Another interesting concept.

"Radicals & Visionaries" is a book made up of (I think) 50 short chapters (a few pages each), each devoted to a certain business figure of some sort. I dig it...big time. The small, digestable chunks make it very easy to read. It's a lot of fun.

"The American Leadership Tradition" does a remarkable job of linking moral shortcomings with professional shortcomings, and shows us clearly why we've come to distrust our President, and, as part of that, our Government. There was a time when The President was an honorable man that people put faith and trust into. Quite a change from the way people look at The Presidency today! This book will help to show you why morality DOES matter, and what happened to cause us to think the way we do about our Presidents these days.

The tesseract is basically three story's that tell the story's of a collection of lives of people at completley different ends of the spectrum and how their lives collide in one night. They all live in Manilla.

The first story is about an English guy working for a Malasyian drug lord. He becomes paranoid, and starts his evening by blowing him away the moment he walks in the room. All the present tense stuff is interjected with flashbacks of almost all the characters lives.

The second story is a woman who is married and has two lovely children. Her night is interjected when a man runs straight through her house -- the man from the first story on the run, the same night he shot the boss.

The third story involves two street kids, who in essence "sell" there dreams to a psychoanalysis who himself finds pondering life and such. When the man from the first story runs past them on the evening, the elder one is compelled to follow, feeling links to his own father who abadonned him when he was younger -- he refuses to believe that he was abanodonned, rather than the father became entangled in something. He chooses to follow this man for those reasons.

The tales all end in the final act of the book: "The Tesseract". It goes through every main character of every story (there's about 15 of them) and tells the final moments of their evening from their point of view.

It's not as long as the beach, and probably not as good some would say, but it is an amazing read, especially the final act. It would make a brilliant film. Sort of Pulp Fiction-y in it's way of dealing with chronological aspects, but not so much that people would be arguing that it was a direct copy.

I suggest you read it.

Ah, I see. My bad. I was thinking of "A Wrinkle in Time," where, unless I'm remembering something incorrectly (quite likely), a "tesseract" is, well, a wrinkle in time, I believe. It allows people to travel great distances across the universe in almost no time at all.

I enjoyed reading Coldfire and Darkfall by Dean Koontz.

I'm in the middle of Fear Nothing right now, and is, so far, a pretty good read.

I have read Thinner by Stephen King, but didn't really like it all that much. I watched the movie afterwards and liked the book more.

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"I was walking down the street with my friend and he said, "I hear music", as if there is any other way you can take it in. You're not special, that's how I receive it too. I tried to taste it but it did not work." - Mitch Hedberg

• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• 1984 and Animal Farm by Orwell
• Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
• Everything by Douglas Adams
• Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions by Vonnegut
• The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
• The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
• Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea
• The Catcher in the Rye by Salinger
• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman
• What do You Care What Other People Think? by Feynman
• Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays by Stephen Hawking
• Cosmos and Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
• For the Sake of Argument and Unacknowledged Legislation by Christopher Hitchens
• The Fine Art of Literary Mayhem by Myrick Land

The Stand- Stephen King
American Tabloid- James Ellroy
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest- Ken Kesey
The Catcher in The Rye- J.D. Salinger
Pagan Babies- Elmore Leonard

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"You, me, everyone...we are all made of star stuff." - Neil Degrasse Tyson

https://shawnsmovienight.blogspot.com/

Way to many to count... I've read the stand at least 20x, several times in one sitting (I know, no life, LOL).

Here's one that nobody's mentioned. I am a big sci-fi fan and my favorite story is "A Boy and His Dog" They made it into a movie with the Miami Vice guy, but the book is sooooo much better. I did happen to enjoy the movie though, 8/10 I think.

monkeypunch - is pagan babies the newest lenard?

BTW- just finished 2001: A Space Odyssey, its a really really good book.

The bible,
The egyptian book of the dead,
Sun Tzu's The Art of War,
Prince Machiavelli,
The collected works of Shakespeare,

Notables:
Grapes of Wrath
Catcher in the Rye
The NRA Handbook

You read this, then you look at his avatar, then his title...::::::shiver:::::If I didn't know him so well, I'd be shaking in my knee high boots and clutching a weapon.

Still might be the safest option available

::::::::shiver:::::::::::*gasp*::::::::::::::::::::::::

New favorites: Mere Christianity and The Great Divorce. I don't think I ever mentioned Lincoln on Leadership, or, for that matter, Churchill on Leadership, either. And Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery is a MUST read.

I don't really have favs of anything - it depends what I remember is good at the time

I really liked The Famished Road by Ben Okri.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

and pretty much anything by Philip K Dick.

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Another high quality post by Fez Wizardo

my all time favorite author is without a doubt Paul Auster.

other favorites include Philip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut, Roald Dahl.

also i've read all of Alan Watts, lots of Dostoevsky, and i'm still reading a huge tome of Charlotte and Emily Bronté's works.

i currently stick to random psychological thrillers and mysteries......i check them out when i see an intriguing review.

and i am always attracted by cool covers/art/design- at least attracted enough to read the jacket.

i used to spend hours and hours in bookstores.........one of my favorite pastimes of the pre-mommy days.
if anyone cares to come babysit for a couple of hours, i'd be ever so happy to cruise on down to the borders right near my house.
sades? you can invite a nice boy over and watch a movie. heh heh
i have paper and indelible ink if you feel like writing......

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on dance seul, on dance seul.....

***On a completely seperate note: Sad but True by Metallica was on in the background and I just noticed that the nodding smiley is in fact MOSHING!

Warning though if you try to stare at it moshing for long enough you end up doing the exact same thing for quite lengthy periods of time!***