Books you've read and would recommend?

[Gough]

I have a substantial library of secondhand books that says otherwise.

Smart phones have made shopping in second hand books a surprisingly profitable activity.

 

[chargers 09]

I think I have the exact same edition of LOTR. Read 5 pages of it and did not understand what the feck was going on. The pages on that book is so delicate that I feel like I'm about to shred it whenever I turn the page.

I started reading AOIAF book 2: COK a couple weeks before the show premiered this year. Got up to page 160 when the season started. Within the first episode, it had caught up to where I was reading. Needless to say I didn't bother continuing with the book even though it's much more detailed. Watching is much more enjoyable than reading. Just too much work.

OT: Those new Mount Franklin bottles are terrible. They scrunch too easily when drinking.

Big mistake, read it mate and I'm usually in the same boat in that I'd rather watch then read.

 

[IAMDASH]

iDisorder
- a great read if you are interested in how technology can run your life if you're not careful

The Big Miss
- a fantastic look at Tiger from a different perspective

No Regrets
- Ace Frehley autobiography. Typical rock memoir, but essential if you like KISS. If you don't know who ACe Frehley is probably not for you

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

The Iceman;Confessions of a contract killer.

I forgot about this one but its a pretty full on look at a how Richard K grew up and became a mob hitman.
Awesome read if your into this stuff

Good book.

You should check out "Contract Killer" by mob hitter Donald "Tony the Greek" Frankos.

He ran with the Lucchese family, Joe "Mad Dog" Sullivan and the Hells Kitchen Westies.

This is the guy that was supposedly on the Hoffa hit team.

 

[Broken]

I'm always reading a book of some description but I often seem to cycle through The Stand by Stephen King, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell and LOTR, so I look forward to checking some of these suggestions out.

I've really enjoyed other peoples recommendations of books I wouldn't normally read like A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini and even Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (I thought I knew the story from the movies, but the book was quite different and I really enjoyed it)

I'm also another recommendation for A Fortunate Life by AB Facey, it's an amazing story.

 

[grizzlym]

Thanks for that, great recommendation, I might have to look at that. Similarly - have you read Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature yet? That looks like an excellent compendium to the one you've mentioned.

I haven't. I'll check it out.

 

[THRILLHO]

I started reading AOIAF book 2: COK a couple weeks before the show premiered this year. Got up to page 160 when the season started. Within the first episode, it had caught up to where I was reading. Needless to say I didn't bother continuing with the book even though it's much more detailed. Watching is much more enjoyable than reading. Just too much work.
.

I don't understand why you wouldn't do both? The books and the show (only seen the first two episodes) are of an incredibly high quality and offer different ways to enjoy the source material.

 

[Northworth]

The Belgariad and The Mallorian series of booked screwed my TEE up in 97

loved those books
tried to read past them and they all felt eerily familiar so i stopped after about book 12

 

[Gough]

Clive James would be one of my favourite writers and authors.

All his autobiographies are great and some of the funniest books I've ever read, in particularly Unreliable Memoirs and Falling Towards England.

Some of my other favourite books would be;

Wired by Bob Woodward - a biography of John Belushi which gives a great insight into his life and his spiral into drugs.

Shakey by Jimmy McDonough - a really detailed, well researched biography of Neil Young, probably need to be a fan of his to really appreciate it though.

Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab - a riveting story of his time in an SAS patrol behind enemy lines in Iraq during the first Gulf War and how he escaped alive.

Unreliable Memoirs is one of only two genuinely laugh out loud books I have read in my life, the other being Adolf Hitler, My Part in his Downfall by Spike Milligan.
7 pages and no mention yet of On the Road. Shame.

 

[Bombers 2003]

Unreliable Memoirs is one of only two genuinely laugh out loud books I have read in my life, the other being Adolf Hitler, My Part in his Downfall by Spike Milligan.
7 pages and no mention yet of On the Road. Shame.

Read the wheel of time by robert jordan
i have all 13 books,in the middle of the towers of midnight,cant wait till the last book comes out next year

 

[Bombers 2003]

im surprised jayden can read

 

[Warner_Bros_FC]

Big mistake, read it mate and I'm usually in the same boat in that I'd rather watch then read.

I don't understand why you wouldn't do both? The books and the show (only seen the first two episodes) are of an incredibly high quality and offer different ways to enjoy the source material.

I'd just finished watching the first season a few weeks back before the show started so I was desperate to know the story. I heard they changed a few bits from the original source and made it lame on the TV version. I'll get back into it during the holidays. I have to, or chargers 09 will do something unspeakable to me.

 

[grizzlym]

grizzlym – how do you claim books on tax?

It's a work related expense for me - magazines, books, newspapers, Foxtel...

 

[Gough]

It's a work related expense for me - magazines, books, newspapers, Foxtel...

Bastard.

 

[NarniMagic]

What price knowledge? I doubt Gutenberg would be grizzling about how much books cost these days.

I sort of get what you are saying, since I am a pretty fast reader and I do hate shelling out $40 for a book that will only provide me with a few hours' diversion. But then I figure, in terms of $/hr entertainment compared to stuff like going to the movies or the theatre or whatever, it's actually pretty good value. Plus I get to keep the book at the end of it.

Personally, I am mostly happy to pay 20-30% more to shop at an independent bookshop because my favourite bookshops easily make my reading experience 20-30% better. YMMV. Perhaps I own less books, but at least for the time being I can still go to the library to supplement my reading.

Thats the same way I feel when people complain about games. Like a game might come out and be said to have "20 hours of gameplay" or whatever and people bitch about it not being long enough or bad value for money, when really if you compare to virtually every other form of entertainment, it's incredible value.

 

[Tiff]

The 4% universe.

Just read a book my girlfriend got on kindle called empty chairs. Terribly written but really engaging. You've got to read the sequel faint echoes of laughter though.

 

[Cruyff14]

Anonymous Lawyer by Jeremy Blachman.

Good for a laugh, it's a true story too.

Night by Elie Wiesel.

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines

 

[PP34]

Any accounts by soldiers of WWII that are worth reading?

 

[Plugger35]

Unreliable Memoirs is one of only two genuinely laugh out loud books I have read in my life, the other being Adolf Hitler, My Part in his Downfall by Spike Milligan.
7 pages and no mention yet of On the Road. Shame.

I've read that Spike Milligan book too, it's funny in parts but not as funny as the Clive James books I've read.

Clive is a lot funnier in book form than he is on TV which is where most people know him from, on top of his autobiographies there are also his books that are compilations of his newspaper articles as a tv critic and travel writer like Visions Before Midnight, The Crystal Bucket and Flying Visits which are great too.

 

[Ed_Gein]

Isn't there a BigFooty group set up on Goodreads yet?

 

[CLUBMEDhurst]

I’m not a big on fiction, but Bret Easton Ellis is good... also Don Winslow, some if his stuff is really good.

“The Power of the Dog” is absolutely brilliant.

Also another vote for The Iceman (bio of Richard Kuklinski). Picked this up at LAX one night and did not put it down til I’d read every word. Didn’t even turn on in-flight entertainment on the flight, I was engrossed. One bad mother goose.

grizzlym – how do you claim books on tax?

A masterpiece. Surprised there ain't more love for this high octane drug war epic.

The book that turned me onto my hardboiled crime jones

A nasty trawl through the depraved mind of a psychopath

 

[treefingers]

Just finished Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, really enjoyed it. Probably not as well written as 1984 but I think I enjoyed it more - so funny yet kind of disturbing to think of our future

 

[mellowyellow]

Mans search For Meaning Viktor Frankl

 

[THRILLHO]

Just finished Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, really enjoyed it. Probably not as well written as 1984 but I think I enjoyed it more - so funny yet kind of disturbing to think of our future

Interesting to compare.

Brave New World was on the NSW HSC booklist. I remember slicing through it in a matter of days. Hands down the best book I read and studied at school, which includes To Kill A Mockingbird.

 

[PP34]

Almost all of my books are shipped. Can't wait for them to arrive. I'll be sure to recommend a couple.