Thread: Recommended Reads

So, what're some good summertime reads?


Classics, oddities, nonfiction or otherwise, they're all good.

Couple I've read lately, to get the list started:


Catapult by Jim Paul.
Two guys in San Francisco with kinetic sculptor-tendencies get drunk one night, hatch the idea that it might be fun to build a giant catapult, and actually follow through once sober. They take it up to an old artillery battery on Mt. Tamalpais, and fling enough objects to the point of pissing off the Park Service. Light reading at best, but amusing. Good for whiling away airport layovers.

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.
Recommended to me with a couple years ago by a fellow Mag/minion, I finally got around to this one. Clocks in at almost a thousand pages, but so entertaining I stopped eating and sleeping for two days straight just so I could finish it off in one sitting. Great stuff – think WWII espionage, codebreaking, wacky British explorer/Allen Quartermain-type jungle stuff, and sprinkle it liberally with submarines, computer nerds and Silicon Valley startups. Sex, explosions, math geek code, yup, yup – it's all there. Techy enough to keep the nerds engaged, yet moves at an easy thriller-novel clip. Sort of a cross between Clive Cussler and that weird guy from the movie Pi.

The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue
Autobiography of racing legend Donohue, who wrote this just before his fatal crash at the Osterreichring during the 1975 Austrian GP. Written in the dry, matter-of-fact tone one would expect of a Brown-educated mechanical engineer. Full of great halcyon-era anecdotes, like taking two cars, acid-dipping one until it was well below legal weight, sending a heavy, legal car through the tech inspection, and then swapping numbers so as to use the acid-dipped cheater to qualify both cars. A must for road racing fans. All else will find it a handy cure for insomnia.



Some that I'm in the middle of:


Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott (so nice, they named him twice, evidently).
An utterly bizarre, charming religio-mathematic parable about caste society ca. Victorian England. A riot.

Ficciones - Collected Short Works Jorge Luis Borges.
Good for reading while bent double on the pooper. "The Circular Ruins" blows my mind and makes me see stars every time I read it (or maybe that's just oxygen-shortage from poopin').

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.
There's a dent in the wall opposite my couch from when I hurled this one across the room one Scotch-sodden night. Four attempts at reading it so far, and still it makes my head hurt. Just can't seem to get into this one. I'm probably gonna pull a Guy Montag on it pretty soon and torch it.

Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky
Still on Page 1. A notorious book that is out of print and banned from many libraries should be pretty entertaining, I hope. Supposedly it attempts to refute the conventional Western science viewpoint altogether, by debunking conventional myths of religion, astronomy, history and the modern scientific method.

Playboy, June 2004
For the articles, naturally.




What're some good reads you've read lately?

Bring 'em on...

Pynchon and Borges rool.

Palace Walk and The Harafish by Naguib Mahfouz. 1988 Nobel Laureate in Literature provides a fly on the wall view of mideast culture. Interesting for at least some of us honky, cracker types.

definitely agree with Cryptonomicon. have you heard anything about Quicksilver? i'm not convinced looking just at the synopsis.

- Confederacy of Dunces by by John Kennedy Toole: one and only breakthrough tragic comic novel by this author who committed suicide. great "old timey" feel to his approach to humor with a very adult attitude.

- Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen: zen/tao and spirituality combined with immersive narrative of the himayalan landscape and cultural fabric.

- The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz: amazing tale of survival and an unfathomable trek of thousands of miles in hostile conditions, created by man and nature.

- Hobo by Eddy Joe Cotton: light reading, great "hobo prose."

- Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57: takes a while to get used but the novel is set in demi-kabuki which takes on an interesting cadence.

- books by Haruki Murakami: surreal japanese pulp. almost so austere that you have to re-read many passages. very "quiet" reading is the best i can describe it.

The unfair advantage is one of my favorite car reads, read it for the first time last year.

I'm reading Hayduke Lives! the sequel to the Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey. If you havent read any of Abbey's stuff, do yourself a favor and pick up some of his stuff. Absolutely fantastic. Funny, insightful, clever...and it reads really really fast. I love his stuff. My friend turned me on to him, she's such a big fan she named her dog after the author.

I'm reading Stephen King's Gunslinger Chronicles, and just finished book 4. There are 8 books to the series, and each are long(some over 700 pages). If you like watching the slow development of a story and characters, check this one out. Its kinda a cross of a western and a science fiction book.

I just finished Kind of Blue: The making of the landmark recording, which chronicles the making of Miles Davis' masterpiece. Lots of cool pictures, great quotes, and insightful facts about Miles during the 1950s.

I'm also reading John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s, which is a social look at jazz of the 60s, specifically Coltranes. The writer Kofsky has been accused of putting too much emphasis on racism, but its an interesting read nonetheless.

A Buttician, eh? Go harass Larry Singleton and John Hoffman. Tell 'em the Deer Lodgician sent ya.

I've read Quiksilver and The Confusion - both are decent, but not nearly as good as earlier Neal Stephenson like Snow Crash and Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

Originally posted by cj001f
I've read Quiksilver and The Confusion - both are decent, but not nearly as good as earlier Neal Stephenson like Snow Crash and Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

i've tried my best to get through Diamond Age but couldn't bring myself to finishing it. my track record with liking an author's earlier works when i have read his/her newer work has not been good.

Haven't been reading much with the move, but keep a few around just to keep my head fresh.

Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman

It's an exploration of some of his ideas of time, seperated into different chapters by each theory. Synopsis of Einstein\\\'s Dreams

Also read Roald Dahl's Omnibus, definitely not along the lines of most of the works he's famous for, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, etc., it's a collection of shorts for adults. Lots of grisly stories, and some pretty twisted lines, great read, I think I'm on my third go-around on it.


Cantdog, I'm looking to pick up Wolves of the Callaha (sp?) next, not typically a big fan of King, but I've been reading this series off and on for years, good story, so many twists, it keeps you interested.

Originally posted by CantDog
My friend turned me on to him, she's such a big fan she named her dog after the author.
.

she named her dog Cactus Ed?!?

brilliance in time, Moab's changes from 84 til now make me puke; cant believe what he saw.

so much good Abbey

best book I have read recently Amsterdam- Ian McEwen

Travels with Charlie -Steinbeck is entertaining me while traveling a lot myself.

naw Woodsy, just edward. Some of my favorite quotes comes from Abbey's books, this one in particular:

"How long'd you go to that school?
"Two weeks. It was a long grind."
"Not long enough, seems like. What branch of higher learning did they teach you there anyhow?"
"They taught all the branches-but none of the roots."


Also two of my favorite books are On the Road and Roughing It, I always take one of em when I travel.

I just finished The wizard and the glass Caddy, and ordered a copy of Wolves of Calla. The series is damn good, I'm glad I've got 3 more books to read...but I dont want it to end.

Originally posted by non grata
- Confederacy of Dunces by by John Kennedy Toole

This is what I thought of immediately when I read the title of this thread. Absolutely hilarious book.

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk is a great read. Great characters and study of human emotion under extremely trying conditions.

Rabbit series by John Updike. There are four book, each written about ten years apart. Start with Rabbit, Run the first in the series written in 1960.

indian country-phillip caputo

I'm always reading. Never not reading.

Newer books to recommend are
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Known World by Edward P Jones (an incredible book about blacks in the 1840s who owned slaves, a powerful book).

I always love
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, probably my #1 favorite book, ever.

The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas - an odd journey into freudianism

Chimera by John Barth a play on Scheherezade of the Thousand and One Nights

I realize as I type these all-time favorites that my taste in books has a running theme...

I never finished Life of Pi. Way to slow for me.

Final Forest is a good, quick read on the Spotted Owl/Old Growth debate. A little dated, but covers the topic pretty well.

For a class I've been reading lots of Immanuel Kant(who is a crappy writer) so I took a break from it and read Twilight of the Idols and the Antichrist by Nietzsche, to sort of counter Kant's Christian driven ideas. Some parts are downright ridiculous, but many are quite elegant, especially the short section on "How the 'Real World' Became a Myth". Its pretty easy reading as far as translated german and philosophy goes.

I read The Dialogues and Natural History of Religion by David Hume earlier this spring and really enjoyed that as well. David Hume was a phenomenal writer, and his ideas are really thought provoking, I've noticed I've been thinking more critically since reading it, which is about as much as you can hope from a book.

My mom sent me a copy of A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier by Diana & Michael Preston. She heard about it on NPR and so far its good, I'm a big nonfiction fan.

Originally posted by yogachik
I always love Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, probably my #1 favorite book, ever.

Light of my life! Fire of my loins!

Lemony Snickets! I can’t believe someone started dropping Kant and Nietzsche as recommended reads.

My list of books to enjoy on the beach with a gin and tonic –

Youth in Revolt – C.D. Payne
Positively Fifth Street – James McManus
In Search of Captain Zero – Allan Weisbecker
The Sportswriter – Richard Ford
A Fan’s Notes – Frederik Exley
God: A Biography - Jack Miles (For those of you looking for a good slog)
The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham (If the warm milk didn't put you to sleep)
Flat Stanley - Jeff Brown

Originally posted by Cosmic Bandito
The Sportswriter – Richard Ford
...
Flat Stanley - Jeff Brown

The Sportswriter really rubbed me the wrong way! I slogged through both that and Independence Day and it was like pulling teeth. I'm a real glutton for punishment!

Flat Stanley, though, now that's a classic.

I saw Positively Fifth Street at Costco a few weeks ago and was intrigued by the blurb in the back. Might have to pick that one up.

now into Atonement by McKewan.
damn the man can write

reading hst's "proud highway" and bandito's recommended read, "in search of captain zero" and am thoroughly enjoying both.

i'm also trying to slog through "staying alive in avalanche terrain."

can anyone else recommend any books involving personal struggles with nature and the self akin to "capt zero", "snow leopard" and "Into the Wild" ?

Originally posted by non grata
can anyone else recommend any books involving personal struggles with nature and the self akin to "capt zero", "snow leopard" and "Into the Wild" ?

OK, it isn't anything like the books you mentioned, but it's a hilarious read: A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. The basic premise is a middle-aged, overweight writer decides to hike the AT with an old buddy. They aren't exactly successful, but Bryson is a funny writer and there's lots of good and interesting information sprinkled throughout. His other books are also good.

Originally posted by non grata

- Hobo by Eddy Joe Cotton: light reading, great "hobo prose."

Stumbled across it at Barnes and Noble on the discount pile the other day, I figured for $4 I couldn't go all that wrong.

I stayed up till two last night finishing it up. Guy has a great style in his writing, nice easy flow, and strings together a story as if it were days not months. The timeline with the pictures in front is pretty interesting, to go back to and see the what and where of each one. Also the terminology is great, I liked the different terms for travelers depending ontheir condition and pride, or lack thereof.

It was also cool to visualize the trainyards that you have traveled past and imaging the story that's running on those rails, Denver, Grand Junction, etc.

Two thumbs, good stuff.

Originally posted by non grata
reading hst's "proud highway" and bandito's recommended read, "in search of captain zero" and am thoroughly enjoying both.

i'm also trying to slog through "staying alive in avalanche terrain."

can anyone else recommend any books involving personal struggles with nature and the self akin to "capt zero", "snow leopard" and "Into the Wild" ?

As Cantdog eluded to, pick up some Edward Abbey. I suggest his non-fiction over his fiction - Desert Solitaire or Down the River are my favorites. Also, Jon Krakaur's (sp?) latest is different, but still a very, very interesting read (Under the Banner of Heaven). An older classic is Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat. Excellent book!

I just started Haruki Murakami's The Chase of the White Sheep - strange, but very interesting so far. I'm also reading a collection of short stories published by Vintage Books called Vintage Stories of Amnesia . Good stuff so far.

"Hobo" does have a cool flow... it's got all you want out from an american epic without the beatnik pretense of "On the Road." have you read "Proud Highway", caddy?

although i haven't read "Wild Sheep Chase", "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" would have to rank up there among his more twisted and ulterior novels. i'm planning on picking up his short stories also... i'm guessing since his lit is pretty loaded, reading bits and pieces of him would be a bit easier to absorb.

it's difficult to distill all the weird shit that happens in his fiction. at first glance most characters and occurances seem to be in the garden variety fucked up vein, but there are reasons for his eccentricity. the cool thing is that even if you want to disregard the all-important "deeper meaning" in his writing, it's fine. they stand alone as just strange pieces of fiction.

i took at look at that krakauer book's synopsis a while ago and it kinda looks like a thriller. as much as i enjoyed "Into the Wild" and "Into Thin Air", i don't see myself picking up "Banner." i'm just looking for another cheesy "Into... Blah Blah." as a writer, i wish he placed his obviously seething subjectivity into "Into Thin Air." but maybe that's HST's influence on me and how journalistic ventures should really shed its objective pretense. "Iceland" is something i may pick up only because i like the country.

i'm definitely down on getting some abbey. thx for the recommendations.

Really fun quick read for me recently was "Bringing Down the House" about the MIT kids that made oodles of cash in Vegas.

and some of my all time Fav's are "The Grapes of Wrath"...one chapter...14 I think it is, really speaks to me, "To have and have not" by Hemingway, great story telling.