Book recommendations

NoisyDante

NoisyDante

There’s a fine line between stupid and clever.
Joined
Jun 5, 2015
Messages
356
Location
Black Forest, Colorado
Anyone read a good book lately? Looking for some recommendations. Here’s some that I’ve read over the last few months.

Executive Order - Tom Clancy
Catch & Kill - Ronan Farrow
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Alchemist - Paul Coelho
Ready Player Two - Ernest Cline
A Promised Land - Barack Obama
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
The Stand - Stephen King
Fear & Loathing... - Hunter S Thompson
The Alienist - Caleb Carr
 
A Gentleman in Moscow- Amor Towles
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue- VE Schwab
Swan Song (If you liked The Stand)- McCammon
11/22/63- S King
The Gold Coast or Word of Honor- DeMille
Hostile Witness- W. Lashner
Mylan Boliter series- H Cobin
Natchez Burning series- G Isles
The Kingsbridge Series- K Follett
Ordinary Grace- WK Krueger
Aloysius Pendergrass series- Preston and Child
 
Last edited:
Well, your list certainly runs the gamut. That’ll make this kinda easy. Here’s some of my favorites, and recent reads.

American Gods & Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman
1984 - George Orwell
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Ender’s Game (entire series) - Orson Scott Card
The Book of Deacon - Joseph Lallo
Geek Love - Katherine Dunn
The Circle - Dave Eggers
The Red Sparrow Trilogy - Jason Matthews
Queen’s Thief - Margaret Whalen Turner
 
Last edited:
11top said:
Aloysius Pendergrass series- Preston and Child
Click to expand...

Very good series, I think my favorite was Cabinet of Curiosities.

jak3af3r said:
Animal Farm
Click to expand...

Loved it, “No animal shall drink alcohol ... to excess”

EdSevered said:
Ender’s Game (entire series) - Orson Scott Card
Click to expand...

I’ve read Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow and the Book of The Dead, amazing how it doesn’t feel dated at all as some science fiction can decades later.

I’ve read a lot of Dickens but not Oliver Twist yet, will add that to the list. American Gods as well.
 
I will 2nd 11/22/63. It’s really different than King’s normal work.
Chickenhawk by Robert Mason. Mason joined the US Army to fly helicopters and got sent to Vietnam, only knowing “it was a great pace to by stereo equipment.”
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, if you like fantasy and you want to tackle 4.4 million words. My favorite series.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
The Food Lab by Kenji Alt-Lopez.
Mindset by Carol Dweck.
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Homicide by David Simon.
Shogun by James Clavell.
Influence by Robert Caldini.
 
I’ll second anything Stephen King and Kurt Vonnegut.

King’s 11/22/63 is excellent. The Stand is one of my favorites - I read the unedited version years ago in four days while I was on vacation (at home). Pre-kids. I can highly recommend the Bill Hodges trilogy - Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End Of Watch. I’ve read a lot of King, and still have a lot to go - and there’s a new one out tom’w.

Not mentioned here, but I can also recommend anything by Christopher Moore. Very funny writer. Lamb (the story of Biff, Jesus’ best friend) is a favorite. Also the early vampire-ish books. Noir was much stronger for me than I’d have guessed - it’s largely about the art world around Van Gogh, but it really hooked me.

Sticking to the really good stuff I’ve read in the last few months:

Letters From An Astrophysicist by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Man, there are some whackos out there, but Tyson deals with them very politely.

Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling). First book in the C.B. Strike series, which was also a series on Cinemax. It’s been a while since I saw the first season, so I’d forgotten a lot of what happens in the book. Held my attention quite well.

A Platinum Producer’s Life In Music by Ted Templeman. Just what it says. Covers his work with - among others - the Doobie Brothers, Nicolette Larson, Van Morrison - and especially Van Halen. There are times he comes across as a little egotistical, but for the most part he backs it up. Lots of behind the scene stories.

Creativity by John Cleese. Very short book, but pretty insightful. There were a lot of things about creativity that he talked about that felt like they nailed me. Some good tips, too.

Do You Feel Like I Do by Peter Frampton. Great autobiography. Again, lots of great stories and background.
 
alantig said:
I’ll second anything Stephen King and Kurt Vonnegut.

King’s 11/22/63 is excellent. The Stand is one of my favorites - I read the unedited version years ago in four days while I was on vacation (at home). Pre-kids. I can highly recommend the Bill Hodges trilogy - Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End Of Watch. I’ve read a lot of King, and still have a lot to go - and there’s a new one out tom’w.
Click to expand...

I really like Stephen King. In addition to The Stand I’ve also read The Shining, the Dark Tower series, Dreamcatcher and Salem’s Lot. I remember there was a tremendous bit of writing in that last one that described the end of summer and the arrival of autumn, I actually read it at a club event when I was a lowly pledge. Made me think this dude can write! Gonna try to find it . . . Found it!

"But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you. It stays on through October and, in rare years, on into November. Day after day the skies are a clear, hard blue,and the clouds that float across them, always west to east,are calm white ships with gray keels. The wind begins to blow by the day,and it is never still. It hurries you along as you walk the roads,crunching the leaves that have fallen in mad and variegated drifts. The wind makes you ache in some place that is deeper than your bones. It may be that it touches something old in the human soul,a chord of race memory that says "Migrate or die-migrate or die". Even in your house, behind square walls, the wind beats against the wood and the glass and sends its fleshless pucker against the eaves and sooner or later you have to put down what you were doing and go out and see. And you can stand on your stoop or in your dooryard at mid-afternoon and watch the cloud shadows rush across Griffen’s pasture and up Schoolyard Hill, light and dark, light and dark, like the shutters of the gods being opened and closed. You can seethe goldenrod, that most tenacious and pernicious and beauteous of all New England flora, bowing away from the wind like a great and silent congregation. And if there are no cars or planes,and if no one’s Uncle John is out in the wood lot west of town banging away at a quail or pheasant; if the only sound is the slow beat of your own heart, you can hear another sound,and that is the sound of life winding down to its cyclic close, waiting for the first winter snow to perform last rites."
 
Last edited:
Magnificent Obsession
Doctor Hudson's Secret Journal
How to Stop Worrying & Start Living
How to Win Friends & Influence People
How to Live Pain-Free
Aging Backwards
Mystic Seaport's Seafood Secrets (vols 1 & 2)
(Numerous Cooking & Songbooks)
The Bible
 
Just finished a couple
troubled blood - the most recent cormorant strike book. I watched the bbc series of the other books first, the actress is really cute

Why (thinking about plane crashes) peter garrison is a good easy read

Set the boy free by johny marr is one of the best music biographys

Now reading the geography of thought, how asians & westerners think differently - richard e nisbett
 
It appears there are many fans of science fiction and S King here. It was listed in my group above, but I’d really recommend SWAN SONG. It was just awesome. It was included in the PBS list of 100 books everyone should read.
 
I'll also add the Carlos Casteneda series of..nonfiction(?) Journals describing his days with a Yaqui Indian sorcerer.

Some of it is true, I have experienced some events that point towards it being real anyway.

Lots of good suggestions here thanks guys. I'm hoping we are talking paper not kindle!
 
11top said:
It appears there are many fans of science fiction and S King here. It was listed in my group above, but I’d really recommend SWAN SONG. It was just awesome. It was included in the PBS list of 100 books everyone should read.
Click to expand...

I'll try not to forget about this when I go to the bookstore this week. Although it's more likely an Amazon order. The new Stephen King will likely be an in-store purchase.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top