The Book Thread

[beverley]

Fiction
Aubrey/Maturin series
Discworld series (Terry Pratchett)
Michael Moorcock's "Multiverse" series
Philip K Dick's collected stories (all 5 volumes)


Non-fiction
Alchemy of the Heavens (Ken Croswell)
Wikipedia (for browsing at random)

And the funniest book of last year.... Fifty Shades of Grey. In parts I laughed so hard I nearly passed out. The following two books were dull in comparison.

[thomm225]

Fiction:

Dennis Lehane (Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River, Shutter Island, and the rest)
Suzanne Collins (Hungar Games Trilogy)
Kent Haruf (Plains Song)
Chuck Hogan (Prince of Thieves; Movie The Town)
Josef Conrad (Short Story Youth, Heart Of Darkness)
Joseph Finder (Paranoia)
Daniel Carney (Under a Raging Sky)

Nonfiction:

Laura Hillenbrand (Seabiscuit)

Mark Kriegel (The Good Son: The Life of Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini)

Brett Honeycutt/ Michael Vick (Finally Free)

[ShaktiGurl]

Fiction:
Snow Crash, Anathem, The Diamond Age and the Baroque cycle by Neal Stephensen
Good Omens, American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Dark Tower series - Stephen King
Song of Ice and Fire (unfinished series!!) - George Martin <- getting writing fat boy!
Hyperion Cantos - Dan Simmons
Illusions - Richard Bach

Non-fiction
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown
Plenty-Coups: Chief of the Crows - Frank Bird Linderman
Travels - Michael Crichton

[RainDog]

Originally Posted by Normanby

Quite the existentialist there eh RainDog?

I will just say my favorite movies include Wings of Desire, Lost in Translation, and Blade Runner.

[gjordan]

What about Melville. everybody knows Moby Dick, but few have ever heard of TYPEE VAI ,his great book about the Marquesas in the 1800s.____Grant.

[Talbot]

No idea how to reduce my library to 10 favourites. I have 700 printed books and over 800 audio books, plus about 14k on my ereader.

Some of my favourite authors:
Nevill Shute
Kipling
David Eddings
Asimov
Heinlein
Donaldson
Dickens
Baroness Orczy
Julian May
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Wilbur Smith
Desmond Bagley
Bernard Cornwell
Anne McCaffrey (but not her son's follow-on)
Dick Francis
Coonts
Cussler
Tolkein
O'Brien
Alexander Kent
EE Doc Smith
David Morrell
Charles Kingsley
Heyer
John Masters
Ludlum

Lots more, but enough for now.

Non-Fiction
Slocum
Churchill
Attenborough natural history
Gerald Durrell

[EddieS]

Dan Simons South Dakota, and Terror
Frozen In Time, not sure who wrote it.
Thanks
Ed

[MarkCK]

My favorites are too many to list. But some of my recent favorites are.

A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Moby Dick
The Wind in the Willows
White Jacket or Around the World on a Man of War
The House of Seven Gables.

[Tom1340]

I enjoyed reading these books, and then I enjoyed the memory of them for a long time afterwards.

Nonfiction
• River of Doubt. Bio of Teddy Roosevelt’s boating adventure in S. America after his presidency. He was a risk taker to the point of folly.
• Undaunted Courage, bio of Merriwether Lewis. Extraordinary, flawed young man, unimaginable adventure, suicide.
• The Map that Changed the World, by Simon Winchester. The map is about geology but the book is about in 19th century England. You will definitely be amazed by the greatness of a common man, and the commonness of some great men.
• The Age of Wonders – how the romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science, by Richard Holmes. Mongo Park finds Timbuktoo, but won’t enter for fear of leaving his boat unattended. Humphrey Davies’s logic works in discovery of sacrificial anodes, but not in selection of wife. Electrical charges made dead men dance.
• Desperate Voyage, by John Caldwell. WWII veteran buys small sailboat and tries to singlehand to Australia to rejoin his wife.
• Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, by Dava Sobel. True story of search (race) to solve problem of finding longitude at sea.
• The Swerve, by Stephen Greenblatt. Early Greeks came up with a theory of atoms that is not so different from modern science. They also measured the value of a person’s life by how much he enjoyed his life. Early Christianity rejected these theories. This is a wonderful account of man’s entry into, and emergence from, the dark ages. Slow reading, but well worth it.


Ficton
• The Riddle of the Sands, Erskine Childers. written in 1903. Recreational sailors exploring north sea discover German plan to invade England. Wonderful story for sailors, and an excellent mystery.
• The Desert, by Jean-Marie Gustavo Le Clezio (nobel prize for lit.) French conquest of NW Africa. Le Clezio says the bankers beat the Moroccan Arabs, not the foreign legion. And one unconquerable Arab girl captures the hearts of the French, and possibly carries the seed of a resurgent Blue Men.
• Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow, (written in free verse that seems to read itself when you pick up the book. Fun fast story about sexy dogs that might kill you, or perhaps they will help you.)
• In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Daniyal Mueenuddin. Why is it so easy to relate to these Pakistani people that I have nothing in common with? Best short story collection I’ve ever read.
• Wheels of Chance, HG Wells. 04. I think this was Wells’ first book, before he started writing science fiction. Innocent young woman lured on a bicycle holiday by powerful dishonorable man. Easy read, fun adventure in a different century.
• Lady of the Camelias, by A Dumas, the son. Possibly the world’s first ‘B’ romance novel, and surely one of the best. Poor woman succeeds fabulously as courtesan, forsakes success for love. Oh, the injustice!

[Andy73]

Aubrey/Maturin series
Eye of the World series - Robert Jordon
Riftwar series - Raymond Feist
Song of Fire & Ice - George Martin

[Doodles]

Fiction:

Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Herman Hesse (anything)
Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Non-fiction:

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
Endurance by Alfred Lansing
North to the Night by Alvah Simon

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by Doodles

Fiction:

Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Herman Hesse (anything)
Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Non-fiction:

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
Endurance by Alfred Lansing
North to the Night by Alvah Simon

Yep, I forgot about Into the Wild. I've read it about 4 times. Krakauer's Books Into Thin Air (climbing Mt Everest) , and Where Men Win Glory (concerning the death of Pat Tillman) are good also. All Nonfiction.

Grapes of Wrath is good also.

[barnakiel]

Fiction:

Froth of the Daydream, Heartsnatcher (B. Vian),
Moominpappa at Sea, The Summer Book, (T. Jansson)
Doctor Zhivago (B.Pasternak),
The Old Man and the Sea (E. Hemingway),
The Spire, The Inheritors (W. Golding),
Sweet Thursday (J. Steinbeck).

Non-fiction:

The Selfish Gene (R. Dawkins),
Under Water to Get Out of the Rain (T. Norton),
Walden (H. Thoreau),
J. Krishnamurti (various books)

"...And we are responsible. Don’t fool yourself by saying, “What can I do? What can I, an individual, living a shoddy little life, with all its confusion and ignorance, what can I do?” Ignorance exists only when you don’t know yourself. Self-knowing is wisdom. You may be ignorant of all the books in the world (and I hope you are), of all the latest theories, but that is not ignorance. Not knowing oneself deeply, profoundly, is ignorance; and you cannot know yourself if you cannot look at yourself, see yourself actually as you are, without any distortion, without any wish to change...." (Krishnamurti)

Cheers,
b.

[Captain_Nick]

Robert Heinlein: Friday, Time Enough For Love, The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, Stranger In A Strange Land, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Starship Trooper, The Number Of The Beast, Job, To Sail Beyond The Sunset

Orson Scott Card: Enders Game, Speaker For The Dead, Xenocide, Children Of The Mind, The Worthing Saga, Homecoming Saga (5 books),

Issac Asimov: The Foundation series, The Gods Themselves, 9 Tomorrows, Nightfall, The Winds Of Change.

Tolken. Vonnegut (just imagine what some Ice-9 would do to cruising...), tons more

Mary Renault: The King Must Die
Dan Brown

NF:
Moitessier: Sailing To The Reefs
Into The Wild

[thomm225]

Forgot to add to Fiction list:

Robert Stone (Outerbridge Reach)

It's about a guy that enters a single handed around the world race with very little experience. If you are a single hander or solo sailor, I'd recommend you not read it!

Loosely based on a true story.........