favorite books

[nalani]

The Subtle Knife and The Tao of Physics.

What's the Tao of Physics like, Scanty? It's on my "not required but should read" list from my Advisor *sigh* ... I just wanna finish the Harry Potter series LOL

 

[kuulani]

What did you get, I didn't know she had a new one out.

It's probably not that new, since I bought it in paperback ... I think it's called Blood & Gold, or something like that. I think that's the only one I haven't read yet.

 

[BlurOfSerenity]

where'd my post go??
i double triple swear i posted in this thread.

 

[PT]

What did you get, I didn't know she had a new one out.

It's probably not that new, since I bought it in paperback ... I think it's called Blood & Gold, or something like that. I think that's the only one I haven't read yet.

I think I read that one, I'm not sure, have to check the bookshelf when I get home. Sure sounds familiar though.

 

[freako104]

im getting into HP lovecraft now

I can only take so much of Lovecraft before I start wanting to slash my wrists. If you like spooky, though, I highly recommend M.R. James. He was one of those Oxford guys, like Tolkien, but he liked writing creepy ghost stories for his friends. Among the most well known are Casting the Runes and The Ash Tree. Some of his stories can be found on the web... go here to check them out.

your the first person whos ever said that about HP to me. personally i cant read much without putting it down cause its so disturbing but in some stories in a way justice is served to humans(the Doom That Came to Sarnath) and others where humanity is insignificant. and in From Beyond the insane is more in touch with reality that we dont know about. ill def check out the author you mentioned tho thanks. blood and gold isnt that new the newwest one i know is queen of the damned. unless she released something after it.

 

[halamikage]

Just finished reading the Harry Potter books for a second time...
But now I'm on A Bend in the Road by Nicholas Sparks. Like that guy.

 

[unclehobart]

Cats Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut

 

[Gonz]

King-especially the Dark Tower series

Anne Rice-Vampires & Witches

stories of Aurthur, son of Uther Pendragon, King of the Britons

 

[PT]

King-especially the Dark Tower series

Anne Rice-Vampires & Witches

stories of Aurthur, son of Uther Pendragon, King of the Britons

I'm betting our bookshelves are almost identical.

 

[freako104]

Cats Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut

that was one of the best books i ever read although i felt kinda creeped out at the end of it. has anyone tried the Wheel of Time series?

 

[Altron]

has anyone tried the Wheel of Time series?

Yes, read all 9 of them. I liked them a lot, up there with Lord of the Rings and Wizard's First Rule series (You can tell what kind of books I like to read

 

[BlurOfSerenity]

I LIKE KIDS" BOOKS!!!

*worhsips alice in wonderland*

 

[nalani]

My cousin and her husband gave me "Memoirs of a Geisha" ... and I haven't been able to put it down ... was up til 4am reading ... it's fabulous ... if you haven't read it, go get it ... I promise, you'll love it.

 

[Gonz]

Alice, except for Disney's remake, is certainly not a kids book. At a more educated time in our history perhaps, but not now.

My first thought was, he lied in every word
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside ("since all is o'er," he saith,
"And the blow fallen no grieving can amend";

While some discuss if near the other graves
Be room enough for this, and when a day
Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves:
And still the man hears all, and only craves
He may not shame such tender love and stay.

Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among "The Band"--to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed
Their steps--that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the doubt was now--should I be fit?

So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway
Into the path he pointed. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on; nought else remained to do.

So, on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers--as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
You'd think; a burr had been a treasure-trove.

No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange sort, were the land's portion. "See
Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly,
"It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place,
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free."

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk
All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
Think first, fight afterwards--the soldier's art:
One taste of the old time sets all to rights.

Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine to fix me to the place
That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.

Giles then, the soul of honour--there he stands
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
What honest men should dare (he said) he durst.
Good--but the scene shifts--faugh! what hangman hands
In to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

Better this present than a past like that;
Back therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes.
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
For the fiend's glowing hoof--to see the wrath
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

So petty yet so spiteful! All along
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all the wrong,
Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.

Which, while I forded,--good saints, how I feared
To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
—It may have been a water-rat I speared,
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.

Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage--

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

And more than that--a furlong on--why, there!
What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
Or brake, not wheel--that harrow fit to reel
Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
Changes and off he goes!) within a rood--
Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.

Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil's
Broke into moss or substances like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

And just as far as ever from the end!
Nought in the distance but the evening, nought
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend,
Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed my cap--perchance the guide I sought.

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round to mountains--with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surprised me,--solve it, you!
How to get from them was no clearer case.

Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick
Of mischief happened to me, God knows when--
In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,
Progress this way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one time more, came a click
As when a trap shuts--you're inside the den!

Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place! those two hills on the right,
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
While to the left, a tall scalped mountain . . . Dunce,
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
After a life spent training for the sight!

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
strikes on, only when the timbers start.

Not see? because of night perhaps?--why, day
Came back again for that! before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,--
"Now stab and end the creature--to the heft!"

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers my peers,--
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew.

"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."

 

[BlurOfSerenity]

alice is most definitely a kids book.
sure, full of political and cultural references it is, it was thunk up on the spot to entertain the liddell sisters -- children.

 

[Janimal]

i'm still reading 'the name of the rose' :s

Have you ever read Foucault's Pendulum?

Oh no! The Rosicrucians!!

Got Dune: Butlerian Jihad for Christmas. I'm just starting it now.

 

[dan]

...alice...

i knocked up a perl script to churn through the text of that thing and spit out sig-sized lumps... worked pretty well...

fairly sigable too.. hmm.. must have that around here somewhere....

/me wanders off looking confused....

(btw project gutenberg is great, loads of classic books OCR'd and free to download)

 

[dan]

books...

there's one called cryptonomicon which would probably go down real well here. computers and encryption and stuff. jolly good. most of that guy's books rock.

douglas coupland has done some good stuff. microserfs was great, but may have dated a bit since it came out. very pop culture. miss wyoming was the most recent one, and that was pretty good. oh, and the main guy in microserfs was called dan, so it must be good

the prodigal spy was really good. tres atmospheric. top dollar.

the K&R C book was one of the most useful i've read for a while. anything by o'reilly is usually good.

i've head great things about the wheel of time series. not really my sorta thing though and i haven't read any of them.

jack vettriani is just great. i got this book for christmas. wonderful.

i actually also quite like jeffery archer's stuff, although i feel the need to don an asbestos suit for saying so...

i got this collection of oscar wilde which was interesting, as much for the annecdotes and commentary on the man as for his stuff.

wandering around the bookshop the other day i picked up the satanic bible and the tao of pooh. the first being surprising insofar as how rational and uncontroversial it actually was, and the second being a delightful look at taoism using winnie the pooh as a guide. tip top.

and the final book that should be in every house is debretts guide to modern manners

 

[Ardsgaine]

Well, I just came home from B&N where I spent that $50 gift certificate I got for Christmas (and then some). Here's what I got...

• The American Heritage New History of the Civil War by Bruce Catton
• Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics by Chas S. Clifton
• Essential Michelangelo by Kirsten Bradbury
• The Cambridge Companion to Galileo
• The Dream of Reason by Anthony Gottlieb
• Tycho and Kepler by Kitty Ferguson
• Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei

Next Christmas perhaps someone will give me the time to read all of them.

 

[nalani]

the Mists of Avalon was sooooooo great!!! soooo much better than the movie!!!! Now I'm reading the Forest House ... I wish they'd make that into a movie .... I gotta get all my pleasure reading in before I go back to school on Monday ... I also read Memoirs of a Geisha - that was fabulous ... and I read Harry Potter again