Book Recommendations

I just read The Martian by Andy Weir after seeing the movie and really enjoyed it. I also really liked Ready Player One and Armada, both by Ernest Cline. The pop culture references in both books made them really fun to read. I'm about to start book one of the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer which is called Annihilation. I got interested in it because it is being adapted into a movie by Alex Garland, who wrote and directed Ex Machina and also wrote the screenplays for 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go, and Dredd.

I did make a book thread years ago, but I don't care if it's revived or merged or anything. I'll post it for reference though: http://www.sportstwo.com/threads/the-official-book-thread.175484/

 

Awesome, I hope you enjoy it! It's being made into a movie by Steven Spielberg in 2017, which is awesome because the book references Spielberg movies several times. I think I'd love to work at a library too, I used to volunteer at one and I really liked it.

 

Neener, neener.......my wife has been a librarian for the past 26 years. That alone makes her a keeper. And libraries (along with community colleges) are far and away the best bang for the tax buck possible. Along with bangin' the librarian.... Anyway, I envy anyone who gets paid to work at one. As far as reading tastes go, I like a wide range of non fiction.....but heavy on general and military history, biographies etc. In between I floss my mind with cheap trash novels (CTNs), mainly Connelly, Coben, Child, Baldacci, Follett, et al. Though my wife brings some interesting young adult stuff home also. About a week before the news of possible water on Mars was announced, I read The Martian. It was, without exaggeration one of the best books I've read in a long time. The downside of that is now I'm reluctant to watch the movie, because I just can't imagine it being anywhere near as good as the book. And my favorite book of all time is A Town Like Alice, by Neville Shute. It's an older book, but just a great tale loosely based on a true story. It's one of the rare books I recommend without hesitation to everyone regardless......it also spawned an Australian mini series that was actually true to the book....and just as good....

 

You should definitely watch The Martian. I may be biased because I actually saw the movie before reading the book, but I think they did a great job. Obviously the movie had to leave some stuff out to make it 2 hours, but the tone of the characters and the overall story are pretty much spot on.

 

Was actually hoping to go to Tightwad Tuesday today at the local Bijou and watch it for $5, but I've found my Tuesday's crammed to the gills lately. But I do plan to see it, and hopefully at the theater rather than on DVD. I haven't heard one negative review yet.....

 

The Water Knife by Paolo Bacagalupi... it's basically The Maltese Falcon set during the coming water wars of the parched Southwest United States.

 

My favorite book of all time is Ask the Dust by John Fante. It's the book about what it means to be passionate and be alive. Then they turned it into a shitty movie with Colin Ferrell and Salma Hayek. The usual.

 

The Martian and Ready Player One are great. I thoroughly enjoyed both books.

Armada was disappointing. It's a total rip off of the Last Star Fighter and it's essentially just the same character from Ready Player One. Not a solid second book from Ernest Cline.

 

Eh, I liked it. It's not like Ready Player One was a literary masterpiece or anything, it was just very entertaining and engaging. I thought Armada was almost as entertaining and I haven't actually seen The Last Starfighter.

 

You should watch it. I recently rented it off amazon because I had never seen it either. It's a good movie.


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Mostly read nonfiction. But the public library recently held one of their book sales - paperbacks are $.50, hardcovers $1.00. The fiction trends mystery and science fiction, the science books pretty out of date and the cookbooks all seem to be based on canned cream of mushroom soup. But it is a great source for classics. I always find a few I haven't yet read. And a few I have but that are in really bad shape. So I picked up A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Mill on the Floss, Resurrection (Tolstoy's last novel and not his best IMO), Brother Karamazov (first read in high school, then in college, not since) among others.

Also recently read the following, non fiction, disturbing but good reads:

And Hell Followed with Her (the woman who organized a militia that killed an immigrant family, hoping to start a nativist revolution)
Hitler's Furies (women in Nazi Germany, not the small number who were real movers and shakers but the thousands of secretaries, teachers, nurses, administrators who were not just going along but actual enforcers. A scene that stands out, a pregnant Nazi in the Warsaw Ghetto rounding up Jews, Jewish women could see her pregnancy and begged her to spare their children - whereupon she stomped a small child to death)
Stiff (just what does happen when we die? Not metaphysically, physically. Less disturbing than the other two morally but does require a strong stomach)

As far a modern fiction, big fan of Millennium Trilogy (although I get annoyed with calling Lisbeth "the girl" when she's 26); quite annoyed with Stieg Larsson for dying before he could write more!

Have a long list of books to read...

 

Hemingway's Chair by Michael Palin is a great novella. give it a try. I Claudia by Peter Graves is a classic too.

 

I also enjoyed the Jack Reacher series... well, most of them anyway. The last few were pretty crappy. The first 10 or so were really good though.

 

Fierce Invalids home from hot climates by Tom Robbins and Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy by Douglass Adams

 

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
Anything and everything that Richard Brautigan wrote