Ok, maybe this has been done before, but I couldn’t find it with the search feature, so here goes!
If you could only recommend one book to a fellow reader, what would it be? In other words, your favorite book EVAR!
I won’t say don’t list SciFi/Fantasy, but that is basically what I am trying to get away from…at least the cookie-cutter stuff.
Offhand, Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night. I don’t know if it’s my favorite book ever, exactly, but it’s damn good and it’s relatively unknown, even to a lot of Vonnegut fans.
WORLD’S END, by T. Coraghesson Boyle (now just T.C. Boyle, but whatever.) Amazing story that manages to combine historical perspectives from colonial upstate New York and McCarthy-era rabble rousers to modern-day misfits. Ranging from being staggeringly funny to heartbreakingly sad, sometimes in the same paragraph, its still the crowning achievement in Boyle’s career.
The Warlord by Malcolm Bosse. Absolutely fabulous book about China in the inter-war years. All your favourite Warlords, Chiang Kai-shek, Chang So-Lin etc. Truly one of the best books I have ever read, determined to visit China just on the strength of it. Basically deals with an American missionary whose train is held up by bandits who he joins until he ends up as a soldier in Marshall Tang’s army. Focus then shifts to Tang who is vehemently anti-foreigner until he falls in love with a Russian woman. Had no interest in China before I read it so its not a particularly specialist novel but it is a corker.
Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman.
If you had to shoot one of your children, just one, which would you pick? :D
Shogun by James Clavell or A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge.
(how unoriginal)
I’m gonna go with a more well-known choice than I’m seeing from you all so far: The Three Musketeers
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong , James Loewen
This book will make you love history.
Excellent choice, due to their length, any books from Dumas also make excellent travel reading.
Ok, Jason, you can shoot more than one of your kids, or books, if you prefer! :D
The first book I ever read. Call of the Wild by Jack London.
I really enjoyed the Count of Monte Christo by Dumas back in like 8th or 9th grade (had to read it for school) - are his others as strong? Is Musketeers the best? (that is by him, right?)
The End of Equality - Mickey Kaus
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
Guns, Germs, and Steel - Jared Diamond
To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee
Dracula - Stoker
The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
Alice in Wonderland - Carroll
The Last Temptation of Christ - Kazantzakas (if I spelled that right, I am amazed)
–I figure… every reader can find something to like from that list.
Duh, the ugly one :roll: .
Where I’m Calling From - Ray Carver
Another vote for Guns, Germs and Steel. Not my favorite book, but the best popular science book I’ve ever read.
Troy
Ender’s Game and Speaker of the Dead by Orson Scott Card.
Definitely not your cookie cutter sci-fi.
Most definately. Much like Dickens or even John Irving, even his weaker titles are bloody good. Also Lupid - would highly reccomend A Prayer for Owen Meany or The World According to Garp, both by John Irving.