We've done the movie thread. Time for the Book thread.

[-Jar-]

I'll just give a quick list of my favorite books, since I haven't had any time to read hardly anything in the past year or so.. I have started several books, but that's about it.. mostly parenting stuff (they never tell you it's the hardest job in the world do they)

Vonnegut.. I love everthing I've read by him.. my favorite so far is BLUEBEARD.. but I haven't read it in years because most of my Vonnegut books were stolen several years ago. A close 2nd would be SIRENS OF TITAN.

Irving.. A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY.. just an incredible, awesome book. What an ending..

Mark Vonnegut.. THE EDEN EXPRESS.. Kurt Vonnegut's son's auto-biographical tale of his life as a hippie in the late 60s and his descent into schizophrenia.. a fascinating and totally involving story.. It reads like a great work of fiction, except it's reality filtered through Mark's memory of those times.. amazing.

Hermann Hesse - STEPPENWOLF. Love this book.. another twisted, visual trip into madness..

Douglas Coupland - GIRLFRIEND IN A COMA.. interesting read, not the greatest, but it's fun to pick up all the Smiths & Morrissey references..

As for Non-Fiction.. a couple great books on astrophysics/cosmology that I've read recently are BEFORE THE BEGINNING by Martin Rees and THE WHOLE SHEBANG by Timothy Ferris.. both are easy to read and fascintating if you're into this stuff. My wife bought me THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE by Brian Greene (recently a NOVA special) and it's interesting, but boy, seems like these days if I have time to read seems my body wants to SLEEP.. somehow Relativity Theory just induces the zzzz's these days.. guess I should skip ahead in the book.. I'm sure the parts about 11 dimentions will be much more exciting.. har har

-jar

[tentoze]

Vonnegut.. I love everthing I've read by him.. my favorite so far is BLUEBEARD.. but I haven't read it in years because most of my Vonnegut books were stolen several years ago. A close 2nd would be SIRENS OF TITAN.

Irving.. A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY.. just an incredible, awesome book. What an ending..



-jar

Sirens is my favorite Vonnegut of all time- "I was the victim of a series of accidents, as are we all."

And I couldn't agree more about Owen Meany. Probably the most genuinely human, and humane, novel I've come across ever.

My earlier list left off one of my top authors, Robert Graves- whether his poetry, or historical novels, translations of ancient mythology, literary criticisms, his autobiography (the best I've ever read) or treatises on the craft of writing- an extraordinary genius.

[JDaniel]

I read all the time. Every day. But my favorite of all genres is, yep, not ashamed to admit it, Westerns. Give me a Louis Lamour or Zane Grey book any day. Almost nothing is more relaxing to me than picking up a good Western. Perhaps it is because I have traveled over most of the territories that both authors wrote about. But whatever it is, I love westerns.

I have over 400 here. I have every Louis Lamour in paperback, and about half in leather bound editions.

I also enjoy Grisham (Bleachers could have been written about my hometown) & Clancy (Debt of Honor, Red Rabbit & Cardinal in the Kremlin were my favs).

JD