Book suggestions?

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_MCB
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Re: Book suggestions?

Post by _MCB »

Sorry, I assume too much. Making changes to this:
http://cassiusuniversity.wordpress.com/mcb/
Huckelberry said:
I see the order and harmony to be the very image of God which smiles upon us each morning as we awake.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/a ... cc_toc.htm
_honorentheos
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Re: Book suggestions?

Post by _honorentheos »

Hi Lucinda,

A couple of books I've read over the last couple of years you may enjoy:

Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas
The brooding narrator in Thomas' stream-of-consciousness first novel recites a mantra, "It is a strange thing to go through life as a social experiment." African American (or, more accurately, "Black Irish Indian"), he was a precocious child. Bused to white schools in Boston, gifted as a poet and a musician, and assured he would transcend his alcoholic parents' troubles, he developed his own drinking habit instead and deep-sixed an academic career. Now about to turn 35, married to a white woman, and a father, he has been dragged off course by a tidal wave of pain and despair and must reconstruct their dismantled Brooklyn life before the summer ends. Battered by bitter memories, and paralyzed by the poison of prejudice, which is tainting his relationships with his loving wife and sons, he works carpentry jobs, goes for long late-night runs, and seeks to exorcise his demons. By evoking the tension, longing, and beauty of the great and grinding city, summoning the mysterious power of the sea, and drawing on Melville and Ellison, Thomas has written a rhapsodic and piercing post-9/11 lament over aggression, greed, and racism, and a ravishing blues for the soul's unending loneliness.


The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
(warning: fair amount of profanity, and untranslated spanish mixed in. I enjoyed it, but I've known a couple of people who hated it for that reason.)
A reader might at first be surprised by how many chapters of a book entitled The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao are devoted not to its sci fi–and–fantasy-gobbling nerd-hero but to his sister, his mother and his grandfather. However, Junot Diaz's dark and exuberant first novel makes a compelling case for the multiperspectival view of a life, wherein an individual cannot be known or understood in isolation from the history of his family and his nation.Oscar being a first-generation Dominican-American, the nation in question is really two nations. And Dominicans in this novel being explicitly of mixed Taíno, African and Spanish descent, the very ideas of nationhood and nationality are thoughtfully, subtly complicated. The various nationalities and generations are subtended by the recurring motif of fukú, the Curse and Doom of the New World, whose midwife and... victim was a historical personage Diaz will only call the Admiral, in deference to the belief that uttering his name brings bad luck (hint: he arrived in the New World in 1492 and his initials are CC). By the prologue's end, it's clear that this story of one poor guy's cursed life will also be the story of how 500 years of historical and familial bad luck shape the destiny of its fat, sad, smart, lovable and short-lived protagonist. The book's pervasive sense of doom is offset by a rich and playful prose that embodies its theme of multiple nations, cultures and languages, often shifting in a single sentence from English to Spanish, from Victorian formality to Negropolitan vernacular, from Homeric epithet to dirty bilingual insult.


Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
The opening pages of a Haruki Murakami novel can be like the view out an airplane window onto tarmac. But at some point between page three and fifteen--it's page thirteen in Kafka On The Shore--the deceptively placid narrative lifts off, and you find yourself breaking through clouds at a tilt, no longer certain where the plane is headed or if the laws of flight even apply.
Joining the rich literature of runaways, Kafka On The Shore follows the solitary, self-disciplined schoolboy Kafka Tamura as he hops a bus from Tokyo to the randomly chosen town of Takamatsu, reminding himself at each step that he has to be "the world¹s toughest fifteen-year-old." He finds a secluded private library in which to spend his days--continuing his impressive self-education--and is befriended by a clerk and the mysteriously remote head librarian, Miss Saeki, whom he fantasizes may be his long-lost mother. Meanwhile, in a second, wilder narrative spiral, an elderly Tokyo man named Nakata veers from his calm routine by murdering a stranger. An unforgettable character, beautifully delineated by Murakami, Nakata can speak with cats but cannot read or write, nor explain the forces drawing him toward Takamatsu and the other characters.


Fool: A Novel by Christopher Moore
Here's the Cliff Notes you wished you'd had for King Lear—the mad royal, his devious daughters, rhyming ghosts and a castle full of hot intrigue—in a cheeky and ribald romp that both channels and chides the Bard and all Fate's bastards. It's 1288, and the king's fool, Pocket, and his dimwit apprentice, Drool, set out to clean up the mess Lear has made of his kingdom, his family and his fortune—only to discover the truth about their own heritage. There's more murder, mayhem, mistaken identities and scene changes than you can remember, but bestselling Moore (You Suck) turns things on their head with an edgy 21st-century perspective that makes the story line as sharp, surly and slick as a game of Grand Theft Auto. Moore confesses he borrows from at least a dozen of the Bard's plays for this buffet of tragedy, comedy and medieval porn action. It's a manic, masterly mix—winning, wild and something today's groundlings will applaud.

.................................................................................................

I hope there is something in there you might enjoy.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth?
~ Eiji Yoshikawa
_Lucinda
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Re: Book suggestions?

Post by _Lucinda »

Thanks, Honor! As soon as I finish Atlas Shrugged I'll dig into your list. Thanks for your suggestions. Merry Christmas!
_cinepro
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Re: Book suggestions?

Post by _cinepro »

One of my all-time favorite novels is "Carter Beats the Devil" by Glen David Gold

Image

It's the story of two dueling magicians in the golden age of stage magic (the 1920's). It's really, really good.
_Lucinda
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Re: Book suggestions?

Post by _Lucinda »

Thanks, Cine! I'll put it on my list!
_Yoda

Re: Book suggestions?

Post by _Yoda »

After seeing the latest "Harry Potter" movie, I'm re-reading Book7.

For an action-filled read, Lucinda, I would suggest any of the Tom Clancey Jack Ryan books. "Debt of Honor" and "Executive Orders" are among my favorites. He has a new one out, "Dead or Alive", which I haven't read yet.
_Eric

Re: Book suggestions?

Post by _Eric »

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie is one of my favorite pieces of fiction ever written. It is absolutely beautifully written.
_Lucinda
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Re: Book suggestions?

Post by _Lucinda »

Thanks Eric and Liz! Liz--I had to re-read HP seven as well. Just needed another fix. I wish she would write another series with the next generation of Potters and Weasleys. I can't get enough of that world.

Shades--I'm really liking "Atlas Shrugged." Thanks for the suggestion.
_MsJack
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Re: Book suggestions?

Post by _MsJack »

If you like hard fantasy, I recommend just about anything by Brandon Sanderson. The Mistborn trilogy is the best. If you want a single book, there's Warbreaker and if you want something shorter and lighter, there's Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians---which is currently being made into a film by DreamWorks. The latter is a young teen novel, but it's pretty entertaining even for adults.

There was an online review of some of the themes in Warbreaker here, and there's an interview with Brandon here. Brandon is a friend of ours and we love him.
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_greentam
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Re: Book suggestions?

Post by _greentam »

"Death With Interruptions" ~Jose Seramago
This is one of my favorite books EVER. It's terribly serious though and can be difficult to read because of the way the writer composed his book. It is about one country where they wake up one day and from then on, no one dies. It talks about death, how we deal with it, etc.

"Never Let Me Go"~Kazuo Ishiguro
This novel is also one of my new favorites. It follows a group of students through their lives as....organ donating clones. The clone part is not really the focus of the story (this isn't "the Island) and this upset a lot of people. The book is really about how we compose our lives and what we fill them with before we die. I wish this one was a bit longer...

And Murakami is a great author. I have finished his "Wind Up Bird Chronicle" and I'm now working on "Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World"
गते गते पारगते पारसंगते बोधि स्वाहा
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