Post: #51

I agree the chef, Rum Diary is a far better read than Fear and Loathing, it was one of his first works but I cant belive it took till 1998 to get it published. Also checkout Hells Angels where he rolls with one of the founding chapters of the Hells Angels bikie gang for over a year in the mid 60's. I highly recommend it. It would have to be one of the original stories of a journalist becoming 'embeded' in such a renegade sub-culture.

I can appreciate the gonzo style he developed after Rum Diary and Hells Angels, producing most notably Fear and Loathing, but his early work stands out for me.

Post: #52

(03-12-2012 10:33 PM)basil Wrote:  I agree the chef, Rum Diary is a far better read than Fear and Loathing, it was one of his first works but I cant belive it took till 1998 to get it published. Also checkout Hells Angels where he rolls with one of the founding chapters of the Hells Angels bikie gang for over a year in the mid 60's. I highly recommend it. It would have to be one of the original stories of a journalist becoming 'embeded' in such a renegade sub-culture.

I read Hells Angels when I was 18 in Portugal. I still remember it.

Great book.

How was the Rum Diaries movie?

Post: #53

G, the movie is definitely worth a watch, it does a solid job of translating across from page to screen and Amber Heard is stunning (even if most of the players on here would give her a 3 on a good day, like you still waiting for the data sheet on the clubs they frequent). I actually had a private little screening in my bedroom for a new girl and it went down a treat.

Post: #54

Brave New World, because it's actually happening.

Post: #55

(03-13-2012 03:28 AM)BortimusPrime Wrote:  Brave New World, because it's actually happening.

Huxley was right, Orwell was wrong.

Post: #56

orwell still wrote the better novel though.

Post: #57

This is quite scary:
'If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever. ' Orwell

Post: #58

My favourite novel of all time is Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights because I relate to Heathcliff. I love how he disappears, makes his fortune, and then comes back to ruthlessly and systematically destroy the lives of the goddamn bastards who mistreated him, right when they are at their stupidest and weakest. Even though he is cruel, I respect his love for Catherine.

A recent favourite is Knut Hamsun's Hunger, about an unemployed writer who sinks ever deeper into hopelessness and delirium. It's been over half a year since I read it and I am still trying to figure out why it won't let me go. It disturbed me deeply somehow.

Post: #59

The Count of Monte Cristo

Post: #60

One Flew Who Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Plus the movie adaptation is amazing.
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Picture of Dorian Grey
Lord of the Flies
Confederacy of Dunces
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth - This felt a little like reading my own autobiography.
The Bostonians by Henry James

Definitely going to try out the books listed in this thread.

I second the recommendations on Houellebecq. I've only read Whatever and The Elementary Particles so far, and just started The Map and the Territory. The Elementary Particles seems to have gotten him more fame, and infamy but I liked Whatever more.

Whatever seemed a little more focused, with more plausible, convincing characters. To me, it made a stronger yet subtler case for the reality of today's sexual market, without resorting to depicting people on the extremes of society to prove his point. Particles had a more diffuse focus. A part of me is always surprised that anyone really disagrees with him - the ideas in his writing seem self-evidently true. And the reception of his writing often bears out his point - people will say his views are terrible, joyless, pessimistic... but won't make much of an effort to show how they're false.

The funny thing is that Whatever was relatively well received, while Particles pissed off a ton of people, for criticizing the sexual revolution. Yet they are completely of a piece with each other - Whatever portrayed social dysfunction and lightly fingered its causes, while Particles fleshed it out in pornographic detail. It's a common pattern I see among the chattering classes - it's okay to identify how things are going bad, but you must never ever blame liberal progress for this dysfunction. Once you do that, all the people who professed to be nihilists, free-thinkers and revolutionaries, who formerly supported you, will denounce and censor you every chance they get. All those former kindred spirits were just a bunch of doctrinaire liberals trying to look cool with avant-garde posturing, but are just as close-minded as anyone else.

Post: #61

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

Don't read a lot of novels, mostly non-fictions. Will add Brave New World to my reading list.

Post: #62

One of my favorite historical 'fiction' novels is "The Source" by James Michener

It's a long epic novel about Jewish culture, from the pre-monotheistic days to something like modern times. The chronological order gets confusing and some parts of it are kind of horrible but definitely my favorite part was the pre-monotheistic times.

They had this village by the name of "Makor" at about 2000 BC that had a few hundred inhabitants. It was a walled oasis in the middle of the desert, and these Jewish desert warrior nomads led this by a bearded patriarch happened upon the village at the behest of God. They made an agreement with the governor to not bring trouble to the locals and made an agreement to live on nearby land.
The village inhabitants of Makor were pagans who worshiped a number of gods, like a large stone effigy of a proto-Baal named on the mountain (he was a destruction god, I think), some kind of fertility god, and a god of harvest.

The two tribes coexisted peacefully on a mutually beneficial trade agreement, with the Jewish nomads farming and shepherding outside of town in the fields and the Makor citizens pressing olives in their walled fortress, but shit really hit the fan once the harvest was over and the festivities picked up. There would be parties of women and younger men who would go single file into the city every day to carry water from the well of Makor to their encampment where the pagans would worship their gods.

Every day they would have a woman dancing naked in front of the temple to tempt a passersby, where they would then walk into the temple and fornicate on the pagan alter to feed the earth with spirit energy or some shit. Once a prostitute in the service of the fertility god was removed from the entrance, another had to replace her after the couple on the altar were done fornicating.

The second part of the ritual happened nine or ten months later in the summer when the harvest was underway; they would worship their destruction god. First they would dig an enormous pit in the middle of town. They lined the pit with brush and lit a towering inferno, and danced around it like maniacs for days while all the whores in the service of the fertility god would hurl their prom-night dumpster babies into the pit to be eaten alive by the gaping, flaming maw of the earth and rejuvenate the life force they took due to the harvest.

Since the young men of the tribe of Jews outside of the town were worshiping with these pagans (basically fucking all of their women), God informed the patriarch leading the tribe that a great deal of blasphemy was going on under his nose, so after he got done killing a lot of the offenders with a sword, he climbed up the mountain and toppled the effigy to Baal.

Of course this was grounds for war (the whole book is basically a thousand pages of warfare), but the pagan fertility issues were definitely a page-turner.

Post: #63

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series.

Currently reading Ender's Game.

Post: #64

I read just about everything Card ever wrote outside of the journeyman series. I will say that ender's game is his best book, but the rest of the ender's game series is him jacking off how smart he was to write ender's game. If you get anywhere near Shadow Puppets, you will rage when you read about his argument with Bean and the biological imperative.

My favorite "big ass book series" would be everything H. P. Lovecraft ever wrote. I wouldn't call it a novel because I downloaded the entire collection of what he wrote, be it letters or short stories, in one large ebook form.

The Sherlock Holmes series is also pretty good.

Post: #65

delete

Post: #66

All Quiet on the Western Front or A Farewell to Arms.

Post: #67

(07-01-2012 04:31 PM)Blunt Wrote:  The Count of Monte Cristo

snap

Post: #68

(05-15-2013 07:09 AM)MSW2007 Wrote:  All Quiet on the Western Front or A Farewell to Arms.

All Quiet is a masterpiece.

Catch-22
Stalingrad
Skagboys
No Country For Old Men

Post: #69

Fahrenheit 451 by the great Ray Bradbury.

Post: #70

I just finished Red Storm Rising.
The book is over 800 pages but I finished it in 2 nights, couldn’t put it down.

Post: #71

(03-12-2012 08:00 AM)Commander Shepard Wrote:  

(03-12-2012 12:24 AM)MHaes Wrote:  Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

+1

Funniest ad best written book I've come across.

Post: #72

Under The Volcano - Malcolm Lowry

probably the only book I can read over and over again, read it every two years or so.


also The Magus by John Fowles and The Ginger Man by JP Donleavy

Post: #73

I read alot but mostly nonfiction stuff, I should propably get more into some classics.

Agree to some posters I thought Rum Diary was great! Ive read pretty much everything by HST and this was my favourite book. It got really bad reviews but I loved the mood he set and how it sucked you in. It was almost as if I was there with Hunter and looking over his shoulder. I cant even say what I like so much about the book but I really loved reading it. The movie sucked.

Right now Im enjoying Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein its really thought provoking and very funny at the same time.

Also the futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem is an amazing book.

As a kid I loved Lord of the Rings I read it several times.

Im also a sucker for the Jack Reacher books but its pretty light entertainment with huuge plotholes and gets pretty repetitive after a while.

Post: #74

"The Fountain Head" by Ayn Rand. I keep trying to read Atlas Shrugged but it's so damn long. I've read around 250 pages into it twice, but got distracted and put it down for too long and had to start reading it all over again. I know it will be great, I just need to get the motivation.

I also really liked "To Have and Have Not," by Ernest Hemingway. It was short, but a great read.

Post: #75

It will have to be Catch-22