suggestions on a good book?

[MeanMeosh]

Originally posted by: AngryPirate
I'm about halfway through Fast Food Nation right now and I like it. Some of the statistics given about the fast food industry are mindboggling.

if you like fast food nation, also read reefer madness: sex, drugs and cheap labor in the american black market by the same author (eric schlosser). i liked both of those books.

kauru: there's this book, 'jackdaws' by ken follett, that you might be interested in. its about women in the second world war. mostly fiction, but apparantly its very very very loosely based on the truth.

 

[Epsil0n00]

Originally posted by: flxnimprtmscl
Read Atlas Shrugged. A bit long and a bit preachy in parts but it's the Best. Book. Ever. That I've read anyway.

Maybe start with The Fountain Head first.... a bit shorter and less preachy. Same author: Ayn Rand (spelling? I think that is correct)

WHY NOT LOTR! Always a good read!

 

[wowitfoth]

" The De Vinci code "

 

[jinduy]

Goosebumps: Night of the living Dummy (I, II, and III) my personal fave of this trilogy is part II... they shoulda stopped there.

 

[SP33Demon]

Stephen King "IT" (even if you've seen series, book is sooo much better, his best ever IMO)
Nelson Demille "Gold Coast"

 

[pyonir]

For you True Crime readers out there, I thought i would repost the list I sent to Kauru. If you have any questions let me know.

"I: The creation of a serial killer" by Jack Olsen
"Helter Skelter"
"In Cold Blood" Truman Capote (excellent book..regarded as literature by many scholars)
"Sniper in the Tower" Gary M. Lavergne
"The Onion Field" Joseph Wambaugh (or anything by Joseph Wambaugh)
"Monster" Sanyika Shakur aka Monster Kody Scott
Anything by the author Harold Schechter
"May God Have Mercy" John C. Tucker

 

[azazyel]

I recently got sucked into the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I had been told by a lot of people that I would like it but hesitated because I really didn't like the few books I did read by him but these books are excellent. He just came out with the fith book and I am trying my hardest to read it slowly so I can savor it.

In a more realistic setting I would recommend salmon rushdie's (sp) The Fury. Salmon is a very educated man and it really comes through in his writting. I was really impressed with his grasp of emotion in this book. It is also a mind bender in a way.

 

[xuanman]

Under the Banner of Heaven by Krakauer - it's about a murder mystery, fundamentalist Mormons, nature of religion.

 

[nater]

Originally posted by: jinduy
Goosebumps: Night of the living Dummy (I, II, and III) my personal fave of this trilogy is part II... they shoulda stopped there.

that's hilarious....I'm 18 now, but those books are actually what made me first enjoy reading when I was ~9-10....I still remember "discovering" that series on my own before it became big...one of my friends was even in the Goosebump club...

 

[SuperTool]

Reading Dr Zhivago now. Pretty good so far.

 

[toekramp]

Originally posted by: OIKOS
HOLY BIBLE

Mein Kampf...if for nothing else, very intriguing

 

[Mr N8]

IF you like Clancy, check out Mark Bowden. He wrote Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo. Both are excellent, IMO. Well, Killing Pablo is much better for the first half than the second half, but I won't ruin the sory for you. Black Hawk Down kept me reading for hours at a time. I finished it in 4 sittings.

 

[PatboyX]

i have to second two books mentioned here: Monster is fantastic. as is Helter Skelter.
as far as fiction, you should maybe check out Ludlum and Heinlein. H is more science-fiction but still sort of what you seem to be into.

 

[ChurchOfSubgenius]

The Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, I noticed that it is mostly "man based" writing (no Oprah book of the month for you Neal) but not so much that an intellegent woman couldn't appreciate it.

Here is a tiny excerpt:

They gave him an intelligence test. The first question on the math part had to do with boats on a river: Port Smith is 100 miles upstream of Port Jones. The river flows at 5 miles per hour. The boat goes through water at 10 miles per hour. How long does it take to go from Port Smith to Port Jones? How long to come back?

Lawrence immediately saw that it was a trick question. You would have to be some kind of idiot to make the facile assumption that the current would add or subtract 5 miles per hour to or from the speed of the boat. Clearly, 5 miles per hour was nothing more than the average speed. The current would be faster in the middle of the river and slower at the banks. More complicated variations could be expected at bends in the river. Basically it was a question of hydrodynamics, which could be tackled using certain well-known systems of differential equations. Lawrence dove into the problem, rapidly (or so he thought) covering both sides of ten sheets of paper with calculations. Along the way, he realized that one of his assumptions, in combination with the simplified Navier-Stokes equations, had led him into an exploration of a particularly interesting family of partial differential equations. Before he knew it, he had proved a new theorem. If that didn't prove his intelligence, what would?

Then the time bell rang and the papers were collected. Lawrence managed to hang onto his scratch paper. He took it back to his dorm, typed it up, and mailed it to one of the more approachable math professors at Princeton, who promptly arranged for it to be published in a Parisian mathematics journal.

Lawrence received two free, freshly printed copies of the journal a few months later, in San Diego, California, during mail call on board a large ship called the U.S.S. Nevada. The ship had a band, and the Navy had given Lawrence the job of playing the glockenspiel in it, because their testing procedures had proven that he was not intelligent enough to do anything else

 

[SaltBoy]

I highly recommend Seabiscuit, the book that the movie was based on. The movie was good, but the book (by Laura Hillenbrand) is absolutely fantastic. I never knew horseracing could be so brutal to both the horses and jockeys...

It's non-fiction to boot, too!

 

[CurtisEbear]

Originally posted by: bradruth
Anything by Chuck Palahniuk. He's most famous for Fight Club, but of course I've seen the movie, so I'm not going to read the book. I have read Survivor, Choke, Invisible Monsters, and now I'm on Lulluby. Good stuff.

He speaks truth. Also I believe he's got a new one out...Diary i think. I'll have to check that out soon.

and of course CubicZ was right on the money too...Shogun is the way to go if you like to read...a lot.


EDIT: also saw a few other suggestions i agree w/ 100%...Tom Clancy's Without Remorse is undoubtable my favorite of his, and someone else said Stephen King's Dark Tower series - its actually a lot different than his other books so even if you dont like King its worth a shot.

a few other suggestions:

To Hell and Back (Audie Murphy) if you like war novels
the Krondor series (Feist) if you like fantasy
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is 10x better than the movie (mostly because the movie blew ass, not because the book is that incredibly good)
almost anything by Crichton


another edit: just read the post about RL Stine, and I was thinking...you ever realize how much money that guy probably made off sh!tty ideas? I mean to be fair, most books for kids that age aren't anything too spectacular, but come on. The guy wrote a book about a sponge that lived under the sink. A
sponge for chrissakes. He probably could've written a book about a spooky clock and sold copies. Oh wait, he did.

 

[jonmullen]

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

 

[BatmanNate]

I just read the Sirens of Titan and enjoyed it, but it doesn't really meet your criteria.

 

[Fiveohhh]

I just read the davinci code and thought it was awesome finished it in a weekend. someone said above that it was overated too many facts, and not enough story . I disagree. the story was awesome, and the facts made the book that much more interesting. I found myself a few times going to the interweb and checking to see if it really was true.

 

[CanOWorms]

Originally posted by: CubicZirconia
Shogun - great book. Currently about 900 pages in.

If you haven't read Musashi, you might want to pick it up after reading Shogun. I'm not a Japanese-obsessed anime nerd or anything, but it's a really great book. It's a famous Japanese samurai epic about the real exploits of a legendary (maybe most famous) swordsman. It's my favorite book It's a long read, too... about 1000 pages or so.

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

read through the book/series ratings at IBList.

 

[Insomnium]

Some stuff I read very recently:

Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich. <-- this book is in itself like a mini "Matrix". After you finish reading it, you'll be wondering who these students, corporations, and mysterious professor really are (pseudonyms are used in the book) and perhaps the motives behind writing such a revealing account. (Could it be a strategic move in some way or another etc)

and

Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi <-- this is the book the movie Goodfellas is based on. True crime in NYC. Has a lot of stuff the movie had + more.

Kitchen Confidential <-- a behind the scenes look at the restaurant business.

These are the 3 I read most recently and will recommend, but I can seriously recommend like hundreds of books worth reading. Enjoy :beer:

 

[CaseTragedy]

Originally posted by: CurtisEbear

Originally posted by: bradruth
Anything by Chuck Palahniuk. He's most famous for Fight Club, but of course I've seen the movie, so I'm not going to read the book. I have read Survivor, Choke, Invisible Monsters, and now I'm on Lulluby. Good stuff.

He speaks truth. Also I believe he's got a new one out...Diary i think. I'll have to check that out soon.

and of course CubicZ was right on the money too...Shogun is the way to go if you like to read...a lot.


EDIT: also saw a few other suggestions i agree w/ 100%...Tom Clancy's Without Remorse is undoubtable my favorite of his, and someone else said Stephen King's Dark Tower series - its actually a lot different than his other books so even if you dont like King its worth a shot.

a few other suggestions:

To Hell and Back (Audie Murphy) if you like war novels
the Krondor series (Feist) if you like fantasy
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is 10x better than the movie (mostly because the movie blew ass, not because the book is that incredibly good)
almost anything by Crichton


another edit: just read the post about RL Stine, and I was thinking...you ever realize how much money that guy probably made off sh!tty ideas? I mean to be fair, most books for kids that age aren't anything too spectacular, but come on. The guy wrote a book about a sponge that lived under the sink. A
sponge for chrissakes. He probably could've written a book about a spooky clock and sold copies. Oh wait, he did.

since a number of people recommended Chuck Palahniuk, I went to the university bookstore to see what they had. they only carried Invisible Monsters so I didn't have much of a choice.

how was the book? well--I just got back from a 2 1/2 hr. lunch that I had to take because I couldn't put it down towards the end. it was a great read and I'd recommend it to anyone. I called my gf afterwards as I was walking back:

"Hi hun."
"I just finished the book."
"WTF?!?"
"Okay. Bye."

I was able to borrow a copy of Da Vinci Code so I'll be starting that soon--then I'll try to finish some more Palahniuk.

 

[quackagator]

Thanks for the site

Originally posted by: DeathByAnts
read through the book/series ratings at IBList.