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Could anyone recommend me a few books that summarize and describe the Israel/Arab/Middle East/Possibly Palestinian conflict? Hopefully it (or they) touch on the complexity of the situation and why fixing one problem would create many more. I'm not so much looking for a history of how the issues today came to be but if it's a history lesson that is necessary to understand a particular issue that's fine.
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Jul 4, 2011 12:29
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appropriatemetaphor posted:The Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translations are well respected. I haven't read their version of War and Peace, but their Brothers K is great and if I were snagging War and Peace I'd definitely get their translation. I'll second the Pevear and Volokhonsky recommendation. I've read their War & Peace as well as Constance Garnett's, and P & V was vastly superior. My favorite history of the French Revolution was Simon Schama's Citizens; an interesting rundown of the events surrounding the Revolution while also examining the cultural influences that formed the people and ideas involved. It also has a bunch of pretty pictures.
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Jul 4, 2011 15:10
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Can someone recommend me books similar to Robopocalypse..? I need more...
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Jul 5, 2011 01:46
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Brace posted:Can someone recommend me books similar to Robopocalypse..? I need more... World War Z, if you haven't read it, is essentially the same story, but with zombies instead of robots. It is also much better. You could try watching The Animatrix, too.
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Jul 5, 2011 02:58
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funkybottoms posted:World War Z, if you haven't read it, is essentially the same story, but with zombies instead of robots. It is also much better. You could try watching The Animatrix, too. I'll check it out. Anything else? I love the survival aspect and how helpless they are throughout the book, it was a great atmosphere.
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Jul 5, 2011 05:36
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Any good book blogs I can follow?
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Jul 5, 2011 16:56
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The best book I've ever read is The Black Company by Glen Cook (and it's sequels). I still read it about once a year just because it's just fun to read. I'm looking for something similar in terms of writing and storytelling style. I think what appeals the most to me is the absence of needless and drawn-out descriptions and explanations, and the fast pace of the storytelling. I've tried some of Cook's other books but didn't find them very interesting.
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Jul 5, 2011 19:26
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A rather specific request, but can anyone recommend a translation of the Poetic and Prose Eddas (the "classics" of Norse Mythology)? I grabbed the version on Project Gutenberg, and it is awful, i.e. "The sun knew not where she a dwelling had," which reads like what I'd expect from Google Translate.
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Jul 6, 2011 22:34
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My mom's birthday is coming up in a few weeks and she loves getting books but I don't know what to get her this year. She reads a lot of David Baldacci, Norah Roberts, Dan Brown, etc. According to her, she likes "thrillers and mysteries". I dunno poo poo about any of those authors or those genres and have officially exhausted all my ideas in previous years. ZeeBoi posted:Any good book blogs I can follow? http://toomuchhorrorfiction.blogspot.com/ was recommended by somebody in this forum, I think. I guess it's pretty specific so you have to be into trashy pulp horror paperbacks from the 80s. If you are, there's lots of nostalgic appreciation for the artwork that appeared on the covers and stuff.
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Jul 6, 2011 23:05
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I've read through several other posts of people asking about post-apocalyptic literature but would like some more suggestions. When it comes to reading I generally go for non-fiction but the post-apocalyptic/dystopian future setting excite my imagination for fiction. For those of you who are gamers, I love S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and the Fallout series. They really sparked my interest. I find my self creating mental fan fiction about these environments all the time. I've seen some recommendations for The Road and I Am Legend, planning on starting those. Any other suggestions, especially if you are familiar with the games I mentioned? All ideas are welcome.
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Jul 7, 2011 01:51
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Born to Hula posted:I've read through several other posts of people asking about post-apocalyptic literature but would like some more suggestions. I really liked "On The Beach". It's about a post-nuclear apocalypse, but more realistic than a lot of those games are. I loved it.
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Jul 7, 2011 02:10
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Mung Dynasty posted:My mom's birthday is coming up in a few weeks and she loves getting books but I don't know what to get her this year. She reads a lot of David Baldacci, Norah Roberts, Dan Brown, etc. According to her, she likes "thrillers and mysteries". I dunno poo poo about any of those authors or those genres and have officially exhausted all my ideas in previous years. Do you know who the authors are in her collection? Michael Connelly, John Sandford, James Patterson, Harlan Coben, and Lee Child would all work, but they're big names and she's surely familiar with them. Slightly less popular are Steve Berry, Brad Meltzer, and Daniel Silva, with the latter being one of the best current writers of spy/thriller-type stories. For something she might not have heard of, Taylor Steven's The Informationist is a real grab-you-by-the-throat thriller and Brad Parks has two excellent mysteries featuring an investigative reporter named Carter Ross. For some international flavor, Keigo Higashino's The Devotion of Suspect X is great (except the end, but...) and, if she can deal with some heavy violence, Jo Nesbo's unfortunately-named Harry Hole books are several cuts above some other popular Scandinavian pot-boilers.
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Jul 7, 2011 02:58
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Doc Faustus posted:A rather specific request, but can anyone recommend a translation of the Poetic and Prose Eddas (the "classics" of Norse Mythology)? I grabbed the version on Project Gutenberg, and it is awful, i.e. "The sun knew not where she a dwelling had," which reads like what I'd expect from Google Translate. Penguin has one. I can't speak to it's quality, but I thought their edition of Njal's Saga read pretty well.
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Jul 7, 2011 03:38
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Mung Dynasty posted:My mom's birthday is coming up in a few weeks and she loves getting books but I don't know what to get her this year. She reads a lot of David Baldacci, Norah Roberts, Dan Brown, etc. According to her, she likes "thrillers and mysteries". I dunno poo poo about any of those authors or those genres and have officially exhausted all my ideas in previous years. Has she read Agatha Christie? You really can't go wrong, especially with an omnibus like this one which has 4 novels, including 2 of her most famous (ones that are considered some of the best mystery stories of all time).
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Jul 7, 2011 06:07
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Mung Dynasty posted:My mom's birthday is coming up in a few weeks and she loves getting books but I don't know what to get her this year. She reads a lot of David Baldacci, Norah Roberts, Dan Brown, etc. According to her, she likes "thrillers and mysteries". I dunno poo poo about any of those authors or those genres and have officially exhausted all my ideas in previous years. Ruth Rendell writes fantastic stuff.
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Jul 7, 2011 15:03
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Thanks for the suggestions. This thread owns. I might end up getting her one from each suggested author or something like that.
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Jul 7, 2011 21:49
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Mung Dynasty posted:My mom's birthday is coming up in a few weeks and she loves getting books but I don't know what to get her this year. She reads a lot of David Baldacci, Norah Roberts, Dan Brown, etc. According to her, she likes "thrillers and mysteries". I dunno poo poo about any of those authors or those genres and have officially exhausted all my ideas in previous years. Plum Island by Nelson DeMille. He's better known for military fiction, but this is a great read and a fun mystery/thriller. Another good one is Child 44 for Tom Rob Smith, basically takes a page-turning serial killer thriller and shifts it to Stalinist Russia which changes all the rules.
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Jul 8, 2011 11:17
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I'm looking for a book that my Dad and I could read together. He's in his 70s and tends to prefer mysteries and thrillers. I know he read that Steig Larson trilogy, and I think has been through a lot of Michael Connely. I prefer hard sci-fi, authors like Asimov and Neal Stephenson. He's also very catholic, and while he's not entirely old fashioned, I wouldn't want to offer him a cyberpunk novel. He's mentioned he read and enjoyed Dune a long time ago. What's a good thriller/mystery novel with a very simple sci-fi premise we might both enjoy? Something along the lines of Gattaca I think would work well.
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Jul 8, 2011 17:00
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Gravy Jones posted:Plum Island by Nelson DeMille. He's better known for military fiction, but this is a great read and a fun mystery/thriller. Another good one is Child 44 for Tom Rob Smith, basically takes a page-turning serial killer thriller and shifts it to Stalinist Russia which changes all the rules.
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Jul 8, 2011 17:19
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Elijya posted:I'm looking for a book that my Dad and I could read together. He's in his 70s and tends to prefer mysteries and thrillers. I know he read that Steig Larson trilogy, and I think has been through a lot of Michael Connely. I prefer hard sci-fi, authors like Asimov and Neal Stephenson. He's also very catholic, and while he's not entirely old fashioned, I wouldn't want to offer him a cyberpunk novel. He's mentioned he read and enjoyed Dune a long time ago. What's a good thriller/mystery novel with a very simple sci-fi premise we might both enjoy? Something along the lines of Gattaca I think would work well. Greg Bear wrote a FBI vs terrorist thriller set in the near future called Quantico. The writing and pace were terrific. Not too many sf elements.
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Jul 8, 2011 17:31
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WeaponGradeSadness posted:Yeah, I'm going to second Child 44. That was one of the better thrillers/mysteries I've ever read. I still need to get the sequel at some point... I've always held off because it gets such bad reviews, especially from fans of the first book. Which is a drat shame. There's a third one out soon as well.
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Jul 8, 2011 22:00
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Elijya posted:I'm looking for a book that my Dad and I could read together. He's in his 70s and tends to prefer mysteries and thrillers. I know he read that Steig Larson trilogy, and I think has been through a lot of Michael Connely. I prefer hard sci-fi, authors like Asimov and Neal Stephenson. He's also very catholic, and while he's not entirely old fashioned, I wouldn't want to offer him a cyberpunk novel. He's mentioned he read and enjoyed Dune a long time ago. What's a good thriller/mystery novel with a very simple sci-fi premise we might both enjoy? Something along the lines of Gattaca I think would work well. Don't know if I'll be much help, but PKD's Ubik comes to mind, as does Crichton's The Andromeda Strain. The former is a bit weird at times and, depending on how "cool" your dad is, might be something he is unwilling to read, but it is at heart a fairly classic whodunnit.
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Jul 9, 2011 00:31
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Anyone that could recommend an old non-fiction book about life between the 17th to 19th century? It doesn't matter about the context of it. It could be a biography, or diary, or anything really. I just want some historically accurate and detailed visuals that can keep me immersed long enough to read the entire thing.
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Jul 9, 2011 18:14
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Imapanda posted:Anyone that could recommend an old non-fiction book about life between the 17th to 19th century? It doesn't matter about the context of it. It could be a biography, or diary, or anything really. I just want some historically accurate and detailed visuals that can keep me immersed long enough to read the entire thing.
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Jul 9, 2011 18:45
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Imapanda posted:Anyone that could recommend an old non-fiction book about life between the 17th to 19th century? It doesn't matter about the context of it. It could be a biography, or diary, or anything really. I just want some historically accurate and detailed visuals that can keep me immersed long enough to read the entire thing. It's not quite what you're looking for, but I'm reading War and Peace right now, and it's absolutely amazing. Here's a quote from wikipedia about the novel's realism: wikipedia posted:Tolstoy incorporated extensive historical research. He was also influenced by many other novels.[9] A veteran of the Crimean War, Tolstoy was quite critical of standard history, especially the standards of military history, in War and Peace. Tolstoy read all the standard histories available in Russian and French about the Napoleonic Wars and combined more traditional historical writing with the novel form. He explains at the start of the novel's third volume his own views on how history ought to be written. His aim was to blur the line between fiction and history, in order to get closer to the truth, as he states in Volume II. You have to take a little bit at the beginning to remember all the characters, but it's been completely riveting since then. The key to helping me keep track of the characters was learning that Russians use different forms of names for different levels of respect. (i.e. Natalya is the same person as Natasha, Pierre is the same person as Pyotr is the same person as Petrushka) I had tried to read it 5 years ago or so, and couldn't get into it because the names confused me. I got past that this time and it's turning out to be one of the best novels I have ever read. It's definitely fiction, but the events and some of the characters are as true to real history as possible. (Unless an actual historian comes in here and calls me an idiot for thinking that. In which case, sorry, I know embarrassingly little about history.)
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Jul 9, 2011 18:49
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Could anyone recommend me an introduction to Plato's metaphysics? I have no real philosophy background, but platonic absolutes sound very interesting.
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Jul 9, 2011 20:10
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Just dive right in and read The Republic, it's pretty good and still stands tall today.
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Jul 9, 2011 20:37
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AARP LARPer fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Jan 22, 2016 |
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Jul 10, 2011 05:28
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Imapanda posted:
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Jul 10, 2011 06:54
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Imapanda posted:Anyone that could recommend an old non-fiction book about life between the 17th to 19th century? It doesn't matter about the context of it. It could be a biography, or diary, or anything really. I just want some historically accurate and detailed visuals that can keep me immersed long enough to read the entire thing. These two are long, but they're cool reads: The Diary of Samuel Pepys and Boswell's huge biography of Samuel Johnson. Boswell's book is especially good reading - it's a really detailed look at the life of a cool writer - but Pepys' has it's charms too.
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Jul 10, 2011 18:01
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Elijya posted:I'm looking for a book that my Dad and I could read together. He's in his 70s and tends to prefer mysteries and thrillers. I know he read that Steig Larson trilogy, and I think has been through a lot of Michael Connely. I prefer hard sci-fi, authors like Asimov and Neal Stephenson. He's also very catholic, and while he's not entirely old fashioned, I wouldn't want to offer him a cyberpunk novel. He's mentioned he read and enjoyed Dune a long time ago. What's a good thriller/mystery novel with a very simple sci-fi premise we might both enjoy? Something along the lines of Gattaca I think would work well. I would second the already-recommended Ubik. I'm tempted to add A Scanner Darkly, but it might possibly be too close to cyberpunk and/or too drug-oriented for your purposes. Throwing another recommendation into the mix, try some Alfred Bester: The Demolished Man or The Stars My Destination are his best-known ones.
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Jul 10, 2011 23:42
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Born to Hula posted:I've read through several other posts of people asking about post-apocalyptic literature but would like some more suggestions. Check out a book called Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse. It's a compilation of post apocalyptic short stories by a small handful of writers. Stephen King and Orson Scott Card just to name a few. Also, for what it's worth, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? takes place on a post nuclear war earth.
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Jul 11, 2011 12:33
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I need something to read next. I'm about halfway through The Scar by China Mieville and I find myself lost in parts of the book about the world, but maybe that's because I didn't read Perdido Street Station. Before that I read Ship of Fools by Richard Russo and very much enjoyed as a great short self-contained sci-fi story with a very easy to follow plot and enjoyable characters. Other books I've liked were Hyperion/Fall of Hyperion, Illium/Olympos, lots of Heinlien, The Magicians, Discworld and Harry Potter. Also, must be available as a Nook book.
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Jul 11, 2011 16:10
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The Nastier Nate posted:I need something to read next. I'm about halfway through The Scar by China Mieville and I find myself lost in parts of the book about the world, but maybe that's because I didn't read Perdido Street Station. It's okay, I read The Scar first of all his books too. It barely has any connection to Perdido so it's fine to be read first. However make sure you don't read Iron Council before Perdido because you really will be lost.
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Jul 11, 2011 16:16
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So I Just finished The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. I really liked this book, does anyone have any recommendations for something similar in the alternate history genre?
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Jul 11, 2011 21:24
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I'm looking for nonfiction books about the Italian fascist movement, particularly Mussolini and his rise to power. Additionally, I'm looking for some fairly digestible books on 20th century Russian history and 10th-18th century English history. All of the books I pick up seem to be written as a textbook for academics and as a nice cure for insomnia for the rest of us. Any suggestions? Boondock Saint posted:So I Just finished The Plot Against America by Philip Roth.  ) I'd recommend How Few Remain for a less fantasy and more realistic alternate history version of the Civil War where the Confederacy beat the Northern Aggressors and established the Confederate States. The Confederate States proceed to buy Cuba and expand their empire. And so on. Another pretty decent one was The Yiddish Policemen's Union which is kinda about what would happen if the Jewish state was set up in Alaska instead of Israel after WW2. Yeah. Bazanga fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Jul 12, 2011 |
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Jul 12, 2011 03:04
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Boondock Saint posted:So I Just finished The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. Also going to second How Few Remain, and then continue on in the series that ends up explaining how a Confederate victory in the Civil War would affect the world up through WWII. Stop after WWI, though. The WWI trilogy is really good, but the interwar period and WWII basically becomes (I don't know if this counts as a spoiler but I'll do it anyway)the real history of inter-war Germany and WWII except replace "Germany" with "CSA" and "Jews" with "African-Americans" but otherwise everything's exactly the same and it just becomes obvious that he stopped really thinking about the alt-history aspect, which ruined a previously interesting series.  But yeah, How Few Remain and the Great War trilogy are really good.Sorry for the long, rambling post, but I'm a huge alt history dork  tl;dr: Robert Conroy and seconding How Few Remain+The Great War Trilogy by Turtledoveedit: You might also like the What If? books by Robert Cowley. The first one is also military-centric, but What If? 2 is more general history--still has a lot of war stuff, but not exclusively. The difference though, is that instead of being novels, they're collections of essays by historians, with a more academic--but still enjoyable!--bent. Punished Chuck fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Jul 12, 2011 |
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Jul 12, 2011 03:33
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AARP LARPer fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Jan 22, 2016 |
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Jul 12, 2011 06:07
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Do Not Resuscitate posted:Wow, I just finished this last week as well. Excellent book. I also have Chabon's book in my queue. A friend of mine passed this link along to me for when I finished reading it, http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2008-10-29/readers-review-plot-against-america-philip-roth It's pretty much just a round table discussion, but it's worth listening to the last five minutes where a Nazi sympathizer type calls in and pretty much loses his poo poo  Speaking of Chabon, I tried to start reading The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay but I just couldn't get into it. Maybe I'll try again, since I only read the first thirty pages. I'm worried the same thing might happen with The Yiddish Policemen's Union. I started reading the sample of How Few Remain on my kindle and I enjoyed it so I think I'll go with that for now. Thanks guys! EDIT: What's a good place to look at review of Turtledove's books? I find Amazon isn't really a good choice since the majority of reviews aimed at his books tend to go "Gahhh liberals ruining my Confederacy white knighting!" and as a result heavily skew things. Handsome Ralph fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Jul 12, 2011 |
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Jul 12, 2011 14:39
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Can someone recommend me another Vonnegut book to read? I've read Slaughterhouse Five about three times, Breakfast of Champions once, and Cat's Cradle once. I'm going to reread the last two again but I want another one to move on to!
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Jul 12, 2011 17:38
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