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[the shah]

this thread is dying. as so too with it is the shah. long live the shah !

i was surprised to see these two, one a work of fiction by deepak (easy charming read) and the other seems to be the same thing with the alternate name (haven't read) !?

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[KingJulien]

Quote:

just any book? or something in particular (e.g. fiction, historical fiction, paranormal romance, military history, women's studies, etc etc)?

I'm really open to anything, otherwise I would've specified - if it's good enough for someone to recommend it's probably at least worth checking out

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[pickpackpockpuck]

I just reread The Unvanquished by William Faulkner. That's a great little book and a good starting point for Faulkner if you haven't read him before. The story is great and it's got the Faulkner prose without being too exaggerated. If you want a great story but without complicated prose, you can't go wrong with The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. It's about his time in Vietnam. If you want a real Literary experience, read Moby Dick. That book is unwieldy and frustrating and absolutely incredible. If you want something rich and beautiful and just about perfect in its composition, read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. If you want to laugh, read Breakfast of Champions. If you want to cry, read The Grapes of Wrath. If you want a great character portrait, read A Portrait of a Lady.

If you want a little of everything, get a book of short stories. There's one I really like called Best Short Stories of the Modern Age. It has some of my favorites (or at least the old edition I had did), including Youth by Joseph Conrad and The Tree of Knowledge by Henry James, both of which are difficult to find elsewhere.

 

[A Fellow Linguist]

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[the shah]



I just reread The Unvanquished by William Faulkner. That's a great little book and a good starting point for Faulkner if you haven't read him before. The story is great and it's got the Faulkner prose without being too exaggerated. If you want a great story but without complicated prose, you can't go wrong with The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. It's about his time in Vietnam. If you want a real Literary experience, read Moby Dick. That book is unwieldy and frustrating and absolutely incredible. If you want something rich and beautiful and just about perfect in its composition, read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. If you want to laugh, read Breakfast of Champions. If you want to cry, read The Grapes of Wrath. If you want a great character portrait, read A Portrait of a Lady.

If you want a little of everything, get a book of short stories. There's one I really like called Best Short Stories of the Modern Age. It has some of my favorites (or at least the old edition I had did), including Youth by Joseph Conrad and The Tree of Knowledge by Henry James, both of which are difficult to find elsewhere.

that was an awful

i do like short stories, one i keep recalling is The Sniper

have you read Chopra's Buddha ? both seem to tell the tale of the path to enlightenment.

this one is a bit but i know the author he's really nice guy, also written books on climate change, he's faculty at NYU but travels extensively from what I gather.



I like where this is heading, thanks KJ.

edit: there's also a "What are you reading now thread" which will have more suggestions and variety

 

[tween_spirit]

 

[pickpackpockpuck]

Portrait of the Artist is the best English prose I've read. I think the story is great as well (it's about spiritual redemption through beauty), but I know a lot of people find it boring. The language, however, is unsurpassed in English (again, talking prose here, so I'm excluding Shakespeare and poetry). I think Moby Dick rivals it, but it's not as consistent. Nabokov is consistently excellent, but his prose gets too florid for me.

I haven't read that short story, but thanks for the link. I will check it out. Metapatterns does indeed sound It frightens me a little. Actually, I just started Speak, Memory so I'll be occupied for a little while anyway.

 

[KingJulien]

I should probably put some recommendations for you guys (not exactly a favorite list since I don't want to commit to that and have forgotten 90% of what my favorite books are):

• Infinite Jest (hilarious, stupidly long, you'll need at least two bookmarks, either my all-time favorite or way up there)
• Catch-22 (surprisingly similar, a little deeper and much easier to read)
• A subscription to The New Yorker (weirdly enough this has some of the best Eng-lang fashion writing I've found, along with every other topic under the sun)
• Demonic Males - more academic, not in the same literary class as the above but very interesting, had a bigger influence on my worldview than maybe it should have
• Blood Meridian - brilliant and funny in a morbid way, beautiful prose
• Leviathan (Hobbes) - sorta dense and not exactly a fun read but it's weirdly entertaining if you're in the mood, he was a funny guy and the fact that it holds up after 400 years is impressive. You might not want to read this with no context.

Might go back and edit more stuff in later when I have access to my bookshelf.

 

[the shah]

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[snowmanxl]

im reading James Franco's Palo Alto

critics compare him to SF favourites such as BEE and haruki

 

[trafficjam]

Have you dudes read Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino? Seems like it would be up this thread's alley.

 

[the shah]

What's a good book without a fantastic cup of coffee or espresso (or [spiced] chai)

Wondering if anyone has experience with any of these ...

I normally just get Intelligentsia Black Cat, have tried some of their blends as well, but keep going back to the Black Cat. Local coffee shop brings in a variety of different things, supposedly getting Stump Town soon and now has Couter Culture Baroida and Bufcafe...

I've tried both Stump Town and Counter Culture espresso at 9th Street Espresso (they had one then switched to the other), but I'm hoping to get different beans for myself at home.

 

[Makeshift_Robot]

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As far as books go though Alan Watts's The Way of Zen is pretty fresh and clean.

Seconding trafficjam on the Calvino recommendation although his work is pretty uneven; I like If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, but the story Under The Jaguar Sun is really good as well for a lot of the same reasons.

Also if you have 5 minutes to spare, "Me And Miss Mandible" by Don Barthelme is a good read. Barthelme is especially interesting if you've tried to do any writing yourself, his stories are streamlined and digestible without losing any depth. You can find a grip of them at http://www.jessamyn.com/barth/

 

[Ivwri]

Have you guys read any Borges or Saramago? Read Ficciones when I was young and impressionable and it really blew my mind .

Hermann Hesse is also really great and I binged on him in university.

 

[KingJulien]

I've been living out of a Keurig since the theft of my French press

however, I'd recommend the following:

http://www.wiredpuppy.com/component/page,shop.browse/category_id,1/option,com_virtuemart/Itemid,1/


edit: relevant: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/...pped-in-an-Age-of-Ignorance-N-Y-Rev-of-Books-