Favorite Books/ Books which you currently read

[ArkadiosV2]

.....

[Afraid]

the best book i have ever read is Mario's Puzo's Godfather, but i think most of you have already readed this book?!

Now im reading one book for school, its one of the best book written by lithuanian Vincas-Mykolaitis Putinas "in the shaddows of altar" (or sth like this, im not sure abt english title)

And when i will have time, im planing to read Axel's Munthe's The Story of San Michele. And i know i have somewhere the book abt soldier Svejk, but cant find it nowhere

[Afraid]

Godfather is a ticket to success. Book, film, music, you name it.

I never read a Lithuanian author work and i don't think there are many books in West Europe from this country. What is 'altar'? Rings a geography bell but...

i dont know a lot abt lithuanian authors books translated in english. the book that i told u abt in previous post is translated into many languages as i think in english too. the most widely read lithuanian author is Jurga Ivanauskaite. her books is translated into polish, latvian, garmanian(?), english, russian and other languages. sad, but she died this year due to a cancer.
Theres also one raelly good book from lithuanian author Antanas Škėma "the white shroud". This book is my favourite from lithuania (well, im not reading lithuanians books a lot)


Altar- the main place in the church, lords table.

[Joško Poljak Fan]

just finished reading James Patterson, Four blind mice (that's 8th book, failed to get 1st and 2nd of the series) and Game of thrones (don't remember the author... Martin or sth.)... a relaxing easy read, since I got tired of some Vietnam biography and thought I could change the perspective after Churchil's WW2 (both were even harder to read in english) and Slovenia 1945, which is kind of too cruel to bother... but fits in my interests scheme...
right now I'm getting a bit nervous since I've read all things I intended to way ahead of schedule, reducing my sleeping time instead and will now probably return to some books I left unfinished... probably "Il pendolo di Foucault" by Umberto Eco, or "book of essays" from Drago Jančar...
my weakness is I never go to the library, since everytime i'm in a book store i'm carrying loads of it back home... it's kind of fetish...

as for the college, yup the books are lying on the table opened... for the past 3 months...

[mvblair]

3. Let's try to stay away from history books (unless you are a history freak) to prevent arguing, fighting and setting this thread on fire.

I'm a history buff, so I'll probably have to mention a few.

My favorite 'recreational' book is of course 'Good Soldier Svejk' by Czech writer Jaroslav Hasek

This sounds like an interesting book. I'm normally not a fan of humor, but you make this book sound pretty good. I think I'll try to find it.

My favorite book? I've read a lot of books, but I'm having a terrible time thinking of a favorite. I'm sure I have one, but I can't think of it off-hand.

One that I've read several times is "Fire on the Plains," by a Japanese soldier after WWII. It's his memoir of Japan's disintegration. He mostly discusses his slow loss of humanity after losing contact with the military.

Perhaps "Earth Abides" is my favorite. I think the author's name is George Stewert. It's the one book he wrote that stuck. It's science fiction about the endurance of nature. The main character tours North America after some kind of apocalypse.

This week, I am reading "An Ordinary Man," by Paul Rusesabagina, the man on whom the movie "Hotel Rwanda" was based. The book is very well written (with a co-author). I'm surprised at some of the author's insights into people; he is a very intelligent man. But the book is pretty much what I expected. I've read a lot of books about Rwanda, and Rusesabagina's book is one of the most "tame" that I read. For some reason, I read a lot of books about the horrible parts of our people: Cambodia, North Korea, the Balkan Wars, and so forth. I don't know why.

One book that was very fun to read that a lot of people here might like is "Big Game, Small World," by Alexander Wolf. It's just a collection of various stories about basketball. There are chapters on James Naismith, Zalgiris, Philippines, Israel, and even a wonderful chapter about the King of Bhutan. It's fun to read, but not very informative.

Nuts, I'll just come out and say it: my favorite books are comics. I like the "Mafalda" collections and Ruis' "Supermachos" especially. But I absolutely adore collections of old "Pogo" comic strips by Walt Kelly. "The Jack Acid Society Black Book," which is a collection of Pogo's trials with communism and a pretty obvious critique of the US during the Cold War is my favorite. There I said it. I like comics.

[qiangdade]

I only really started reading books recently and i was particularily impressed by 2: The Trial by Franz Kafka and The Code Book by Simon Singh.

Currently reading The Castle by Kafka again.

[Levenspiel]

I'm currently reading the Nobel prize-winner physicist, Gerard't Hooft's "In Search of the Ultimate Building Blocks". It's quite good read if you're interested in quantum mechanics and subatomic physics.

As for my favorite books, there are many. But Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "The Road Back" are probably the first books by which I was truly impressed.

Adalet Ağaoğlu and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar are my favorite Turkish writers.

[qiangdade]

I totally lost my mind when reading The Trial. It causes you the outmost panic and horror, i even started imagining myself in that situation, really strong book. Bureaucracy...

Which even makes your frustration bigger because nowhere in the book is the reason for which K was arrested in the first place.

As a Jewish he expresses the fear and insecurity of the Jewish people against the system, against the machine.


My eye caught 'Code' in your post before i read it, fortunately it was another 'code'

The Trial is sick. It also inspired some very nice movies imo like Brazil or The Game.

As for the code book, it is just the history of cryptography from ancient times till now combined with some nice history elements in it. No conspiracy theories whatsoever

[Billy]

I dont have a tv so I go through atleast two books a week on average.

This last week I read "Collapse, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed " by Jared Diamond after finishing his most excellent "Guns, Germs and Steel: The fates of Human Societies". I can strongly recommend both.

Right now I am going through "A world History of Architecture" by Moffet, Fazio and Woodhouse as it is part of my curricullum and I am supposed to make a presentation about it tomorrow (the Gothic architectures influence in France).

For anyone wanting an indepth look at architecture I can strongly recommend it as its exceptionally comprehensive.

On Monday and Tuesday I read "Palace", a book (in Swedish) about a hotel that I found interesting.

The week prior to that I read two books by Jan Guillou called "Tjuvarnas marknad" (The market of thieves) and the sequal "Fienden inom oss" (The enemy within), two books that deals with the absurdity of everydag life (in Swedish obviously).

I dont think it would be very interesting for anyone living outside of the Nordic countries but Guillou is probably the greatest writer of the same region in the last century and if you have a chance I can not strongly enough recommend reading his "Crusades Trilogy" about a knights life during the crusades.

Another one of my all time favourites is "Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and His Terrible Hatred" by Carl-Johan Vallgren.

I can not stop myself from going back and read a few pages every now and then as both the story (about a mind reading midget in the German city states) and the language is simply...well, I struggle to find a better word than "delicious"!

I can also very much recommend "Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market" by Eric Schlosser. It is a fairly indepth look at different subcultures primarily in the USA and their different subeconomies.

More later!

[Juan Carlos Nadal]

Briefly (I am writting this while in the middle of an experiment ):

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Exposes the weaknesses of religious arguments and makes a point for the undeserved respect that religion enjoys compared to other notions such as political beliefs. Also pinpoints the absurdity of putting religious labels to kids. A week after I read it Dawkins was in town to give a talk which I attended. Was pretty cool

"The book of general ignorance": A list of ~250 facts and factoids that we think we know but we are wrong about: e.g. what is the tallest mountain on earth, is there an animal called panther?, etc. Very easy read and quite entertaining.

"Sacred Origins of Profound Things": Describes the socioeconomic reasons that brought about the various traditions, beliefs and rules of the 3 Abrahamic (and not only) religions.

Waiting to read "Salt" which describes the history and impact on humanity of salt across the years.

[Jan van Grabski]

I am currently reading :

Robin Lane Fox "Truth and Fiction in the Bible". Written by a historian to see how the historical facts contradicts with what we have in the bible, also sheds lights on differencies in the gospels.

Martin Meredith "The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair ". Very easy to read and quite enjoyable for someone like me who knows very little how African states achieved independence from the colonial rule....also depicts main leaders of the african continent later on.

oh well...

[Billy]

As we have some people who find math and religion interesting I would like to give a heads up for "The Nothing that Is: A Natural History of Zero" by Robert Kaplan.

Eve if you dont like math it is a very interesting read about how philosophy and religion has hampered the progress of mathematics.

Another author I think should be in every mans (and womans!) bookshelf is David Sedaris, most of his books are hysterical but my all time favourite is "Me talk pretty one day". Great for reading while on an plane or train as it consists of a number of short stories.

I will definitely read "The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair" after this, it sounds very interesting.

[Billy]

Waiting to read "Salt" which describes the history and impact on humanity of salt across the years.

I read "Salt", it was interesting. If you like "Salt" and have not tried Diamonds "Collapse" I can recommend you reading that as well.

[Jan van Grabski]

As we have some people who find math and religion interesting I would like to give a heads up for "The Nothing that Is: A Natural History of Zero" by Robert Kaplan.

yep, i looked up the description of the book, looks like the stuff i am going to love. As i doubt that the library at my work will have it, though i will have to wait for my next salary to buy it (i spent my last euro on energy drink which actually does not work, and i am all sleepy, and cant meet my deadlines),

My bestseller of all times is of course the Bible, i like to read it time to time, it makes me so unChristian. I rearly read fiction books, cant enjoy them, which is strange. The only exception is sci-fi, fantasy .... but also not that often.

[rind]

Well, unfortunately I am not the reader I was when I was going through my teens, the internet takes too much of my time now (I show strong signs of addiction). Still, I don't have a TV, so despite being unsatisfied, I'm able to read a few books a month.

I'm currently going through the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, precisely a book consisting of his short stories, Agosto de 1983 y otros cuentos... I think Borges' works are pure literature, if you're familiar with the styles of writers such as G. G. Marquez, U. Eco, I. Calvino or O. Pamuk, you'll even like him more. He has a direct influence on postmodernist fiction (i.e. roughly, a refusal of the "totalizing" elements of modernist thought, for instance a master narrative in literature's case). Especially, I recommend Historia universal de la infamia (A Universal History of Infamy) to everyone interested.

I recently finished Franz Kafka -- The Zürau Aphorisms. This book consists of 109 aphorisms by Franz Kafka all written between 1917 and 1920. It was very, umm... Kafkaesque?

Also I would suggest a book I read last month, Histoire Générale du Diable (A History of the Devil) by Gerald Messadié. As an atheist I'm really into the history of religion, this book traces the idea of the "devil" in different cultures, is a comparative study that shows... Well, OK I decided not to go in detail in this particular case since I really don't wanna turn this thread into an ineffective religion debate. I'm tired of personal polemics, I will just quote Publishers Weekly here:

What emerges from Messadie's explorations is that the Devil is a very recent concept, arising primarily out of Zoroastrianism in Persia in the sixth century B.C. In that religion, a personified evil being is coexistent and coeval with a personification of the good, and Messadie examines how that dualism has slipped into Christianity, in particular. Thus the author concludes, on the basis of careful historical study, that the Devil does not exist in societies where the need for a force opposing the good is absent. Finally, Messadie aptly demonstrates how people in contemporary culture, in the absence of the personification of evil, use the Devil to vilify their enemies and to promote hatred.

[alermac]

My picks:

1) The Ground Beneath Her Feet (Salman Rushdie). It's a very twisted love story involving rock stars from India and earthquakes, based on a Greek myth. Very long but great.

2) Jack Frusciante Left The Band (Enrico Brizzi). Written in a really weird way, it represents late-teens that don't feel like ever doing anything.

3) Night Train (Martin Amis). A police investigation on the death of a supposedly happy woman, involving drug experiments and depression.

I also enjoy history and political books, but let's not go in there :P

[mvblair]

I dont have a tv

My goodness…I am so, so sorry…

This last week I read "Collapse, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed " by Jared Diamond after finishing his most excellent "Guns, Germs and Steel: The fates of Human Societies". I can strongly recommend both.

“Guns, Germs, and Steel” was a fun read. Not very academic, but well-organized and well-though out.

I can also very much recommend "Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market" by Eric Schlosser. It is a fairly indepth look at different subcultures primarily in the USA and their different subeconomies.

I think “Reefer Madness” was actually a documentary from the ‘30s, right? About kids who smoke a joint and end up being Satanists?

Briefly (I am writting this while in the middle of an experiment ):

Great job being brief, JC.

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Exposes the weaknesses of religious arguments and makes a point for the undeserved respect that religion enjoys compared to other notions such as political beliefs. Also pinpoints the absurdity of putting religious labels to kids. A week after I read it Dawkins was in town to give a talk which I attended. Was pretty cool

This is a book which I actively dislike…but I didn’t read the whole thing. I read two or three chapters and got tired of it. This author makes a lot of assumptions. I think I basically wrote this book during my freshman philosophy class. One thing that I really disliked was how he kept saying “hey, atheists are great people, so stop shouting that we’re terrible, but you religious folks are such idiots.”

"The book of general ignorance": A list of ~250 facts and factoids that we think we know but we are wrong about: e.g. what is the tallest mountain on earth, is there an animal called panther?, etc. Very easy read and quite entertaining.

I have a trivia book called “Isaac Asimov’s Book Facts,” or something like that. It’s got something like 3,000 single paragraph facts. I think the book is for children but I really like reading through it.

Waiting to read "Salt" which describes the history and impact on humanity of salt across the years.

This is a book that I actually read all the way through. It’s an easy run and it’s fun, but it’s nothing new. There are now a ton of books about “how XYZ changed the world,” like Simon Winchester’s book “The Map that Changed the World.” I don’t know…they’re good reads, but I don’t think they contribute much to the study of history.

Nuts, I'll just come out and say it: my favorite books are comics. I like the "Mafalda" collections and Ruis' "Supermachos" especially. But I absolutely adore collections of old "Pogo" comic strips by Walt Kelly. "The Jack Acid Society Black Book," which is a collection of Pogo's trials with communism and a pretty obvious critique of the US during the Cold War is my favorite. There I said it. I like comics.

So I’m the only little kid here?

--Matt

[Billy]

My goodness…I am so, so sorry…

Dont be, Im doing well in school!

Ill prolly buy a TV soon though, the ULEB and Euroleague season is about to begin! And soon we´ll have NCAA as well!

Man, I so badly need a basketball fix right now!

I think “Reefer Madness” was actually a documentary from the ‘30s, right? About kids who smoke a joint and end up being Satanists?

I dont know the background to the title of the book but it is a very good read.

I have a trivia book called “Isaac Asimov’s Book Facts,” or something like that. It’s got something like 3,000 single paragraph facts. I think the book is for children but I really like reading through it...
...So I’m the only little kid here? (Regarding comic books)

I think you actually answered that yourself Or, atleast, you are a kiddy at heart!

[fasoulaki]

The last book I have read is "Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey " from Bruce Clark because I was searching for a neutral description about what happend in the 1920ies.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/CLATWI.html

The book I like most is "Foucault's Pendulum" from Umberto Eco.

[ziv]

as an "indophile" i'm currently reading the amazing book by Arundhati Roy - "The God of Small Things".
usually i don't read translated books but mostly those written by israeli authors. i mean as far as novels and not history or popular science. there are some great books by israeli authors transleted to other languages. i'm espcially a great fund of Avrahm B. Yehushue. it might be very interesting for you to find of his in your own language ("the lover", "Mr. Many" for example). of course - israeli Author Amos Oz, winner of Goethe prize is also an exclent author whom you might be able to find his works and be interested at.