Paan Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 I am just finishing Jitterbug Perfume, a pretty frigg'n cool book... I am always wondering what I want to read next. Can anyone recommend any books that have really made an impact or that was very interesting. I am open to pretty much anything... I usually like to alternate between fiction and non-fiction... Just nothing to do with Bush! I am sick of hearing about that guy. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bradm Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 For some non-fiction, either "Future Shock" or (even better) "The Third Wave" by Alvin Toffler are good. They're big and dense, but can, I think, help to understand our changing society. The premise of "The Third Wave" is that, until, say, the middle of the 20th century, there had been two great "waves" of change in human society: from hunter-gatherer to agrarian society, and from agrarian society to industrial society. From about the middle of the 20th century onwards, another wave of change is happening, from industrial society to what Toffler calls "super-industrial society" (and what others call "post-industrial society" or "information society"). One of the key things to realize is that a wave of change in society affects all aspects of society, from methods of production, to politics, to law, to economics, to the structure(s) of the family. Note that the books are not particularly recent (IIRC, "Future Shock" was written in 1970 or so, and "The Third Wave" came along in the early '80s, which is one reason I prefer "The Third Wave": it's closer to today), and are, obviously, pre-internet, but they're both good reads. Aloha, Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SevenSeasJim Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 Kev, if you like Historical Fiction read some Edward Rutherfurd. SARUM A novel tracing the story of the city of Salisbury and of five families through a hundred centuries of turmoil, tyranny, passion and prosperity. It charts the entire course of English history and the social and political forces that shaped its society. He has 5 books out currently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CyberHippie Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 All Tom Robbins kicks ass! If you've only read Jitterbug Perfume, also check out "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates" and "Skinny Legs and All".If your interested in a little CyberPunk style Sci-fi, check out "Snow Crash". It's a wicked book!Another good one is "Pest Control" by Bill Fitzhugh. It's about this dude named Bob Dylan, who is a professional exterminator, who gets confused for a "Profesional Extermintaor" aka a hitman. Halarity ensues... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esau Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 The Clouded Leopard by Wade Davis The essays and stories in this book, though distilled from travels in widely separated parts of the world, are fundamentally about landscape and character, and the wisdom of lives drawn directly from the land. Wade Davis has been called “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity?’ Driven by the desire to discover new plants for healing and visions, as well as to learn about other ways of knowing the wild, Davis journeys from the rain forests of Borneo to the mountains of Tibet, from the ice floes of the Arctic to the sands of the Sahara. Along the way, he samples the first hallucinogen from the animal kingdom, searches for the legendary clouded leopard and reveals the dimensions of a potential worldwide economic disaster involving rubber, “the white blood of the forest?’ With passion and insight, he describes Vodoun priests, Inuit narwhal hunters and jaguar shaman who journey beyond the Milky Way. From his travels, he returns with captivating stories of unusual individuals, ancient shamanic wisdom about healing and a deeper understanding of the connections between traditional peoples and their homelands. http://www.wade-davis.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorgnor Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 Fingerprints of the Gods - Graham Hancock Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alexis Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 hmmm a fiction book i liked was River God by Wilbur Smith. It's a story that takes place back in Egyption times. It's interesting in that it covers a fair amount of time, and has quite a few different elements of conflict. It's also part of a series (I love series). The Seventh Scroll is the next one in the series, it takes place in the present day with people finding scrolls that document what happened in River God and them trying to figure it all out with modern day science. Then the Third is Warlock (I think) and it takes you back to the time the first one was set in, but a generation later, so you see where the struggles and accomplishments from the characters in the first book have gotten their now grown children. Really is quite good. Oh! or Pompeii! by Robert Harris. That was a good book too, it's a story told through the eyes of an aquatic engineer. He was the guy in charge of the aquaduct and the story starts 5 days before the eruption and continues on until the day after. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MuleMomma Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 A little too obvious perhaps, but it seems I tend to alternate between Tom Robbins and Kurt Vonnegut, and just started reading "Galapagos" a couple days ago. So far, it's written from a million years in the future about a swindler taking a cruise to the Galapagos Islands in 1986, but having read a couple Vonnegut books previously, I'm thinking it may change course drastically. I'm sure one or two people can vouch for me here if I say that Vonnegut is always a fun read! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomFoolery Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 Check out "Why Christianity Must Change or Die" by John Spong. He's a United Church bishop that doesn't believe in god. Its a pretty mind blowing take on what religion and christianity could be... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StoneMtn Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 I am tempted to list 25 of my favourite books. Instead, I'm just going to suggest one that you probably haven't heard of. It's a book of short stories, and it's great. It's called THE ASCENT OF ELI ISRAEL - BY JON PAPERNICK . He won awards for it, I believe. He is a guy who lived in Israel for a few years as a reporter, and then he wrote these semi-fictional stories. Papernick is interesting himself, because he grew up in Toronto as a young punkrocker, and you can really see that in his book. Seriously; everyone should read it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tonberry Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 I second vonnegut, though I would offer the following as alternatives to galapagos (which I myself just started too). Cat's Cradle -- my favourite book ever. A biographer seeks out the legacy of the father of the atom bomb. He finds a new religion (Bokononist) and... things get worse from there.Mother Night - An American double agent (An American Spying on the Nazis, for whom he pretends to be spying on the Americans) copes with being betrayed by his country during the cold war. Sirens of Titan - one of the world's wealthiest men is drafted into mars' secret army, and then becomes a tool for the greatest religion of all times.Each of these books does contain a little bit of highly veiled political commentary for their time, and they're incredibly witty.Also, if you can enjoy plays over novels, I would recommend Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros. Actually, anything by Ionesco's good... but Rhinoceros and The Bald Soprano are cream of the gravy crop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paan Posted November 2, 2004 Author Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 Wow... I am going to write all of these down and check them out. Thanks guys! Hey SugarMegs I read (most) of a book called Guns, Germs and Steel. You may like this one since you are in Anthropology (still don't know what your fascination with ants is.. Its basically about why history turned-out like it did with Europe conquering the Americas, and what lead up to certain areas of the world becoming powerful before others. A little dry and text-bookish, but it is in your arena, and does have some pretty interesting stuff about pre-history. I believe he won the Pulitzer prize for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bradm Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 Also, if you can enjoy plays over novels, I would recommend Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros. There's also the 1974 movie starring Zero Mostel & Gene Wilder. Aloha, Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottieking Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Kolsterman Brillantly hilarious pop culture essays from a guy that seems to loathe and live it. One of my favs from last year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hamilton Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 Nick Hornby's "How To Be Good" is a pretty cool read. He's the dude who wrote "High Fidelity", which you should definitely read as well, if you haven't already. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paan Posted November 2, 2004 Author Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 Ohhh dry and textbookish :: You know I can't read fiction books anymore. I have not been able to finish one since highschool. That paragraph did not come-out correctly. I didn't mean the "dry and textbookish" being in your arena, but the human pre-history part... SORRY!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamH Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 1. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time 2. Eats, shoots and Leaves 3. No Logo (if you haven't read it already) 4. Any of Wade davis' books but especially The Clouded Leopard, as per Esau's reco. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hamilton Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 2. Eats, shoots and Leaves I'm reading this right now... very interesting, and amusing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bokonon Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 i will defenitely jump on the bandwagon of suggesting kurt vonnegut (as my usual username might imply). if you like satire i would also recommend george orwell, ayn rand, terry pratchett (which is fantasy satire and quite hilarious). catch-22 by joseph heller is great too, as is anything by margaret atwood if you can take temporal jumps and weird twisted ideas. i can't remember the author right now, but "wizard's first rule" was a good read too. if you are ever stuck for something to read, the short list for the giller or the man-booker prize always produces good reads. this year they are- man-booker: bitter fruit by achmat dangor cloud atlas by david mithcell the electric michelangelo by srah hall the line of beauty by alan hollinghurst the master by colm toibin i'll go to bed at noon by gerard woodward giller: beyond measure by pauline holdstock galveston by paul quarrington runaway by alice munro the tiger claw by shauna singh baldwin a compicated kindness by miriam toews all that matters by wayson choy and remember, support your local library! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SevenSeasJim Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 If you want some good ole Canadian humour; read some Farley Mowat. Another good one I just read was Asylum by Patrick McGrath. Very good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FairySari Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 I was going to suggest Jitterbug Perfume. It's my favourite book ever. I hope you enjoyed it. So, instead, how about Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. Or The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul, also Douglas Adams. I've never read the hitchhiker's books, but I thouroughly enjoyed these books. I think that the long dark tea-time would be a good choice to read directly after jitterbug perfume, actually. And the copy I have is published by Pan books, so that's got to be some sort of sign. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StoneMtn Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 If you want some good ole Canadian humour; read some Farley Mowat. Farley Mowat rocks hard. My favourite Canadian writer. The obvious choice by him, of course, is "Never Cry Wolf" and is always an amazing read. The other, less likely, title of his, though, which I very much recommend is "Grey Seas Under". It's a novel about a tugboat based in Newfoundland and its contribution to WWII. Despite its potentially boring sounding theme; AWESOME BOOK! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SevenSeasJim Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 If you want some good ole Canadian humour; read some Farley Mowat. Farley Mowat rocks hard. My favourite Canadian writer. The obvious choice by him, of course, is "Never Cry Wolf" and is always an amazing read. The other, less likely, title of his, though, which I very much recommend is "Grey Seas Under". It's a novel about a tugboat based in Newfoundland and its contribution to WWII. Despite its potentially boring sounding theme; AWESOME BOOK! I just read "The Boat Who Wouldn't Float" and laughed my ass off during the entire read. I actually have a picture of that boat which I took when I was out on Cape Breton Island (hopefully it really is that boat). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhishyK Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 The best books I've read in the last 2 years would include... The Little Country by Charles de Lint Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins Fall on Your Knees by Anne-Marie Macdonald The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver The Stand by Stephen King Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (my fav of the bunch) I love to read!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velvet Posted November 2, 2004 Report Share Posted November 2, 2004 Did anybody mention Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five? Changed how I look at the world, that did. Oh, and the Harry Potter series is good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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