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Reading Books

In no particular order:
Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States
Alex Haley, Roots
Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Ian Carr, Miles Davis: A Definitive Biography
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life
Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre
MK Ghandi, The Essential Ghandi
James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom
Jack Kerouac, On The Road
Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War
Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Ralph Nader and Wesley J Smith, No Contest
Jerry Schad, Afoot & Afield in Los Angeles County
Cervantes, Don Quijote de La Mancha

Thanks!

Jack Kerouac, On The Road

damn ... now where you mention it, I sees something I forgot - add this at 2nd place of my list, and additionally, of the same author: The Darma Bums

... oh, and not to forget about the guy whose name I cant rememeber, who wrote the book called 'mit dem Kühlschrank durch Irland' ('through Ireland with the fridge', raw translated).

yours, bG.

beards are cool. every villain has one!

This is tough "on the spot." i'll have to name a few then come back to it. (I'm at the library doing this; ironic I can't come up with 10 immediately.)

In no particular order:
"Teachings of Don Juan," Castaneda;
"Das Energi," Paul Williams;
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence," Rbt Persig;
"Finite and Infinite Games," James P. Carse;
"Scrabble Players Dictionary," Merriam Webster;
"Maintaining and Repairing PCs," Scott Mueller;
"Surfing the Himalayas," Fred Lanz;
"Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," Tom Robbins**;
"Archaic Revival," Terrence McKenna;
"Me Talk Pretty One Day," David Sedaris.

Not bad. Didn't take nearly as long as thought.
**The only caveat to this is the that I didn't think Cowgirls was Robbins best work, but it's the only thing that immediately comes to mind. I've "bookmarked" his spot, you might say.

This was fun.

Once Fred Neitszche declared God is Dead, f*ck became the most important word in the English languag

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence," Rbt Persig;

ths book is fantastic. i love it. it has nothing to do with zen and little to do with motorcycle maintenance. it's a great read.

If you can, try and find a copy of the sequel, Lila: An Enquiry into morals.

it's even better, but isn't puplished in Australia, so i'm not sure if it will be where you are, but if you try librarys and second hand book stores you should be able to locate a copy.

-Mel

Look at me! I'm a prostitute robot from the future!

Okay this looks like a trip down memory lane...

1. The Fly-Truffler by Gustav Sobin - this seems oddly parallel in nature to the next title...
2. Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - magical realism rules!
4. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
5. The Lover by Marguerite Duras - I know she writes about the same story (her own) over and over, but she does it from so many differing angles...
6. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
7. The Same Sea by Amos Oz
8. Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins
9. The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
10. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
I must add one more...
11. Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar - love the spiraling plotline that can be woven and rewoven, reread in so many different ways... I prefer books that are left without a solid resolution in sight... that way the reader can play around with various endings or continuations in their minds. I am the same way about Tarot Card readings... I don't like things cut and dried. Nebulosity breeds creative minds of the future, for better or for worse.

May the libraries of Borges spiral into infinity...

My mind is made up...not like my bed, which is a mess.

In no particular order, here are some of my favorites:

Arthur C. Clarke - 2001, 2010, 2061, 3001
Douglas Adams - HHGttG, the Dirk Gently series
J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories, A Boy in France
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughter House Five
Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club (currently reading Choke)
H. P. Lovecraft - Herbert West – Reanimator, The Call of Cthulhu, etc

Personally, I don't see why people go nuts for Lord of the Rings.

Well, LOTR simply was one of the first big fantasy novels, and many people who way back in the 60ies and 70ies read it in their childhood and teenager phasis, nowadays really adore it to see a pretty good movie adaption in the movie theathre.

of course, there's the backward effect, too. all those people who didnt know a fuck about fantasy books till LOTR came into movie theatres now think that LOTR is the nonplusultra of anything called fantasy, and even they know all in a sudden all about the genre, even more than someone who started reading SF, fantasy and similar at the very time he DID start with reading.

yeah, there surely is better stuff, like mentioned by myself above ;) - but of course, one has to see the historic patterns. but thats mainly all about it - now see what happenes if someone tries to get the Farseer triology right into movies, THAT would be fun :D

cu, w0lf.

beards are cool. every villain has one!

Um let's see... in no particular order.

Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist
Thomas Harris - Hannibal
Stephen King - It
Anne Rice - Vampire Chronicles
Sir William Shakespeare - Much Ado About Nothing
Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game
Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle In Time
Edgar Allen Poe - The Fall of the House of Usher
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Hobbit

I can come up with so much more but since I can only pick ten I guess I'll stop there.
-ag

"Stop the world! I wanna get off!"

That one is easy. Robert Jordan's books, 1 through 10

Athena, here and there...

1. Sword of Truth Series - Terry Goodkind
2. River God - Wilbur Smith
3. Warlock - Wilbur Smith
4. Salem's Lot - Stephen King
5. Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien
6. Shogun - James Clavell
7. The Far Side - Gary Larson
8. The Stand - Stephen King
9. Gai-Jin - James Clavell
10. Green Eggs and Ham - Dr. Seuss