Guest MayFlower1 Posted May 17, 2003 Report Share Posted May 17, 2003 UWOMED2005, Thanks for the link. I'll definitely check it out. Regardless of whether the theories proposed in the selfish gene are correct or not it was still a fascinating book! Had me glued for hours. I'll revisit this thread once I've had a chance to check out some of the stuff you've pointed me to. Thanks. Peter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mying Posted May 17, 2003 Report Share Posted May 17, 2003 Jerika81: I'm a bit of a series fiend myself. Since you mention surviving Lord of the Rings (something I can't do) have you tried any of these fantasy/sci-fi? I suspect you have, since they're so popular, but just in case... Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time -- the first couple books are excellent. Each book is positively massive, and there are currently 10 of them. You may tire of the storyline in the 8th or 9th but then again it depends on you. Certainly has it's own massive following. David (& Leigh) Eddings -- any of the fantasy series. Lightly humourous dialogue, standard fantasy storyline, good character development. Spider Robinson -- cute, amusing, witty, fun even just for the Toronto references. Generally well-liked by anybody who likes Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams -- well, see above. I'm betting you've read them all already. Christopher Stasheff -- the "Wizard in Rhyme" series is witty if only for its play on words and scientific principles (I rather liked when Maxwell's Demon came to life). But stop after book 4. It goes seriously and very badly downhill from there. I don't even know how this stuff goes to print. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest marbledust Posted May 17, 2003 Report Share Posted May 17, 2003 I absolutely loved "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry, definately one of the best books I have read in a long time. His other 2 novels are also very good. Staying with the theme of India, I am currently reading "A Suitable Boy" by Vikram Seth. Anybody else have any suggestions for books about India or by Indian authors? It's my new reading obsession. Nick Hornby is a good choice if you are in the mood for some light, comedic novels. I liked "How to be Good" the best. "The Corrections" by Jonathon Franzen was also a good read. I'm also a big Harry Potter fan. I can't wait for the new book to come out June 21! It's gonna be huge!! (~650 pages) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bearman14 Posted May 17, 2003 Report Share Posted May 17, 2003 Jerika81: I would concur with mying about the David/Leigh Eddings books. Start with the Belgariad (5 books in series). Their character development is fantastic. I would caution reading anything by Robert Jordan. I started reading this series several years ago, and I cannot stand it anymore. It is clearly (in my eyes) a case of an author going to the well WAY too many times -- this series should have ended 5 books ago. But it makes too much money for the publishers (and the author), and the fans of this series are absolutely dogmatic in their belief that it is the greatest, blah, blah, blah... "The Farseer Trilogy" by Robin Hobb is a great read. Really cool twists (female author writing from first person perspective of a 15 yr old boy), and original plot -- not another Tolkien knock-off (re: Terry Brooks). On a lighter note, "The Dark Elf Trilogy" by R.A. Salvatore is one of my favorite series (after LOTR) and again has a really cool perspective on the protagonist. "The Black Company" series by Glen Cook is another original and non-typical fantasy series. Away from the Fantasy/Sci-Fi realm, "Trinity" by Leon Uris is really good (actually, all of his books are great), and "Sho-Gun" by James Clavell is quite gripping (if you can get by the cheesy 1980's mini-series version of it). Good summer reading -- the kind of books you'd pack along on a backpacking trip. Bearman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bcdentalgirl Posted May 17, 2003 Report Share Posted May 17, 2003 Yay! I'm going straight over to the library to pick up some of the books mentioned to relax with on the back porch! Me, I like stories about freaks, weirdos, outsiders so I recommend... GEEK LOVE (about a family of circus freaks) ASK THE DUST (about a loser trying to be writer and lover and failing at both) FALL ON YOUR KNEES (natch) AND THE ASS SAW THE ANGEL (inbred hillbilly darkness) SHE'S COME UNDONE (another Oprah book, but still good - very funny) COSMOS (BY Carl of course, my favorite book of all time) YOU CAN'T WIN (true story about hobo/hustler life in the 20's - partly takes place in BC...scenes of the opium dens of 20's chinatown, Vancouver) Have a great summer, read lots! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest monkey Posted May 17, 2003 Report Share Posted May 17, 2003 i plan to read up on most of these books u guys have recommended. who'da thunk it that a premed forum would be the best place for me to get some Interesting NON medical reading suggestions from! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UWOMED2005 Posted May 17, 2003 Report Share Posted May 17, 2003 Yeah, Eddings was an awesome read. What was the followup to the Belgariad? Was it the Mallorean? Man, I read those books in grade 7 and 8. . . 12/13 years ago. That's half my life! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest IRNBRUD Posted May 17, 2003 Report Share Posted May 17, 2003 marbledust, Check out The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. I thought it was an absolutely beautiful book....and funny enough it is another Booker Prize winner IB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ploughboy Posted May 17, 2003 Report Share Posted May 17, 2003 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Jerika et al... As a card-carrying geek and lifelong bookworm (with the -9.00 prescription to prove it), allow me to recommend a few more titles that haven't been mentioned... Neal Stephenson - Very unique writing style that you'll either love or hate. Characters are a little flat (females especially) but he manages to sneak a brief primer on geeky subjects into his books, while keeping the reader entertained. Recommendations - "Cryptonomicon" (code making and breaking), "Diamond Age" (nanotech), "Snow Crash" (internet). Warning: the man could not write a good ending to save his life. Vernor Vinge - "A Deepness In The Sky" and "A Fire Upon The Deep". Connie Willis - "To Say Nothing of the Dog". Cute, light and imaginative, it won the Hugo a couple of years back. Find yourself a nice spot in the shade, open up a wobbly pop and enjoy... re: The Mallorean - ugh. If you've read the Belgariad, you've read the Mallorean. re: Wheel of Time - like bearman, it didn't do much for me and I bailed early. However those who like it, like it a lot... pb -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQE+xtFi/HNgbK3bC2wRAh0sAJ4xVH1HmC5uMxD1UzmMpsFagxJJVwCePjmG 10OaZ5CEQ2GA4SRvF8otnDc= =0fVW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest coldspell Posted May 18, 2003 Report Share Posted May 18, 2003 awesome thread, especially now that we have a bit of time to read... to add my two cents, the best book ever, all time: on the road, jack kerouac. someone mentioned kinsella: try magic time or shoeless joe, especially if you're a baseball fan. another absolutely great book is evening, by susan minot, especially if you like atwood or ann-marie macdonald. lust and other stories, by susan minot as well, is a quick, beautiful read. and if you're a hockey fan, read the game by ken dryden, the quintessential sports book. read it and weep over the fact that the leafs are dumb enough to fire him.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dogeatdog12 Posted May 18, 2003 Report Share Posted May 18, 2003 last exist to brooklyn by hubert selby jr. or something like that. it was an amazing book Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest IRNBRUD Posted May 18, 2003 Report Share Posted May 18, 2003 coldspell, I finally read "On the Road" last year. I had really been looking forward to it and it of course came highly recommended. Can I be honest? This is quite possibly the worst book that I have read in a long long time! I was totally shocked and dismayed at how boring I found this "beatnick classic". I have read other books of this genre and always enjoyed them. Could you provide some insight into exactly what makes this the best book of all time? I would love to be convinced to re-read! IB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest coldspell Posted May 18, 2003 Report Share Posted May 18, 2003 hi! well, i would also love to be able to convince you to give on the road another chance. it's my favourite book in the world, and my defense of it may get a little long, so i apologise in advance. i guess the best place to start is to situate its publication in american history. the fifties were a time of incredible political conservatism - anticommunism was at the forefront of american politics (mccarthy, nixon just starting out), and liberalism, and the left generally, was suppressed, even in academic circles. the first glimmers of dissonance came from american sociologists: william white (the organization man) and c wright mills (white collar) and others painted a bleak picture of american society, describing a culture "bored at work, restless at play", a culture obsessed with consumption and belonging, getting its taste from the mass media. americans, they argued, were trapped in suburbia, obsessed with fulfilling the narrow idea of the american dream: a car, a middle management gig, and backyard barbeques. and then came on the road. kerouac rejected the conservative values of the day, and in his story of moving west to san francisco, writes a love leter detailing what america could be. sal and dean reject the ordinary, and embrace the freedom and the journey that the american experience is supposed to be about, creating their own vision. they move west, just like american history is a story of moving west, but instead of taming the frontier and acquiring land, they smoke and drink and are absolutely free from the society that binds them. the writing style is so unique: absolutely fresh, lyrical, stream of consciousness, unpretentious writing. sal paradise, the narrator, uses these long, melodic elliptical sentences to describe farmers from north dakota. he wants to feel everything, do everything, love everything, which i think gets at the feeling people in their early twenties have. he describes hobos as having more passion than nietzsche-quoting intellectuals, which represents the democritisation of culture, and how everything is beautiful, including the back of a flatbed truck; it doesn't have to be considered as such by the intellectual elite. kerouac creates an american vision that is what the beats were all about. it's funny, you can track his love for america by watching how many times the characters stop for pie, a typical symbol of americana. on the road simultaneously undercuts the "american dream" and offers another dream of what it could be. Dean Moriarty speaks in quick, powerful bursts, which is a neat counterpoint to sal's rhapsodising. between the two of them, they create an amazing rhythm that is seen in beat poetry and jazz. the whole book is almost pulsating with passion, burning with fire and energy. On the road set the stage for the 60s revolution, in a lot of ways. if you read ginsberg's poem america, or listen to simon and garfunkel's song america or any bob dylan, if you track the ideology of the Students for a Democratic Society movement or the rise of rock and roll, it all has its roots i think in the free spiritedness, idealism and rejection of fifties values seen in on the road. so at the end of this longest post ever, i hope i've managed to convince you to give it another go, or anyone else to read it. it's a damn good book! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jerika81 Posted May 18, 2003 Report Share Posted May 18, 2003 Thanks for all the advice, now I have lots of options to choose from over the summer. I actually haven't read a lot of the books people mentioned. I have read the two books Poughboy mentioned by Vernor Vinge and I agree, they are both really good. And if anyone else is in to sci fi I have a few other recommendations, although Orson Scott Card is still the first author I would recommend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UWOMED2005 Posted May 18, 2003 Report Share Posted May 18, 2003 Yeah, I loved "On the Road" as well. I think the backdrop for me reading it helped - I had just finished up an elective in Internal Medicine in Geneva, and I decided to travel Europe by randomly grabbing buses and/or trains to locations I only decided on when I arrived at the station. In this situation, the book was pretty inspiring. Also, being in medical school it's easy to get too caught up in your career. Almost everyone else is! Reading "On the Road" reminded me that not everyone is caught up in the 9 to 5 (ok, bad example for medicine when sometimes you're working 9 until 9 the next morning when you're on call ) and there's nothing wrong with that. . . life is about more than your career, and different opinions shouldn't be rejected because they're different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mying Posted May 20, 2003 Report Share Posted May 20, 2003 Here's a list of the top 100 books as voted by the British public for a BBC poll. I thought it might help spur some people's memories about books they'd always wanted to read, or maybe give some new ideas... 1984, George Orwell The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll Animal Farm, George Orwell Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer The BFG, Roald Dahl Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks Black Beauty, Anna Sewell Bleak House, Charles Dickens Brave New World, Aldous Huxley Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres Catch 22, Joseph Heller The Catcher In The Rye, JD Salinger Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky David Copperfield, Charles Dickens Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson Dune, Frank Herbert Emma, Jane Austen Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy The Godfather, Mario Puzo Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck Great Expectations, Charles Dickens The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, JK Rowling Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling His Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien Holes, Louis Sachar I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer Katherine, Anya Seton The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, CS Lewis Little Women, Louisa May Alcott Lord Of The Flies, William Golding The Lord Of The Rings, JRR Tolkien Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton Magician, Raymond E Feist The Magus, John Fowles Matilda, Roald Dahl Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden Middlemarch, George Eliot Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie Mort, Terry Pratchett Night Watch, Terry Pratchett Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck On The Road, Jack Kerouac One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez Perfume, Patrick Süskind Persuasion, Jane Austen The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving Pride And Prejudice, Jane Austen The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot The Ragged Trousered Philantrhopists, Robert Tressell Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret History, Donna Tartt The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher The Stand, Stephen King The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens Tess Of The D'urbervilles, Thomas Hardy The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson The Twits, Roald Dahl Ulysses, James Joyce Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson War And Peace, Leo Tolstoy Watership Down, Richard Adams The Wind In The Willows, Kenneth Grahame Winnie-the-Pooh, AA Milne The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jerika81 Posted May 20, 2003 Report Share Posted May 20, 2003 Thanks Mying. Just wanted to say that I love Roald Dahl and I'm glad to see that 4 of his books made the list. In my Queens interview when they asked which dead person I'd like to have dinner with I said Roald Dahl hands down. What an imagination! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UWOMED2005 Posted May 20, 2003 Report Share Posted May 20, 2003 I'm surprised there's not more James Joyce (ie "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"), and that Ulysses isn't higher on the list. I thought the general consensus was that Joyce was the greatest English Language author this century (which supposedly has been dominated by Spanish authors like Marquez.) Nice to see the BFG is high on the list. That's my favourite Dahl. And the inclusion of Harry Potter leads me to conclude I've really got to get around to reading those books. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mying Posted May 20, 2003 Report Share Posted May 20, 2003 The list is in alphabetical order by title. In order for Ulysses to be higher on the list it would have to be called Alysses or something. Apparently, proportionate numbers of younger readers were polled, so my slippery grasp on statistics tells me that children's books would have a more-than-fair chance of edging out more mature reading for the top 100 places. And... 1) Harry Potter *is* that good, and yes you *do* have to read it. 2) I can't stand James Joyce. I can't stand Tolkien either so maybe I'm just broken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest peachy Posted May 20, 2003 Report Share Posted May 20, 2003 I enjoy Harry Potter as much as the next person (book 5 preordered ), but I don't really think it's better than tons of other children's SF/Fantasy, like the "Dark is Rising" series, Monica Hughes' stuff, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UWOMED2005 Posted May 20, 2003 Report Share Posted May 20, 2003 Whoops, my bad! Actually, it's kind of cool the books aren't ranked. Otherwise, I'm sure some people would have argued number 4 should have been number 5 and the like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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