Books....

My favorite is Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett. I read this every thre years or so. It's good.

Another one I repeat on is Psycho Cybernetics - Dr Maxwell Maltz. Let's me look into my mind and my disposition a little. I recommend this to everyone. Hard to find the original from the 50s.

Also really liked Angela's Ashes, and 'Tis: A Memoir - Two fine books by Frank McCourt.
 
It's been years since I've had the reading bug.

Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune, by Frank Herbert, were among the last of my completed readings. Before that was Stephen King's The Shining.

I had meant to read Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October but lost the bug. I have watched the film about 20 times though... one of my favorites.
 
Some classics that left impressions on me in my younger days:

Steinbeck - “Grapes of Wrath”, “Of Mice and Men.” Probably the best depression era writer ever.

Dostoyevsky- “Crime and Punishment.” Maybe THE original psychological thriller.

Kerouac- “On The Road.” Hippies before there were ever hippies.

I’ll second “Cuckoo’s Nest.” Movie was excellent. Book was better.

“Bonfire of the Vanities.” Movie was atrocious, book was good.

“Catch 22.” Joseph Heller. The ridiculousness of war and the military. (“Something Happened” tries to do the same for Corporate life. Decent, but doesn’t match Catch 22.)
 
andrushkiwt said:
I'll check out the films when I'm finished. Thanks for the idea.

I didn't enjoy reading until not too long ago, actually. I had a bad habit of looking ahead on the next page (right page if I flipped to the left) and I was too anxious to see what happens. Suddenly, it disappeared, and now I can read books like most other people :) I got so caught up in Dragon Teeth, I just couldn't put the books down, one after the other.

There's something about the way you can imagine the characters and story the way YOU perceive it and want it to be, given what the author gives you to work with, of course. I'm a big movie fan as well, but about 8 years ago I started only watching flicks with ratings above a certain mark - there was an across the board parallel to a movie's ratings and how much I liked it. I could often guess its IMDB score within a few points the moment t ended. I figured I might as well just go by the ratings then.

Too many whack directors out there and bad/over acting. With the books, I'm now finding, the directing is up to me. I enjoy this more now.
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In my younger days I use to read books....some because we had to for English or Creative Writing classes, but also because you didn't have on-demand TV and cable with 500 channels and many, many, movie offerings. So a good book was more accessible.

As I got older...most of it had to do with "time". To watch a good 2-3 hour movie wasn't a big drain. To sit and read a novel could take 2-3 days, if you just bang away at it non-stop, but that was/is too hard to pull-off since life rarely gives us that much freedom.
AFA reading a book piecemeal, how many people seem to do...a few pages today...a chapter tomorrow...another next week....UGH!...that's torture for me.
If I read, I have to plow through the whole thing non-stop.
So...I lost interest in devoting 2-3 days to a novel, as I had way too many other interests that were calling me.
I didn't gravitate toward movies simply because of the "time" thing...it's the appeal of the audio/visual impact. With today's cable channels...if you look around, you can still find some of the great movies of the past, and you can also filter through much of the current crap, and find the occasional good movie.

These days, I like reading magazine articles. I can work my way through one quick enough...while sitting in the bathroom. :D
Not to mention...the internet has so much info and content, it too sucks up time...I just ain't got nothin' left for a "good book".
 
miroslav said:
These days, I like reading magazine articles. I can work my way through one quick enough...while sitting in the bathroom. :D
Not to mention...the internet has so much info and content, it too sucks up time...I just ain't got nothin' left for a "good book".
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I'd recommend FlipBoard for this exact purpose. It's an app that sorts through all the online mags and hand delivers you (er, electronically) articles focused ONLY on topics of interest to you that you have previously selected. For example, I searched for the topics NBA, Nirvana, Cobain, Technology, Recording, Mixing, World Events, and so on.... Now, when I open the app, I get a filtered news magazine showing me only articles regarding those topics. They are mostly from big sources, like Time, USA Today, Newsweek, NBC, etc... but sometimes there's lesser known offerings.

Anyhow, that's how I spend my 15 min bathroom breaks at home- cycling through the stories that I know I'm likely to read.
 
I've been reading mostly historical fiction lately.

Conn Iggulden's series on Genghis Kahn is quite excellent.

Poul Anderson's books on Harald Hardrede are quick easy reads - lots of fun

Of course The Game of Thrones books are amazing. I know a lot of people watch the show but the books are exponentially superior. The show does a nice job with character depth and development, the books do that x 10. You might find it hard to believe but George R.R. Martin can really write. It is fine literature, and I don't say that lightly. Anyone who has not read these books should be ashamed of themselves (haha).

Bernard Cornwell's saxon series is pretty cool - about the formation of England. This was made into a mini-series. What a disaster. They royally screwed it up.

Brandon Sanderson writes fantasy - the first two books of the storm light archive are amazing but the third one is a stinker. He really went off the deep end. The first two stand alone nicely though so I can still recommend them.

Andrzej Sapkowski - The Witcher books/novels are a lot of fun. This is straight up fantasy. The short stories are amazing. Short stories are his strength. Highly recommend.

Pillars of the Earth/World Without End - great books.

Red Sparrow was a great book. Spy novel about a Russian ballerina with an advantageous psychological disorder. The movie was utter trash. It's as if they decided to leave out all the most interesting and unique details of the book and just do another shock value violence flick. Ugh.
 
andrushkiwt said:
Been on a summer reading binge. Eight down, two more to go before school starts back up. Not sure how I found the time for all those in between music, work, and home life, not to mention an engagement and two vacations.

Current story is The Day of the Jackal, by Forsythe. Halfway through and completely hooked. The first two chapters or so were filled with too much history and background, for my liking, but the main story is incredible.

Best book this summer, so far, would have to be Dragon Teeth, by Crichton. Barely beat out State of Fear, same author. Andromeda Strain underneath that, rankwise. And a shoutout for Trap the Devil, by Coes.

After the Jackal is Bone Collector. Any rec's? There's an insane amount of pediatric pharmacology and advanced physiology textbooks on the horizon...so I'd like to get these pleasure readings in while I can. :)
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Natural Born Heroes AND Born to Run, really. Both classics by Christopher McDougal.
 
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