I decided to read books again after a while.. right now I'm reading Last Man Standing by David Baldacci.. I bought it 'coz the cover reminded me of Max Payne (no kidding)... and I'm enjoying it right now..

Anyhoo, I was wondering if anyone can recommend some books.. I wanna read at least one book per month.. Right now I'm looking for something funny or something entertaining, something that can make me laugh... thanks so much... :biggrin:

another bookworm on the loose.... :D

but im more on self help books :D i have read a few fiction, but more on classic ...hehe.

the cover looks interesting. whats it all about?

Its I'm lazy to type so I'll just copy and paste it the synopsis.. hehe.. :biggrin:

A brilliant new action adventure from one of the world's leading thriller writers. When his hostage rescue team is wiped out in a brutal set-up, Web London is the last man standing. Now he just has to keep it that way... It took seven seconds for Web London to lose everything: his friends, his team, his reputation. Point man of the FBI's super-elite Hostage Rescue Team, Web roared into a blind alley toward a drug leader's lair, only to meet a high-tech, custom-designed ambush that killed everyone around him. Now coping with the blame-filled words of anguished widows and the suspicions of colleagues, Web tries to put his life back together. To do so, he must discover why he was the one man who lived through the ambush - and find the only other person who came out of the alley alive...a ten-year-old boy who has since disappeared. Last Man Standing is an explosive psychological thriller about a man desperate to find answers - from the secret terrors he has kept for himself to his unbearable guilt. His fight to save himself and those he cares for will come at a high cost... and threaten everything he has grown to believe in. With vividly realized characters and a breathtaking pace, this is another spellbinding novel from David Baldacci, one of today's best storytellers...

and there ya go.. :sweatface:

Hmmm...might as well post my own favorite books:

"Memoirs of a Geisha" by Arthur Golden
"Waiting" by Ha Jin
"Lizard" by Banana Yoshimoto
"Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by H. Murakami (don't remember his name anymore...this was a long time ago)

there really is a book with that title? :eek:

anyhoo, We have a small library right here. A lot of books about gardening and cooking :rolleyes:

I used to have a book collection that could rival National Bookstore :biggrin: But my favorites were:

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo
Women Who Run With the Wolves - Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Como Agua Para Chocolate - Laura Esquivel
The Invitation - Jude Devereaux
Wishes - Jude Devereaux
Love Me Forever - Johanna Lindsey
Defy Not The Heart - Johanna Lindsey
The Wind Dancer - Iris Johansen
The Kitchen God's Wife - Amy Tan
The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende
The Woman Who Had Three Navels - Nick Joaquin

And all of Jessica Zafra's books

At the moment I'm reading:

a) Flash Site workshop - Ken Milburn & Oncall Interactive,
b) Selected Poems of William Wordsworth
c) Le Hobbit - French adaptation of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit
d) Various Detective stories - by Various Writers (including Edgar Allan Poe)
e) Don Quixote - Cervantes
f) A Brief History of the Universe - Stephen Hawking

I've got another 6 or 7 books I bought last month and this month I will start on once I finish the above mentioned :)

Oh yeah, I'm looking for a good quantum physics text book. Know any?

My recommended books (at the top of my head):

100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Like Water for Chocolate - Laura Esquivel
American Gods - Neil Gaiman

Edit: Oops! Didn't notice that sky already has Like Water for Chocolate in her list. :)

Wooohh...Skysenshi seems to like the classics and English literature types. I have not read any of the books on your list, but then again, I stopped reading much after getting anime crazed. :sad:

Books still pending:
LOTR - JRR Tolkien
Soul Music - Terry Prachett (disc world series)
and a bunch of battletech books I'm lazy to read since the clans lost their home planet.....

Not reading nowadays, anyway, I will be getting this book: Another Universe.. It's all those science theories etc. Including blackholes or time travel etc. Another one I recommended was Biology Computer(?) or something.. Can't remember, it was great.

The last book I read was on Haiku/Tanka etc, I posted the entire book online, check out my website's link page. They are well translated. :agree:

i love reading books too :D


books that i've read or my fave books:

my fave!!!
alexandre dumas
count of monte cristo


jrr tolkien
the hobbit
lotr books

amy tan books
joy luck club
bonesetter's daughter
kitchen god's wife

bram stoker
dracula

murasaki shikibu
tale of genji

arthur golden
memoirs of a geisha

leo tolstoy
war and peace (but i have just read 1/3 of the book but it's good :D )

jude mcnaught books (almost all of them)
kat martin
jude devereaux
sidney sheldon
nicholas sparks (a walk to remember, the notebook)
kristin hannah (mystic lake- a real tearjecker! :bawling: very good plot!)


- i forgot the other books :)

Soul Music is hilarious! Music with Rocks In! :laugh:

Terry Pratchett is a mad genius, or angry scientist or something. I've read the entire DiscWorld series and I can't wait for another one. I have the entire series.

Have you read his stories about the Guards? Men At Arms is by far the best one of his series :D I just love Corporal Carrot!

That's my favorite classic! Too bad I haven't seen the movie. When I read that book, I thought, "Hey! Did Jose Rizal just copy this book?" A lot of similarities with Noli and Fili.

good thing you haven't seen the movie!!! the movie sucks, they altered it and made it into a fairy tale type of ending. :angry:

my rizal prof. said that rizal read that book and he loved it. his idol was alexandre dumas :) so, i guess that explains it :D

Huh? Count of Monte Cristo? Fairy tale? Some people are just too good in making bad movie versions of good books.

yup, they changed almost all of it. if mr. dumas saw the movie, he would rise up from the grave and kill those producers, directors, etc. and all those who butchered his book :) hehe!

Ernest Hemingway
Farewell to Arms - This is a great book. It shows Hemingway's journalistic style which is very rare nowadays and his stoic philosophy. Don't read this if you're into books with happy endings. Tragic.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Da Man!)
100 Years of Solitude - I never thought I'd finish this so soon. And it's selling now. Basically, a saga or whatever of the Buendias. There's much passion in the characters (which is a trademark of Marquez and most Latin authors). And the magical realism is so cool. But if you're meticuluous enough, you may find a typographical error in the copies sold here.

Of Love and Other Demons - This is a MUST READ! If you're into love without the mushy stuff, this is it. Intense! But I'm not talking really about the making love part, Sierva and Delaura's love is simply intense. Tragic.

Laura Esquivel
Like Water for Chocolate - Passion is the key. (D@mn that word, passion!) You may find spontaneous combustion really cool. And the cooking, too.

to be continued...

Yeah, Latin American writers have a certain way of telling stories which only they can do. Must have something to do with their culture.

Niccolo Machiavelli
The Prince - This book deals with dangerous knowledge. Why? You may find this book evil. But if you really try and understand what the author is saying, you'll find this very useful. Geniuses are often misunderstood.

Sun Tzu
The Art of War - Tactics and strategies. You can apply Sun Tzu's knowledge anywhere. Check out "The Sheathed Sword." It tells you how to win the war without even fighting. That's victory.

JD Salinger
Catcher in the Rye - This is a must-read. It really starts off as very bleak and depressing and angsty. But try to understand how it ended. You may be enlightened. You may want to be a catcher in the rye.

Clive Barker
Weaveworld - Scary. A contemporary of Terry Pratchett. Check the Three Sisters, if you're a dude, you'd be a lot thankful they really don't exist.

Neil Gaiman
American Gods - Idols, idols, idols. A cataclysmic battle between ancient and modern gods and goddesses. If you're mushy, there's a really beautiful piece that Shadow's wife told him. If you want to find out without reading the book, let me know.

Pablo Neruda
I forgot the title of the book. But check out his poetry. Intense! (Love this word.)


So many books, so little time.

Sheesh! I forgot:

Victor Hugo
Les Miserables - A book with existentialism. You may actually reflect what you live for.

Dante Alighieri
Inferno - The best book among the Divine Comedy Trilogy.

Whew!

What? I can't remember.

Gaiman is my favorite, though I currently do not have the money to go out and buy his books. I read his comic books, though. The Sandman series was great, and so was Death.

For anyone interested in electronic texts of classical work, there is Project Guttenberg on the net, which features stories that are public domain. You can find Nathaniel Hawthorne, Katherine Mansfield, Oscar Wilde, Frank Stockton and many, many, others. There are short stories and also complete novels like Alice in Wonderland, The Illiad, and stuff. Of course, nothing beats curling up with a good book.

Okay, my list goes:

Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Different Seasons, The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King

The Sandman Series by Gaiman (I know, these are comics, but they're so damn good)

The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer

The Catcher In The Rye by JD Salinger

ummm...can't really recommend anything else right now. There are so-so and bad ones as well, of which I'm sure you're not interested.

Oh god, so many ... here are my favorites:

The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion (J.R.R. Tolkien)
We the Living (Ayn Rand)
The Queen of the Damned (Anne Rice)
East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
The Book of the Dun Cow (Walter Wangerin, Jr.)
Watership Down (Richard Adams)
The Dragonlance Legends (Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandré Dumas)
David Copperfield (Charles Dickens)
The Iliad, The Odyssey (Homer, translated by W.H.D. Rouse)
The Dwelling Place (Catherine Cookson)
Flight of the Falcon, Men of Men, The Angels Weep (Wilbur Smith)
The Icewind Dale Trilogy, The Dark Elf Trilogy (R.A. Salvatore)

... there are others, but this is plenty for now. :sweatface:

There's this short story on the SF and Fantasy magazine compilation which begins (and ends) with:

The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door...

the writer said that the two sentences in itself are a complete horror story. Dunno, just thought that it was interesting to note.

Ah.....brings back memories. :) (its like a kiddie story.....but i dunno why i loved this story*sigh*)
Hope you read the full version and not those short ones.I just loved the chapter:Agnes and I.....i almost cried when Agnes told davie boy about darla's last wish. :bawling:

Just curious, anyone liked Through the looking glass? Was my fave. :)

Ah yes ... but his late wife's name was Dora, Blublu (sorry, the nitpicker in me is showing :sweatface: ).

My favorite chapter was the one about the storm, when Ham tried to save Steerforth and they both died ... :bawling:

mmm...The Lord of the Dreaming, Neil Gaiman once said that one of the strangest characters in English Literature is Alice.

I believe he has a point. She can multiply in n-based numbers, her logic fuddled and her lines are totally weird. It disturbed me somewhat that it was a children's book.

How ironic that Neil Gaiman's new children's book, according to some reviews, is disturbing. (For the adults at least.)

A bit off-topic, but anyway ...

I read a newspaper article a couple of months ago that Lewis Carroll was, er, obsessed with Alice Liddell (the real counterpart of his fictional Alice). Yes, in that way ... which may explain why the character is so strange. :sweatface:

You mean Coraline? Yes, I read the reviews, and it was scary. This girl went through a looking glass and found no one there. When she returned to her world, her parents were replaced with the alternate world's version; exactly the same, yet with big black buttons for eyes.

Can't wait to get it!

He also did adult fairy tales. Try and find "Snow, Glass, Apples" for a great redux of Snow White.

There was this one story he did, which newborn babies are treated like cattle. Most probably in his anthology, Smoke and Mirrors.

Sigh, can't wait to get a job and actually buy these things.[I]

Yep. I've read that. :)

Hmmmm..... lessseeee....

Anything by Robert A. Henlein.... Stranger in a Strange Land, especially.

Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard..... I know, I know... you've seen the movie, and you thought it sucked big time. It did. The book doesn't. I'd call it one of, if not THE, best sci-fi books I've ever read! Give it a try!

The Left Behind series by LaHaye and Jenkins. Awesome stuff!

Anything by Piers Anthony. The Xanth books are great, but the Incarnations series was better...

Mercedes Lackey is a good fantasy writer, too... even has some yaoi stuff in it! lol

LOOOOOVE the Discworld series, by Terry Pratchett. British humor at it's best.

.... Dang, there's just so many, I could go on for days...
I gotta say though, out of all the "classical literature" I was forced to read in high school, I only liked All Quiet on the Western Front. My tip: Avoid Wuthering Hights like the plague! You were warned..... :pukeface:

Awk ... I forgot to mention the Pern books by Anne McCaffrey (Dragonriders of Pern trilogy, Harper Hall trilogy, etc.) - a must for anyone who loves dragons. More sci-fi than fantasy, though ...

*falls off chair*
Araraa.... :laugh:
Yup, you're right.....its Dora...silly ol' me! :blush: :sweatface:
*hides under rock and reads "How to Remember Girl's names for Dummies" :devil: *

note:I pitied Ham.......he was a nice guy...and had to die like that....I wonder if he'd jump in the sea anyway if he knew it was Steerforth?

Bram Stoker's Dracula...Gosh i've become addicted in horror after i watched Hellsing!!

Left behind series :ok:
i have read it from left behind to desecration. i heard that the new volume has been released already. i cant wait to read it :D

WATERSHIP DOWN!!! :bounce: :nuts: i sooo agree with you there! :agree: i got the chance to read it when my friend lent it to me, and i only got a copy of the book when my parents came home from New York this summer! the bookstores in the Phils don't seem to be keeping this in stock anymore. :(

to Shun: i've never heard of Lizard before. what's it about?

btw, all the other banana yoshimoto books that i've read are good. so far, there's Kitchen, NP, and Asleep. :)

and to all those interested:

There's a BOOKFAIR ongoing at the Megatrade Hall in SM Megamall. i went there yesterday, but i didn't get to browse much, and i don't know how long this will last. :sweatface: i still think it's worth checking out. entrance fees are Php 5 and Php 4 for adults and students respectively! :happy:

it's from august 31 to sept. 8 (this sunday) :)

I think Coraline might actually be a great book. The plot is okay. And we all know how Gaiman delivers his stories. I actually downloaded the screensavers. They're cool! :biggrin:

Even the book's art looks great! (But of course, it's Dave McKean.) :biggrin:

(Of course I don't have a copy of the book yet. I saw some artworks in their site.)

Finally! Someone who's also a Piers Anthony fan!!!

I got hooked on his Apprentice Adept series, and I've got most of his other works bar the Xanth series (too many books. I usually go out and buy whole set when I buy books.) I've been collecting all his earlier stories, like Protho Plus (about a dentist who gets kidnapped by space aliens because they need him to fix their teeth). The Incarnations series is really good.

The shitty thing is that it's kinda hard to find his books - other than the Xanth ones over here in Malaysia. :( I usually find his stuff in Bargain shops.

Oh yeah another book I recommend if you like fantasy is Magician by Raymond E. Feist. (i think - :laugh: ) I lost the book. Darnit! I wanna read it again!

I'm into romance at the moment... SIgh...
Why dont you read "A Walk to Remember"? I love it! :blush:

A couple years ago I went through an intensive four semester Humanities program in which I read lots of the classics, and subsequently got burned out with reading anything academic. This particularly bad since I still have a couple more years to go. :sweatface:

A few books I've recently read and enjoyed.

The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell (A well written examination of the point in time that triggers a social epidemic.)

We Were Soldiers Once... and Young - Gen. Hal Moore (ret.) (Superb first hand account of the Battle of Ia Drang during the Vietnam War. If you're interested about what modern combat is like, this is the book to read.)

Black Hawk Down - Mark Bowden (Another interesting account of modern warfare.)

I was a big fan of the Xanth books too ... I have a lot of those! After a while, though, the puns lost their hold on me ... that's why they dropped off my favorite books list. Still re-read them from time to time. I also have all the Apprentice Adept (Stile) books.

As for the rest of Anthony's works, I haven't been able to find them in bargain bookstalls yet. :sweatface:

Too bad they can't make the Apprentice Adept series into movies. :sweatface: what with most of the people running around naked most of the time. :laugh: especially Sheen. :devil: :blush:

I can't find them at all the bargains I go to either, but when I do, it's like winning a small lottery. :)

Oh yeah, um... I have to confess that I didn't purchase the first 3 apprentice adept books. I stole them from my high school disciplinary teacher's office. :sweatface:

Elfboy, le genie criminel. (Elfboy, the criminal genius - not the criminal genie, rub me :blush: ).

I watched the movie. I liked it. But my sis told me that there were many differences between the book and movie. I'll read it sometime to know. :)

watch it first before reading it...the book is much more good than the movie. and if you read the book first then watched the movie, you might get disappointed. happens in most novels that's made into movies.

True, true. :) But you know what, I've read the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas and then watched the movie, although there were a lot of differences, I actually liked the movie! :biggrin:

ugh..don't even get me started on "Queen of the Damned"... :rolleyes: