Great Books

[finlma]

I always find that the best books I read are those recommended to me by people. I thought I'd start a thread on great books that people have read.

The best book I've read is Surviving The Killing Fields by Haing S Ngor

[tiktok]

One book I've recommended/loaned to loads of people without ever hearing a negative comment back is 'Anthropology' by Dan Rhodes, a very witty and clever collection of short stories that can be read in under an hour.

Oh and anything by Kurt Vonnegut :)

[exile]

a favourite of mine is the catcher in the rye by j.d salinger or shogun by james clavell and a must is mccarthays bar (r.i.p)

[ken foree]

anything by don delillo. robert stone is good, best book i read recently was 'cloud atlas' by (i think) david mitchell. bob dylan's 'chronicles' v. good too

[harry crumb]

I read Holes by Louis Sacher recently. Its a kids book but i really enjoyed it. It was easy reading and made me laugh. Thats good enough for me.

[Risteard]

I know a lot of bookworms mightn't like it but The DA Vinci Code is a hell of an adventure.

[Plastic Paddy]

Well, I've never come across a bad word against The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Mario Puzo, the author of The Godfather, portrays his lead characters in most of his books as avid readers of said tome. That's high praise indeed. :)

:D PP

[green goblin]

Iain M. banks. The sc-fi Culture stuff, rather than the Wasp Factory and so on.

Loved Salinger's stuff as a young man. Haven't read it for years, hope it's as good as I remember.
Hi-Fidelity made me laugh out loud. I think Hornby's a good comedy writer.

Comics, though. Frank Miller's Daredevil, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, Grant Morrisson's Doom Patrol and Animal Man, all as good as anything in any other medium, really.

Favourite Book of all time is, sadly, still going to be "Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with the Daleks", by David Whitaker :o .

[fosterdollar]

Iain M. banks. The sc-fi Culture stuff, rather than the Wasp Factory and so on.
Haven't met anyone who's into both Iain and Iain M. yet. It's the Iain Banks stuff i would go for but that's just personal taste.

Christmas reads for me (Don't get much chance to get into a good book until i get some free time):

Mr. Nice - Howard Marks
Ryanair (Biog. of Michael O'Leary) - Siobhan Creaton
Iain Banks - Crow Road
Red Mist: Roy Keane and the Football Civil War - A Fan's Notes - Conor O'Callaghan
P.S. I Scored The Bridesmaids - Ross O'Carroll Kelly

should point out that i have a particular interest in biographies and non-fiction in general

[ken foree]

Comics, though. Frank Miller's Daredevil, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, Grant Morrisson's Doom Patrol and Animal Man, all as good as anything in any other medium, really.

Favourite Book of all time is, sadly, still going to be "Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with the Daleks", by David Whitaker :o .

did you read/like preacher by garth ennis. i was fairly bonked on the head by v for vendetta and watchmen by alan moore. stood up halfway to literature proper as you alluded to; any comic creator that shows a copy of thomas pyncheon's 'gravity's rainbow' on a bookshelf has to be doing something right.

..and i've been itching for some baker/davidson era dr. who lately i must also confess! sad sad sad man

[ken foree]

Fyodor Dostoevsky.

nostrovia to that man, his name alone is a good read

[pete]

No idea about great books.

Currently reading 'The Gate' (Francois Bizot), Biog of frenchman in Cambodia when Khmer Rouge took over.

Recent reads
- Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
- Touching the Void (was then mad into Docu/Drama for ch4 (i wouldn't recommend)
- Bringing the House Down (Ben Mezrich) card counting student scam on casinos (very good).

[Bluebeard]

This is a great thread - I absolutely love a good book, and I'm looking forward to the recommendations. :)

Grahame Greene is one of my favorite writers - such atmosphere and the plots are generally pretty damn good too. The End of the Affair is just fantastic, beats socks off the film (which isn't too bad for the most part), or The Quiet American - a pretty good adaptation, but again, you miss so much with the book.

Philip Roth's The Great American Novel is possibly the best (and funniest) sports realted fictional novel I've read (Baseball being the sport).

Douglas Adams is always a good read if you like Sci Fi and humour

Of the non-fictional, try Greg Palast's Best Democracy that Money Can Buy (tempted to say No Logo, but this was terrifying AND funny), or Jon Ronson's Them: Adventures with Extremists (the section where he goes to Cameroon with "Big Ian" is priceless alone)

[Karlos]

Personal Favourites

Donnie Brasco by Joseph Pistone
American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis (any by this author generally)
Brilliant Orange by David Winner
Charlie & The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (for our younger readers!)
anything by Philip K. Dick!

[ken foree]

This is a great thread - I absolutely love a good book, and I'm looking forward to the recommendations. :)

Grahame Greene is one of my favorite writers - such atmosphere and the plots are generally pretty damn good too. The End of the Affair is just fantastic, beats socks off the film (which isn't too bad for the most part), or The Quiet American - a pretty good adaptation, but again, you miss so much with the book.

Philip Roth's The Great American Novel is possibly the best (and funniest) sports realted fictional novel I've read (Baseball being the sport).

Douglas Adams is always a good read if you like Sci Fi and humour

Of the non-fictional, try Greg Palast's Best Democracy that Money Can Buy (tempted to say No Logo, but this was terrifying AND funny), or Jon Ronson's Them: Adventures with Extremists (the section where he goes to Cameroon with "Big Ian" is priceless alone)

whoa, dig the taste here. roth is cool, him and delillo are into the baseball it seems. roth just put out a new one about lindbergh the flying nazi sympathizer and an alternate reality u.s. of a. dunno if you've read it but 'infinite jest' by david foster wallace is apparently pretty hilarious and about tennis! PALAST is a great man no one on these shores listens to but should.

always wondered about 'the quiet american' too, had it in my hands pre-chrimbo as a prize for someone.

other rec's:

non-fiction:
eiger dreams, into the wild, into thin air, under the banner of heaven - all by mountain climber/writer john krakauer ('into thin air' his desc. of the '96 everest disasters - great, and f*ckin freaky)

david sedaris' stuff is usually funny

'only a game' - eamonn dunphy, sometimes a dirty word, maybe it'll show up with * * * * through it ;)

fiction:
white noise (not the silly movie with michael keaton), underworld - don delillo, my faackin favorite :D

crying of lot 49 - thomas pyncheon

okay this post is already too long by half.

[Bluebeard]

whoa, dig the taste here. roth is cool, him and delillo are into the baseball it seems. roth just put out a new one about lindbergh the flying nazi sympathizer and an alternate reality u.s. of a. dunno if you've read it but 'infinite jest' by david foster wallace is apparently pretty hilarious and about tennis!

Haven't read it but it's on the list, and the DF Wallace has been added now ;)


always wondered about 'the quiet american' too, had it in my hands pre-chrimbo as a prize for someone.

Definitely worth a look - good reading and the usual moral cruxes to carry. Strangely the main characters in this are NOT Catholics, though there are one or two towards the background



crying of lot 49 - thomas pyncheon

heard a lot about Pynchon, not so big here as in the states, and personally as elusive as Salinger I believe. Is his other stuff worth rating?

[green goblin]

did you read/like preacher by garth ennis. i was fairly bonked on the head by v for vendetta and watchmen by alan moore. stood up halfway to literature proper as you alluded to; any comic creator that shows a copy of thomas pyncheon's 'gravity's rainbow' on a bookshelf has to be doing something right.

..and i've been itching for some baker/davidson era dr. who lately I must also confess! sad sad sad man

Ennis is a great writer. Very funny, astute bloke. He was great when he was 18, doing Troubled Souls in the eighties with John Macrea, and he's got better since. Although I do struggle with blasphemy, I adored Preacher, nearly injuring myself with laughter several times. V was a cracking read too, but I find Moore's later stuff less rewarding. Didn't really dig The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

New series of Who starts sometime at Easter. More excited about it than I can say.

[Roo69]

Iain Banks - Crow Road


Is that the same as the TV series they made a few years back ?

[fosterdollar]

Is that the same as the TV series they made a few years back ?
The very one. Both TV series and book excellent :cool:

[green goblin]

For horror, HP Lovecraft's 'Shadow Over Innsmouth' is a great collection of stories. Peter Straub's 'Ghost Story' was pretty damn good too.

And for classics, try Antoine de St. Exupery's 'The Little Prince'. A beautiful story.

And for toilet reading, anything by Bill Bryson, almost always enjoyable, great light reading.

Lovecraft is far FAR too scary :eek: Not grossout horror, far creepier, more unsettling. Saw the film of 'GhostStory' and didn't sleep for days either....

The Little Prince is wonderul. On a par with Wilde's 'Selfish Giant'.

[ken foree]

Haven't read it but it's on the list, and the DF Wallace has been added now ;)

good stuff, along those lines is 'the corrections' by jonathan franzen? he was the guy who told oprah to eff off when she included him on her book of the month club thing. and then recanted. very funny, a combo delillo/wallace for me (who both seem to suck the teat of pynchon). erm, yea


Definitely worth a look - good reading and the usual moral cruxes to carry. Strangely the main characters in this are NOT Catholics, though there are one or two towards the background

cool i'm in-between books right now so i think i'll go for it


heard a lot about Pynchon, not so big here as in the states, and personally as elusive as Salinger I believe. Is his other stuff worth rating?

defo a freak of nature, 4 books in forty years? only one photo exists of him and his whereabouts unknown so salinger-like in that respect to be sure. can't recommend anything other than 'lot 49' which is about 150 pages but seems like 700. his stuff only gets crazier from there, e.g. 'gravity's rainbow,' about (among 6,000 other plot lines) a guy who gets a stiffy every time a german v2 rocket approaches england, since he was bio-engineered in the same german lab as the missles. i guess you could use adjectives like 'farce' and 'post-??' to describe his stuff!

[ken foree]

Ennis is a great writer. Very funny, astute bloke. He was great when he was 18, doing Troubled Souls in the eighties with John Macrea, and he's got better since. Although I do struggle with blasphemy, I adored Preacher, nearly injuring myself with laughter several times. V was a cracking read too, but I find Moore's later stuff less rewarding. Didn't really dig The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

New series of Who starts sometime at Easter. More excited about it than I can say.

never read early ennis stuff but sounds good for an 18 yr. old! 'preacher' had a great balance to all its aspects and he really hit on it at the right time, especially for the u.s. reader. moore's 'league' was just okay, you're right. not a patch on his better stuff. art coulda been a lot better too. what about 'marvels' - always thought that was a terrific idea executed near perfectly.

only briefly seen the new doctor! looks better than the guy they had in that semi-recent one-off movie anyway. ian dowie to play davros surely, no makeup required ;)

[davey]

Just finished "Oh play that thing", Roddy Doyles follow up to the greatest Irish novel ever, "A Star Called Henry". Enjoyable but nowhere near as good as the first in the trilogy.

Loved Tom Wolfes "Bonfire of the Vanities" too. Brilliant look at greed in NY in the 1980s.

[lopez]

My favourites:

Fiction Foreign - Undoubtedly Orwell's 'Animal Farm' and '1984'. Brilliant! Both were made into films although I found the movie of version of AF didn't have a lot in common with the book. :confused: Also anything by Martin Cruz Smith.

Fiction Irish - 'Divorcing Jack' by Colin Bateman.

Factual foreign - 'Dirty War: Clean Hands' by Paddy Woodworth. Like a thriller with how his former student flat-mate who wanted to kill a policeman with a heavy wheel out of a window becomes the Socialist governor of Vizcaya and ultimately jailed for his part in the state-sanctioned assasination of ETA members.

Factual Irish - 'John McQuaid: Ruler of Catholic Ireland' by John Cooney.

Sport foreign - 'Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing' by Donald McRae: A 1995 book on boxing. 'When Beckham Went To Spain' by Maradona's biographer Jimmy Burns. Thankfully not much on Beckham but lots on the footballing culture he's playing in. And 'The Selling of The Green: The financial Rise and Moral Decline of the Boston Celtics' by Harvey Araton and Filip Bondy: Controversial 1991 book on the basketball franchise.

Sport Irish - 'The Team that Jack Built' by Paul Rowan, 'The Sash He Never Wore' by Derek Dougan and 'The Fighting Irish' by Roger Anderson.

[Duncan Gardner]

Christmas reads for me (Don't get much chance to get into a good book until i get some free time):

Ryanair (Biog. of Michael O'Leary) - Siobhan Creaton


Creaton's book is quite sympathetic to O'Leary, recognising the huge influence he's had on cheap(er) travel.

On the other hand (as widely covered in the Dublin media) she shows that he can be an ill-mannered buffoon.

[1MickCollins]

Most contemporary fiction is such a waste of time - for wonderful prose try Cormac McCarthy's Child of God, Suttree and his masterpiece Blood Meridian. Forget his later trilogy which has won awards, it doesn't have the power of Blood Meridian.

Also anything by JM Coetzee.

[ken foree]

Most contemporary fiction is such a waste of time - for wonderful prose try Cormac McCarthy's Child of God, Suttree and his masterpiece Blood Meridian. Forget his later trilogy which has won awards, it doesn't have the power of Blood Meridian.

agree there, 'most' fiction seems pretty awful but then again it's impossible to read all of it so i shouldn't comment. maccarthy is heavy stuff alright, there's inscrutable words in there, and mad mad poetry, and he can be disturbing like few others. read 'outer dark' and 'blood meridian' though i find with him a little goes a long way! (similar to faulkner in that regard perhaps?) still great and destroys much else.

who's this coetzee then besides having another great name? :)

[blobbyblob]

Reading John Grishams The Last Juror at the mo. Gripping stuff.

Just finished Paranormal Ireland - Cant remember the author. Good read for the ghost hunters among you.

[lopez]

Last summer I went to Dublin. One of the things I wanted to do was a Joyce 'walk'. I therefore attempted to read Ulysses. What a load of cojones, although it had its moments. I almost gave up several times. It seems to me that - like stuff like baseball - the books, articles and 'culture' that surround this 'masterpiece' are more interesting than the item itself.

Is there anyone out there that has read this book? And anyone think that it's me that talking b*llocks? :eek:

[shedite]

Creaton's book is quite sympathetic to O'Leary, recognising the huge influence he's had on cheap(er) travel.

On the other hand (as widely covered in the Dublin media) she shows that he can be an ill-mannered buffoon.


I like that book. Shows how ruthless you have to be to succeed.

Book I'm reading is Bill Bryson, A Short History of Everything. Great Read. It's a funny look at the solar system in easy words.

[sylvo]

Reading at the moment ''John Devoy the greatest of the Fenians'', just after finishing ''Green and Red, the lives of Frank Ryan'' and just over Christmas I read ''Kerry's Fighting story 1913-1924''

[1MickCollins]

agree there, 'most' fiction seems pretty awful but then again it's impossible to read all of it so i shouldn't comment. maccarthy is heavy stuff alright, there's inscrutable words in there, and mad mad poetry, and he can be disturbing like few others. read 'outer dark' and 'blood meridian' though i find with him a little goes a long way! (similar to faulkner in that regard perhaps?) still great and destroys much else.

who's this coetzee then besides having another great name? :)

A South African writer who writes with spare and elegant prose. But the Nobel committee have probably put the kibosh on him by making him the literature laureate last year.

[1MickCollins]

Last summer I went to Dublin. One of the things I wanted to do was a Joyce 'walk'. I therefore attempted to read Ulysses. What a load of cojones, although it had its moments. I almost gave up several times. It seems to me that - like stuff like baseball - the books, articles and 'culture' that surround this 'masterpiece' are more interesting than the item itself.

Is there anyone out there that has read this book? And anyone think that it's me that talking b*llocks? :eek:

That book is without peer, the only time I wish I were a Dubliner is when I am reading Joyce! ( of course his father's side of the family came from Cork wouldn't yah know ). Forget the secondary material and hoopla generated mostly by American acedemics and just read ( try starting at chapter 4 ).

[piratemousey]

the rulers of the world by john piger. fascinating insite into the
politics of greed and murder.
anything by george orwell and Noam choamski

[fosterdollar]

It can't be as hard as 'Borstal Boy',which I read when I was 16-17;All written in dialect.........Immortal closing lines though,would bring a tear to any Irish person.......

On this note, try Irvine Welsh out for size. Trainspotting was a nightmare to get used to at the beginning. Ecstacy and Filth are reads you won't put down till the end though. Acid House short stories are hialrious.

[green goblin]

Last summer I went to Dublin. One of the things I wanted to do was a Joyce 'walk'. I therefore attempted to read Ulysses. What a load of cojones, although it had its moments. I almost gave up several times. It seems to me that - like stuff like baseball - the books, articles and 'culture' that surround this 'masterpiece' are more interesting than the item itself.

Is there anyone out there that has read this book? And anyone think that it's me that talking b*llocks? :eek:


I read it when I was 19. I thought it was fantastic, mind stretching... and a load of incomprehensible aul' bolleux, all at the same time. It's certainly more lucid that some of his other work. Finnegans Wake, for eg. What the frick is that one all about? Makes Ulysses read like a Haynes Manual by comparison. :eek: 20 years later I still can't work out whether it's genius or a double portion of sweetbreads.

I think you need to try and look at it given the times he lived in, not with our post modernist eyes. It's still never going to be an easy read, but as a great man once said, "You should try everything in life once, except incest and folk dancing".

Still, he could play guitar, and as such would play rythymn in my all time fantasy Irish supergroup. Haven't decided who else is is in it yet.

[lopez]

I read it when I was 19. I thought it was fantastic, mind stretching... and a load of incomprehensible aul' bolleux, all at the same time. It's certainly more lucid that some of his other work. Finnegans Wake, for eg. What the frick is that one all about? Makes Ulysses read like a Haynes Manual by comparison. :eek: 20 years later I still can't work out whether it's genius or a double portion of sweetbreads. Good description of Ullyses. Read Dubliners prior to that and found it an easy enough read. Portrait I began after Joyce but found a more interesting book by page 2 although this is not to say I thought it was cr*p. Ullyses had its moments - Bloom's self fornication on the beach, getting the biscuit bin by the citizen - and that every chapter is written differently is a masterpiece. Heard once Finnegan's Wake was his revenge on English supplanting the Irish language.

[ken foree]

Heard once Finnegan's Wake was his revenge on English supplanting the Irish language.

hah! that would be the something.

joyce always considered himself a poet first, so his stories can be read for sound. didn't know he played guitar, the man obviously has a melodic ear! try reading some of ulysses out loud, just a paragraph or two. preferably alone so you don't have to feel like a pretentious ****** ;)

[ollie]

tony cascarino's book was very good and honest. the gafta awards is very funny.

[green goblin]

Good description of Ullyses. Read Dubliners prior to that and found it an easy enough read. Portrait I began after Joyce but found a more interesting book by page 2 although this is not to say I thought it was cr*p. Ullyses had its moments - Bloom's self fornication on the beach, getting the biscuit bin by the citizen - and that every chapter is written differently is a masterpiece. Heard once Finnegan's Wake was his revenge on English supplanting the Irish language.

The change of format/viewpoint for each chapter is great, actually. English people in general don't come over all that well. the soldiers' for eg, "Oh, oi do loikes a noice mince poi" still gets me smiling. It's also incredibly rude in places, which I'm sure didn't hurt it's reputation.

Veering off on a tangent, an early teenage fave of mine was Tom Barry's "Guerilla Days in Ireland". The 1970's version had a great cover, that made it look like Biggles, or something. Dead exciting. I still remember my poor (English as cucumber sandwiches, bless her!) Mother making me solemnly swear not to share my ethusiasm for it with my friends at school, who might not have been able to place it in the appropriate cultural context, shall we say. :rolleyes:

[sylvo]

[QUOTE=green goblin]

Veering off on a tangent, an early teenage fave of mine was Tom Barry's "Guerilla Days in Ireland". The 1970's version had a great cover,



Went to Kilmicheal a few years ago when down in Cork on a pilgramige due to reading ''Guerilla days in Ireland'' fantastic monument there to what happened, and also went to see his house in Roscarbery.
Another fave from my early Irish history reading is Dan Breens ''my fight for Irish freedom'', (tends to have been written at a hundred miles an hour by him, plus he did tend to add numbers to the causlty list that got on the wrong side of him). ;)

[Junior]

On this note, try Irvine Welsh out for size. Trainspotting was a nightmare to get used to at the beginning. Ecstacy and Filth are reads you won't put down till the end though. Acid House short stories are hialrious.

Went through a bit of a phase of reading Welsh just after Trainspotting came out on the big screen.

Marabou Stork nightmares was my favourite - he was definitely on something whilst writing that!!

[Duncan Gardner]

I like that book. Shows how ruthless you have to be to succeed

Disagree. O'Leary didn't and doesn't have to be so outrageously rude to dominate his business. How exactly does parroting inanities like "Which part of **** off don't you understand" to any listening hacks, demonstrate anything other than shock for its own sake?

[strangeirish]

DeValera by Tim Pat Coogan. Some very interesting stuff about aul Dev and his book on Collins was pretty good also, albeit a tad biased.

[piratemousey]

yes i agree great book by tim pat there,.
of course he has a certain dislike for the man, but why wouldnt he?