Recommended Books?

[indeedproceed]

What is steampunk? Is it related to cyberpunk?

[gustusias]

I must reply here because I am a big reader. There are certain books I would like to refer you guys to if you don't mind. First of all Dennis Lehane is a Boston boy out of Dorchester who writes the best detective novels imagineable. The movie 'Run Baby Run' was his book as well as the movie 'Mystic River.'

Secondly Jerezy Kosinski has written a classic book, 'The Painted Bird."Short stories of Joseph Roth, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by  Carson McCullers, The Big Snow by David Park, Butterfly Weed by Donald Harrington, Dostoyevsky, Johseph Conrad, Steinbeck, especially of Mice and Men, Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, Benjamin Netanahu's book, An Endurable Peace, Rodney Doyle's books, especially Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha, Garth Stein's book narrated by a dog, yeh really, How to Race in the Rain  and lastly I recommend in Cambrige, at 47 Mt. Auburn Street, Grolier's Book Store, the best and only bookstore in America that deals only with poetry, and make no mistake,poetry is just incredible when done well.

I am sorry if I was a bit longwinded here, but I love books and enjoy passing along to others the joy of reading. I do not deal in trash here. Most of my reading involves only high grade writing, like our Celtics, another high grade product.

[MattG12]

The movie 'Run Baby Run' was his book as well as the movie 'Mystic River.'

I believe you mean "Gone Baby Gone". Anyways, Lehane is a great writer. Definitely look out for the next movie based on one of his books. "Shutter Island", filmed all over the Boston area. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, directed by Martin Scorsese.

TP for you for mentioning Lehane as well as Cormac McCarthy!

[Schupac]

The movie 'Run Baby Run' was his book as well as the movie 'Mystic River.'

I believe you mean "Gone Baby Gone". Anyways, Lehane is a great writer. Definitely look out for the next movie based on one of his books. "Shutter Island", filmed all over the Boston area. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, directed by Martin Scorsese.

TP for you for mentioning Lehane as well as Cormac McCarthy!

Speaking of Cormac McCarthy I recommend "Blood Meridian" to any red blooded man I meat (not a typo, that's how manly they have to be).  It's a brutal, bloody tale about a group of outlaws in the American West employed by the Mexican government to kill and scalp Apaches.  It's even more vividly written than your normal McCarthy book, and the subject matter just pulls you in.  These aren't Gary Cooper style, shining-white-teeth niceguy cowboys, these are dirty drunk criminals who found a temporarily legal outlet for their broken personalities. 

WARNING- NOT for the faint of stomach or heart.  When I say brutal, I really mean it.  There is some truly senseless, degenerate violence in this book, but it helps tell these men's story.  It's also loosely based on fact and the real-life account of the main character (though he was suspected of some serious embellishment).

It's one of my favorite books, ever.

[BudweiserCeltic]

What is steampunk? Is it related to cyberpunk?

In general, it's pretty much a setting where steam is mainly used as the power source. In this type of stories, you often see airships, oldschool planes, trains, steam powered ships, etc. Think of the movie Wild Wild West with Will Smith, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with Sean Connery.

Cyberpunk might be appealing to the same type of people, but it's different in that it's a different set of technology and motivations. You see hackers, articificial intelligence, information technology... in all it's a more futuristic setting.

So as far as Shadows of the Apt goes, along with all the fantasy characteristics of magic, unique races, etc., we also find a lot of steam powered inventions. So as you progress throughout the story, there'll be a lot of magic vs. technology vs. human skills (learned or innate). The world in general is very low on the technology scale... and not everyone is capable of using technology, hence the apt vs. the inapt, and they differ by kinden (races).

Just finished the 3rd book of it, Blood of the Mantis, and it was also a very good one.

The 4th book comes out in 2010.

[eddietours]

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

by John Perkins

[gustusias]

Darkness Take My Hand, A Drink Before the War, Coronado(a collection of short stories) are some other Lehane books I have read. Thanks about Shutter Island. I started to read that and was only 40 to 50  pages in when I lost it somehow. The same thing happened to me with Blood Meridean, and I was already a good 100 pages or so into the book. I will have to pick them up again. I have no explanation to this absentmindedness of late,but it is irritating.
 
To be honest Cormac McCarthy is about one of the best writers I ever read. His books are not easy for me to read in the sense that he writes a prose so rich, vivid, and just difficult to get used to . No one I read uses language as well as he does. Many of his words I just never heard of. His knowledge of plants, trees, the land, etc... is incredible. Recently I finished All the Pretty Horses. It is just great. His endings to his novels just capture my heart and I am left holding on to those precious words of his like some pearls of knowledge, always known somewhere deep within myself, but only now have been revealed to me. I would say he he is one of the greatest writers in the last century, in a different league than all the others.

[MattG12]

The movie 'Run Baby Run' was his book as well as the movie 'Mystic River.'

I believe you mean "Gone Baby Gone". Anyways, Lehane is a great writer. Definitely look out for the next movie based on one of his books. "Shutter Island", filmed all over the Boston area. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, directed by Martin Scorsese.

TP for you for mentioning Lehane as well as Cormac McCarthy!

Speaking of Cormac McCarthy I recommend "Blood Meridian" to any red blooded man I meat (not a typo, that's how manly they have to be).  It's a brutal, bloody tale about a group of outlaws in the American West employed by the Mexican government to kill and scalp Apaches.  It's even more vividly written than your normal McCarthy book, and the subject matter just pulls you in.  These aren't Gary Cooper style, shining-white-teeth niceguy cowboys, these are dirty drunk criminals who found a temporarily legal outlet for their broken personalities. 

WARNING- NOT for the faint of stomach or heart.  When I say brutal, I really mean it.  There is some truly senseless, degenerate violence in this book, but it helps tell these men's story.  It's also loosely based on fact and the real-life account of the main character (though he was suspected of some serious embellishment).

It's one of my favorite books, ever.

Blood Meridian shall hit theaters in 2011 (So they say)... I'd expect it to take until 2012 since it seems like every movie gets put on hold for a year these days.

[BudweiserCeltic]

Finished all 11 books of The Dresden Files last week, and I have to say that I thoroughly am enjoying the series. Next book comes out in April.

I also read Child of Fire by Harry Connolly, which was a book that was similar to The Dresden Files. It was his debut book and first of a new series. I enjoyed it too and will recommend it to those of you that have enjoyed Dresden.

Right now I'm reading Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, the author who is continuing The Wheel of Time. So far I've been enjoying it... it has an interesting magic system.

[Redz]

Just started reading a classic that I've never actually read before.

[BudweiserCeltic]

Another book that I recently read was The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Really interesting read. You can say that it's a mixture of Harry Potter and Narnia, but for adults. Their take on magic and it's consequences, and how it affects young people (around college level) with magic and how they deal in a world were magic is not used by the rest of the population is interesting.

I'm really recommending it, though it can be slow at times, in my opinion the payoff makes it worth it. Overall well written, and it can be thought inducing.

http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780099534440/

In a secret world of forbidden knowledge, power comes at a terrible price...Quentin Coldwater's life is changed forever by an apparently chance encounter: when he turns up for his entrance interview to Princeton he finds his interviewer dead - but a strange envelope bearing Quentin's name leads him down a very different path to any he'd ever imagined. The envelope, and the mysterious manuscript it contains, leads to a secret world of obsession and privilege, a world of freedom and power and, for a while, it's a world that seems to answer all Quentin's desires. But the idyll cannot last - and when it's finally shattered, Quentin is drawn into something darker and far more dangerous than anything he could ever have expected...

[ma11l]

I'm only a few chapters into When the Game was Ours but so far it is as good as advertised in my opinion.

[MattG12]

Has anybody read The Shack yet? I've had a lot of people recommend it to me, so I bought it yesterday. I'm not going to start it until I finish Thoreau's Walden, though.

I would definitely be interested to get a few more opinions on it, maybe somebody will hate it and lower my expectations which are very high at the moment.

[Scott]

Has anybody read The Shack yet? I've had a lot of people recommend it to me, so I bought it yesterday. I'm not going to start it until I finish Thoreau's Walden, though.

I would definitely be interested to get a few more opinions on it, maybe somebody will hate it and lower my expectations which are very high at the moment.

My wife has read it and all I can pass along is more of the same…she loved it.  Considering how different our interests are I stayed away from it (she is reading these vampire love novels now - more of the lasting impact from the Twilight fad I suppose).  So funnily enough, you should let me know what you think of it.

Speaking of classics, I am reading “The War of the Worlds”.  Having seen both movies and  I figured I might as well read the original story. 

Anyone read “World War Z”?  I just grabbed a copy but have yet to start it.

[nickagneta]

Just finished Shadowmarch and Shadowplay, books one and two of Tad Williams Shadowmarch tetralogy of which both books three and four are due out next year. For those familiar with Williams you know he can build a fantastic literary universe in his story telling, but in this one, he's a bit all over the place with it as he has three or five sets of names for the same gods and people only through different races and it gets very confusing at times. By half way through the second book everything started to sink in and the story got much better as he started pulling all the loose parts together, but by then I had pushed my way through 1000 pages.

All that said, I am now very much looking forward to the release of the next two books in 2010 as he now has me hooked after closing the plots together into a very interesting story of political intrigue, gods, warring races and love.