Stephen E. Ambrose- Band Of Brothers

That was a very well written accounting. If you haven't yet, read his D-Day once you're finished.

My last, which took me forever to get through, was David Copperfield. I was disappointed given the way Dickens bragged about it in his forward. It hardly compared at all to A Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations.

I think next up will have to be Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Tonight I picked up a copy of Appreciate Your Life by Taizan Maezumi Roshi. I'm only about 5 pages in, but it is excellent.

I just finished 'Trainspotting' the other day. I picked it up in a used book store in Ireland. Interesting read aboot the dregs aye Scotland.

Yeah....this is definitely a good book...

I just finished River of Ruin by Jack DuBrul. Exciting, action-packed story. Very enjoyable. I've enjoyed other books from same author.

Mark

Just finished: "Better Off: Flipping the switch on technology" Eric Brende (about society's obsession with machines and labor saving devices, as compared to an old-order amish sect...)

Johnny Cash's Autobiography, "Man in Black" picked up at a goodwill

"The Life of Pi" Yann Martel -- supposed to be something profound about religion and philosophy... Right now its about a kid stuck in a rowboat with a tiger...

Lastly, "Darwin's Black Box" -- VERY interesting. Its about irreducible systems, mostly, evolution, and how they suggest that evolution could not have created all species simply by adapataion and mutation...

Oh yeah, and I just finished "The Preacher" which is an amazing series of graphic novels (ok comics) about, well.... Religion, the west, gunslingers, devils, angels, conspiracy, ect.... by Garth Ennis

Book it!

Still working on Stone Junction by Jim Dodge.

Read Meno dialogue by Plato.

Will soon begin either The Darling by Russell Banks or Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

You Can't Catch Death by Ianthe Brautigan
a very poigniant memoir of her father Richard Brautigan.
very difficult read emotionally.

marty

Songbook - Nick Hornby

The Pleasure of Finding Out, a collection of lectures and essays by Richard Feyneman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.

The Pleasure of Finding Out, a collection of lectures and essays by Richard Feyneman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.

I read Surely you're Joking, Mr. Feynman! back when I was in high school and enjoyed it. Let me know what you think of The Pleasure of Finding Out.

As of late, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Eagerly awaiting the English translation of Murakami's Kafka on the Shore.

Parachute Infantry by David Webster (Was in 506 Easy Company (i.e. Band of Brothers) during WW2)

Voices of D-dayedited by Ronald Drez. First hand accounts of the day.

Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs by Albert Speer

I have a small ETO fetish. :lol:

Eagerly awaiting the English translation of Murakami's Kafka on the Shore.
Indeed! Indeed! Indeed!

']Indeed! Indeed! Indeed!


Oh yea, oh yea!

How Soon Is Never, Marc Spitz - quick mindless fun obsessing about The Smiths
The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz - I need all the help I can get
Start Where You Are, A Guide to Compassionate Living, Pema Chodron - ditto
Lonely Planet Guide to Costa Rica - For my trip in February :D

"A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole...(which I try to read at least once a year..it makes me laugh..plus I love New Orleans...) Too bad he's not around to write more..
"Mongo-adventures in trash" by Ted Botha
"The Immortal Class" by Travis Hugh Culley( love any books about riding)

Just got A Salty Piece of Land by jimmy Buffet
continuation of the Tully Mars story from Margaritaville.
Also have quicksilver by Neal Stephenson to read next.

Marty

Finished Cat's Cradle two days after finishing Slaughterhouse 5 and thought it was great. Now almost done with Mother Night, but a page is ripped out so I have to find an online transcript of it. After this I'll be starting The Siren of Titan.

I did not read the entire thread, so apologies if anyone mentioned this book:

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

It is about India and it is a very sad book. It is about human misery, so it may not be for everyone. I am reading it because I recently traveled to India on business and I was fascinated with the way people live there.

Have recently finished or am about to finish the following:

The Eight Gates of Zen ~ John Daido Loori
Appreciate Your Life ~ Maezumi Roshi
Minor White: Rites and Passages ~ James Baker Hall/Aperture
Jock Sturges: Notes ~ Jock Sturges
Living Wabi Sabi ~ Taro Gold
A Tao of Dialogue: A Manual of Dialogic Communication ~ Doug Ross
The Ultimate Cyberpunk ~ Pat Cadigan (Editor)
Burning Chrome ~ William Gibson
When I Was Cool ~ Sam Kashner
Mad Love ~ André Breton

Also about to re-read The Way of Chuang Tzu and take out a few hundred more pages in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.

Blindness by Jose Saramago

What a great allegory for how we perceive in the modern world.

Visions of Cody - Kerouac

Visions of Cody - Kerouac

How are you liking it? I'm working on it too, bit by bit. When I'm in the right mood, it's amazing and I can't put it down, but otherwise I can't seem to get through more than a page or two at a time.

How are you liking it? I'm working on it too, bit by bit. When I'm in the right mood, it's amazing and I can't put it down, but otherwise I can't seem to get through more than a page or two at a time.

Yeah, I agree. The freeform taped conversations are a great snapshot of the friendship between Jack & Neal, but you really have to be in the proper mood, setting to get it to flow. As I'm reading it too, I find myself getting pretty sad over how that friendship kind of disolved in the sixties and they both ended up dying so young.

All of my reading is for school, but I have read some really interesting books of late.

Last year for my English term paper I read "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner. Great book, but you really have to be with it and stay on top of things due to the "stream of conscious narrative."

This year for my Humanities class I just read "Hamlet" by Shakespeare. I never liked Shakespeare before, but this was very interesting and engaging. Requires you to think a lot, but great story.

I've also read a lot of the great writings of/ by so many great philosophers. Plato's "Phaedrus", Dante's "Divine Comedy", excerpts from Aristotle, Petrarch's "Ascent of Mt. Ventoux", excerpts from Machiavelli's "The Prince" and I hope to read "The Discourse" at some point, as well as assorted writings by Martin Luther, Montaigne, and others.

Very studious and not always exactly riveting, but very thought provoking. I find it interesting to see how thought has evolved and trends have continued or changed from Socrates' ancient Greece through the Renaissance/Reformation, to Transcendentalism, Romanticism, Realism, and into our modern world. The history of thought is such an interesting thing to study, I hope more people look into it.

Every Second Counts~ Lance Armstrong

This year for my Humanities class I just read "Hamlet" by Shakespeare. I never liked Shakespeare before, but this was very interesting and engaging. Requires you to think a lot, but great story.



Ah! But you've got to see Hamlet! Preferably on stage, but there are also many film versions you can rent.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair for English. We had a choice of six books, and Epscot Fitzgerald is a snoozefest, so I picked this.

The swords of night and day by david gemmell.

Ah! But you've got to see Hamlet! Preferably on stage, but there are also many film versions you can rent.

I have heard that it's a great play. Some of my friends watched the movies and said they were good. From what I have heard the Kenneth Branagh and Kate Winslet version was the best.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair for English. We had a choice of six books, and Epscot Fitzgerald is a snoozefest, so I picked this.

Excellent book! A great perspective not only into the practices of the processing plants, but of the lifestyles of the eastern European immigrants in the Chicago area. Started me on the path to not eating meat.

Well, see, I like what the book deals with and all, but Sinclair is, to say the least, about talentless when it comes to writing. I just picked it because I'm way into workers' rights, socialist theory, etc. I'm also vegan (three years in April), so that helps a bit.

I think a lot of people give up meat after reading The Jungle.

I understand that, but as someone who's concerned and interested in such conditions, it's a worthwhile read just as much as it would be someone who isn't familiar with things of the sort at all.

I have heard that it's a great play. Some of my friends watched the movies and said they were good. From what I have heard the Kenneth Branagh and Kate Winslet version was the best.


It's the best one on video that I've seen. Yet I haven't seen the Olivier version. That may be better.

Of the big Hollywood versions, I liked the Branagh version best too. It's the most cinematic and exciting. Then Olivier. Then Gibson. I haven't seen the Ethan Hawke one, but I've heard it's probably not worth it.

Finally started reading The Immortal Class. So far it's exactly as I expected it to be...

The Republic~ Plato

Finally started reading The Immortal Class. So far it's exactly as I expected it to be...


...which probably why I couldn't finish it.

Ooops..I thought the title was "What Brooks are you riding" for a second

Ah! But you've got to see Hamlet! Preferably on stage, but there are also many film versions you can rent.

Don't waste your time on Shakespear unless you can find it translated into english. Our language went thru major changes not long after Shakespear wrote... words shifted in meaning, sentence structure changed, old words dropped out, new words came in... 400 years later we are speaking an entirely different language. That is why Shakespear is so dificult for 21st century brains to process. It looks like english but isn't.

One good example of how english has changed since Shakespear is the very famous line, "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo." It sounds like she is asking, "where are you, Romeo?" when he is obviously standing right in front of her. But what she REALLY said (translated into english) was, "Why do you have to be Romeo?" as in, "Why do you have to be YOU... Romeo that I am forbidden to love?"

I personally like reading books written as they were supposed to be
read.
Faust by Goethe is much better in the original meter than the *******ized
english version (and you can find an english version with original meter, its
just difficult).
Think of what Beowulf would be like in modern english, unintellegible.

Marty

Don't waste your time on Shakespear unless you can find it translated into english. Our language went thru major changes not long after Shakespear wrote... words shifted in meaning, sentence structure changed, old words dropped out, new words came in... 400 years later we are speaking an entirely different language. That is why Shakespear is so dificult for 21st century brains to process. It looks like english but isn't.

One good example of how english has changed since Shakespear is the very famous line, "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo." It sounds like she is asking, "where are you, Romeo?" when he is obviously standing right in front of her. But what she REALLY said (translated into english) was, "Why do you have to be Romeo?" as in, "Why do you have to be YOU... Romeo that I am forbidden to love?"

I'm aware of the meaning of that line in Romeo and Juliet. I think that studying Shakespeare is important regardless of it's difficulty. I tried unsuccesfully to read MacBeth and A Midsummer's Night Dream in earlier classes, but I learned that if you sit down and study his work a little bit it makes sense and isn't all that hard.

Hamlet is a great work of literature and Hamlet's conflict is a great psychological study. The "To be or not to be..." soliloquy is one of the greatest speeches in literature.

Just finished "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell. I'll read Neil Gaiman's graphic novel "Murder Mysteries" this weekend and maybe take "American Gods" with me on vacation. But I may try out something new.

...which probably why I couldn't finish it.

Yeah....I could easily put it down and not finish it. I'm just going to work my way through the rest of it so I can be done with it.

A Significant Other by Matt Rendell.

The Complete Science Fiction of H.G. Wells. Just finished the Time Machine, working through The Island of Dr. Morough (sp?) - leave it at work for when BikeForums isn't updating all that fast...

I personally like reading books written as they were supposed to be
read.
Faust by Goethe is much better in the original meter than the *******ized
english version (and you can find an english version with original meter, its
just difficult).
Think of what Beowulf would be like in modern english, unintellegible.

Marty

I read Beowulf this semester, it was great. I was worried that the english would be tough, but now I see how important it was to read it in it's original form.

Yeah....I could easily put it down and not finish it. I'm just going to work my way through the rest of it so I can be done with it.


Yea, I can't figure out if being unhappy with myself for not finishing it is or for reading through his convoluted and overwrought prose.