Watership Down!

i like depressing man against nature books:

The Perfect Storm
and
Into Thin Air
are among my favorites.

Most annoying over-rated book I have read: Possession

and as PDM says:
"I loved 'The Hobbit' but found The Lord of the Rings' books quite difficult to get into - they are long and require concentration ~& there was always something else requiring my attention. "

.. I agree entirely with that statement 100% - I lost interest entirely mid way through the 2nd book of the trilogy!

1. Sun-Tzu's Art of War
2. Book of 5 Rings
3. Way of the Samurai
4. Rogue Warrior
5. Rogue Warrior 2:Red Cell
6. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Series
7. Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Series (ones that didn't become movies)
8. Communist Manifesto
9. Tao of Jeet Kune Do
10. Striking Thoughts
11. Animal Farm
12. Louis L'Amour western novels
13. Principles of Personal Defense (similar to Art of War except more modern)
14. Shakespeare
15. Autobiography of Malcolm X

I've read 'Animal Farm' ~ great book.

Shakespeare?
Do you mean everything he wrote? (or supposedly wrote, anyway?)


http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/animalfarm/

http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/

Er, sorry to interrupt the Shakespeare discussion here...

Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, and Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover are what I would call "classic good reads" and worth re-reading periodically. I know they are seen in some circles as overly dramatic (in a soap-opera-kind of way) and perhaps simplistic, but I find them enjoyable and would recommend them. (The latter book, though, is wildly inappropriate for young people, not because of "bad words" or adultery but because you need extensive life experiences in order to put the book in context!) (I should check out the "banned books thread" that PDM started earlier - sounds fun!)

The genre with which I'm most familiar lately is murder mysteries/police procedurals/detective stories. I absolutely LOVE Ian Rankin (his Scottish DI Rebus series especially; often called "tartan noir"), Elizabeth George (Inspector Lynley of Scotland Yard, England; must be read in order of publication), and Sara Paretsky (V.I. Warshawski is her Chicago, Illinois private eye).

Then there's Dick Francis who's written a billion or so mysteries! The horse-racing themes might get a tad repetitive (he's a former steeplechase jockey) but his writing (and each of his main heros) has a distinct sense of dignity, understatement, and integrity.

As for Shakespeare, I've only read Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet.

I really loved reading 'Romeo & Juliet' when I was in my teens.

I think UK schools generally teach Shakespeare. I also had to read 'Julius Caesar'.

I mentioned, before, that I went to see my first live Shakespeare play, in Stratford, last year: 'The Tempest'.

[quote=Pudgie's mom]...Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, and Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover are what I would call "classic good reads" and worth re-reading periodically. ... [/quote] I saw the film of 'The Scarlet Letter' ~ thought-provoking, I really enjoyed it. I feel that I should have read Dickens but haven't. I watched a documentary about him, a couple of days ago. Apparently, he had a rough childhood, which comes out in his books, like 'A Christmas Carol' & 'Great Expectations', for example. He saw the awful lives of the working class in London & Birmingham and brought a few home truths to the richer folk. His readings were very popular with the ordinary working people. [quote=SPEECH: BIRMINGHAM, DECEMBER 30, 1853] The first of the Readings generously given by Mr. Charles Dickens on behalf of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, took place on Tuesday evening, December 27, 1853, at the Birmingham Town Hall, where, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, nearly two thousand persons had assembled. The work selected was the Christmas Carol. The high mimetic powers possessed by Mr. Dickens enabled him to personate with remarkable force the various characters of the story, and with admirable skill to pass rapidly from the hard, unbelieving Scrooge, to trusting and thankful Bob Cratchit, and from the genial fulness of Scrooge’s nephew, to the hideous mirth of the party assembled in Old Joe the Ragshop- keeper’s parlour. The reading occupied more than three hours, but so interested were the audience, that only one or two left the Hall previously to its termination, and the loud and frequent bursts of applause attested the successful discharge of the reader’s arduous task.[/quote] http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/d/dickens/charles/d54sls/chap13.html

PDM: Thanks for the Dickens link -- interesting and makes me want to read more Dickens!

(Sorry to use up space on this topic to thank one particular individual but I've no idea how to do Private Messages.)

If you are in to vampires, the Darren Shan series is a good one it has 12 books in all, they are interesting. (The author is Darren Shan)

Another good series is the Roswell High series by Melenda Metz (I'll have to see if that name is spelled correctly) It's about alien teens, I haven't got read 8-10 yet.