Posted on 07/25/2008 3:01:11 PM PDT by Stephanie32
(My first thread, hope I'm doing this right!)
I have never listened to a book, have to try that. Thank you, I’ve heard of both of your choices!
From your interests in Animals, the "All Creatures Great And Small" series by James Herriot (memoirs of a 1930's-era British farm vet). "Heartwarming" they call it but uproariously funny while still sticking to your ribs.
From your cooking, if you want technical, try "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen" by Harold McGee, this book goes into the chemical composition of food and how cooking accomplishes what it does, with a lot of interesting history about the development of different foods and recipes from around the world.
For mystery novels, if you like intellectual puzzlers, go for Agatha Christie; and if you like English period pieces, go for Dorothy L. Sayers or Josephine Tey. Sayers is better .
For light fluffy humor, try P.G. Wodehouse for comedies; for outdoor humor columns, Patrick F. McManus.
For science, try Kip Thorne's work on black holes, or anything by the late Richard Feynman.
Political humor is covered by P.J. O'Rourke.
And of course, there's always Shakespeare.
Or you can just FReep.
Cheers! IS that enough for starters?
You forgot Retief of the CDT, you scoundrel! :-)
Cheers!
Cheers!
Don't forget Tom Clancy (military/spy stuff).
And R.F. Delderfield's To Serve Them All My Days -- Brit historical novel.
...and if you want WW II, try F. W. Winterbotham's The Ultra Secret about how the allies broke the top-secret german code machine.
Cheers!
I am fascinated by all of your choices and I will finish my replies to you all tomorrow night and this weekend. I have a wedding tomorrow and I’m sort of bleary eyed here. Thank you again. :-)
Btw, Joe Haldeman’s “The Forever War” and “All My Sins Remembered” are excellent SF.
Podhoretz details his friendships with several famous American leftists and why they became "ex" friends (he moved to the right politically).
A TALENT FOR TROUBLE
A biography of film director William Wyler. I read all 500 or so pages in an afternoon.
ROSEBUD by David Thomson.
A very opinionated bio of Orson Welles, very enjoyable.
LOOP GROUP by Larry McMurtry
I know most here prefer McMurtry's westerns but I really enjoy his contemporary novels. This one's a little too close to chick lit for comfort but so far I'm enjoying it. McMurtry eases you into the reality of his characters' world and before you know it, you're at the end of the book. Not a great novel, but a fun read.
I, ASIMOV
Fun reduction of his two-volume autobio into bite-sized chunks.
SEIZE THE DAY by Saul Bellow
Starting this tonight.
I'm in the mood for a fun Heinlein-type read, and may read one of his I haven't read yet this weekend. Recent SF bores me, and that definitely includes the "conservative" SF writers, too.
The Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters as narrated unabridged by Barbara Rosenblat, as well as anything else narrated by Barbara Rosenblat.
I’m currently reading several off and on:
http://www.amazon.com/Captain-African-Slaver-Theophile-Conneau/dp/0405018304 (given me by a fellow freeper and a definitive narrative of the West African slave trade early 1800s focusing on the coastal trading centers by someone who was there)
http://www.amazon.com/Commando-Boer-Journal-War/dp/1417925841/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217048910&sr=1-1 ( when Southern Africa was first lost)
Camp of the Saints stays on my bedside, I’ve yet to finish it
Warning: it's kind of icky in parts. There are real and very vivid descriptions of the horrors of that particularly horrible war. There are also a few clearly-depicted sex scenes. So you must ask yourself if this is the sort of thing your book club would like to read. I am not discouraging you, just giving you a heads up so you can consider the book fairly. Amazon may have online excerpts available.
Disraeli: Portrait of a Romantic - David Butler.
I always have a book going in the van. Radio reception is spotty, at best. If I have my grandkids with me, they can find a station with music, somehow.
“Lincoln” by David Herbert Donald
great biography of one of our greatest Presidents
I’m reading it right now
When you think about what Lincoln and so many others went through in those times, and the tough tough decisions he had to make, it makes the socialist whiners and weasels of our era look even more pathetic.
Obambi, you’re no JFK, you’re certainly no Lincoln, but you might just be Jimmy Carter.....
Summer reading list bump! ;-)
Here are a few I thought of during the night:
And There Was Light by Jacques Lusseyran.
This is a true story.
The author was blinded in an accident as a child.
He developed a sixth sense. He contends that nothing is taken away from us without something to replace it.
He worked for the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation, and, because of his uncanny ESP, he was adept at identifying Nazis trying to infiltrate the Resistance.
He was betrayed and sent to a Nazi concentration camp, where fellow inmates at first stole his food etc. but learned to value him more than food because of his sixth sense. He was one of the few to survive (sorry about the spoiler).
Two other terrific books are Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Lewis Carroll was a genius and very clever. The metaphors, symbolism, and plays on words are terrific.
Looking Glass is a chess game. Playing it as you read--do this with your spouse, children, and/or friends--adds multiple dimensions.
For example, Alice is a pawn. What she wants most is to be a queen. In the end of the book (sorry about this spoiler), she reaches the other side of the chess board, becomes a queen, checkmates the Red King, and wins the game. Metaphorically, this is the fulfillment of every child's ambition to become an adult, find success, and fulfill her/his dreams.
Alice's conversation with Humpty Dumpty is priceless.
She urges him to climb down from the wall.
He refuses and adds: "The King has promised to send all of his horses and all of his men." How's that for the embodiment of hubris?
As Alice leaves him (sorry--another spoiler) a resounding crash reverberates through the forest--a great metaphor for everything from warning your child: "If you disobey me, you will be sorry; there are things that I can't fix" to warning Americans not to vote for Barack Obama and the Democrat Party to Aristotelian tragedy to the fall of civilizations and the fall of Adam and Eve.
Other great books are the Iliad, the Oddyssey, the Oresteia, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Also The Scarlet Letter, Washington Square, and The Sound and the Fury.
Also Tales of the South Pacific and The Bridges at Toko-ri by James Michener.
Sins of the Fathers: The Atlantic Slave Trade 1441-1807 by James Pope-Hennessy.
Born in Blood by John J. Robinson, about the persecution of the Knights Templars.
Captain from Castile and Prince of Foxes by Samuel Shellabarger--terrific books by an inexplicably underrated author.
Man! I love these books!
I started to list Retief...but I was interrupted and had to finish the post quickly. The Retief books by Keith Laumer are definite keepers.
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