FR Book Club: What's on your Summer Reading List?

June 17, 2005

[wizr]

The "Left Behind" series. Already finished books 1 and 2.

[null and void]

As for me, picking up a DVD of "The War of the Worlds" is giving me the desire to give Wells another go (I've never made it through any of his books).

This version?

H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds - Silicon Valley FReep-in for FReepers, FRiends, and FRamlies (Vanity)

Read the thread first...

[Cincinatus]

Phyllis Dorothy

[Cincinatus]

I'm nearing the end of the second book of Neal Stephenson's three-book series, The Baroque Cycle, a book called The Confusion. The first book in the series is Quicksilver and the last one (which I have yet to read) is The System of the World.

I highly recommend these books. Basically, they are historical novels set in the late 17th century about a key "hinge time" -- the transition from magic to science and from feudalism to free market capitalism. Highly entertaining, literate, and fun.

[Tanniker Smith]

That would be the one. (I haven't read the entire thread yet, just the first 50 posts, but I recognize the pictures.)

I just finished watching it yesterday. Very enjoyable.

TS

[caver]

freerepublic.com

[Pablo64]

Your secret is safe with me, LOL! I like my wife to think that I'm unique anyway. I think she realized that I had, shall we say, unusual reading habits when she found out that I read Ben Hur when I was in 5th grade and used to read books while riding my bicycle.

[Lemondropkid31]

Ohhh ok. I hadn't heard of her before.

[Conservative4Ever]

You beat me by a few grades. Read Ben-Hur when I was in 8th grade. After Mom gave final warning for lights out at bedtime...read with a flashlight under the covers.

Red

[Pablo64]

LOL!, I wasn't allowed my own flashlight. Luckily, my bed was fairly close to the closet on one side, so I would turn on the closet light and slide the closet door open a crack. Just enough to to read if I tipped the page toward the closet.

I'm sure my kids use their flashlights (yeah, they've got 'em even if I didn't) to read under the covers after lights out, but I haven't "busted" them for it yet.

[MHT]

Last week I led a book discussion group on Middlesex and would be willing to share several points of research I found regarding author, etc., if you're interested after you finish the book.

[MHT]

Devil in the White City is chilling. I enjoyed the murderer part more than the engineering but found the contrast fabulous. History can be stranger than fiction and it is almost as if the story wrote itself.

[MHT]

A friend of mine writes science fiction and said that TTWife violated some of the physical prinicples upon which fictional time travel is based. PBS/Nova has a website where the consistencies you must maintain in fictional time travel are outlined. It's true; she did---but, in the meantime, what a story! Can you imagine what her storyboard must have looked like? The network of strings leading from one point in the plot to another must have been like a spider's web!

[meowmeow]

Last week I led a book discussion group on Middlesex and would be willing to share several points of research I found regarding author, etc., if you're interested after you finish the book.

I would like that - thanks (I finished the book). And by any chance does that include an explanation on the brother's name? That was driving me crazy.

[peacebaby]

I'm not trained in writing...maybe I should take some courses...but I don't understand the strict rules of writing time travel, and why the author violated them.

Can you give me the PBS/Nova website address? I'm curious now.

Have you read "Dogs of Babel?" The storyline was somewhat complex, not as complex as The Time Traveler's Wife, though.

[MHT]

http://www.geocities.com/naran500/features/time_travel.html

It took me awhile to find it because I couldn't remember exactly how I found it to begin with! Glad you made me look it up. As an example, the main character did change part of his past, yet refused to tell his mother-in-law that she should watch out for cancer.

[MHT]

Have you read The Instance of the Fingerpost by Ian Pears?

[twigs]

No, I've never heard of it. But I looked on Amazon after I read your message. It sounds wonderful and like excellent summer reading. I'm guessing that you liked it?

[Quilla]

Just found this thread and noticed both your posts. Janet Evanovich's eleventh book in the Plum series is released today.

[yarddog]

Everyone should read Winston Churchill's 6 volume "History of World War II".

Another must read is "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoyevsky (unsure of the spelling).

Another is Xenophon's Anabasis.