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What's The Last Book You Read?


John Crichton

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America: The Book. A compelling historical narrative that flows with rich detail and intelligence.

And it's all true, every word of it!

I'm thinking about reading The Silence of The Lambs...

Any good after seeing the movie?

Justin

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I'm thinking about reading The Silence of The Lambs...

Any good after seeing the movie?

Justin

The basic plot is quite the same, but the book is even better than the film. There are more scenes with Hannibal (some parts of which made it into his extended scenes in Red Dragon movie), and the has more emotional content overall. Well worth the read.

Karol, who loves both the book and the film.

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I tried picking up the second book in the Master and Commander series but the University bookstore has it out of stock :D

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Are they any good? Because the film was top-notch! And I mean REALLY top-notch. With real testosterone. Not like the POTC and Bruckheimer crap.

Karol, who really, really needs to see this movie again.

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I finished Goldfinger today.

Not one of the best Bond books, IMO.

I thought the political-incorrectness (Bond "converts" a lesbian LOL) was rather hilarious.

"I come from the South. You know the definition of a virgin down there? Well, it's a girl who can run faster than her brother."

- Pussy Galore

I loved the face-offs between Bond and Goldfinger, though. The talks, the prodding, the mindgames. Good stuff. But rather a lengthy book.

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Are they any good? Because the film was top-notch! And I mean REALLY top-notch. With real testosterone. Not like the POTC and Bruckheimer crap.

Karol, who really, really needs to see this movie again.

I read the first book and I really liked it. If you're looking for an action book of sorts this isn't it, it's more about life at sea and just following two guys (Aubrey and Maturin) and what happens to them. I just liked the laid back style to the book, they get captured but oh well, they sit on top of a hill and eat dinner while watching the harbor.

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I tried picking up the second book in the Master and Commander series but the University bookstore has it out of stock  :thumbup:

I´ve only read the first 4 in the series, but the quality is amazingly consistent throughout.

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I'm re-reading The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan right now. Just started The Dragon Reborn.

I still love the series, despite the slower pace in the last few books.

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  • 1 month later...

I just finished, more than 20 minutes ago, The Ruins by Scott Smith (author of the awesome "A Simple Plan" which was turned into a fantastic film w/ Billy Bob Thornton, and the "Game Over Man! GAME OVER" guy from Aliens".

Bill Paxton, now that I thought about it.

Here is the URL for a quick synapsis http://www.amazon.com/Ruins-Scott-Smith/dp/1400043875

If you like horror movies and/or novels, you should give this a try. Easily one of the best horror novels I have read in a long time. However, it is not an actual HORROR novel. Sure, it can be gruesome in parts.... but I found myself identifying with all of the characters. Finding myself realizing that I would probably be doing exactally what they were doing in their situation.

Great story!!!!!

I will leave it at that. If you are a horror book or movie fan, you should read this book! The only negative is the fact that Smith hasn't written a novel since the 90's "A Simple Plan" (which turned into an awesome film)! "The Ruins" has been optioned to become a movie, as of now, and I am anticipating that!

Think "The Descent" and you will have the idea of this bleak and FANTASTICALLY AMUSING horror story!!!

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I'm re-reading The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan right now. Just started The Dragon Reborn.

I still love the series, despite the slower pace in the last few books.

I'm on Crossroads of Twilight now, and boy, is it slow. It seems like Jordan really lost the knack for pacing after The Fires of Heaven. You read these books, and for 800 pages, nothing happens. Then the last chapter will explode with action that positively came out of nowhere. Yet as much as I complain about the deathly pacing, I still can't stop reading because the characters are so good... Especially Mat B)

I just miss the tightly paced and well plotted earlier books like The Great Hunt.

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I just finished You Only Live Twice and the first two chapters of The Man with the Golden Gun. Only two more Flemings to go.

I felt YOLT was kind of weak, though. The Japanise stuff was all nice, but I didn't care much for the story, despite it being the resolution to OHMSS.

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Making my way through the massive book The Winston Effect, basically a coffee table book encompassing all of Stan Winston's projects among other things.

Also reading The Director's Cut, a nice collection of interviews with up and coming directors (Singer, Gondry, Sommers, Ratner-probably the luckiest guy in the film business) and some old ones (Donner).

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Michael Crighton's "Next". I'ld give it ***/*****. Overall it was enjoyable, but highly unbelievable, this coming from someone with a good knowledge of Genetics. Granted it wasn't the gentic aspects of it that were soo far-fetched, but the lawsuits were kind of like Come On, what kind of judicial system would except these cases, are lawyers realy that idiotic?

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I finished Focault's Pendulum a while ago. It's great, even better than The Name of the Rose. Even the so-called "Da Vinci Code theory" makes its appearance, and, in context of the whole thing, makes Brown's book even more laughable and all of that 16 years before it was written.

Now I'm reading Eco's latest novel.

Karol

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I just finished Kurt Vonnegut's A Man Without a Country. It is a compilation of columns that Vonnegut has written over the years - reading them all at once makes you feel you are sitting and chatting with him for a whole evening. It's really political, anti-Bush and all, so I won't be detailed about my impressions on his thoughts.

But here is a particularly representative excerpt:

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED

FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

WAS MUSIC

Now, during our catastrophically idiotic war in Vietnam, the music kept getting better and better and better. We lost that war, by the way. Order couldn’t be restored in Indochina until the people kicked us out.

(...)

It makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up. And I really like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the whole world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today – jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock-and-roll, hip-hop, and on and on – is derived from the blues.

A gift to the world? One of the best rhythm-and-blues combos I ever heard was three guys and a girl from Finland playing in a club in Krakow, Poland.

The wonderful writer Albert Murray, who is a jazz historian and a friend of mine among other things, told me that during the era of slavery in this country – an atrocity from which we can never fully recover – the suicide rate per capita among slave owners was much higher than the suicide rate among slaves.

Murray says he thinks this was because slaves had a way of dealing with depression, which their white owners did not: They could shoo away Old Man Suicide by playing and singing the Blues. He says something else which also sounds right to me. He says the blues can’t drive depression clear out of a house, but can drive it into the corners of any room where it’s being played. So please remember that.

Foreigners love us for our jazz. And they don’t hate us for our purported liberty and justice for all. They hate us now for our arrogance.

© 2006 The Sunday Herald

Please don't consider this a political or personal provocation, or a public one at least. I just took advantage from the fact that parts of the book are available online to show how it basically goes. Doesn't necessarily mean I agree with every word. About the copyright, there are a lot of pages hosting this text, so I hope that's all right.

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Anyone else half-read books? You start a book and are really into it but somehow you lose interest and just stop? I have probably a dozen half-books I need to finish. I'm trying to solve the problem by just reading a chapter a day that way my enthusiasm doesn't just flame out. A few half-books I've read...

Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein

The Alien Years - Robert Silverberg

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

Contact - Carl Sagan

Carpe Jugulem - Terry Pratchett

Justin - Who hates doing that...

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Anyone else half-read books? You start a book and are really into it but somehow you lose interest and just stop? I have probably a dozen half-books I need to finish. I'm trying to solve the problem by just reading a chapter a day that way my enthusiasm doesn't just flame out. A few half-books I've read...

Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein

The Alien Years - Robert Silverberg

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

Contact - Carl Sagan

Carpe Jugulem - Terry Pratchett

Justin - Who hates doing that...

It happened to me all the time. Now I read less books and only those that I'm really interested in. And there are few of them.

Karol

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  • 5 months later...

Many people on these boards seem to be at least partly refined, what with basic knowledge of classical film and film music, so I'm assuming most of you can read. ;)

I thought it'd be cool to have a discussion about various good books and give suggestions for others. I've found that these types of threads are good at expanding your horizons, or learning of a title that is either new or near-forgotten in a genre you love.

I'm not really sure how this will work. Right now I'm just going to talk about HP Lovecraft's short stories. Feel free to respond about what I talk about, or talk about a book you're reading, or your favorite books. Unless this thread gets really swamped, it'll be pretty free form.

Anyways, I just recently decided to go out and get a book of Lovecraft's short stories, having heard about him before. Man, he's amazing! I bought "The BEst of HP Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre" at Barnes and Noble and love 90% of the stories so far. A few of his stories seem to never get off the ground, and try to tell you to be afraid of something that isn't very terrifying. "The Colour From Space", for example. But the rest are fantastic examples of how horror should be written (or seen). Gore isn't scary. Often what you don't see is what's so scary. That eerie feeling that creeps into your bones that makes you uneasy is what true horror is really about.

Anyways, if you haven't read it, I would highly suggest it. Good horror books are so hard to come by (I can think only of Psycho, Amityville Horror, and The Shining), that a collection of fantastic short stories is a great fix for those wanting to find more horror.

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Anyone here into David Baldacci novels? I recently started reading them, and they're generally very good. Good mystery/suspense books. Here are the few I've read:

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And I'm currently reading:

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My favorite so far is Absolute Power, with Hour Game close behind.

Ray Barnsbury

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I just finished reading Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli's Batman: Year One. Great read, and set the standard for all origin stories of the character, not to mention greatly influencing Batman Begins. Probably as good as The Dark Knight Returns in its' own way, despite being quite different.

I have to read two "actual" books (as they call it) over the Summer for school, those being The Chocolate War, and The Catcher in the Rye. Not a big fan of reading (these types of books anyway), but if I must.....

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I think one of the best ways to learn a language is reading books so i read: 'Il nome della Rosa'

Great reading.

I also bought 'La Battlaglia di Midway' (aka Midway) and im reading it now (well, taking a break for studies :) ) Nice and familiar cover art hehe. Or course, using sometimes Williams' music as companion.

Amazingly, i found in Italy (in english) a book called 'The Making of JAWS'. Unfortunately no mention to Williams, since it deals with the shooting in Martha's(?) Vineyard. Well at least it just cost 1 €.

And of course i also bought a bird guide in italian :P. Very handy when i was in the Alps with the class, because unfortunately, most people dont know the latin names... :) that is why they were done.

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Has anyone other than me gotten The Children of Hurin? I thought it was excellently put together, though there wasn't really anything new there for those of us that have read the Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.

Currently I'm wrapping up The Pythons Autobiography by The Pythons.

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Amazingly, i found in Italy (in english) a book called 'The Making of JAWS'. Unfortunately no mention to Williams, since it deals with the shooting in Martha's(?) Vineyard. Well at least it just cost 1 €.

Who's the author?

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In the middle of Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union at the moment

Is it as...unfortunate as it's title?

Morlock- currently reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which will be followed by Anansi Boys and Stardust

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Amazingly, i found in Italy (in english) a book called 'The Making of JAWS'. Unfortunately no mention to Williams, since it deals with the shooting in Martha's(?) Vineyard. Well at least it just cost 1 €.

Who's the author?

Edith Blake

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I was going to finally start Angela's Ashes, but Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will probably push its way in in a few weeks. I actually don't have that much time to read right now anyway.

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In the middle of Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union at the moment

Is it as...unfortunate as it's title?

Morlock- currently reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which will be followed by Anansi Boys and Stardust

It's a delightful read so far

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  • 2 weeks later...

Nu, how was it in the end?

At long last, I finished reading American Gods a few days ago. Loved it. It took me a couple of hundred pages or so to get into, but once I was in, i was enthralled. Neil Gaiman has a tremendous gift for story. Before going on to Anansi Boys, I decided to get Stardust out of the way (concidering that could take me a while to read a serious book). I must admit, the story didn't really draw me in until the ending. But I loved the ending. Can't wait for the movie, I'm intrigued by the Robert DeNiro role, which in the movie is named Captain Shakespeare, but was only in the book very briefly, and none of his clips from the trailer are in the book. Still, very much looking forward to the film.

I think I'll wait with the next one, get Potter out of the way.

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Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn.

Nice and entertainig 'Prequel', and entertaining. Shame we already knew the outcome...

I would like a sequel that tells how Thrawn meet the emperor. And what he thinks about him being Sidious hehe. And i would like to know if he 'used' the emperor to obtain ships and a command rank.. because he doesnt seem to be a bad person in this book, and even dislikes Tyranny. Maybe he was convinced by the Empire.... if not why he wanted to re-create the empire in the 1st trilogy or why he created an Empire of the Hand in the unkown regions and not other ruling method...

I think i got my answer from the author himself:

Q:I was surprised by Thrawn's character in Outbound Flight. He seems too smart and basically decent to become the servant of Palpatine that he later becomes.

TZ: Ah, but is he really Palpatine’s servant? My sense has always been that he was manipulating Palpatine just as much as Palpatine is manipulating him. After all, he only came to the Empire so that he could gain command rank, collect all the military hardware Palpatine was willing to give him, and then get himself kicked back out to the Unknown Regions where he could start his long-term preparations for the coming war against the Yuuzhan Vong.

Not that Palpatine was fooled, of course. I’m sure he knew perfectly well what was going on and figured he was getting as much out of the deal as Thrawn was. Possibly a little more.

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Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

A bit less laugh out loud than his other books, but this seems way more factual and has a really nice nostalgic feeling. Hope to finish it in time for Potter :cool:

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I was going to finally start Angela's Ashes, but Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will probably push its way in in a few weeks.

I read the first 100 pages of Angela's for a History Book report and I'm sorry to say I haven't gotten a chance to finish that and Les Miserables which I have been reading since Christmas. :blink: Right now I'm reading Ghosts of Yesterday (the Transformers prequel) and I just finished the last two harry potter books and The Great Gatsby.

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Hmm... some book called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Wasn't bad at all. :P

I'm planning on reading all seven again soon, but not right yet. I want to read something else first, maybe Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 "quadrilogy" (I've read the first two, but not the others - how are they?).

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Well, after finishing that Harry Potter thingy....I'm reading it again. Slower.

After that, hmmm, I've got the still-unfinished (after two goes over several years) Battle Cry of Freedom staring me in the face...

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I just finished reading The Catcher in the Rye for school. I don't fully understand it, but it nevertheless left quite and impression on me.

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Hmm... some book called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Wasn't bad at all. :mellow:

I'm planning on reading all seven again soon, but not right yet. I want to read something else first, maybe Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 "quadrilogy" (I've read the first two, but not the others - how are they?).

They're alright. But unmemorable.

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