Books you can't live without
POSTED BY: BadgersHat
UPDATED: Thursday, May 12, 2005 14:58
VIEWED: 31206
PAGE 7 of 11
I see
The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
"The sprawl series* -William Gibson
Stuff I havn't seen:
A Distant Mirror - Barbara Tuchman
Regeneration
The Eye in the Door - Pat Barker
The Ghost Road
Bogeys and Bandits - Robert Gandt
Punks war - Ward Carroll
and the tons load of classics, atlases and military history I see laying around . . .
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Shepard Book.
"..it is my very favorite gun."
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Here are mine:
- Lord of the Rings trilogy
- "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein
- "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein
- "Starship Troopers" by Robert Heinlein
- "The Forever War" by Joe Hadleman
- "MacBeth" by Shakespeare
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"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."
Richmond, VA & surrounding area Firefly Meet Up:
http://firefly.meetup.com/9/boards/
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Quote:
Originally posted by zoid:
I am currently eagerly anticipating William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition" in paperback; I don't buy hardcovers because I only like to read a book once (it's a long and boring story).
We have an extra five months . . .
I, on the other hand, don't purchase paperbacks 'cause, if I'm only going to read the book once, I'll support my local library.
Quote:
Suffice to say, it takes a special book to make me reread it, to warrant a hard-backed edition, and to make my elite list of books I can't live without.
...
Having said that, I hafta get hardcovers for LoTR trilogy. Might want to lend them to the grandkids, someday...
I applaud your sense of grandfatherly responsibility.
Quote:
Thanks for your list. Care to point out the reasons that make your list so re-readable?
Familiar books are like time machines; rereading them takes me back to the first time. Neutron Star may mean more to me, for that reason, than to a new fan. It is a collection of hard SF, published in 1966. Larry Niven was on his way to becoming the O Henry of science fiction when he was seduced, by awards & scads of money, into working only on novels. But before that, he saved SF from the new wave.
William Gibson's science fiction (as opposed to his more recent stuff, which ain't exactly SF) is the most information-dense literature I've ever encountered. He can invent a word, and show me a whole new world. He deserves a section in the next edition of Elements of Style, & I need a new word to describe what he does. I think of it as an evolution of imagery, his language conjuring not just pictures but societal frameworks. Gibson affects me the way poetry is supposed to, but almost never has. But the time machine may be @work here, too. I had lost my faith in SF when I found Gibson, and was reborn.
There are flaws in Snow Crash but, two great characters, & concepts spanning all of recorded history, kept me so engrossed that I didn't begin to notice the flaws until I'd read it several times. Stephenson can also create a world with a word.
I love conspiracy theories; I even liked the Lone Gunmen. Point of Impact is the conspiracy theory of a lone gunman, & fascinatin' character.
Ralph Peters is a retired US Army officer. He has written several novels, most involving small unit combat. Some folk might call that military fiction but, as it says on the tin, the War in 2020 is set in the future, which quacks like SF to me. The time machine means it always feels like I'm reading it when the USSR still mattered.
Thinking of these books is like remembering my first kiss. Rereading one of them is like feeling it again.
Rereading Little Big, by John Crowley, is like tasting it.
Keep the Shiny Side Up
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I couldn't possibly save all the Heinlein I own (in the proverbial fire.) I am amazed that everyone seems to be willing to save Starship Troopers. Personally Heinleins nod to facism would get left as I sacrificed my flesh for:
Moon is a Harsh Mistress (and any of Heinleins more libertarian treatises)
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Books,
Harvest the Fire; The Stars are Also Fire and the rest of that Series.
Books by Ken MacLeod especially The Cassini Division and other books in that series.
Forever War would make the cut but not Forever Free. Did anyone Read that? I mean what the hell kind of drugs was he doing that day. Talk about God in the machine.
Fallen Angels by Niven and Pournelle? Maybe? Introduced me to fandom and so I owe that book a debt.
And of course Farenheit 451. If that book burned the irony alone might kill me.
Outside of fiction:
All the poetry of Pablo Neruda.
Bastiat's "The Law"
Free Market Environmentalism
The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche
The Complete Works of Weber
The Marx Reader
501 Spanish Verbs (awesome book with conjugations and colloquial meanings and useful phrases)
Civilization and Its Discontents (the only good thing ever written by Freud IMNSHO)
The Jefferson Bible.
The NRSV Bible. Maybe Darby in a pinch. And the old family king james (but only cause it has the family tree...the translation sucks.)
"The Art of Happiness" from the Dalai Lama
The State by Peter Kropotkin
Anarchy in Action by Colin Ward
And...and...and...
nevermind. If the books must burn I am staying in my study!
-Eli
"If voting mattered it would be illegal."
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Double post Sorry.
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The Giver by Lois Lowry
The Jefferson Bible by Thomas Jefferson
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xenocide:
Great list! You wrote:
Quote:
...I am amazed that everyone seems to be willing to save Starship Troopers...
The first Heinlein I ever read was "Revolt in 2100". When I saw the trailer for the original Star Wars back in nineteen-seventy-*mumble*, I took one look at the light sabres and exclaimed -- sotto voce -- in the theatre, "Cool! Vibroblades!". In similar fashion, when "The Empire Strikes Back" trailered, I muttered, "What a rip! That's a sandworm from 'Dune'".
Quote:Read 'em, dug 'em all; red, green and blue.
...Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Books...
Quote:Great team. Loved the Heorot/Beowulf books. Very good characters and believable alien lifeforms. Nobody's mentioned Frederick Pohl, so I'm gonna lump the Heechee in with Niven's Ring denizens as best of genre.
...Niven and Pournelle...
Quote:Seriously? Ubermensch socialism that so appealed to Hitler? Nietzsche was wrong, bass-ackwards: The State exists to serve the People, not the other way 'round. Do you like his stuff as an example of logical folly? I mean, no offense intended to you, but, whoa!
...The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche ...
Quote:Good call there, though strange bedfellows with FN and Weber. On a similar note, "Zen and the Art of Making a Living", by Laurence Boldt changed my way of looking at my life's work. Read my profile page, regarding 'never wanting to retire'. Since reading his book, I have striven to make my life's work an artform that I perfect every day. As a result, I am fully self-actualized in my profession.
..."The Art of Happiness" from the Dalai Lama...
Quote:One of the more memorable images from Fahrenheit 451. And I'll be right there with you, Brother, pouring the brandy and offering you a last cigar (and probably arguing with you 'til the flames embrace us that a true ubermensch knows he must serve others, not force them to serve him). If the thirst for knowledge and enlightenment ever totally leaves Humanity, I'm going with it. Let's hope that 'reality TV', "Judge Judy" and "Entertainment Tonight" and their ilk are just passing phases, not the barbarians at the gates...
...If the books must burn I am staying in my study!
Appreciatively,
zoid
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"Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me." The Ballad of Serenity
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Quote:
Originally posted by Alta:
Daphne Du Maurier: Rebecca
Hi, Alta!
Ever read "The House on the Strand" by Ms. Du Maurier? If not, I HIGHLY recommend it.
Mal-licious
Co-Holder of the Red Bell from Hell
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Wow! I love threads like this. I need to go through and make a list of books I haven't read yet.
My List:
Sandman, all volumes, by Neil Gaiman: One of the best comic books of all time. Brilliant, moving, and meaningfull. I love everything else by Gaiman, but the Sandman is easily at the top of the list.
The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien: I love the Silmarillion because it tells the history of an entire people in a way that moves me. More than once I found myself overwhelmed by the courage of the characters, and the tradgedy that they bring down on themselves. The Hobbbit is a brilliant children's story that hints at darker happenings. The Lord of the Rings is filled with a diverse cast of fleshed out characters, and gives builds on the themes of how even the smallest person can change the world.
White Apples, by Jonathan Carroll: I love everything I've ever read by this author, but his most recent story takes a high place on my list.
From the perspective of a man who has been brought back from death to help protect his son from Chaos, this novel is filled with detailed characters and asks a lot of really great questions about life and death.
Kushiel's Dart, by Jacqueline Carey: An intricate fantasy, told from the first person prospective of a prostitute. This woman though has been touched by a god and plays an important role in a struggle taking place for her country. Describing the story is difficult, but there are a lot of really neat ideas in this book. A very unique fantasy.
A lot of the other books I'd put on my list have been mentioned (Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, To Kill a Mockingbird, anything by Ray Bradbury, The Dark Tower Books), so I'm going to call it good for now.
"Blue so deep it swallowed me / Like the sky eating the birds." Matt Lindquist
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