Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen... I LOVED this book! Tell me your favorite book!

[Byzantine]

In fourty words or less…

You should read this book! Sure, it’s about Bass fishing but it’s more than that. It has a cast of characters that you just won’t believe. It’s enchanting, real, and so laugh out loud you’ll need depends! If you can’t buy it, rent it! It’s a great book, male or female… get your hands on it now!

Your turn!

[rocking_chair]

my favourite of mr hiaasen’s books is: lucky you. he does have a way with wacky people. perhaps we should do a book club thing with one of his books.

[Crunchy_Frog]

I’ve read many of Hiaasen’s books: Double Whammy, Skin Tight, Native Tongue, Strip Tease, Tourist Season, Stormy Weather, and Lucky You.

I recommend you read them in the order they were published, as some of the characters are recurring and you’ll want to know what happened to them between books.

Personally, I prefer Robert Crais’s books and his characters Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. I’ve read them all except Indigo Slam, which I can’t find anywhere.

As for my favorite book of all time?
To Kill a Mockingbird

[Gazelle]

Double Whammy is the only Carl Hiassen book I’ve ever read… I liked it.

My favorite book of all time is A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. His writing is like the candy called divinity. Rich, sweet, complicated and you can only have one piece at a sitting…

[RTFirefly]

*Originally posted by Crunchy Frog *
Personally, I prefer Robert Crais’s books and his characters Elvis Cole and Joe Pike.

Crunchy, I knew I liked you! Mrs. F. and I are big Elvis Cole/Joe Pike fans; we’ve read them all.

Favorite book of all time? That’s a tall order; there are so any good ones. But the one that really owns my heart is Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

[Gazelle]

*Originally posted by RTFirefly *
Favorite book of all time? That’s a tall order; there are so any good ones. But the one that really owns my heart is Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

Oooh, that is a great one. My 4th grade teacher read it to our class and I was hooked! Did you read the others in the series? Freaky, freaky books.

Another favorite from the same era of my life was The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. If you get a chance, check it out. Quick read, excellent book.

[Totoro]

I’d have to say the Discworld Series, all by Terry Pratchett. There’s about 25 books in the series, but they don’t really need to be read in a particular order…

[Nacho4Sara]

My most favorite book of all is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith. I read it when I was 15 and I truly believe that’s when I started living.

It’s about a girl, Francie, who is born in 1901 and grows up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her family is poor; her father is an alcoholic, a loving man but one who cannot support his family. It focuses on Francie coming of age despite her abject poverty, but it also tells her parent’s and her aunt’s stories. It deals with classism, immigrants in the early 1900’s, education standards and the means by which people were forced to live.

But above all, it’s a beautiful story about a girl evolving into a person both due to, and regardless of, her childhood. It never glosses anything over or hides the truth; it just lays out what their life is.

There’s a little paragraph on the title page of some older editions that sums up the book pretty well*:

There’s a tree that grows in Brookyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to read the sky. It grows in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly…survives without sun, water, and seemingly without earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.

And my favorite part of all (Katie is her mom):

[Francie] was the books she read in the library. She was of the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie’s secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk.

She was all of these things and of something more that did not come from the Rommelys nor the Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only–the something different from anyone else in the two families. It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is gien life–the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.

I wish everyone was required to read this book. There are so many lessons that even a child can learn; and when I read it as an adult, I’m awed by what Betty Smith was trying to teach, to share.

Close seconds are The Little Prince by St. Exupery, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle, The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, and The English Patient by Michael Ondaajte.

And as for poetry, Between Angels by Stephen Dunn is a masterpiece.

*Mods - I hope it’s ok that I posted that; the entire book is about 500 pages so I thought a paragraph was within the realm of printable copyrighted material.

[Nacho4Sara]

In fourty words or less…

D’oh! How could I completely miss that part of the OP?

Please forgive me my stupidity this evening.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith kicks some serious ass. Read it.

There!

[Edwardina]

I’ve recently discovered James Lee Burke and his Dave Robicheaux novels set in Louisiana. You will not find any other writer doing what he is doing with the detective/crime/suspense genre.

As far as “regular” novels go, (no particular genre), I loved The River Why by David James Duncan.

[aside] I love all Carl Hiaasen’s books, as well as the Elvis Cole novels by Robert Crais. If you like Elvis Cole, then you’ll probably also enjoy the Spencer novels by Robert B. Parker, which I also recommend reading in chronological order. I read everything in chronological order, if humanly possible. [/aside]

[THespos]

Carl Hiaasen wrote this awesome short book called “Team Rodent,” which I thought was hysterical. It’s all about the dark side of Disney and it fits with my Disney/Microsoft/Nike conspiracy theory nicely.

I also dug Sick Puppy by the same author.

One of my favorite books is Takedown by Tsutomu Shimomura. It’s the story of Kevin Mitnick’s capture. Great hacker book.

I also love the following…

-The Dark Tower books by Steven King
-Anything written by Jimmy Buffett
-“Walk This Way” - The biography of Aerosmith
-All the Straight Dope books, of course