Random Recommended Book Lists are Useless to Me. Please Dopers, Recommend Me a Book.

I’ve been trying for a while to find books to read through Google, and the results have been disappointing to say the least. I recently called up a list of “25 Books that will Change Your Life”, for example, and of those twenty-five:

Seven were classic books that anyone with a decent education should have read already. And I have. Well, except for The Picture of Dorian Gray. Not wanting to read that though. Sorry Oscar.

Eight were kids’ books. Goddammit, I’m in my fifties. Don’t hand me Lunchables when I ask for Steak Tartare.

Three were about Nazis. Hiding people from the Nazis. Escaping from the Nazis. Dealing with your guilt about your Nazi history. I get it. Nazis are SERIOUS AND IMPORTANT AND OPPOSING THEM IS ALL DEEP AND LIFE AFFIRMING AND SHIT. I am just sick to death of Nazis in my Pop Culture. Okay? Find something else to obsess about in print. Or movies. Or anywhere. WE MUST NEVER FORGET. Fine, I won’t forget about Nazis, I promise. Now shut the fuck up about them. PLEASE!

Four were Young Adult novels. One was about delinquent rebellious teens. One was about bi-racial teens dealing with racism. One was about teens dying in a cancer ward.
And one was about teen friendships…IN NAZI GERMANY. I give up.

One book is Bridget Jones’ Diary. Ick.
I guess what I’m saying is, please recommend me something to read. Something nice for a person in their mid-fifties. And I’d rather not read about Nazis, thank you, just in case I didn’t state that clearly enough.

I’ll recommend books in return:

Easy to find: One Summer by Bill Bryson. His take on 1927 is fascinating, especially about the eugenics movement.

Harder to find: Down the Common by Ann Baer. Describes a single year in the life of a medieval woman. So convincing, you’ll think you’ve time traveled.

Watership Down

It’s about bunny rabbits.

Don’t ask me, I love The Picture of Dorian Gray. :wink:

Since I don’t have a clear sense of what you like besides being transported into other times and places, I’ll just name a couple of favorites. They take you there.

Mary Doria Russell ** The Sparrow**

Katherine Dunn Geek Love

Guns of the Gods: A Story of Yasmini’s Youth, by Talbot Mundy. Available free at Project Gutenberg. Kiplingesque intrigue in colonial India, with a mystery and a treasure. Can’t beat a mystery and a treasure!

It totally is. And it’s amazing. Everyone should read it.

I have no idea what you like based on your post so I’ll just recommend my favorite books in various genre. All are fun and pretty easy to read. All were important to me at some point in my life. All display that I have fairly particular taste. I feel like all transcend their genre and would be liked even by people who don’t like that genre. I really like Bill Bryson so I’m also trying to list books that have sort of his tone.

  1. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
  2. 100 years of Solitude
  3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - read the whole trilogy… All five
  4. Good Omens
  5. Enders Game
    6)The Warriors Apprentice
  6. Star Tide Rising
  7. The Big Sleep
  8. Lamb by Christopher Moore
  9. The Hotel New Hampshire

John Fowles’ “The Magus”

TWA 800-The Crash, The Cover-up, and the Conspiracy by Jack Cashill is an eye opener.

Mark Berent’s books if you can find them. He wrote a fictionalized account of the Vietnam War so definitely no Nazis.

My favorite recent reads:

*Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction *by Elizabeth Vargas. A really good alcoholism memoir that was harrowing and readable at the same time.

*On the Bottom: The Raising of the Submarine S-51 *by Edward Ellsberg. Recommended in another SDMB reading thread a few weeks ago. Written in 1929 about a submarine-raising mission in 1926. Everything you ever wanted to know about pre-scuba diving (the kind with the big metal globe on your head).

The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. Written in 1922 about Robert Scott’s 1911 expedition to Antarctica. You are there.

The Martian by Andy Weir. Life alone on Mars in the not-to-distant future. I like both the movie and the book, but the book is definitely heavier on the science involved.

River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West by Rebecca Solnit. Muybridge was a photographer who lived from 1830-1904, did pioneering work in photography that lead to the development of motion pictures, traveled extensively, and also shot his wife’s lover. If it was a movie, it would seem too melodramatic.

I’m in the same age range as you, and also try to avoid reading about Nazis. If there are any other specifics you’re looking for, let us know and I’ll try to recommend something.

The Hustler by Walter Tevis. It’s what the famous Paul Newman movie is based on. Here is the thread I started explaining why: Excellent Book - The Hustler (yes, the basis for the Paul Newman movie) - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board

Let’s see…of my person picks that aren’t either completely esoteric or horrifying?

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
A fascinating, and tragically underappreciated subject—logistics, and the Intermodal Shipping Container!

Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America’s First Nuclear Accident
The title is slightly inaccurate, but it’s still an in-depth and intriguing look at a lesser-known and somewhat mysterious nuclear reactor accident.

The Vinland Sagas Erik the Red, et all.
If you’re into historical accounts, this will probably do the trick. Not to be confused with Vinland Saga, which is a manga, although by all accounts I’ve heard a very good one.

Nazisploitation!: The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture
…just kidding. Sorry. :smiley:

Lovecraft Country. I don’t normally enjoy anything remotely sci-fi but the hubby insisted I give it a shot. The characters and the historical/cultural angle hooked me.

If you’re interested in being transported into other times and places, you may like Jean-Christophe Rufin’s Brazil Red.

It’s centered around a little-known but real attempt by the French to set up a colony in Brazil in 1555. The endeavour ends in failure as it’s plagued with conflict, both external (against the local Indians and the already entrenched Portuguese) and internal (the group is split between Catholics and Protestants and distrust runs high).

I wouldn’t say it’s a masterpiece but it’s definitely a good read.

If you want non-fiction, I highly recommend Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall, which is a history of how the United States became involved in Vietnam. It won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2013.

Hi. Me again. Thank you for all the suggestions.

I guess I spent more time in my original post describing what I didn’t want to read, rather than what I would actually like to read. Frustration at Google, et al.

I read a wide spectrum actually. I love history, current events, pop culture, comedy.

Mostly, I read non-fiction, but now, I would love to read a really good novel. Or a novelization of true events, like historical fiction. Something like The Emancipator’s Wife by Barbara Hambly which portrays Mary Todd Lincoln. Or I, Claudius, or The Red Tent. By the way, I’ve read those already, and recommend them.

More recommendations from me to you:

Eliot Ness: the Rise and Fall of an American Hero by Douglas Perry. The best biography I’ve read for a while. This guy Ness was more than just an ax wielding show-off, as he’s been dismissed as in recent years.

Gone with the Wind I don’t care if it’s politically incorrect. It is far more than a romance. It’s about survival, and it sees the Civil War through Confederate women’s eyes. It’s great literature.

Steel Boats, Iron Hearts by Hans Goebeler and John Vanzo. If you’ve ever been to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry and seen the U505, this is the story of one of the crewman who served on that boat. Hans Goebeler moved to Chicago to be near his beloved submarine, and often gave tours before he died. AND HE WAS A NAZI. Sorry.
Any more suggestions? Keep them coming.

If you want a highly amusing immersive novel try out The one hundred year old man who climbed out the window and disappeared by Jonas Jonasson or any of his other books.

Also, if you have an absurdist bent to your humour, The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore
or
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

Anything by Bill Bryson, but I particularly like A Walk In the Woods or At Home

Try The Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough. A lightly-fictionalized telling of Roman history from about 50 prior to Caesar through Augustus. First book is the The First Man in Rome. Praised often here on the 'Dope.

Another would be Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield - a fictionalized telling of the Spartan stand at Thermopylae. A bit more historically accurate vs. 300 :wink:

If you like non-fiction, read The Professor and the Madman, the best work about crazy people and dictionaries that you will read this year.

How about detective novels? If you haven’t yet, read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the best English drawing room mystery. You will not guess whodunit. You will see all the clues, they will make sense, but you will not guess.Or The Maltese Falcon, which is truly great literature about moral ambiguity and people’s determination that life has to make sense. It doesn’t.
Regards,
Shodan

Then try to find those Berent books. He was there and wrote the series (five, IIRC, starting with Rolling Thunder) to help with his PTSD. Pretty much the only book series I’ve read other than The Green Mile, which I have in one big paperback, All Creatures, Zelazny’s Amber, and Fleming’s Bond.

Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham. It is not historical fiction but it described a fictionalized version of the author’s life and it is far enough in the past that it reads like historical fiction.
If you like that one, Liza of Lambeth, by the same author is the story of a young girl from a poor family going about her life in turn of the century London.
A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, by Solzhenitsyn. A short book about the day in the life of a prisoner in Stalin’s gulag. Surprisingly happy book.