Recommend Omni a Book

Cafe Society
41

The House of God by Samuel Shem - A funny novel about a group of interns going though residency. It’s like MASH*, but the movie version and not so much the (cleaned-up and more ‘respectful’) TV version.

Incidentally, there is also a series of novels that formed the basis of the movie MASH*. I haven’t read any of them yet.

Here is a collection of essays by George Orwell. He was one of the better essayists, and I find his work very intriguing and readable. If you’ve never read any good essays this is a wonderful place to begin.

Working by Studs Terkel is a collection of interviews that are, through Terkel’s great talent, thumbnail sketches of the people he spoke with in the course of creating this book. They are individually quite short and arranged by topic, so killing a few minutes here and there with this book is very easy.

A History of π by Petr Beckmann is a book about the history of mathematics that’s really about the history of human thought and intellectual freedom throughout the world. The mathematics is complete and can be done with pencil and paper as a diversion, but the real meat of the book is the history and analysis.

It would be worth your time to find a collection of short stories by O. Henry or Saki. Both were masters of the form in what was probably the form’s golden age, and both know how to craft a very fine and effective story.

42

I second Carl Hiaasen, Ender’s Game, and Christopher Moore. If you like Hiaasen and Moore, you’ll probably also like Tim Dorsey.

43

I’m starting The Watchmen tonite. Hopefully it resonates with me. Ender’s Game looks like a top candidate for my next effort.

44

I’ve decided it’s time to resurrect this thread. I’ve taken a few of your suggestions and I’m at a point where I’m again looking for a book to toss on my night stand. Since this thread here’s what I’ve uncovered up until now.

The Watchmen - As noted in my last post it was the next in the queue. I’d never really been a comic book guy and this was my first graphic novel. By most accounts it’s considered the best of it’s kind so if I was going to take to it this would be the time. I won’t say I disliked it. I enjoyed parts of it for certain. The most enjoyable aspect was the overall theme the story established. I really enjoyed The Invincibles and the plot similarities between the two are blatantly obvious. I can see why this book appealed to people. At the same time it felt dated to me. The artwork was not that impressive. My biggest issue was Moore’s story-telling gimmicks. My biggest issue was the part where he kept telling the story of the Pirates and the castaway. I forget the names, but that entire story and the symbolism was irritating. I found myself wanting to skip these parts entirely. All-in-all a mixed experience to say the least. Grade: C-

I finished the above book on a cross country flight and needed a book to read during the return trip. Airport bookstores usually leave a lot to be desired and in this case there was nothing of note to pick up. My solution was to simply grab a new release by an author I’d heard of before. The two choices where Michael Crichton and John Grisham. I’ve never been a huge fan of Grisham’s movies, while mildly entertaining a law procedural doesn’t strike me as being scintillating reading. That left Crichton and out of sheer coincidence the book turned out being a book suggested here.

State of Fear - All politics aside this was a pretty interesting read. I liked his writing style. His female characters are pretty shallow archetypes without much development but I’m a typical guy so I can handle some literary T & A. I liked the action and I really liked the science/pseudo-science in this book. Say what you want about Crichton, he’s definitely thorough and convincing. Grade: B

After that read, I dug up this thread and picked the recommended book which seemed to fit my mood best. For one reason or another I went with the sci-fi genre.

Ender’s Game - This one convinced me that this thread has paid dividends. I really loved this book. Great plot and great original theme. The characters were exceptionally vivid and well developed and Card’s writing style worded very well for me. It’s not often that I feel immersed in the setting when reading and this one did it. Needless to say I’m very excited about the upcoming movie. I have nothing but good things to say about this series, and I naturally took a step into the next book. Grade: A

Ender’s Shadow - I decided to exchange the copy of Enders Game I bought (I finished it inside of 2 weeks) for a bundled series. There were two to choose from, the Bean thread and the Ender thread. It was a tough choice but the idea of reading a book set simultaneously with Enders Game really sounded like a good time. I loved the way this book compliments the first one. Seeing all the developments from a different point of view only made the story richer and more complete. This book was equally well written and I think I liked it even more than the first one. I suggest everyone who reads Game read Shadow immediately after. Just fantastic stuff. Grade: A

Shadow of the Hegemon - I’m not sure if I was just getting tired of the series or if bringing the setting down to earth cooled me on the story but this book didn’t resonate the way the first two did. Still liked the style and the characters but by the time I was finished I decided I was ready to move on to something else. Maybe it was the cloak and dagger aspect that felt like too much of a departure from my expectations after the first two. Still a good read though. Grade: B+

The next book was another emergency airport purchase. Scrambling for a good read on the return flight from Vegas and I went to the “familiar authors” strategy. This time I found a better stocked store and dipped into the Steven King section and grabbed one of his collections of short stories.

Steven Kings’ Nightmares and Dreamscapes - It was sheer coincidence that TBS announced they were running a miniseries based on a selection of these stories. I did like several of them, a few were just weird and a couple were downright lame. I’m finishing Head Down now and it’s shaping up to be one of my favorites, ironic that it’s his rare non-fiction work. Dolan’s Cadillac and The Night Flier were another pair of the top choices. Nothing reached the level of interest that The Stand generated, I’ll have to pick another novel to read to see if that book was just that good or if I just prefer novels over short stories.

So, that’s where I’m at. I’m going to revisit the previous suggestions and try and get a new reading list put together. Count of Monte Cristo will be one for sure, though getting a good translation that lacks a lot of that flowery and cumbersome language will be important. I’m watching the pilot of Friday Night Lights on TV so it’s safe to assume I’ll be looking for Bissinger’s book at some point too. I know I loved the movie and I have an irrational affinity for football so that can’t be a bad thing.

45

I’ve recommended Seabiscuit to people that aren’t big readers and they loved it.

46

I’m going to, once again, try recommending John Morressy’s Kedrigern stuff. This book is a couple novels and about 8 short stories. Light fantasy with some humor.

47

The Ringworld novels by Larry Niven are very good science fiction books and are a great introduction to SF beyond Bradbury.

Dangerous Visions is a collection of short stories edited by Harlan Ellison, everyone’s favorite sawed-off asshole. :wink: It maintains a fairly consistent level of quality throughout and is a wonderful representation of the era SF started to move beyond the Golden Age.

Neuromancer by William Gibson is a very tight, fast-paced, action-oriented novel that also happens to be the beginning of cyberpunk as a self-aware genre. This is the book Terminator and Alien came from, in a stylistic sense.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is tight, fast-paced, action-oriented and funny, in a somewhat dark and dry kind of way. It roughly marks the end of cyberpunk per se, although cyberpunk elements have never really died off.

In the Upper Room and Other Likely Stories by Terry Bisson is yet another collection of short stories. :wink: Bisson is a modern SF author (this collection is copyright 2000) and he has a very distinctive style. He succeeds in being funny and sad and intriguing.

48

I thought Nightmare and Dreamscapes (the book) sucked. You’ll note in my post upthread that I listed several of his collections, and N&D was not included.

49

I love reading, probably a little too much to be objective in this sort of thread. But here’s a few opinions anyways, by genre:

Fantasy: For some fun, easy, light stuff, try the five books in The Belgariad, by Eddings. There are a lot of reasons to trash him (he’s absolutely mailing his latest series in, he does the same general cliches a lot, and I’m sure a lot of other issues), but his first series is… well, light, easy, and fun fantasy, especially if you haven’t experienced him before (since you’re not sick of him doing, well, the same thing in every book/series he writes).

A step up gets you to Raymond Feist, particularly his Riftwar and Serpentwar stuff (Magician is where to start). Again, pretty by-the-book fantasy for the most part, but very enjoyable page turners. Quality varies outside those two series - he has an entire “making more money out of characters and ideas I already have lying around” trilogy - but his latest stuff is pretty good again.

Science Fiction: For cyperpunk, I second the Neuromancer and Snow Crash recommendations made by Derleth. It’s not usually a genre I end up loving, but both those books are great. Another author I recommend whenever I get the chance is C.S. Friedman - pretty much anything she has written (she’s done, um, seven books between fantasy and sci-fi), but The Madness Season is a standalone and probably my favorite.

More Traditional Fiction: The Count of Monte Cristo is definitely more readable in a shorter translation… the one I have is just a pretty generic book of similar brand to the ones you’d get in HS for “classics”. A Tale of Two Cities is by far my favorite Dickens, though that’s almost certainly pushing too close to “stuff I hated in HS”.

Niche Non-Fiction: I’m not a big non-fiction fan in general. If you have any particular passions, though, there’s probably a great non-fiction book out there that you’ll love. We always do the sports threads, but frankly I can’t think of a “must-read” football book, though there are certainly some good ones out there. Battle Cry of Freedom and A Brief History of Time have near-permanent places at the front of my bookshelf, but unless you’re into civil war history or theoretical physics, respectively, prolly not your thing. Rob Neyer’s books are good stathead baseball stuff.

Crazy Fantasy Assignment: Read everything Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman have ever written, and write a thesis paper about how the quality can vary so widely from “young writers finding their style” to “brilliant and enjoyable fantasy” to “mailing it in for the paycheck on a series that was finished a decade ago”. Okay, so that might be a little too homework-y!

People like me are sort of bad for this question, though… because I will read anything that’s even mediocre within fantasy or sci-fi, plus anything that’s of high quality in any other genre. It gives me something to do between sporting events other than work and sleep.

50

A couple things about Card and King.

Card has some interesting books in the Enders series though the focus changes from kids doing amazing things for their age to adults facing complex issues. They are good for the most part but the focus is way different.

King is one of my favorite writers. When he is good he is damned hard to beat. The problem is that when he is bad, he tends to really suck. Thankfully he doesn’t do bad very often (stay far, far away from The Tommyknockers). King, it seems to me, writes best when he can go into detail and get into the characters pasts. I always recommend The Talisman (written with Peter Straub) and for shorter stories Different Seasons and Night Shift. The Talisman is a fantasy/horror mix and is a great book. Different Seasons has Stand By Me, Apt Pupil and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption and The Breathing Method. Three of those have been made into movies and only one of the movies sucks (Yeah, I’m looking at you Apt Pupil) Night Shift has Survivor Type, which is just…well, read it. You’ll see. It also has Nona, which is probably my favorite King short story.

Slee

51

Am I really the first to mention Robert Heinlein and Spider Robinson?

You might want to start with The Moon is a Harsh Mistress from Heinlein, and any of the Callahan books from Spider.

Other SciFi–Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker series is good, and he’s allowed other authors to write stories set in that universe. You can read one of my favorite Berserker stories here:

http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200502/0743498860___9.htm
For more fantasy, I’ve read that Robert Adam’s Horseclans series is going to be re-released soon. The original Dragonlance series (mentioned earlier in the thread) is pretty good. R.A. Salvatore and Ed Greenwood have some good AD&D inspired books out, under the Forgotten Realms brand.

For mind candy, you might want to check out the various action/adventure series–The Executioner–veteran declares war on the mafia, The Destroyer–cop trained in a forgotten art of assassination with a healthy dose of not so subtle humor. The Wingman–super-pilot fights for freedom in a post WWIII world, with various elements of weirdness, and may others.

52

I’d recommend Michel Faber’s “Under the Skin”…when good cats go bad! Also Neil Gaiman’s “Neverwhere” especially if you’re at all familiar with the London Underground system.

Other faves include stuff by Louis de Berniéres, Sharon Penman for good historical fiction, Charles Dickens 'cos he’s just fab…oh, I could go on.

sin

53

Michel Faber’s short story collections (esp “Some Rain Must Fall”) are excellent.

Steven Gould has a young adultish SF book called “Jumper” that’ll be out as a movie next year (woo!). I like all his books, but I think this is his most accessible.

“Once a Hero” by Elizabeth Moon (it’s the middle of a series but works very well as a stand alone - the other books aren’t bad, but they aren’t as enjoyable). I think it’s space opera.

Also YA but damn good is Lloyd Alexander’s Westmark trilogy (Westmark, Kestral, Beggar Queen). He has a 5 book fantasy series that’s pretty good as well. I’ve never read the prequel.

54

OK folks, it’s been a few months and I’ve moved further along, reading several of the suggestions taken from this thread. I’m really glad I started it, certainly I feel like I can trust Doper’s tastes.

Let’s see, what have I read since the last summary,

Count of Monte Cristo - This book lived up to it’s billing. I found a fairly dumbed down translation, it was a Border’s Classics Abridged Edition that was cut to 500+ pages in hardcover and felt very accessible. I found the story to be very timeless and it didn’t feel dated. It almost felt like it was written to be a period piece as opposed to an old book written in the moment, which I think is a good thing. Books like Jane Eyre and The Great Gatsby were horrific to read because they felt so horribly dated that it may as well have been written in gibberish. The beginning of the novel was simply fabulous. The mood and characters were built perfectly and you could really feel the despair and anger. When the book shifted back to France it got a little tough to decode at first since all the primary characters all had different names and honorary titles. I got a bit lost and had trouble seeing the careful setups The Count was crafting. As it went on things became clearer. I felt the ending was a touch anticlimactic. Dumas is a little similar to Steven King in that building up the characters and drama is his strength while a satisfying conclusion sometimes is missing. Grade: A

Good Omens - I liked the beginning of this book quite a bit. The interplay between the good and bad angels was fantastic. I found a lot of humor in the first half, but then I felt as it closed in on it’s conclusion it began to take itself a little bit too seriously. What began as satire and irony devolved into simple clueless hijinx from daft characters. I feel like the book had a lot of promise that it didn’t capitalize on. For a story about the coming apocalypse there didn’t seem to be that much menace, which may very well be the whole point, but it kinda prevented me from getting too invested in the outcome. Still, genuinely funny books are rare so this ones a winner. Grade: B

Neuromancer - This was one of the disappointments. I generally enjoy the cyberpunk genre in video games and movies. I found the characters in this book a little one dimensional and I felt like the author spent too much time inventing technobabble instead of investing in the story. Age might be part of the problem, some of the concepts and themes might have been a hell of a lot more impressive in the 80s when a “internet” world was more magical than it is today. Some of the action sequences were good, but too many of the characters were fairly clumsy stereotypes for my taste. It didn’t help that the entire motivation of Wintermute was lost on me and the title character barely made an appearance. To say it was anticlimactic would be an understatement. I often found myself annoyed and confused as the setting would shift from “world” to “world” through Case. When the main character primarily serves as a third party observer throughout, even though he is supposedly a indispensable member of the team, you know the premise leaves a little to be desired. Sorry, this one was more style than substance. Outdated style nowadays. Grade: C

'Salem’s Lot - Looks like I’m going to become a shameless King fan. I really enjoyed this book and it was genuinely scary in parts. An impressive feat considering how difficult I usually am to scare. Once again I found his ability to develop a wide variety of characters and weave them into a setting was impressive and engrossing. I enjoyed the pacing and buildup and the only real disappointment was that much of the drama was a little predictable. Perhaps he was a little heavy handed in his foreshadowing. It has a pretty exciting ending, though I think it was a little bleak and depressing. I think on the whole it fell slightly short of The Stand but that’s no shame. Grade: A-

Some of the suggestions I’m entertaining for my next read include: A Brief History of Time (or perhaps A Briefer History of Time). Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Gormenghast triology, though maybe not right away, some of the Will Cuppy stuff if I can find them at Borders, and Christopher Moore’s titles. After Steven King I think I’m feeling something on the lighter side.

So, let me take this bump as an opportunity to request any and all new suggestions and feel free to re-emphasize any books noted above that I might have bypassed. Please try and give me a little idea of what I’d be in for with them. Thanks all!

55

:eek: :dubious: :frowning:

56

Dude, Jane Eyre singlehandedly killed reading for me for a full decade. It was the first book assigned in freshman year honors English, I made a real effort to read it and couldn’t do it. My mom even tried to read along with me, she’s a voracious reader herself, but after a week we agreed that Cliff Notes were the way to go.

57

I’m glad this thread is back because I’ve been looking for a reason to post about this book:

**The Exploits of Ebenezum ** by Craig Shaw Gardner.

This book is actually 3 books (**A Malady of Magicks, A Multitude of Monsters, ** and A Night in the Netherhells ).

I found it recently, using my favorite method of finding new books to read. I read a compilation of excerpts. I think the book was Masterpieces of Horror and the Supernatural, or something like that. When I read a very short excerpt of A Malady of Magicks, I laughed so hard and so long that I got some very strange looks in the lunchroom at work. I bought the full trilogy off Amazon as soon as I got home.

How could anyone not like a book about a wizard who’s allergic to magic?

Doom!

Oh, and my usual suggestions…

  1. 1984
  2. The entire Redwall series
  3. The Bonesetter’s Daughter (if you’re a guy, reading Amy Tan will not make you less of a man. It’s a really good book).

I’m sure someone will disagree with me about this, but if you have a choice between reading Desperation or The Regulators - read Desperation. The Regulators sucked. But, I suppose it depends on which you read first. Stephen King was one of my favorite authors until I read these two books back to back.

The friggen bad guy is the same in both books. The character names are the same but they’re not the same damn people. Kirsten and David were brother and sister in Desperation. In the Regulators, they were husband and wife. People who died in one book, lived in the other book. Stupid Stephen King

58

I just reviewed the thread and saw that no one appears to have recommended Steven Brust yet. His Taltos novels are among my favorites, and offer a nicely unorthodox take on fantasy. (Think human hitman/mob boss working for the elvish Mafia. Sort of.) They’re relatively short, quick reads, and a lot of fun. The series lags a bit in the middle, but it’s worth following all the way through. The Khaavren Romances (Phoenix Guards, Five Hundred Years After, and The Viscount of Adrilankha) are set in the same world, but are wildly different in style; they’re written in a deliberate imitation (or perhaps mockery) of the style of Dumas–note the titles.

Also, I invariably recommend P. C. Hodgell, whose work doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves. Currently, she has four novels out in her Chronicles of the Kencyrath series–Godstalk, Dark of the Moon, Seeker’s Mask, and To Ride a Rathorn, some of which are available in omnibus form. The books are very dark fantasy with an odd mix of humor, largely provided by the heroine’s wry outlook on life. They follow her attempts to rejoin her people after a long (and largely forgotten) exile–attempts complicated by everything from demons to politics to inimical geography, not to mention her people’s penchant for blood feuds and her own propensity for making buildings fall down or burn up. They’re beautiful, intricate books. I just wish she’d finish the series.

She also has a collection of short stories called Blood and Ivory; most of the stories are about the heroine of the novels, but it also includes a good Sherlock Holmes story, of all things.

59

Since you like Crichton and King, I’d suggest picking up Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. It’s got the science aspects to it (fair warning: I’m probably the last person on earth who can tell you how accurate the science is) and it’s a very scary, fun, fast read. Then if you like that, you can go back for more. I’m on the fifth Agent Pendergast book right now, and I started reading them last Saturday.

60

Interesting. I read them at least 5 years apart, and I definitely noticed some of the similarities (or recycled elements), though not all of them. And I wondered whether I would have had a deeper appreciation for the books, or just gotten bored with them, had I read them back-to-back. It sounds, from what you say, like it would have been the latter.

But I definitely agree with you about Desperation being better. I quite liked it, whereas The Regulators—well, I wouldn’t say it sucked, King’s writing ability saves it from that, but it’s not one of his better ones.