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Pretty hard to pick just a few. What are your all time best reads. Can be from any stage in your life and it doesn't have to qualify as a great book, just one you really enjoyed, one that shaped your thinking, had an impact etc etc.

 

for me:

 

A Fortunate Life (A.B. Facey)

 

Siddhartha (Hermann Hess)

 

Fermat\'s Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World\'s Greatest Mathematical Problem (Simon Singh)

This book is so intensely interseting that I was depressed when I finsihed it.

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after priming with the quark and the jaguar: adventures in the simple and the comlex by murry gell-man (not especially good) i read web of life:a new understanding of living systems by fritjof capra and was able to find some drection in life ;\) neither of these books are remarkably well written, but they have some nice concepts.

 

 

ive read singh's book, it was good.

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Very hard!! (not me, the topic.. lol.gif )

 

Japanese: wagahai wa neko de aru - Nastume Soseki

Professioanal: Law's Empire - Dworkin

Novel: A prayer for Owen Meany - Irving (but I love a 1000 more)....I've read The Great Gatsby quite a few times....

 

I love books..and am currently writing one. Which makes me wonder..anyone wrote a book? Got published? This is my first attempt and don't really know what to expect...... wave.gif

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 Quote:
Originally posted by Kintaro:

Japanese: wagahai wa neko de aru - Nastume Soseki
I'd really like to read some japanese literature, but I read a short synopsis of that book, and it sounded like it would be really depressing. How would you describe it?
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I think the only books i have ever read from cover to cover are....

 

Harry potter the 1st one *last year!!

 

Goosebumps the Haunted mask *hey i was in year 6!

 

Go Ask Alice *book bout a drug addicted teen

 

Stoker *From the eyes of the last surviving POW WWII

 

The last 2 are fantastic books both true storys resonablily depressing but they keeped me hooked.

Im not much of a reader... hence i have only completed 4 books....!! \:D

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MisterSparkle,

 

Not depressing at all. If you like cat's..I do..it's hillarious. I've read it probably 3-4 times. It's life through a cat's eyes in the Edo era. Bochan is also a good Natsume Soseki book. Funny.

 

If your looking for J-literature, you might want to check out Kenji Miyazawa's "Night of the Milky Way Railway"...pretty trippy read! I actually visited the location after reading the book just to see for myself (Hanamaki, Iwate).

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To kill a mocking bird - harper lee

 

Falling leaves - adeline yen mah

 

Angelas ashes - Frank McCourt

 

A handmaids tale - margaret atwood

 

Pride and prejudice - jane austen

 

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy - douglas adams

 

merchant of venice - william shakespeare

 

a child called 'it' - dave pelzer

 

i have also read a truck load of books on theatre and theatre arts which i have found very interesting.

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Heart of Darkness is one of my favourites too. There's a history book called 'King Leopold's Ghost' that looks at Belgium's colonial policy which was the historical background to Conrad's story. Fascinating stuff, and in the big historical picture, very little known.

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 Quote:
Originally posted by echineko:
I like to reading about other peoples life story, its many time is very interesting.
I too. That is why I enjoyed A.B. Faceys story so much.

I tend to nearly always prefer factual accounts rather than fiction. If I want adventure I will read something like Papillion or Robinson Crusoe (ok, not quite fact)or even Moby Dick . If the book is pure fiction then I need to learn from it, stimulate the brain. For example In the Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco).

In my original post forgot to mention Against the Gods: the Remarkable Story of Risk.

I do enjoy fiction, but only 1 in 10 that I read are of that type. I almost never read pure fiction unless it has that literature edge to it.

Should post this to another thread, but I once tried to write some fiction. The theme was supposed to be about the confusion of people and how you can't measure something without changing its state, thus you can never measure anything at all. It was a total failure. I would have to sit up extremely late to get my warped mind going and then would just puke out complete nonsense. I really had difficulty creating characters (I am not the artistic or interpersonal type and just creating characters was to theatrical for me) so I attempted to write a story without actually identifying or refering to any actual character in the story, even though the strory was all about human confusion. I was going to call the book either:

Interpretation

or

This Page Was Intentionally Left Blank
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A few that spring to mind are:

 

On the Road by Keruac bit me with the travel bug.

 

I have Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha to thank for my inital interest in Japan, a tale that truly touched me.

 

Shogun by Clavell is definitely an all time fave.

 

Siddhartha is definitely a beautiful book.

 

Gibson's Neuromancer is a great sci-fi romp.

 

There are a ton of others. Those spring right to mind though.

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"Sanity, madness, and the family" by R.D. Laing was a seminal read for me. It tends to confirm the words of the poet "They f**k you up, your mum and dad." but if you take it with a pinch of salt, it can be very refreshing to acknowledge it. (I didn't take it with any salt at all, and had some rather big battles with my folks who are at least as argumentative as I am. \:o ) Some of his interviews with schizophrenic people about their family relationships really made me squirm.

 

I've also read "Dispatches" by Michael Herr more times than I care to remember.

 

I OD'd on fiction doing Eng Lit at uni, so I hardly ever touch the stuff anymore. But "The English Patient" made a lasting impression. The story threatens to spiral into total weirdness without ever getting completely incomprehensible (the latter being something I hate in books).

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spiral into total weirdness without ever getting completely incomprehensible
Then, you definately would not like one of my recent favorites, Infinite Jest . I had to admire the skill of the author, although some people would accuse him of just showing off.
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