Highly recommended reading

[evil^milk]

Hello HL2.net, I know we have a forum to discuss literature but I can almost certainly say it is even less read than the off-topic forum, which is why the topic is here. I hope it is reasonable for it to be in this section, at least for a few weeks, so that it gains enough exposure for more posts; anyway, I digress.

What book would you highly recommend to someone?

I just finished reading last week a book called The Book: On The Taboo Of Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts-an apparently important philosopher of recent times. I recommend it because it touches upon some very fundamental truths about who we are, beyond our egos-which Watts suggests are illusions that are inseparable from their context. This, of course, is nothing new to you. But Watts examines this and other issues in very accessible language that will leave you at ease with who and what we really are.

The best I can do to get you interested in this book is by forwarding an idea I took from it (if I understood it correctly). We are the universe examining itself from different points of view. What and how we examine the world depends on the singular body we are stuck with, but this by no means suggests that we are discrete entities; rather, the limitations imposed by our bodies give us the sensation that we ARE discrete entities. The fact, though, is that we are as much our own bodies as we are the text that you have just read coming from the idea called "me". We could even go so far as suggesting that we are a single interdependent entity, a confluence of causes and effects not isolated in any one specific context.

There is a lot of wisdom in this book, which I highly recommend. I know of no other place at the moment where I can openly talk about it and so I thought I'd share here.

In the pursuit of wisdom, amusement, knowledge, or whatever, really, what book would you highly recommend, HL2.net?

 

[Vegeta897]

Hello HL2.net, I know we have a forum to discuss literature but I can almost certainly say it is even less read than the off-topic forum

Which is why more people should start using this:

View the latest posts. Forum section becomes irrelevant. Stop limiting yourself to only the forums you happen to check. Stop viewing the forum index and looking at the same old 'newest' posts of each section. Only see what's relevant and being discussed, regardless of where it is. Let forum sections serve more of an archival purpose, where you use them to find something from the past.

Once you start using it you'll never know how you managed before.

--- end psa ---

On topic, I'd recommend The Face in the Frost, by John Bellairs. Especially the audiobook version, because the narrator is awesome.
It's a 1969 fantasy novel about 2 wizards. It's so rich in detail and personality. It has parts that I avoid listening to when I listen to the book in bed, because they're downright scary. Scary because it lets your imagination do all the work.
It's not a very long book and is just a real treat.

 

[Krynn72]

Berlin Noir. Its about a German Private Detective in the 1930s. Its three separate stories, all quite good. HBO actually picked up the rights to make a tv show with it if/when they feel like it.

 

[KiplingsCat]

Oooooh. I like Berlin. And I like detective stories.

*Puts on list*

I'm reading Dead Souls by Gogol at the moment. I'm only about a fifth of the way through, but my god, it's hilarious. I've already recommended it to everybody I know.

If there was one all-time favourite-definitely-read-this book that I would recommend....it's a tough call, but I guess I would have to say Hamlet. Everybody should read Hamlet (King Lear a close second (or maybe even a tie), of course). Because when you read Hamlet, you realize that the storyline of Hamlet crops up everywhere- in other books, and films, and events that really happened. I first read it in my mid-teens, which probably made me like it even more...Hamlet is the quintessential moody adolescent (that's why it bothers me to see old people playing him. He was so young!). Also, it's some of Shakespeare's most beautiful writing, in my opinion.

 

[bobtheskull]

I'd recommend The Face in the Frost, by John Bellairs.

This immediately caught my attention and is now high on my list but... Holy Crap! Where the hell am I gonna get it. It must be out of print or something cos it's bloody extortionate... Think I'll be trying my local libraries for it.

Berlin Noir. Its about a German Private Detective in the 1930s. Its three separate stories, all quite good. HBO actually picked up the rights to make a tv show with it if/when they feel like it.

I like the sound of this too... will keep an eye out for it.

I've got too many favourites, couldn't possibly pick any singular one. Arthur C. Clarke's Rama books (although the 1st is the best IMO), Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas books are darkly hysterical... a guilty pleasure of mine. Another series I can't recommend enough, although not exactly literary masterpieces they are enormously fun books, Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. Harry Dresden is a private detective... who also happens to be a wizard... the only Wizard in Chicago with an advert in the Yellow Pages. Another is John Connelly's Charlie Parker books. They are detective novels, with a horror aspect. Very hard going but worth it.

 

[Eejit]

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series is well worth the effort.
The first book Red Mars tells the story of the first 100 colonists and their immediate successors, their attempts to live on the planet and begin terraforming. Tensions with the powers on overcrowded Earth and with the anti-terraform faction on Mars.
Green and Blue Mars continue the story, looking at how a Martian society might develop and struggle against the colonial power of Earth and how terrforming may develop.

It's most interesting because much of it is really quite plausible, it's Hard Sci-Fi at it's best.

 

[bobtheskull]

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series is well worth the effort.
The first book Red Mars tells the story of the first 100 colonists and their immediate successors, their attempts to live on the planet and begin terraforming. Tensions with the powers on overcrowded Earth and with the anti-terraform faction on Mars.
Green and Blue Mars continue the story, looking at how a Martian society might develop and struggle against the colonial power of Earth and how terrforming may develop.

It's most interesting because much of it is really quite plausible, it's Hard Sci-Fi at it's best.

I second this. Though I've only read the first one (and boy, I found it really hard going) but it was a good read. Never read the other 2 though. Might have to follow that one up.

 

[Evo]

50 Shades of Grey.

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/runs

In all seriousness, if you like pro cycling, David Millar's book is a great read. Detective/crime/thriller - Jo Nesbo has some good reads.

 

[kineaesth]

Berlin Noir. Its about a German Private Detective in the 1930s. Its three separate stories, all quite good. HBO actually picked up the rights to make a tv show with it if/when they feel like it.

Also I've just finished reading The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon, it's a really excellent alternate timeline detective noir set in Sitka, Alaska, which has been populated almost entirely by Jewish refugees. Very moody and so on, but also quite funny