Name some good books to read on a rainy weekend...
what would you recommend as a good book that is thoughtful and entertaining,,,but not 800 pages long...
i'll start:
Pulp Fiction:
The Killer Inside Me...Jim Thompson (almost any JT will be great to read)
The Long Goodbye...Raymond Chandler
if you like those...then any chandler, thompson, Charles Willeford (is God), and Dashiel Hammlett
Sci Fi:
A Scanner Darkly--Philip K Dick...ok, any PKD
A Mote in God's Eye....Niven/Pournelle...ok, longer book, but a fun read
Social/Dramatic:
High Rise..JG Ballard
Jailbird...Kurt Vonnegut
The Painted Bird...Jerzy Kosinski
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
....g
[ 02-09-2003: Message edited by: thegelding ]</p>
i'll start:
Pulp Fiction:
The Killer Inside Me...Jim Thompson (almost any JT will be great to read)
The Long Goodbye...Raymond Chandler
if you like those...then any chandler, thompson, Charles Willeford (is God), and Dashiel Hammlett
Sci Fi:
A Scanner Darkly--Philip K Dick...ok, any PKD
A Mote in God's Eye....Niven/Pournelle...ok, longer book, but a fun read
Social/Dramatic:
High Rise..JG Ballard
Jailbird...Kurt Vonnegut
The Painted Bird...Jerzy Kosinski
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
....g
[ 02-09-2003: Message edited by: thegelding ]</p>
Comments
not long, very thought provoking, and the best ending to any book i've read in a long, long time.
Gravities Rainbow by Pynchon well, lots of rainy days!!
Being and Time Martin Heidegger --for very dark rainy days
Absolom Absolom Faulkner
Hard Boiled Wonderland At the End of The World and
Sputnick Sweetheart by Murakami
Letters To A Young Poet -Rilke
Waiting For Godot or
Three Novels: Malloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable by Samuel Beckett --for extremely extremely dark long rainy days
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan dated, but very thought provoking
Anything about the philosopher Giambatista Vico including The New Science by Vico
particularly: Philosphy and the Return To Self Knowledge by Phillip Verene
All of Joyce's works plus the whole library of guidebooks!!!
[ 02-09-2003: Message edited by: pfflam ]</p>
Vernor Vinge books!! good engrossing sci-fi with techno-twists and good old fashioned white-knuckling drama
Jonathan Letham: Gun with Occasional Music --very much twisted like a blend of Dashielle Hammet and Phillip K Dick
I hear his other stuff is good too
Anything Vonnegut
PKDick
....ummm
particularly Immortality
and
The Book of Laughter and forgetting
also
100 Years of Solitude by Gabrial Garcia Marquez
You could read them over nad over and still find stuff you missed the first time...
[ 02-09-2003: Message edited by: nosey ]</p>
Its light hearted, short and a classic. For all ages!
i just finished reading "all she was worth" by miyuki miyabe... a really good mystery novel, revolving around identity theft and credit card debt in japan.
other good books:
kangaroo notebook by kobo abe
tender at the bone by ruth reichl
naomi by junichiro tanizaki
the elephant vanishes (short stories) by takashi murakami
oh and any edogawa ranpo short stories-- good slightly creepy things, my favorite so far is "the human chair".
O'Conner has a great selection of short stories, as well as Chekov.
Some Dean Koontz.
oh yeah, Kama Sutra for Dummies!
Where The Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
or, any of the collected works of Berkeley Breathed.
[ 02-10-2003: Message edited by: opuscroakus ]</p>
And, you know. Everything by Vonnegut.
Video Night In Katmandu by Pico Iyer . . . it's a travell book and is from the 80s or early nineties but it svery entertaining and fascinating and a quick engrossing read.
The Unquiet Ghost by Adam Hoschild, is a journalistic book about the history of Stalin's murderous regime and the unearthing of its history after the fall of Communism . . . fascinating and a quick read
-------
ANd Roo . .The Wind Up Bird Chronicles is also good by Murakami . . . most people that I know that have read his books think that it is his masterpiece . . . but I just thought it was ok . . . din't have teh same emotional impact as the others I mentioned.
and Some Preffer Nettles by Tanazaki is one of my favorite books . . . though I read it along time ago . .
All Quiet on the Western Front
For rainy day novels John Irving is great, I don't like to feel encumbered on rainy days, or through the winter either, and must disagree with many of the selections here not for unworthiness but because of their kind of genius. An important part of reading is that you survive the exercise with your witts intact, all depending on how seriously you read. I always feel a little dead at the end of a long book and don't like finishing them during particularly gloomy periods, so I stick to poems because a poem is more like sprinting: leaves you winded, but excited. Maybe it knocks you on your ass, but you still have energy to get up. When a novel clobbers you, you feel broken all over, you want to relive it, master it, much too easy to despair -- never finish novels on rainy days. Now I suppose if we all lived on the Mediterranean we could read novels all the time, any old time, and sun and salt and sea would repair words' wounds, but some of us have to contend with Toronto and worse, and so we must mete out literature at a responsible pace or give up reading altogether.
Sorry, I've been reading Hemmingway.
Right now I'm reading A Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain (even after last year's Kitchen Confidential forced me to give up any notion of ever eating Sunday brunch again) and The Complete Fairy Tales of The Brothers Grimm which are pretty...um...grim.
And as if it hasn't been said enough, anything Vonnegut (hence my sig ).
[oops! I forgot two really good books for some light rainy-day reading: Towing Jehovah and Bible Stories for Adults, both by James Morrow. Good Stuff.
[ 02-11-2003: Message edited by: 709 ]</p>
Mark Helprin, A Winter's Tale
Science Fiction: Hyperion, Dan Simmons
Horror: Carrion Comfort, Dan Simmons
Mainstream Fiction: Phases of Gravity, Dan Simmons
Novellete Anthology: Lovedeath, Dan Simmons
Short Story Anthology: Prayers to Broken Stones, Dan Simmons