Book Tasters / Rate the last book you've read

[Doppelgang]

How about a thread to give a quick introduction to a book you've just read? that way others can decide if its a book they might be interested in, or can give your own thoughts on a book you've read yourself recently, I'll give it a go:

I just read a novel by Ben Elton, called Blind Faith. I've never read one of his books before but I might read others in future as it was a good book. Set in the near future, global warming has meant that diseases infect and kill most children due to higher water levels, poor sanitation, and everyone being cooped in close together, Science and reason have been replaced by a Blind faith that whatever happens, happens for the best and we must embrace it for there is little we can do about it. Trafford, the main character determines to bring a revolution by bringing reason back into the world, he rediscovers lost knowledge and literature, develops a relationship based on courting rather than on immediate sensual gratification, and tries to send a message to the world that the purpose of life is to evolve, in a world where people had come to think that everything should be made to suit them, rather than them adapting to a changing world.

A really interesting premise I thought, and it develops the story in quite a realistic and believable way. At times you're thinking he may be referring to where our current society may be headed and giving us an advance warning. Also, he doesn't at any point judge this future society as either good or bad he just describes it for what it is, allowing you to come to your own conclusions.

 

[Taake]

Even though I hated the movie I decided to give Paulo Coehlo's "Veronika Decides to Die" a chance...

My main problem with the movie is that it trivializes mental illness something I find very offensive.
In the book however, with the characters differently explored I find it better explained - in a way it trivializes mental illness but in a way it doesn't - because they aren't actually mentally ill!

They're troubled - yes, bored - oh sure, afraid - most certainly, spiritual - indeed... and mainly, just plainly very misunderstood.

Eduard's character irritated me most in the movie but in the book again it's different. He's depressed to the extent of potential bouts of psychosis... maybe but certainly not schizophrenic!

The only person who seems remotely and truly 'ill' in the book would be the doctor...

All this said I found the book rather enjoyable. It has some rather good "life lessons" so to speak in it, little gems to think about, and is very easily read.
(Though I strongly dislike author's who inject themselves into their books... kind of cheap...)

Well written even if the mental institution feels more like an institution of the past than the present.

 

[Professor Walsh]

I've just re-read "The Time Traveler's Wife", along with a friend of mine. It's a love story with just the right balance between sweet and bitter, a love story that's believable enough to keep me interested, and quirky enough to make me want to read it yet another time. If you like the love stories of BtVS, I think you can enjoy this one.

Back in the living room, Henry is still sleeping. I retrieve my watch from the
windowsill and see that it's only 6:30. I'm too restless to get back into bed. I walk
into the kitchenette in search of coffee. All the counters and the stove are covered
with stacks of dishes, magazines, and other reading material. There's even a sock in
the sink. I realize that Henry must have simply heaved everything into the kitchen last
night, regardless. I always had this idea that Henry was very tidy. Now it becomes
clear that he's one of those people who is fastidious about his personal appearance
but secretly slovenly about everything else. I find coffee in the fridge, and find the
coffee maker, and start the coffee. While I wait for it to brew, I peruse Henry's
bookshelves.

Here is the Henry I know. Donne's Elegies and Songs and Sonnets. Doctor
Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe. Naked Lunch. Anne Bradstreet, Immanuel Kant.
Barthes, Foucault, Derrida. Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. Winnie the
Pooh. The Annotated Alice. Heidegger. Rilke. Tristram Shandy. Wisconsin Death
Trip. Aristotle. Bishop Berkeley. Andrew Marvell. Hypothermia, Frostbite and Other
Cold Injuries.

The bed squeaks and I jump. Henry is sitting up, squinting at me in the morning
light. He's so young, so before"”. He doesn't know me, yet. I have a sudden fear that
he's forgotten who I am.
"You look cold" he says.

On a different note, I am currently reading Egon von Neindorff's book "The Art of Classical Horsemanship" (translated from "Die reine Lehre der klassischen Reitkunst"). This is such a lovely dressage bible, I'll recommend it to anyone who are interested in dressage riding or just want to ride better.

 

[xaphania]

I'm currently reading 'The Wilderness Saga' by Sara Donati. I read and loved Diana Gabaldon's 'Outlander' series a couple of years ago, and when I asked on a livejournal comm for similar books, they recommended these.

I'm enjoying them so far but they're not much more than historical chick-lit with some political history tidbits thrown in. That said, they're a good, fun read.

When Elizabeth Middleton, twenty-nine years old and unmarried, leaves her Aunt Merriweather's comfortable English estate to join her father and brother in the remote mountain village of Paradise on the edge of the New York wilderness, she does so with a strong will and an unwavering purpose: to teach school. It is December of 1792 when she arrives in a cold climate unlike any she has ever experienced. And she meets a man different from any she has ever encountered -- a white man dressed like a Native American, tall and lean and unsettling in his blunt honesty. He is Nathaniel Bonner, also know to the Mohawk people as Between-Two-Lives.

 

[Doppelgang]

A good series of books, according to my sister, are the girl with the dragon tattoo, Siegfried Larsson and the other two in that series. I havn't read them myself, but I did see the film of the girl with the dragon tattoo, and I could see the appeal of it, so I would definitely recommend them to anyone over about at least the age of 18-21, looking for a more grown-up approach/understanding of the world. The stories revolve around a central female character who can hack in to computers, and just does it for fun, but then ends up using her skills to help someone to solve a crime. There's quite a few serious, dramatic and controversial scenes in it, but they fit together well with the message of the story overal.

I've just finished reading, well listening, to an audio version of the invisible man by HG Wells. This was the original sci-fi novel about this concept that spawned all the others. It was quite good, not as out-dated as I thought it would be. It explores the idea, made standard by future stories of this kind, that invisibility, although it may seem like a great freedom to have, soon leads to you going crazy because all the normal freedoms you take for granted get taken away, and what good is a freedom that you cannot share with anyone? It goes in to this idea probably in greater depth than most of the follow-up stories with the same concept.

I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes good classic science fiction, but you do have to be a bit patient with it as it's a bit slow to build up the tension.

(For anyone who likes to listen to audio books, you can download most older books up to about 1930, because the copyright of them has expired, at http://www.librivox.org It's a good site, where people volunteer to do audio recordings of older books that they like, and it has a very good selection.)

 

[white avenger]

I'm currently re-reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter Of Mars" trilogy, just so that I can be ready for the release of the new movie next year. I had forgotten just how almost Shakespearean Burroughs' narrative and dialogue are, but considering that the first book in the trilogy, "A Princess Of Mars," was written a century ago, I guess that's kind of understandable. (God, I hope this movie blows "Avatar" right out of the water for spcial effects and story. I've waited more than 50 years to see John Carter on the big screen)

 

[frankie]

I'm also reading an Edgar Rice Burroughs book " Tarzan Of The Apes". I've read it about a hundred times already but it is my second favorite book. Tarzan and Kala are two of my favorite literary characters. It's a brilliantly written and full of everything you want from a book. Action, adventure, romance, loss and it's wonderfully descriptive. There are many many sequels as well, but the first is best in my opinion 🙂.

 

[Christopher]

I wanted to read some decent fiction so had a flick through something called 'The Bible'. It was barely comprehensible and poorly written with no respect for the readers intelligence, so I went back to my Dan Brown novels.

 

[Ollehh]

At the moment, I'm just reading a Doctor Who novel called The Glamour Chase;

'Why are you here? I mean - who are you, exactly?'
An archaeological dig in 1936 unearths relics of another time... And - as the Doctor, Amy and Rory realise - another place. Another planet. But if Enola Porter, noted adventuress, has really found evidence of an alien civilisation, how come she isn't famous? Why has Rory never heard of her? Added to that, since Amy's been travelling with him for a while now, why does she now think the Doctor is from Mars?

As the ancient spaceship reactivates, the Doctor discovers that nothing and no one can be trusted. The things that seem most real could actually be literal fabrications - and very deadly indeed. Who can the Doctor believe when no one is what they seem? And how can he defeat an enemy who can bend matter itself to their will? For the Doctor, Amy and Rory - and all of humanity - the buried secrets of the past are very much a threat to the present...

I'm almost half-way through it. It's set the story up nicely so far, even if it took a while to introduce the main characters.

 

[TaylorSwift]

I'm currently reading Dead Souls by Gogol. It's set in Russia of course..it's kinda hard to say what's it about..it offers a portrait of Russia's society and economics at that time..after 1812..and it starts with a gentleman of the middle-class who comes to town and actually try and buys dead souls..I still don't know why...I've just read 200 pages..but as most of the Russian novels I predict it's gonna be awesome.

 

[Doppelgang]

I just finished reading Americana by Don Delillo. Parts of it were really good, but other parts seemed to drag a bit. The main character is a person with an office job in New York, who doesn't like his job who decides to leave it and go into the heart of america to film a documentary to discover the essence of American life. He becomes dissillusioned though with what he finds.

I feel that part of the message of the story may have been that the problem was not in the people he filmed and interviewed in the heart of america but in his own negative projections on to others that coloured his view of things.

I am currently reading an Edgar Rice Burroughs book, At the earths core, based on what a couple of others said on here about his novels, not having read any of his sci-fi before. It's quite good so far, and I'd say its comparable to H.G. Wells in quality and scope.

 

[TaylorSwift]

Comments on this post
Doppelgang agrees: I've not read Gogol myself yet, but some of my fave novels are other russians Tolstoy and Doestoyevsky

Oh..I love Tolstoj..I've read his most famous books...Anna Karenina and War & Peace and found them beautiful. Dostoevskij...I've read some short stories and started Crime and Punishment but had to return before I've finished it and therefore I have to read it again in the future..

 

[Doppelgang]

Oh..I love Tolstoj..I've read his most famous books...Anna Karenina and War & Peace and found them beautiful. Dostoevskij...I've read some short stories and started Crime and Punishment but had to return before I've finished it and therefore I have to read it again in the future..

Yeh Tolstoy's good, I've read Anna Karenina and Ressurection, but not war and peace yet, I'm sure it's only a matter of time till I read that 🙂 I would definitely recommend reading more Doestoyevsky, Crime and Punishment is good and also The Idiot and Brothers Karamazov is an epic.

 

[Ricia]

I just read the first volume of the graphic novel "I Am Here". It's a story of a girl who nobody notices and who's only contact is with two people online. She becomes friends with the most popular boy in school and it deals with her suddenly getting attention and the consequences. It's emotional, heartbreaking and beautifully told and I've only read the first part. There's five volumes.

 

[Carrrrgh]

Rate the last book you've read

Priceless - Nicole Richie

7/10 - It started off really good but then it ended sort of abruptly and oddly. Overall it was a good read though.

 

[Zeppo]

I love Nicole Richie. 😀

Never Let Me Go - 11/10

This is a movie now. But read the book first!! It's haunting and so genuine. So amazing, I recommend and if anyone has read it let me know, I'd love to talk about it. SO good.

 

[HalloweenRain]

Man's Search For Meaning- It was an AMAZING book, Its so thought-provoking, but there are things in it that are so terrible that it made me cry. 10/10

 

[xaphania]

I'm reading Sara Donati's Wilderness series, about the New York frontier in the early 1800s and several generations of a family living there. It's good, and the book in that series that I just read:

Queen of Swords - which I'll give 8/10. I didn't enjoy it as much as the previous books, or the one I'm reading now, because there wasn't much time spent on my favourite characters and too much time on new ones.

 

[Carrrrgh]

This was a really long while ago but It's worth mentioning

Remember Me? - Sophie Kinsella

10/10 I read it years ago but it's still probably one of my favorite books, so clever 🙂

 

[Taake]

"Discourse in the origin of inequality" - Rosseau. I'll give it a 7/10 because it's very good and the language flows freely, leaving you unable to put the book down. However, Rosseau certainly gives the feel at times as if he's the last person who should ever be passing any judgements on the concept of "inequality"

Somethings in the text are most definitely dated but it is worth a read and a great deal of it transcends the time it was written in!