Need a good book

hendrix said:
For a totally different kind of book, "The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime" is another favourate. Wasn't "life-changing", but after reading that book I looked at life in a totally different way.
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Agreed, a wonderful book :)
 
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson if you haven't already read it. Should keep you going for about a month!
 
hendrix said:
For a totally different kind of book, "The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime" is another favourate. Wasn't "life-changing", but after reading that book I looked at life in a totally different way.
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Think I'm going to go for this one as well, sounds interesting, so does "You Got Nothing Coming", think these, "His Dark Materials" and "100 years of sollitude" should keep me occupied for a little while, thanks guys
 
Don't forget Spike Milligoons books. ;)

Such as:
The bible according to...
Frankenstien according to...
Robin Hood according to...
Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall

and so on - he's done loads though.

And sadly - his gravestone was right. "I told you I was ill"

Simon/~Flibster
 
Paulus said:
harlen coben books... very similar to john grisham ,, if you like that kind of thing
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Cheers for that, i'm a big fan of John Grisham but have never heard of Harlen Coben, will look him up :)
 
There's a couple of very good WWII accounts:
Sniper on the Eastern Front
The memoirs of Sepp Allerberger - Knights Cross.
by Albrecht Wacker.
Publisher Pen and Sword Books Ltd (UK)
Year 2005
ISBN 1844153177
Format Hardback - 196 Pages
Very good book. Insightfull as to the role of the sniper on the battlefield and often harrowing first hand accounts of the front line fighting on the eastern front. A graphic memoir, providing a vivid insight into the atrocious conditions and brutal cruelty of this campaign. There was, we learn, no place for chivalry and few prisoners survived long after capture. Allerberger relates the cunning, disciplin and fieldcraft that not only saw him survive during the near constant action but made him such a relentless assasin.
linky
excerpt available here a fairly explicit description; be warned (Mods: I'll delete this if it's considered to be inapropriate or an infringement of whatever...)
Mixed reviews on amazon, but make up your own mind.



The Forgotten Soldier
Guy Sajer
Hardcover: 476 pages
Publisher: Brassey's US (May 2001)
Language English
ISBN: 1574882856
This is the horror of World War II on the Eastern Front, as seen through the eyes of a teenaged German soldier. At first an exciting adventure, young Guy Sajer's war becomes, as the German invasion falters in the icy vastness of the Ukraine, a simple, desperate struggle for survival against cold, hunger, and above all the terrifying Soviet artillery. As a member of the elite Gross Deutschland Division, he fought in all the great battles, from Kursk to Kharkov. Sajer's German footsoldier's perspective make The Forgotten Soldier a unique war memoir, the book that the Christian Science Monitor said "may well be the book about World War II which has been so long awaited." Now it has been handsomely republished as a hardcover containing fifty rare German combat photos of life and death at the Eastern Front. The photos of troops battling through snow, mud,burned villages, and rubble-strewn cities depict the hardships and destructiveness of war. Many are originally from the private collections of German soldiers and have never been published before. This is a deluxe edition of a true classic.
linky


I'm halfway through The Forgotten Soldier at the moment; neither book is overly dramatic or sensational but simply put accounts of the boredom and terror of the eastern front. If you have any interest in history or curiosity about those times then I can wholeheartedly recomend these books.
 
Nitefly said:
Dunno if you would consider them childrens books or not, but the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy of books are my favourites. They consist of 'Nothern Lights', 'The Subtle Knife' and 'The Amber Spyglass'. Look them up :) .

Not too keen on Adrian Mole mind...

Edit - And yeah, avoid Tolkien like the plague, ugh! :p
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You like the garbage that is HDM and dislike Tolkien?

Christ.

[edit]Sirril, His Dark Materials is only liked because it is fashionable to do so. They're tedious slogs through and aren't worth it when you get to the end.
 
Nitefly said:
Excellent, you won't regret it. I have a signed first edition of the amber spyglass in hardback, got it when I went to see him lecture about his books in a museum in Oxford :cool:
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The film is currently in pre-production and bits of CGI I've seen look fantastic.
 
Avoid the literary junk that is the Da Vinci code- it's a really really terrible book.

If you want a fairly easy read that's a real page turner, try books by Geoffery Archer- absolutley fantastic and 100x better than that tripe Dan Brown writes.

Kane and Abel, followed by The Prodical Daughter and Shall We Tell the President being a good start (they follow on from each other.) Kane and Abel being the best of those, but the other two still being very good reads. Pretty much all of his books are very good though (As the Crow Flies, A Matter of Honour are both very good reads too)

Or you could try The Time Traveller's Wife: I must admit I've not read this one yet (its my next book) but I've heard it's meant to be excellent.
 
Bes said:
...try books by Geoffery Archer- absolutley fantastic and 100x better than that tripe Dan Brown writes.
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All his books are the same! They are some sort of wierd analagy of his own life, or rather the way he thinks his own life is and the 'unjust' trials and tribulations that he's been though.

You do realise that by buying his books you are giving him money don't you?
 
Archer sucks.

Dan Brown is a perfectly good read. Its just an easy read. Thats nice sometimes.
 
You do realise that by buying his books you are giving him money don't you?
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Pick 'em up in charity shops, double boost of goodness :p

In fact, I can't plug charity shops enough for books, I read books too fast to be paying full whack for them, so picking up books for 50p-£1 a go is perfect, plus it means that even if it isn't that good it's so cheap it's worth doing.
 
Gilly said:
You like the garbage that is HDM and dislike Tolkien?

Christ.

[edit]Sirril, His Dark Materials is only liked because it is fashionable to do so. They're tedious slogs through and aren't worth it when you get to the end.
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I enjoyed reading HDM because the characters were interesting and the concept was great.

I disliked lord of the rings for many reasons:

a)It took forever for something to actually happen.
b)Tolkien seemed to enjoy writing 8 pages on a flower and them dancing around it then half a paragraph on a fight or something that could have been exciting.
c)There were so many characters and parts which weren't vital to the story, but they wern't interesting either.
d)The songs.
e)It was tediously BORING.

But each to their own. I know someone who thinks that the LOTR books are aweful when taken by themselves, but are brilliant when you take the story as a whole. Unfortuantly they were so dull that I never got much further than half way through it.
 
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