Quote :

"Check out cryptonomincon for sure"

Yeah, no. I couldn't get thirty pages into it.

5/27/2006 3:02:07 PM

^thats why i ask advice, to avoid permanantly damaging my reading enthusiasm,
but jurassic is so so great

5/29/2006 1:33:49 AM

Catch 22 is a great book

I keep repeating myself with Steinbeck, but I really love his writing.

I've heard Uberto Ecco is pretty good too.

5/29/2006 1:47:05 AM

Quote :

"I've heard Uberto Ecco is pretty good too."

He blows away Dan Brown... not that Dan Brown is anything great but you know what I mean

5/29/2006 2:35:55 AM

Definitely State of Fear. It's one of the best I've ever read.

5/30/2006 7:40:13 PM

I just finished Crichton's Eaters of the Dead and really liked it. It's basically the story of Beowulf that everyone reads in high school, but this one is based on the actual manuscripts of an Arab traveller who ends up with Beowulf's tribe/clan and writes a report recounting all the events to give to the Sultan. Aside from the fighting and all, you get some background on Viking rituals and daily life, and also how some early tribal groups lived.

If you're looking for action/adventure, Clive Cussler books aren't bad. They are your typical movie star hero who gets into trouble but saves the day at the last moment, but there's a lot of history/mythology introduced that makes it interesting. Serpent is one I really liked.

5/31/2006 12:04:12 AM

Quote :

"Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett"

Wonderful read.

Fiction suggestions:

Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

Non Fiction:
Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene

5/31/2006 12:25:19 AM

im reading jurassic park, so far so great
im thinking of following it up with lost world but i dont know if its as bad as the movie

6/22/2006 9:48:05 PM

as far as i know the movie is totally different

6/22/2006 9:51:32 PM

The Lost World was cool as shit when I read it, which was in sixth or seventh grade.

I'm reading The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene right now. I'd put it off for a long time because he was kind of a dick when I met him, and I'm awesome at staging one-man boycotts of things. It's pretty interesting, and reading it makes me feel slightly less stupid.

6/23/2006 1:18:44 AM

^ just to be clear, for everyone else - when you start reading Brian Green, you're entering a whole different genre than all the other books that have been discussed by Crichton and Grisham and Brown.

He's a physics writer, kind of like Hawking. But if you're getting into pysics books, I suggest Richard Gott's Time Travel in Einstein's Universe, and of course the requisite Hawking books, A brief history of time and The universe in a nutshell.
And what surprised me the most with all the physics books is that you can go straight to the source - Einstein's Relativity itself, and it's very readable and accessible - http://tinyurl.com/mzxqf

[Edited on June 23, 2006 at 2:34 AM. Reason : .]

6/23/2006 2:11:34 AM

Please note that I don't read shit like Crichton, Grisham, and Brown, and I know the difference between fiction and non-fiction.

And I used to read physics books like crazy when I was in high school, but I'd stopped for a long time. I've read A Brief History of Time, Relativity, assorted books of lectures by Feynman, and quite a bit of the more pop-oriented stuff by Michio Kaku and guys like that. I just haven't read anything like that in a long time.

6/23/2006 2:19:01 AM

yeah, i know you obviously know the difference. just for the benefit of everyone else who might not be familar with Greene or Gott.

6/23/2006 2:35:26 AM

There was a clerk in our Probate Court reading a Judy Blume book during her lunch break the other day. I think she's like 25.

6/23/2006 8:28:41 AM

Quote :

"im thinking of following it up with lost world but i dont know if its as bad as the movie"

Its a good book. It is nothing like the movie at all. They wrote the screenplay before he finished the book if I am not mistaken.

6/23/2006 3:07:35 PM

for easy beach type reading try james patterson, he wrote the books "kiss the girls" and "along came a spider"

its a pretty good little series if you read all the alex cross character books. http://www.jamespatterson.com/books_alex_cross.html

he's written a bunch of other good books too though, just check around the site.

[Edited on June 23, 2006 at 7:35 PM. Reason : ,]

6/23/2006 7:33:14 PM

cool, im into physics theories and facts, ive tried to read a few physics books but i bit off way more than i could chew so those books sound interesting.

they seem to be in the same league as "dragons of eden" which i never finished but i like the way sagan writes.

6/24/2006 12:28:07 AM

A Brief History of Time is very well written and very entertaining reading. There's nothing technical in it, so you should be able to appreciate it without any advance knowledge.

6/24/2006 12:32:44 AM

Jonathon Kellerman - Psycological cop thriller books. Hes got some great stuff.

Micheal Connley- Straight up cop books mostly. Can get gory, mostly serial killers. I suggest "A darkness more than night"

Stuart Woods- A little of everything, still thrillers. Last one I read was Palindrome, pretty good.

6/24/2006 9:22:34 AM

Quote :

"timeline by crichton is one of the best books i've ever read."

6/24/2006 12:56:46 PM

i'm not a crichton hater by any means - i enjoyed the andromeda strain, and prey to a lesser extent - but i thought timeline was way stupid.

6/24/2006 1:39:34 PM

Did anyone else HATE State of Fear by crichton?

6/24/2006 6:56:55 PM

Now that I've graduated and moved into a house by myself, I've been finally doing some pleasure reading. I'm not a speed reader by far but I've read 3 books in the last 2 months. thats alot for someone that has NEVER completed a book that wasn't required for class.

I'm going to be honest. I love Dan Brown books. I've read The Divinci Code, Angels and Demons, and Digital Fortress. I just picked up Deception Point last night.

I have a few Crichton and Clancy books that I've picked up over the years. Once I finish the final Brown book, I'll start on those.

6/24/2006 9:20:59 PM

If you don't like Stevenson then you either fail at life or are not a big enough nerd

6/24/2006 9:52:46 PM

i LOVED snow crash. it's definitely one of my most favorite books, but good lord! cryptonomicon was awful. bland characters, WAY too much technical info.

6/24/2006 11:26:44 PM