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Someone recommend me some good books to read

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  • 23-10-2009 3:10pm
    #1
    StormWarrior
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,577 ✭✭✭


    Something exciting, interesting and horizon-broadening please.


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    #2
    Cool_CM
    Registered Users Posts: 4,977 ✭✭✭Cool_CM


    This man should be able to help you out;)


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    #3
    genericguy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,831 ✭✭✭genericguy


    michael chabon - the yiddish policeman's union.
    James michener - hawaii
    bill bryson - a short history of everything
    the art of war - sun tzu
    a painted house - john grisham

    Any of the jack reacher novels by lee child if you need to switch off for light entertainment.


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    #4
    funk-you
    Registered Users Posts: 2,743 ✭✭✭funk-you


    You might get a serious answer here OP:

    http://boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=19

    -Funk


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    #5
    stephodile
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2 ✭stephodile


    I'd definitely recommend 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' by Lionel Shriver. The subject matter is a bit unsettling but if you want something that's incredibly well-written, and will make you think, it's really worth a read.


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    #6
    Mardy Bum
    Registered Users Posts: 3,674 ✭✭✭Mardy Bum


    Ulysses, thank me later.


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    #7
    Cadiz
    Registered Users Posts: 454 ✭✭Cadiz


    Uum highly subjective thing isn't it so don't come back to me saying 'why'd you recommend that, I can't believe I lost hours of my life reading it etc.' But for what it's worth:

    Running with Scissors - Augusten Burroughs
    The Secret History - Donna Tartt
    Stuart, a Life Lived Backwards - Alexander Masters
    Attachment - Isabel Fonseca
    Anything by Graham Greene (esp the Quiet American, The Third Man, Brighton Rock, The Bomb Party)


    With agree with previous poster re. We Need To Talk About Kevin..

    There have been some great auto/biographies recently too, none of which I can recall right now but will come back on that..


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    #8
    Cadiz
    Registered Users Posts: 454 ✭✭Cadiz


    Paul Theoroux's travel stuff is great too..


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    #9
    O.A.P
    Registered Users Posts: 1,379 ✭✭✭O.A.P


    StormWarrior wrote: »
    Something exciting, interesting and horizon-broadening please.
    Roots if you have'nt already.


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    #10
    Latchy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 21,191 ✭✭✭✭Latchy


    The Forensic Science ( fiction ) series of books by Patricia Cornwell .


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    #11
    cashback
    Registered Users Posts: 1,598 ✭✭✭cashback


    Cadiz wrote: »
    Paul Theoroux's travel stuff is great too..

    Was just going to say the same. The Great Railway Bazaar is his most well known maybe and it's one of my favourite books. I've also read Dark Star Safari and Riding The Iron Rooster, also worth a look. Currently reading Ghost Train to The Eastern Star, his sequel to the Bazaar.
    Definitely a rung above most travel writers.


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    #12
    henryporter
    Registered Users Posts: 2,089 ✭✭✭henryporter


    Life: A Users Manual - Georges Perec
    Foucaults Pendulum - Umberto Eco
    Murphy - Samuel Beckett
    Watt - Samuel Beckett
    Anything by Raymond Carver
    Anything by Thomas Pynchon


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    #13
    Cadiz
    Registered Users Posts: 454 ✭✭Cadiz


    cashback wrote: »
    Was just going to say the same. The Great Railway Bazaar is his most well known maybe and it's one of my favourite books. I've also read Dark Star Safari and Riding The Iron Rooster, also worth a look. Currently reading Ghost Train to The Eastern Star, his sequel to the Bazaar.
    Definitely a rung above most travel writers.

    Riding the Iron Rooster +1, it affected the way I thought about writing and travel and life. Read Dark Star Safari at start of the summer and thought long and hard about aid provision and how I viewed Africa for a long while after that..

    Books rock! :)


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    #14
    Dades
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,558 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    Shantaram.


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    #15
    Anouilh
    Registered Users Posts: 1,826 ✭✭✭Anouilh


    "Winterland" by Alan Glynn.

    http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/fiction-reviews/underworld-s-faustian-pact-1.927174

    It's a Noir thriller, set in post-boom Dublin and explores corruption in high places... among land developers and politicians.

    Incredibly well paced and with many surprises.


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    #16
    Harpic
    Registered Users Posts: 108 ✭✭Harpic


    just finished a great book;
    Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Burton, Harris, O'Toole and Reed (Hardcover)

    by Robert Sellers (Author)


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    #17
    Seonad
    Registered Users Posts: 171 ✭✭Seonad


    "The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Díaz

    Simply because it's the latest book I've read but it is very interesting


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    #18
    Acacia
    Registered Users Posts: 2,816 ✭✭✭Acacia


    Anything by Tracy Chevalier, but especially ''Girl With A Pearl Earring."


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    #19
    Davao8000
    Registered Users Posts: 53 ✭✭Davao8000


    The Laughing Policeman - Sjöwall and Wahlöö


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    #20
    PEPPI
    Closed Accounts Posts: 17 ✭PEPPI


    A FINE BALANCE.....A BIT HARD TO GET STARTED, BUT LATER HARD TO LEAVE DOWN .


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    #21
    FruitLover
    Registered Users Posts: 2,534 ✭✭✭FruitLover


    PEPPI wrote: »
    A FINE BALANCE.....A BIT HARD TO GET STARTED, BUT LATER HARD TO LEAVE DOWN .

    WHAT? SPEAK UP


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    #22
    JCDUB
    Registered Users Posts: 1,225 ✭✭✭JCDUB


    Dades wrote: »
    Shantaram.

    +10000000

    First read about this book on here, brought it on holidays to Thailand and absolutely fell in love with it.
    Best book I've ever read, I've been recommending it to everybody for the last two years!!
    Gonna get "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" from the library tomorrow on above recommendations..:)


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    #23
    rickman
    Closed Accounts Posts: 19 ✭rickman


    three great reads

    lustrum - robert harris ( random house)
    here comes robert kingdom - peter mc cluskey (location27books.com)
    life of pi - yann martel (picador)


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    #24
    Denerick
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 6,488 ✭✭✭Denerick


    This is always an interesting kind of thread, because people tend not to suggest their favourite ever books (Though this often overlaps) but those books which may or may not be technically well written or profound, but which had a massive impact on the way they think and operate.

    In this spirit I'll recommend one book which challenged a lot of my 'popular cynicism' to the very core - Alduous Huxley's 'Eyeless in Gaza'. In this book you go back and forward in time through the life of the protagonist, as early as his schooldays and as late as his dramatic life change to a public life, deep in the inter war period of political extremism. His cynicism is slowly and cleverly unravelled and revealed for the self gratifying vacuousness it is. Can't recommend it highly enough.


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