Fav Book?

dlevanchuk

dlevanchuk

What is/are your favorite book(s) to read?

I've got two:

"Shantaram" by Gregory Roberts - Phenomenal. A MUST read. Even if you don't like adventure books - its.. i dont even have words lol

"Idiot" by Dostoyevsky - takes you deep down into a human mind. What is good or bad? Talks about complex human emotions, love, hate etc.
 
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It's hard to say. I've got 2-3 in mind.

Definitely Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein) gets the #1 spot.

Coming in with an almost-tie (and i have to mention it because it's so different from #1) is Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins.

I've never been able to stomach those russian writers for long enough to get swept up in the plot :(
 
#1 Anything by Vonnegut...but I really like Dead Eye Dick.

I can read Sherlocke Holmes and just about anything Agatha CHristy, over and over.

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco I think would make a very good movie. He also wrote The

Name of the Rose. Both are excellent reads.
 
"The Diving Bell and The Butterfly" - Jean-Dominique Bauby

Then there's...

Gatsby, Les Mis, Anything from Herman Hesse...

I could go on.
 
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Dreadylocks said:
It's hard to say. I've got 2-3 in mind.

Definitely Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein) gets the #1 spot.

Coming in with an almost-tie (and i have to mention it because it's so different from #1) is Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins.

I've never been able to stomach those russian writers for long enough to get swept up in the plot :(
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You could try Chekov's short stories?? Russian Lit. is an aquired taste I think, and you're right, you have to let the plots

develop. Anna Karanina and The Brothers Karamazov are very good.
 
Murdock said:
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
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Just my opinion but I found that book pretentious and unreadable. I consider myself to have a very large vocabulary, and I had to have a dictionary next to me with that book. I'm sorry, I normally abhor not finishing a book, but that is one for which I broke my rule.

Murdock said:
You could try Chekov's short stories?? Russian Lit. is an aquired taste I think, and you're right, you have to let the plots

develop. Anna Karanina and The Brothers Karamazov are very good.
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Getting through a Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky is on my bucket list. Thanks for the suggestions :)
 
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Dreadylocks said:
Just my opinion but I found that book pretentious and unreadable. I consider myself to have a very large vocabulary, and I had to have a dictionary next to me with that book. I'm sorry, I normally abhor not finishing a book, but that is one for which I broke my rule.
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Really?? I was trying to read another book by him, The Island of the Day Before, and couln't finish it. In this case I

think it was a bad translation. But in the case of Pendulum, Eco wrote it in English, so maybe he comes off as

pretentious without meaning to be?? I just enjoyed the whole idea of this immortale "dude" roaming the earth in

search of "it", while masterminding all these other sub-plots that come together in the end.....then it

backfires.....and the whole time the protagonist gets mixed into the whole thing by messing around with his word

processor. Anyway, to each his/her own. :)
 
I think Russian literature requires to have knowledge of russian history, in order to understand why characters behaving curtain way. For example Bulgakov's "Heart of the Dog". Plot is about how a doctor turned a dog into a human by adding part of a human brain, and some gland (don't know american word for it :-S ). The idea behind the book is about Russian revolution, and men's lives.

I've read both russian and english versions, and oh boy.. so much has been lost during english translation. It read as a different book to me :(
 
@ Cracker Funk:

YAY!!! PICTURES!! :-D




Wheatgrinder:

Now we're talking! 1984, Brave new world, animal farm and f. 451 are must have in any household!
 
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I read THE SILMARILLION at least once a year. I'm such a geek.

For film books, I just devour at least 2-3 books a month ranging from the typical color picture "Making Of" books to coffee table books (like the new MAKING OF EMPIRE STRIKES BACK by Rinzler), or rare paperback books from the days of old (Like the MAKING OF RAIDER OF THE LOST ARK by Derek Taylor). I just finished THE MAKING OF MEMENTO which is hilarious because it starts with the DVD release and goes backwards like the movie, ending with the short story that inspired the movie.
 
dlevanchuk said:
Wheatgrinder:

Now we're talking! 1984, Brave new world, animal farm and f. 451 are must have in any household!
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In related news: I had a proud dad moment when my teenage daughter quoted "Atlas Shrugged" to me... and all the computers in my house are named.. Winston, Julia, O'Brien, ...
 
I'm a tricky book customer...

To add to the Russian lit conversation, I feel like a fraud reading translated works. I think it's a difficult thing to say that 'Crime and Punishment' is my favourite book unless you read it in the original Russia. Just my feeling, I've always had difficulty with translated works for that reason...

As for favourite books this is a really hard one to answer. I'm English but Huck Finn is up there and on the other hand I love definitive English works like Brideshead Revisited, A Handful of Dust, The End of the Affair and Scoop (I'm a big Evelyn Waugh buff.)

In terms of 'world' literature I love Coetzee, Ishiguro, Le Clezio, Roth, Pamuk, Gordimer...etc.
 
Hemingway: "The Sun Also Rises." I'd love to turn that into a movie, set in contemporary Detroit/Windsor.

Ian Rankin: "Resurrection Men." My life's goal to make it into a 6 part mini-series.
 
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