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Georgie · Joined: 31 May 2005 Posts: 1070 Location: Hawaii, USA

I'm going to borders this weekend. Does anyone have any suggestions for fall reading?

Brf · Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2005 6:07 pm Post subject:

The only thing I ever read is Piers Anthony Sci-Fi/Fantasy... in paperback.

FrankyG888 · Joined: 09 Nov 2004 Posts: 267 Location: Overland Park, KS

I am currently reading the James Bond books by Ian Flemming for fun. If you are reading for school I would pick something like the Ayn Rand books. If you have read those I would pick a more serious Micheal Crichton book like State of Fear.

bannie · Joined: 22 Mar 2005 Posts: 1966 Location: Boston

Pick up the nightside series by Simon Green

they're about the "Nightside", the magical center of London where anything, and I mean literally anything, is possible and John Taylor, a dective that can find anything

I picked it up by chance, and finshed the four in the series in a month. The 5th comes out at the end of August

Something from the nightside is the first one, start with that

Georgie · Joined: 31 May 2005 Posts: 1070 Location: Hawaii, USA

Well, thank you, but I was thinking more along the lines of classical literature.

I'm getting a Hemingway, and I may look at others books and writers. I do have some Huxley and Hawthorne books.

arwen · Joined: 25 May 2005 Posts: 21

Crime and Punishment, Catch 22 and um let me think, The Scarlett Letter is difficult to get into but has an intersting theme, depends how heavy you want to get

CooJoe · Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 1:53 pm Post subject:

I just finished reading "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk, and I highly recomend it.

Georgie · Joined: 31 May 2005 Posts: 1070 Location: Hawaii, USA

I do have The scarlet letter and I have read it once. I don't know if I have Crime and Punishment. Who is the author?

Baron · Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Posts: 175 Location: Washington State

Over the last few months, I read book after book by Isaac Asimov, including all of the Foundation and Robot novels, plus some gems like The End of Eternity, The Gods Themeselves, and Pebble in the Sky. Of those, I recommend Mr. Asimov's classic, 1950's stuff. That would include the three books I mentioned above, plus The Foundation Trilogy, his short Robot stories, The Caves of Steel, and The Naked Sun.

I somehow think that reading all that Asimov wasn't too healthy for me...I've lately been obsessing over developing a method of psychohistory...[/i]

arwen · Joined: 25 May 2005 Posts: 21

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Brf · Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2005 8:06 am Post subject:

Baron wrote: book after book by Isaac Asimov

You mention Pebble in the Sky. I have that as a trilogy with Currents of Space first, Pebble in the Sky second, and The Stars Like Dust third.... which show how alot of Asimov's stories can be fit into a timeline, with Foundation last.

Asimov was a visionary.... The premise behind Currents of Space is actually being considered by modern astronomers.

JuntaJoe · Joined: 07 Nov 2004 Posts: 7391 Location: Texas

Asimov was more than just visionary.

He had a mind like an elephant.

He could grapple with several huge disciplines and absorb them.

His non-fiction books on both the mind and the physical body are some of the best books a layman can read on these topics. He wasn't a medical doctor, but that's only because he didn't bother with the paperwork. Medicine, physics, logic, cosmology, ethics, whatever. He learned them all.

Btw, I highly recommend reading Asimov like that. Actually, reading any of the scifi that's made by scientists is best done that way. Just read everything they made before moving to another author. You might put Arthur C. Clarke and Charles Sheffield on that type of reading method.

Scifi by true scientists is so wonderful to read. Too bad that bookstores dump them in the same aisles with repetitive fantasy and implausible space opera. It's just a crime if you ask me.

Brf · Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2005 6:03 am Post subject:

I read a ton of Asimov Non-fiction when I was in highschool.... He had a humorous bent on alot of things too....

There was one time some ladies group or another came to him and asked him to write a non-fiction essey called If I could design a woman.

He asked them, "Do you want humorous or serious?".

They asked, "What do you mean?"

and Asimov floored them with, "Well... if want humorous, I would put the breasts on the back to make it more fun dancing."

They reply, "Serious please"

Georgie · Joined: 31 May 2005 Posts: 1070 Location: Hawaii, USA

Well, I should tell you some of the books I have purchased last week, after I had put this thread up.
I did get some Hemingway books. They are

The Sun Also Rises
For whom the Bell Tolls
The Old Man in the Sea .

I also got Jack Kerouac The Road
and some sketchbooks.

So I do have a big backlog of reading to do.
*sigh*

Brf · Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2005 5:59 pm Post subject:

Georgie wrote: The Old Man in the Sea

Bah..... That book was the reason behind my only "C" in highschool...

I found out a couple months ago that Literature was my father's only bad grade in highschool too.

Georgie · Joined: 31 May 2005 Posts: 1070 Location: Hawaii, USA

I get to read all of them alone-- not as assignments. That was for Brave New World.

Batchman · Joined: 12 Dec 2004 Posts: 1419 Location: Orlando FL

Baron wrote: I somehow think that reading all that Asimov wasn't too healthy for me...I've lately been obsessing over developing a method of psychohistory...

I noticed! :roll:

All good books ... I have read all kinds of Asimov books, including In Memory Yet Green and In Joy Yet Felt (or something like that), his two 700+ page volumes of auto-biography. Neat stuff.

Batchman · Joined: 12 Dec 2004 Posts: 1419 Location: Orlando FL

Brf wrote: I read a ton of Asimov Non-fiction when I was in highschool.... He had a humorous bent on alot of things too....

There was one time some ladies group or another came to him and asked him to write a non-fiction essey called If I could design a woman.

He asked them, "Do you want humorous or serious?".

They asked, "What do you mean?"

and Asimov floored them with, "Well... if want humorous, I would put the breasts on the back to make it more fun dancing."

They reply, "Serious please"

Oh, that is so very an Asimov-type moment!

Asimov was interesting ... very much in support of equal rights and respect for women, yet also one very large dirty old man! Some of Asimov's early books on black holes and the like were some of the most interesting real science I ever read!

JuntaJoe · Joined: 07 Nov 2004 Posts: 7391 Location: Texas

Want to know what I think Einstien's big mistake in life was?

That when he realized that reaching for the TOE was out of his reach because he grew too old that he didn't take up more writing, expecially scifi.

He could have taken on a few hyper gifted pupils and get them up to his knowlege level before they were 25 and let them run with the TOE while he watched and commented. Everyone knows that massive math breakthroughs tend to happen between ages 25 and 30 of the scholar.

Einstien could have backed off and shadowed them in his older years while writing. Sure, he did become a party animal and philosopher, but he simply didn't get more of his general thoughts and fantasy ideas onto paper.

Science and math are for the younger crowd. Philosophy and writing are better when you are older.