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Books/Reading - It's been a while

AcidRain

AcidRain

Bluelighter
Joined
Feb 5, 2006
Messages
1,463
Location
Australia
As a kid, I was an avid reader. . then drugs came along.

Now that the drugs are gone. . I'm finding myself with alot os free time on my hands and no idea what to do, so I want to start reading again..

Things I'm interested in. . are kind of . . surreal fiction .. not science fiction/fantasy so much.. unless they're particularly different to your average scifi/fantasy story . .which really all seem the same to me.
. . . kind of twisted reality is what i like. much like drugs I guess :P Also just regular reality can be fine too.

I'm also into kind of crossover between fiction/nonfiction .. interesting nonfiction i guess you could say haha, but not just that the topic interests me - also that its written in an interesting way rather than being like a textbook or scientific paper inside a book.

I like stories that engage my emotions. make me feel.

I'm a guy. and im not really into 'girly' kind of stories much... I still enjoy stories of love. .but only when they are told from the right 'perspective'. And as long as the book's cover isnt like pink and flowery or something haha. insecure much? :\

Any recommendations would be great, thanks guys! :)
 
Magical realism might be your cup of tea.

Try Rushdie (Moor's Last Sigh; Satanic Verses) or Gabriel Garcia Marquez (100 Years of Solitude) or David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green) as a starting point.
 
^ I kinda put tom clancy in the same category as stephen king :p

haven't heard of the last one, I'll check it out. . but if it's a similar kind of thing I'm probably not interested
 
My all time favourite book:

The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis
 
Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" Trilogy.

The series starts with "Northern Lights".
It is set on Earth but not quite as we know it. Every person is born with a companion, called a daemon, a little animal that is bound to them.

Captivating, horrific, imaginitive and novel.

Highly recommended :)
 
Starship Troopers by Heinline isd really good. Nothing like the movie though. Well worth the read.
 
wizekrak said:
My all time favourite book:

The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis
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just read the plot summary. . . this sounds like the sort of thing id go for. will definitely be checkin it out
 
I'll second Rushdie. Hell I'll third it too. I quite like Midnight's Children, but The Satanic Verses was quite good too.

Even if you're not too keen on science fiction, I'd suggest the original Dune series (not the tripe written by Brian Herbert and some other guy). It's a many-tiered discussion of economics, environment, politics, religion, gender relations, fear and human potential. Some of the books are more tedious than others (Heretics is my least favourite, followed by God-Emperor), but they all show a great writer showing a complex and well thought out world.

I wouldn't bother with the prequels, the new sequel, or the House series unless you're a hardcore Dune fan, and if you are you will likely be disappointed anyway. They're basically run-of-the-mill pulp sci-fi written in a world based on Frank Herbert's work. Fan fiction really, but given the stamp of approval since it was done by his son.
 
Infinite Jest said:
Magical realism might be your cup of tea.

Try Rushdie (Moor's Last Sigh; Satanic Verses) or Gabriel Garcia Marquez (100 Years of Solitude) or David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green) as a starting point.
Click to expand...

what the hell kind of lapse in recommendation is this? Go read Infinite Jest
 
AcidRain said:
Things I'm interested in. . are kind of . . surreal fiction .. not science fiction/fantasy so much.. unless they're particularly different to your average scifi/fantasy story . .which really all seem the same to me.
. . . kind of twisted reality is what i like. much like drugs I guess :P Also just regular reality can be fine too.
Click to expand...
check out michael marshall smith. if you want to test the water, he has a book of short stories called what you make it. my favourite book of his is only forward.

alasdair
 
Check out Blindness by Jose Saramago.

It's about an eye surgeon who is driving home from work and who suddenly goes blind (this could take place anywhere, and the location is never specified; Portugal is Saramago's home country). This blindness is catching, and the government, in an effort to stop its spread, forces all who have it into an institution where they have to fend for themselves.

If you're interested in it, read no more about it on the book cover or anywhere else. It's written in a very matter-of-fact, dry style, but give it 20 pages and I bet you won't be able to put it down. Saramago has won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Blindness-Harvest-Book-Jose-Saramago/dp/0156007754/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196290784&sr=8-1
 
i found the deptford trilogy by robertson davies to be a really interesting read. it may not interest you that much if you aren't intrigued by psychology (specifically jungian) but even then the layers in which the story's depth is woven has something in it for everyone. first book in the trilogy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Business


the complete works of franz kafka is also a great read to look into if you're a fan of twisted reality... and magritte paintings
 
atlas said:
what the hell kind of lapse in recommendation is this? Go read Infinite Jest
Click to expand...

The guy's just jumping back into reading; we don't want to scare him off again. The Entertainment will still be there in a year.
 
I would recommend The Wheel of Time series.

It's an excellent read, especially if you like the sort of book that steals ideas from every fantasy writer who ever lived, combines them into a plot that is so lumbering and burdensome it takes eleven 1,000 page novels to cover six months in the narrative and then the author dies of a rare blood disease before finishing the 12th and final book.
 
Have you ever read Enders Game? It'll look like a kids book by the cover, but it's definitely a good read. Not a bad book to start off with if you haven't read for a while.
 
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