Suggestions for a good read... (Page 2)

Awesome - i will look it up!

A series I ran into, as BF's family was discussing it.  Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson have a series of books with Peter Pan.  They are actually juvenille/junior books but they are a fun read!  First book is Peter and the Starcatchers, then Peter and the Shadow Thieves and then the 3rd is Peter and the Secrets of Rundoon.  I just saw that there was a next in the series Peter and the Sword of Mercy!!  The first 3 books take place "before" the Peter Pan story that we know.

If you can dig into fantasy I will recommend the following series:

Codex Alera by Jim Butcher               excellent thru and thru!

Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan        petered out around book nine but now that Sanderson
                                                          took over after robert died its back in a good way

Mistborn  by Brandon Sanderson      Awesome

Magician:Apprentice by Raymond Feist  Solid series that branches off to a bunch of books

Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind     Good but a little preachy politics wise, dude worships
                                                          Ayn Rand.

Song of Fire and Ice by George RR Martin    Awesome start but ever since it got lined up to be
                                                                     a series on HBO I am unsure if he ever intends
                                                                    on finishing, to be honest last book was kinda Meh.

If you don't mind cracking up while reading, I recommend "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" by Christopher Moore.  I was in tears in the first 5 pages.  Totally slayed me.

Edited by robburkett 2010-11-05 2:39 PM

John Grisham has written some good stuff.

A girl at my work was reading this and was enjoying it - *WARNING - ADULT CONTENT* -
http://www.sharonpage.com/books/hot-silk/

If you liked Crichton and King and Koontz I might also suggest reading Peter Benchley (the Author of Jaws) who has several good books out there. I always found them well written and enjoyable and to some degree the "can't put down type"

I will second also for fantasy Raymond Feist's magician series as excellently written with great story and plot development.

There are also the classics from Orson Scott Card (Enders Game) and the Dune Series by Frank Herbert.

In reality there are to many good books out there to read

(Did I also mention Douglas Adams Hitchhiker series?)

I think it was the saddest day of my life when he passed away.  I can hardly stand the thought of no more Crichton.  But, there is a ray of sunshine - I didn't know of this last novel!  I thought I had read his last one.  Woo hoo!

I am not much of a non-fiction fan and this is now way old, but Nelson Mandela's biography was a book I couldn't put down.

As for fiction, if you like a bit of nonsense fast and hard action, try Matthew Reilly's books.  I prefer the Scarecrow books that begin with "Ice Station".  These feature an American Marine.  His other main series feature an Australian main character (Reilly is Australian but is widely available in the US).

Edited by Malgal 2010-11-05 4:38 PM

If you liked "Into Thin Air" you'll likely like the rest of Krakauer's books as well.   I've read probably a good 80% of the entire mountain-climbing genre and alot of them are really good books.

for Fiction:   "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson (really anything by him but this is my fav)
   "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card.

 I've read a lot of fantasy. I just started reading Patrick Rothfuss's" The Name of the Wind" again because his new book drops in March. I'd say it's as good as any fantasy novel I've read.

Indeed.  I couldn't stop laughing.

War by Sebastian Junger.

Another series by Jim Butcher, the Dresden Files. Lots of fun to read.

March of which year?  He has been saying that since name of the wind has yet to follow through with any promises.  The book is excellent but not worth reading just to wait another 3-4 years for him to continue the story. 

Good books I've read recently...

Fiction:
I second (or third) "The Art of Racing in the Rain" by Garth Stein
"The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski
"Pride, Prejudice & Zombies" is a hilarious remake of the classic.

Non-Fiction:
"Nothing to Envy, Ordinary Lives in North Korea" by Barbara Demick - didn't think I'd like, but the total brainwashing of millions of people & how they accomplish this is fascinating and unbelievable.

Enjoy!

Running on Faith by Jason Lester

Iron/Ultra Man with the use of only one arm. Got to meet him a few weeks back. Awesome book, great guy.....

2 excellent biographies / social commentaries are "The boy who harnessed the wind" and ""The other Wes Moote". First is about a boy growing up in Kenya in extreme poverty and builds a windmill more out of interllectual curiosity than a solution to poverty. Wes Moore is about 2 men with the same name growing up in inner city Baltimore. One becomes a Rhodes scholar and the other a murderer. Both are good reads and make you humble.

A lot of Bill Bryson recommendations, and while in general I concur--I'm a big Bill Bryson fan, I've read every book he's written and re-read some--yesterday I was startled to find this passage describing his cab driver's ride to his hotel in London (in Notes from a Small Island):

" 'Course it is. I know it.' And he immediately executes a dramatic U-turn, causing a passing cyclist to steer into a lamppost (but that's all right because he has on cycle clips and one of those geeky slipstream helmets that all but invite you to knock him over)." (p. 44, Black Swan ed.)

I think that's really sad, and really not "all right."

I just finished reading a book called "Hellhound on His Trail; the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for his Assassin". It was a non fiction book that read like a thriller. The author sort of gives little vignettes of what all of the various players in the story were doing and how their lives intersected. It gives a very interesting picture of James Earl Ray. It was a quick read. I love non-fiction.

If you're into buildings/cities...there's a book called "Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City" that I always recommend. It is a tremendous read for us art history nerds.

ETA: I also read "Travels with Charley" by John Steinbeck on my trip to Scotland and on my trip to OK (thought it would probably be a better choice than The Grapes of Wrath....), and I really enjoyed it. I felt tones of my other favorite book, "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac.

Edited by phoenixazul 2010-11-07 11:28 AM