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Best book you've read this year?

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by patrickindallas, Aug 6, 2007.

  1. AuntBee

    AuntBee New Member

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    Just finished The Lady in Blue by Javier Sierra (sp?). Kind of a religious/supernatural espionage mystery, historically based. Very interesting.
     
  2. chrick

    chrick Junior Member

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    Not a new book (2004), but loved My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. Also read Vanishing Acts (same author) which was good.
     
  3. zapranoth

    zapranoth New Member

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    Can't name just one best.

    My favorites:

    _All Tomorrow's Parties_ by William Gibson
    _Empire of the East_ by Fred Saberhagen

    _The Dark Knight Strikes Again_ is genius (Frank Miller)

    _On the Take_ was very important.

    Harry Potter #7 was great fun. =)

    Hmm.

    _American Gods_, and most anything else, by Neil Gaiman.
     
  4. Ethereal

    Ethereal New Member

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  5. withersea

    withersea DNF is better than DNS

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    Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill (Stephen King's son)

    I'll add another vote for Freakonomics also.
     
  6. onerpm

    onerpm New Member

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    The Cruelest Miles. Great read about the diptheria epidemic in Nome, AK in the 1920's and the race to get the medicine there by dogsled. Fascinating. Also gets into much about the struggle of everyday life in that era.
     
  7. ohershey

    ohershey New Member

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    Hmmm... I've been on a kick where I've been re-reading old classics - mostly because my books are out of boxes and on shelves for the first time in seven years. Recently:

    The Ringworld books by Larry Niven
    The Dorsai Saga by Gordon R. Dickson
    Miners in the Sky by Murray Leinster (Way out of print, sorry....)
    The Ender's Game saga by Orson Scott Card
    The Tales of the Otori series by Lian Hearn (not really a "classic", but good)

    If I were to choose a select few books to recomend to others, these would top the list:

    Dune by Frank Herbert
    Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
    Empire of the East by Fred Saberhagen
    Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
    The Postman by David Brin
    Nine Princes in Amber (and the rest of that series...) by Rodger Zelazny
    Initiate Brother and Gatherer of Clouds by Sean Russell
    The Rider at the Gate and Cloud's Rider by CJ Cherryh
    Wolf and Iron by Gordon R. Dickson
    Armor by John Steakley
    Bridge of Birds, Eight Skilled Gentlemen, and The Story of the Stone by Barry Hughart

    My problem is that I read voraciously, and I'm always out of books to read.
     
  8. priussoris

    priussoris New Member

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    Jon Stewart " America" The Book

    was a great read and yet very funny, makes ya wonder
     
  9. marc_staug@hotmail.com

    [email protected] MarcInDentonTx

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    My favorite this year is "After This" by Alice McDermott
     
  10. fshagan

    fshagan Senior Member

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    Most recent, that I just finished this week, is America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It . Pretty good, Mark Steyn is a funny guy, and he makes a compelling argument about demographics being more important than bombs in the fight for western civilization. This one has a definite right-bias, so liberals won't enjoy it.

    Also great reads:
    Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court by ABC News journalist Jan Greenburg, is a very good read for anyone interested in the politics of picking supreme court justices. This one is even-handed and would be enjoyed by liberals as well as conservatives.

    American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation, Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham's wonderful book about how America was founded as a secular but religious nation, and the true meaning of the founder's words .... the Christian Reconstructionists and radical secularists will be very uncomfortable because they are both proven wrong, but everyone else, religious and not, left or right, will enjoy the insights Meacham gives.

    I didn't enjoy A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now nearly as much as I thought I would, because it tends to repeat itself. It is basically a thesis that the origin of our poisoned political discourse is in the feeling that anger validates the self, as first expressed by the beat generation in the late 50's and early 60's, up to our "angry white male" and "venomous liberal" invective we see thrown around so much today. Its interesting, but a book about half the length could have told the same story.
     
  11. Rae Vynn

    Rae Vynn Artist In Residence

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    "Skinny Bitch" Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin
    "Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows" J. K. Rowling
    "The Goat-Foot God" Dion Fortune
    "The Sea Priestess" Dion Fortune
    That's just this month.... :D
     
  12. desertbriez

    desertbriez New Member

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    harry potter and the deathly hallows - j. k. rowling (actually.... the whole harry potter series! AWESOME! i re-read books 1-6 in preparation/to refresh my memory before the final book.... and now that i know how it all ends.... i've decided i want to listen to them and i'm currently on book 4.... i'm enjoying them just as much even though i know the overall outcome... !)

    [​IMG]
     
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  13. Godiva

    Godiva AmeriKan Citizen

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    The two classics I reread most often are:

    Ben Hur

    Pride and Prejudice.

    Every time I read either of these books I come away with something new that I hadn't noticed or thought of before. Interestingly enough, Wallace, the author of Ben Hur, was a general in the Civil War that later became a governor.

    I recently heard an interview of the author of a new book that sounds very interesting: Hocus Potus by Malcolm MacPherson
     
  14. AussieOwner

    AussieOwner Active Member

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    I'll join the list of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" readers - got to read this on the Monday after its release (my 2 daughters had to read it before I could get it). Apart from it being just a great series, it has so encouraged children to read. My two read so much more these days, the TV is collecting cobwebs.

    Apart from that - latest reads are:

    "Traitor" by Steven Coonts
    "Saucer" - The conquest" by Steven Coonts (a re-read)
    "The Earth is Flat" by Thomas Friedman - not bad until he got onto his government bashing jag - ruined the last half of the book
    "Chart Throb" by Ben Elton - great sendup of those shows like Idol

    Mad Hatter - Thanks for the list of great SciFi - there are a couple there that I have not read, so will go looking for them.
     
  15. F8L

    F8L Protecting Habitat & AG Lands

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    Nice line up guys/girls :)

    I've read many this year but I htink the best was:

    Collapse by Jared Diamond


    "In the prologue, Diamond summarizes Collapse in one paragraph, as follows.

    “ This book employs the comparative method to understand societal collapses to which environmental problems contribute. My previous book (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies), had applied the comparative method to the opposite problem: the differing rates of buildup of human societies on different continents over the last 13,000 years. In the present book focusing on collapses rather than buildups, I compare many past and present societies that differed with respect to environmental fragility, relations with neighbors, political institutions, and other "input" variables postulated to influence a society's stability. The "output" variables that I examine are collapse or survival, and form of the collapse if collapse does occur. By relating output variables to input variables, I aim to tease out the influence of possible input variables on collapses. â€
    —page 18


    Diamond lists eight factors which have historically contributed to the collapse of past societies:

    1.Deforestation and habitat destruction
    2.Soil problems (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses)
    3.Water management problems
    4.Overhunting
    5.Overfishing
    6.Effects of introduced species on native species
    7.Human population growth
    8.Increased per-capita impact of people

    Further he says four new factors may contribute to the weakening and collapse of present and future societies:

    1.Human-caused climate change
    2.Buildup of toxic chemicals in the environment
    3.Energy shortages
    4,Full human utilization of the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity

    Diamond also states that "it would be absurd to claim that environmental damage must be a major factor in all collapses: the collapse of the Soviet Union is a modern counter-example, and the destruction of Carthage by Rome in 146 B.C. is an ancient one. It's obviously true that military or economic factors alone may suffice" (p. 15)."
     
  16. pyccku

    pyccku Happy Prius Driver

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    I really enjoyed Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond as well.

    Collapse deals with the fall of civilization, but GGS deals with WHY certain groups of people never advanced to the point of being "civilized" - what are the reasons that the earth is divided into have and have-not societies?
     
  17. micksimon

    micksimon New Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(F8L @ Aug 11 2007, 09:53 PM) [snapback]494153[/snapback]</div>
    If you enjoyed Collapse you might also like The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. He discusses how the world would continue if man were suddenly gone, by plague, war or whatever. How long would it take for nature to have its way with man's evidence? It's a very interesting read.
     
  18. Ryder99

    Ryder99 Member

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    the loop by jacob ward

    From amazon
    Artificial intelligence is going to change the world as we know it. But the real danger isn't some robot that's going to enslave us: It's our own brain. Our brains are constantly making decisions using shortcuts, biases, and hidden processes—and we're using those same techniques to create technology that makes choices for us. In The Loop, award-winning science journalist Jacob Ward reveals how we are poised to build all of our worst instincts into our AIs, creating a narrow loop where each generation has fewer, predetermined, and even dangerous choices.
     
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  19. John321

    John321 Senior Member

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    The Art of Living, by Edward Sri

    Next up - I am going to reread an old classic - Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
     
  20. newtothisprius

    newtothisprius Junior Member

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    Secrets of the Millionaire Mind is my current favorite.