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Other => Off-topic => Topic started by: peharnikica on September 02, 2014, 01:58:06 PM



Title: Great books
Post by: peharnikica on September 02, 2014, 01:58:06 PM
Hello,
I'm a great reader, I work in a bookshop, and now, here opening a topic about books, which are my great love and passion.
As a bookworm, I don't have a favorite book, but a choice of great books, and today one of my dearest; Master and Margarita, from Mihail Bulgakov.
It was published in 1966, 26 years after author's death.
One of the best novels ever written, has everything in it; philosophy, humor, horror, fantasy, religion.....Bulgakov started writing the novel in 1928. He burned the first manuscript of the novel in 1930.
The second draft was completed in 1936, by which point all the major plot lines of the final version were in place. There would follow four other versions. Bulgakov stopped writing four weeks before his death in 1940, leaving the novel with some unfinished sentences and loose ends.
The last version, based on all available manuscripts, was prepared by Lidiya Yanovskaya in 1989.
There is a lot more but ones who want to know can find a lot of material on internet and library's.
But, warm recommendation to everyone who love great book and didn't read :)


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: ensurance982 on September 02, 2014, 02:03:44 PM
I think there have been one or two threads about this topic already, but I can only recommend "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" to people! It's awesome, and really a different thing than the movie. The movie is a nice adaption, but doesn't get the point across like the book does. I always meant to read more books by Hunter S. Thompson!


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: nakazznicek on September 02, 2014, 02:11:44 PM
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Noel Adams. It's said. I love that book along with others from this author. Sci-fi at it's best, irrationality at it's finest :)


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: BitCoinNutJob on September 02, 2014, 02:21:51 PM

Game of thrones books pretty awesome but kinda like the TV show better   :)


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: Billbags on September 02, 2014, 05:51:24 PM
I find my escape and interest in art mostly with music, but these books I found to be quite good and page turners. If OP could recommend books similar to these I will take the time to read any suggestions. Thanks in advance.

1. Anne Rice - The whole vampire series

2. Clive Cussler - Atlantis Found

3. Steven Coonts - America

4. Robert R. McCammon - Swan Song



Title: Re: Great books
Post by: danynx on September 02, 2014, 06:56:45 PM
The hunger games,
Lord of the rings

Those are my fantasy proffered books


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: leezay on September 02, 2014, 07:31:12 PM
Dune series.
Games of thrones.

Good books to read.


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: Gleb Gamow on September 02, 2014, 08:17:21 PM
American Dreams: Lost and Found (http://www.worldcat.org/title/american-dreams-lost-and-found/oclc/006222488)


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: BitcoinStuff on September 02, 2014, 08:37:28 PM


Yes I also like The Lord of the Rings.


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: Winner on September 03, 2014, 12:36:02 AM
Hitchhikers guides to the galaxy.

The only book you ever need.


Narnia chronicles are good to read as well.


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: peharnikica on September 03, 2014, 09:13:36 AM
I think there have been one or two threads about this topic already, but I can only recommend "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" to people! It's awesome, and really a different thing than the movie. The movie is a nice adaption, but doesn't get the point across like the book does. I always meant to read more books by Hunter S. Thompson!

Thank you. I didn't find that title in Croatia, but we got Fear and Loathing in New York, three short stories, and they are on my list :)


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: shogdite on September 03, 2014, 10:03:36 AM
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Noel Adams. It's said. I love that book along with others from this author. Sci-fi at it's best, irrationality at it's finest :)

Hitchhiker's Guide is an epic book, massive fan of Douglas Adams. Really enjoyed all the Red Dwarf novels, similar kind of wacky dry humor :)

Think William Gibson also needs a shout out, Neuromancer is a absolute classic.


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: Starscream on September 03, 2014, 01:32:58 PM

Game of thrones books pretty awesome but kinda like the TV show better   :)

You mean A Song of Ice and Fire series?
Yeah, he meant that.

You should also try out Dragonlance, I really liked that series.


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: vortexz on September 03, 2014, 02:11:57 PM
the road
Ender's game


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: NeuroticFish on September 03, 2014, 02:23:20 PM
I'd recommend:

"A Song of Ice and Fire" by George R R Martin

And if you like SF:

"A Fire Upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge
"Tuf Voyaging"  by George R R Martin
Ender saga by Orson Scott Card


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: sapta on September 03, 2014, 02:28:48 PM
Buru Quartet by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, check them out:

This Earth of Mankind
Footsteps
Child of All Nations
House of Glass

EDIT: You can find them easily on Amazon. :)


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: peharnikica on September 04, 2014, 10:11:34 AM
I have calculated, learned to read with 5, and since then i devour books....I can read one-two books per day, and some which are more for thinking in few days till week. So, i have read about 4500-5000 books till now, and have to admit, there are only few authors these days (not talking about classics) which can blew me off.
I am a fan of thriller and crime, but also love to read anything good in other fields.

I've discovered her few weeks ago, and think she might be my new favorite author.....Lucia Etxebarria, The Content of Silence.

Her speciality are human relationships, her language beautiful and hypnotic, i think i wasn't this excited since I've read Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The shadow of the wind, Kepler's Hypnotist, or Marqueze's One hundred years of loneliness.

For every bookworm who is not bonded in only one field, but like me loves anything that is really good, warm recommendation, and also for this three books, if you didn't read them :)


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: peharnikica on September 06, 2014, 02:00:00 PM
Today, 2 novels which somehow predicted future....

Aldous Huxley was born in Surrey, England, on July 26, 1894, to an illustrious family deeply rooted in England’s literary and scientific tradition.
Raised in this family of scientists, writers, and teachers (his father was a writer and teacher, and his mother a schoolmistress), Huxley received an excellent education.
Although much of his scientific understanding was superficial—he was easily convinced of findings that remained somewhat on the fringe of mainstream science—his education at the intersection of science and literature allowed him to integrate current scientific findings into his novels and essays in a way that few other writers of his time were able to do.

Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD was published in 1932. His most enduring work imagined a fictional future in which free will and individuality have been sacrificed in deference to complete social stability.
Through its exploration of the pitfalls of linking science, technology, and politics, and its argument that such a link will likely reduce human individuality, Brave New World deals with similar themes as George Orwell’s famous novel 1984. Orwell wrote his novel in 1949, after the dangers of totalitarian governments had been played out to tragic effect in World War II, and during the great struggle of the Cold War and the arms race which so powerfully underlined the role of technology in the modern world. Huxley anticipated all of these developments. Hitler came to power in Germany a year after the publication of Brave New World. World War II broke out six years after. The atomic bomb was dropped thirteen years after its publication, initiating the Cold War and what President Eisenhower referred to as a frightening buildup of the “military-industrial complex.” Huxley’s novel seems, in many ways, to prophesize the major themes and struggles that dominated life and debate in the second half of the twentieth century, and continue to dominate it in the twenty-first.
In the late forties, Huxley started to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and mescaline. He also maintained an interest in occult phenomena, such as hypnotism, séances, and other activities occupying the border between science and mysticism. Huxley’s experiments with drugs led him to write several books that had profound influences on the sixties counterculture. The book he wrote about his experiences with mescaline, The Doors of Perception, influenced a young man named Jim Morrison and his friends, and they named the band they formed The Doors. (The phrase, “the doors of perception” comes from a William Blake poem called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.)


Born Eric Blair in India in 1903, George Orwell was educated as a scholarship student at prestigious boarding schools in England. Because of his background—he famously described his family as “lower-upper-middle class”—he never quite fit in, and felt oppressed and outraged by the dictatorial control that the schools he attended exercised over their students’ lives. After graduating from Eton, Orwell decided to forego college in order to work as a British Imperial Policeman in Burma. He hated his duties in Burma, where he was required to enforce the strict laws of a political regime he despised. His failing health, which troubled him throughout his life, caused him to return to England on convalescent leave. Once back in England, he quit the Imperial Police and dedicated himself to becoming a writer.
Orwell devoted his energy to writing novels that were politically charged, first with Animal Farm in 1945, then with 1984 in 1949.
 1984 is one of Orwell’s best-crafted novels, and it remains one of the most powerful warnings ever issued against the dangers of a totalitarian society. In Spain, Germany, and the Soviet Union, Orwell had witnessed the danger of absolute political authority in an age of advanced technology. He illustrated that peril harshly in 1984. Like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), 1984 is one of the most famous novels of the negative utopian, or dystopian, genre. Unlike a utopian novel, in which the writer aims to portray the perfect human society, a novel of negative utopia does the exact opposite: it shows the worst human society imaginable, in an effort to convince readers to avoid any path that might lead toward such societal degradation. In 1949, at the dawn of the nuclear age and before the television had become a fixture in the family home, Orwell’s vision of a post-atomic dictatorship in which every individual would be monitored ceaselessly by means of the telescreen seemed terrifyingly possible. That Orwell postulated such a society a mere thirty-five years into the future compounded this fear.

Of course, the world that Orwell envisioned in 1984 did not materialize, well some things did......:)


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: ensurance982 on September 06, 2014, 02:01:33 PM
Had to read Brave New World in school! Have you also seen the movie adaption? It has Leonard Nimoy (Spock from Star Trek) in it, as well! Pretty funny to see that guy without his pointy ears and snarky remarks.


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: peharnikica on September 07, 2014, 10:33:38 AM
Had to read Brave New World in school! Have you also seen the movie adaption? It has Leonard Nimoy (Spock from Star Trek) in it, as well! Pretty funny to see that guy without his pointy ears and snarky remarks.

I had to read it in school too, but I have read it again when i was older, in English, and it was better.....
I have realized that some books i have read when i was young, and they were boring,when i read them now, with more life experience, they are great....Not all of them, some are same boring stuff like before (Goethe's Wherter).
I didn't watch the movie, actually didn't know that there was a movie :)


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: peharnikica on September 10, 2014, 04:36:19 PM
As I said my love is crime and thriller, so today.....I have read a lot of American crime authors, but i got saturated....In past couple of years, Croatian publishers turned more to Scandinavian crime....and i love it!
Cold, dark, depressive as their winters, they can force you to stay awake for all night...cause you're too scared to turn the light off, or simply cause you can't stop til the last page.
There are a lot of them, but today;

Jussi Adler Olsen

Jussi Adler-Olsen's career is characterised by his great involvement in a wide range of media related avtivities. In 1984 he made his debut as a non-fiction writer. 1997 saw his debut as a fiction writer. His latest novel is The Marco Effect (2012).

Born in Copenhagen, he was the youngest of four children and the only boy. Son of the successful sexologist and psychiatrist Henry Olsen, he spent his childhood with his family in doctors' official residences at several mental hospitals across Denmark. In his late teens, he played in a couple of pop groups as lead guitarist. Graduated from the state school in Rødovre (1970), 1970-78 he studied medicine, sociology (passed History of Modern Politics) and film making

The Keeper of Lost Causes (US), Mercy (UK), 2011

Police inspector Carl Mørck is put in charge of a department of cold cases, joined only by his assistant, Assad. They dig into a case about a disappeared woman.
And that's all I'm going to say.
Short chapters, humor and terror changing in same proportion, great characters, something different and refreshing....
So for all crime lovers, enjoy :)


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: the_K_man on September 10, 2014, 04:38:28 PM
The fault in our stars is apparently good as the movie itself is a huge hit


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: KIRAZ on September 10, 2014, 05:10:23 PM
The fault in our stars is apparently good as the movie itself is a huge hit

I watched the movie the other day and it's worth a read i think.


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: jontrue on September 10, 2014, 09:33:42 PM
Game of Thrones


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: peharnikica on September 12, 2014, 04:12:18 PM
I try to always read a book first, and they are always better, cause everyone has a different imagination, and it's always different (and better). Try it....you'll see, movie can never catch everything you imagine, and complete story, emotions.....
By the way, both great titles, wonder how Thrones will end after almost 20 years.....


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: peharnikica on September 13, 2014, 02:58:03 PM
George R.R. Martin is a great fantasy writer, also love his Fevre Dream, a vampire novel from 1982, but still fresh today :)


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: oli123123 on September 14, 2014, 02:27:48 PM
Metro 2033 is a pretty good book. I love post-apocalyptic books, i want to read Metro 2034 too but some people say it's not pretty good.


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: MichaelAguilar.90 on September 24, 2014, 06:21:22 PM
This is one of my favorites books so far and is ''The Knight in Rusty Armor'' wrote by Robert Fisher wonderful history,  I really enjoyed, also I like the H. P Lovecraft books and Edgar All Poe of course also Paulo Coehlo.


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: cryptomad on September 24, 2014, 06:46:34 PM
Im not usually a big book reader,but this thread might inspire me to read more :D thanks


Title: Re: Great books
Post by: floman on September 25, 2014, 06:34:40 AM
Harry Potter  ;D :D