Important: Read
Sorry. Been busy for the past few days (I'm lying).
from what i read lately (cause i dont read much, no time) harry potter and the goblet of fire, da vinci code, angels & demons.
I hate Dan Brown's work. I really do. I've come close to saying unforgivable things to an old roommate who read
The Da Vinci Code and almost left his girlfriend stranded at a bookstore when she decided to buy him
Angels and Demons and
The Deception Point.
I turn into a huge asshole when it comes to Dan Brown, and I'm not sure why.
I've found friends who are avid readers and do have taste guiltily reading one of his books and agreeing that it's crap. They can't explain why they're still reading it, though. I decide that these people are retarded, and so my first recommendation for the Dan Brown reader is
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. This book is about (and narrated by) an autistic British kid who is trying to find out who killed his neighbor's dog. It's a riot.
I also look at Dan Brown's work as damaging society. Books like this are evil and should be burned. So naturally, I have to recommend Ray Bradbury's
Fahrenheit 451, which almost any product of the American educational system is probably already aware of. If you aren't - it's about a future where people stay at home in fireproof houses and live through their TVs, and firemen burn all books.
Finally, I decide that people can just flat out do better. Being an asshole to people who read bad books does nothing but make them want to avoid your company when it comes to books. If you want to do better, I recommend
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. There's a bad sex scene here and there, and only one of the characters is really fleshed out, but there's suspense, drama, intrigue, and so on. There's Nazi gold, cracking military codes, and so on. It's a great summer read, actually.
ok here we go.... i liked the movie skeleton key... are there any books like that... kind of scary and good twist endings and themes like that???
Like I said above, I'm not too into getting scared. Some Anne Rice (the stuff about vampires, not Jesus) might fit your needs. Chuck Palahniuk (
Fight Club) has also been turning out some horror novels lately, and he's usually good for a twist.
Sometimes i try to force my self to read but after reading few pages I lose my concentration or i feel lazy. I really want to start reading again but it dosnt seem that it will ever happen again
The trick is to find something interesting. Things you can do:
1. This might sound patronizing (I hope not, given the number of adutl Harry Potter readers out there) but try starting with some books geared towards younger readers. The
His Dark Materials trilogy is very good - I'd recommend it to anyone of any age. It's geared towards younger readers, but it doesn't dumb itself down. Actually, a Dan Brown fan might like it too, as it does go into religious conspiracies.
2. Go for something with a lot of pictures, aka graphic novels. The canon of the genre is Alan Moore's
The Watchmen. Almost anything Alan Moore has done, actually, is gold.
V for Vendetta is another great one (much better than the movie). If you're not into superheroes,
From Hell and
A History of Violence are also great. There's really a wide variety.
3. Short stories and books. If you can decipher the use of vernacular, Irvine Welsh's
The Acid House is great. Michael Chabon and Dave Eggers have also assembled some good collections by multiple authors - the variety should even things out.
Also, I'm still working my way through Ulysses. I'm pretty sure James Joyce was a robot.
I didn't find
Ulysses to be as impossible as its advertised to be. I've been struggling through
Infinite Jest for months now, though. Everytime I pick it up, I tear through the pages, but when I put it down I have no desire to pick it back up again. The fucking footnotes are killing me.
go ahead and recommend if you have anything in mind.
But I love biographies or something based on a true story.
As far as biographies go, my favorite is Malcolm X's autobiography. The last good one I read is
American Prometheus, a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. The first few chapters alone are priceless - who gets so depressed about being a virgin that they try to kill?
Some of my favorite non-fiction books are about sports, but I don't know how much an Australian would care about American football or baseball. I'd suggest anything by Gay Talese. He's one of the great journalists of our time.
The Gay Talese Reader is a good collection of his magazine articles.
Honor Thy Father is about the Bonanno Mafia family, and
Fame and Obscurity is a collection of articles about people like Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, etc.
