Which are your three favourite books?

[feline_dacat]

I am far too fickle to pick a top three of books! That's why I haven't posted till now. Out of all the books I currently in my room (I've had to stash away all my others, my room is too small!) here's my top three:

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman (not the whole His Dark Material series necessarily, this book stands out)
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (I cheated on this one - i lent it to a friend so its not actually in my room at the moment)

I used to love the Redwall series and I always recommend Discworld books to anyone who asks, but i prefer Good Omens.

I've read one Haruki Murakami book, and its good! It takes getting used to because its surreal and personally i suspect that some of the original charm may have been lost in translation (literally!)

 

[Narz]

@ Narz: Siddartha was inferior to Huxley's 'Doors of Perception' IMO, it was a more convulted way of saying much the same thing and you still got to go on a great journey.

Thanks for your opinion Ram, I will see if they have it at the local library (or will have them order it).

 

[mrtn]

...I always recommend Discworld books to anyone who asks, but i prefer Good Omens. ...

Good girl!

 

[Rambuchan]

Thanks for your opinion Ram, I will see if they have it at the local library (or will have them order it).

No worries matey.

For more mind expanding / drug culture / spirituality you can also check out:

- Don Juan's teachings in Carlos Castaneda's books.
- 'On the Road' & 'Doctor Sax' by Jack Kerouac
- Just about any Hindu religious text
- 'Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas' & any fiction or journalism by Hunter S. Thompson
- 'Les Paradis artificiels: opium et haschisch' by Charles Baudelaire
- 'The Naked Lunch' by William Burroughs
- 'The Man Who Tasted Shapes' by Richard Cytowic
- 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat : And Other Clinical Tales' by Oliver Sachs.

And loads more.

 

[Turner]

I have heard some things about the jonathan seagull book. I once tried to read some of the first pages i think, but it seems that i didnt like it since i didnt end up buying the book

It's a different type of book to read. More inspirational than anything else. I think I first read it for a book report in fourth grade. Read it a few times since then...and about the third time I read it I realized what it was about.

 

[Rambuchan]

Oh and you can add "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsig to that list above.

 

[Che Guava]

No worries matey.

For more mind expanding / drug culture / spirituality you can also check out:

- Don Juan's teachings in Carlos Castaneda's books.
- 'On the Road' & 'Doctor Sax' by Jack Kerouac
- Just about any Hindu religious text
- 'Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas' & any fiction or journalism by Hunter S. Thompson
- 'Les Paradis artificiels: opium et haschisch' by Charles Baudelaire
- 'The Naked Lunch' by William Burroughs
- 'The Man Who Tasted Shapes' by Richard Cytowic
- 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat : And Other Clinical Tales' by Oliver Sachs.

And loads more.

We have much in common, Ram! I'm a huge fan, well, nearly all of those books/authors, but HS Thompson and William Burroughs really top that list. Have you ever picked up anything by Herbert Hunke? I bit obscure (at least for me!) but he hung out with a lot of the beat poets before they got big and writes some brutally honest stuff that can bring me to tears! "Queer" by Burroughs is my favourite of his, and there was a novel Thompson wrote that was published years after he wrote it (The Rum Diary) that was just fantastic...

Don't forget the Electric Kool-Aid Acid test too!

[EDIT: Someone very close to me also strongly reccomends all Oliver Sachs books!]

 

[Kyriakos]

An interesting, a bit obscure, book is "the songs of Maldoror", by the "count of Lautreamont" (aka Isidore Duccas). It was written in the beginning of the 19th century iirc. Lautreumont died at 24, from syphilis, or tuberculosis, if i am not wrong. The entire book is urging the reader to commit as much evil as he possibly can, and hate everyone else.
Although it isnt one of my favourite books and neither do i consider it particularly well-written (although the translation may be at fault here as well) i think that it is worth reading some pages of it in some bookstore

 

[Narz]

Thanks for the ideas Ram.

 

[Rambuchan]

We have much in common, Ram! I'm a huge fan, well, nearly all of those books/authors, but HS Thompson and William Burroughs really top that list. Have you ever picked up anything by Herbert Hunke? I bit obscure (at least for me!) but he hung out with a lot of the beat poets before they got big and writes some brutally honest stuff that can bring me to tears! "Queer" by Burroughs is my favourite of his, and there was a novel Thompson wrote that was published years after he wrote it (The Rum Diary) that was just fantastic...

DOn't forget the Electric Kool-Aid Acid test too!

Yes we do . Never heard of Herbert Hunke, I wonder why not!

I only ever read Naked Lunch by Burroughs, but thanks for the tip! There are of course others like the Kool-Aid test ( ) and also the sequel to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" > "Lila".

@ Narz: Anytime buddy, your interests are leading you to some mindblowing literature.

 

[Narz]

@ Narz: Anytime buddy, your interests are leading you to some mindblowing literature.

I'll let you know what I think of what I find. And if I come across anything you might be interested in yourself (and perhaps not know of).

 

[jonatas]

Probably my favourite book, as in work of fiction, is Virginia Woolf's "The Waves".... it's really a long prose poem in the form of a novel, very unusual and inspired. I'm really not into reading fiction though.

 

[Rambuchan]

Right, time to throw in some non-English titles, hopefully people will now them as they are quite famous:

"1001 Arabian Nights" - outstanding story telling! (Not really a book but it's in print so why not)

"The Haft Paykar" - Nizami (also an epic poem, I've babled about this a lot in History Forum)

"The Master & The Margarita" - Bulgakov (brilliantly imaginative)

 

[Kyriakos]

the story of the bad jin which was locked in a bottle and thrown to the bottom of the sea is one which i had read (from the 1001 nights) when i was 8 years old, and was very important for me ever since. The ability to see symbolisms in that story never seams to end.

 

[Rambuchan]

Shakespeare also liked the 1001 Nights. The Taming of the Shrew is in fact taken from it.

 

[mrtn]

Shakespeare also liked the 1001 Nights. The Taming of the Shrew is in fact taken from it.

Huh? While I don't know much about Shakespeare the first western translation of 1001 Nights came in French in 1704. I doubt good ole William heard of those tales before (at least in the "here's a bunch of arabic tales" form).

 

[Rambuchan]

Huh? While I don't know much about Shakespeare the first western translation of 1001 Nights came in French in 1704. I doubt good ole William heard of those tales before (at least in the "here's a bunch of arabic tales" form).

Well that's what Eurocentric history and literature will lead one to believe.

As mentioned my friend, this was never intended to be a book, so translation dates or not make absolutely no difference. They are oral stories which go on and on and interlink back within each other. Traders told them to each other and then they got spread around the world. People in Shakespeare's England would have got wind of them. It is in fact quite fascinating following stories as they travel around the world.

EDIT: The story which would have morphed its way to Europe was "Prince Behram and the Princess Al-Datma." It is basically the same as The Taming of The Shrew. It also demonstrates how women once had a reverred position in Arab society.

 

[mrtn]

My last parenthesis is quite important.

 

[Rambuchan]

And my whole parenthesis seems to be in support of that

 

[Darth_Pugwash]

I am far too fickle to pick a top three of books! That's why I haven't posted till now. Out of all the books I currently in my room (I've had to stash away all my others, my room is too small!) here's my top three:

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

If I recall correctly, Peter Jackson (LOTR director) is going make a film of this book.