Discussions
Time for a good read?
Posted by Nomadic • 5/17/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: author, blog, books, interests, reading, writing
I am interested in knowing what your favourite book is, but more importantly I want to know what you liked about it.....if there isn't just one answer that's cool too.
User Comments
-
Art of Deception By Kevin Mitnick
Awesome book... cool author-
Come on.....why was it good bkerensa?
-
-
James Herriott's All Creatures Great and Small. He is the best story teller I've come across. His honest, witty, accurate account of life in the Yorkshire dales is heartwarming. -
Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart
Because sometimes I feel I'm living it.-
Earth Abides - What is it about?
-
Earth Abides, a 1949 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by Berkeley English professor George R. Stewart, tells the story of the fall of civilization from deadly disease and its rebirth. Set in the United States in the 1940s, it deals with Isherwood Williams, Emma, and the community they founded. The survivors live off the remains of the old world, while learning to adapt to the new. Along the way they are forced to make tough decisions and choose what kind of civilization they will rebuild.
-
The novel of the last of the Americans. That and Eternity Road are my favorite "end of the world" novels.
-
-
Faraway Tree-
More....come on, crkian.
-
-
Green Eggs and Ham.
It teaches a lesson without being "preachy." -
@Nomadic
Ziga Vodovnik is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, where his teaching and research is focused on anarchist theory/praxis and social movements in the Americas. His new book Anarchy of Everyday Life - Notes on anarchism and its Forgotten Confluences will be released in late 2008.
From the onset of the Vietnam War Howard Zinn was active within the emerging anti-war movement, and in the following years only stepped up his involvement in movements aspiring towards another, better world. Zinn is the author of more than 20 books, including A People's History of the United States that is "a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited politically and economically and whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories..." (Library Journal)
His most recent book is entitled A Power Governments Cannot Suppress and is a fascinating collection of essays that Zinn wrote in the last couple of years. Beloved radical historian is still lecturing across the US and around the world, and is, with active participation and support of various progressive social movements continuing his struggle for free and just society.-
Respect to you Timethief - you MUST have cloned yourself. How can you be in so many places at once giving such wonderful articulate replies?
-
-
I just copy pasted this out of an e-letter that I was sending to a friend.
-
Ah-ha. You are a cut and paste bandit. Clever.
-
-
Charming detective series set in Botswana:
markstoneman.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/the-no-1-ladies-detective-agency/-
It been made into a film I hear
-
I agree with Mark. All of Alexander McCall Smith’s books are excellent. I loved them
-
-
I just finished A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. I cried and cried and cried. So much in fact, I am not sure I enjoyed it.
-
My favourites: PLURAL
Journey to Ixtlan - Carlos Castenada. Wonderful lessons on Life
www.prismagems.com/castaneda/donjuan3.html
That Elixir Called Love - Ramtha. Essential reading on the misconceptions on love.
Wisdom of Insecurity - Alan Watts. Freedom for the mind.
Naam or Word - Kirpal Singh. Discourses on the Sound Current. -
I recently finished Mitch Albom's - "for one more day" and Khaled Hosseini's - "The Kite Runner".
I really liked both books and found Albom's to be uplifting and Hosseini's - well it aggravated me (the main character did) 'til the very end. -
This is from my soon to be published book (self published that is):
C.B.C's "The Ravens Love"
The story plays from the point of view of a vampire who is a hopeless romantic – but the author (me) compares the immortality of a vampire to a poet – that is, he only dies when there is a stake/strike to the heart.
Verse II
"Blood Line"
“I must feed my desire - for it continually starves.”
The night is my concubine…
Again as in the nights that have past and it seems, all those to come, my night has just begun and it’s frustrating. However, this evening, the usual frustration is slowly being replaced with a thread of hope and excitement, a tinge of something new.
The sounds of my footsteps merge with a continuous five noted bird-song in the fore-distance. I distinctly hear the twilight croons of a whippoorwill. I imagine him there, perched high above the path on his favorite branch, his feathers perfectly groomed, singing his poetry:
“My love, we could meet there, just beyond the tree line that follows the stream.
There, at the end of the path banked by lavender and those great caramel tinted oak trees bordering the dream.
There, in the opening under a brilliant silver sky, in the lovers’ field of green, where all is pardoned.
Meet me there, in our secret garden.”
A beautiful poet is this whippoorwill and even as I near his location, he does not stop; he does not lower the volume of his song. For I know his desire and I know it is not safety that he seeks tonight – it is love that he wishes for.
I continue to amble letting lazy steps carry me towards the city, listening to him sing, hoping that his poetry wills the heart of a beautiful mate. Hoping that in the near future I may hear his son casting love notes into the night air.
I feel hopeful this night and decided not to tempt discontent and as such; I dare not visit Retiro Park this evening. I’m certain Artemisia would not be there, but if she were I’d be devastated.
It’s my humble expectation that the whisper to her own heart was powerful enough to carry her like a winged angel to better things, an enhanced life. Her whisper, as silent as it was - was loud enough for me to hear and so evident in the tears that fell onto my soothing, encouraging fingers. Much like the whippoorwill, I heard her song from a perch high in the heavens and her connections to her past became as weightless as a shadow. Now if she could just find the courage to just fly away, to meet her lover in the secret garden.
Instead, this evening, I travel to the Plaza Mayor. I often visit the Plaza to view the artworks of the local talent, to see the tanned shoulders and ruby lips of the beautiful women that grace the city, to drift among their smiles, their conversation and their eloquence.
Of course, my favorite paintings are the landscapes depicting the sun. Their blotches of lead-based yellow paint only capturing a fraction it its beauty, its flooding rays. I find irresistible the apple green color of the trees in spring, the sun-ripened orange of the trees in fall, the capture of it all.
The sun is unforgiving. I long to see her once again, to express regret, but she will not allow me. She hides in the shadows of the day and I in the darkness of a moonlit night.
As luck would have it, the Plaza was full of spectators enjoying the night air and light conversations. With a glass of wine in hand they viewed and commented on the art of their peers. Before them were blue skies of summer days, amber sets mixed with crimson red sunsets and the nudes of women caught, just for a moment, in all their beauty – the softest subject matter. They were completely surrounded and immersed in the objects and their observations of talent, but I was looking elsewhere.
Two women caught my eye. One an addict, most likely hooked on coca leaves - the other – an illustration of artistic beauty.
I must admit and I knew this ‘instantly’; the second woman captivates me.
Her steps were light and her demeanor heavy on the hearts of men. She brought happiness with her and left a little bit of it with each male she spoke with. And when she departed their company, I could tell that they already missed her.
Such beauty, such beauty.
Finally, when she could endure loneliness for a moment – I approached her.
“Can I trust you?”
“Sir, I don’t even know you.”
“Armand Vigée-Lebaidsi at your service, my lady. Can I trust you?”
“Trust is a traitor, my lord.”
“Ah, yes, a traitor of lies”
She smiles…Charmed.
“Yes, you may trust me then.”
“All I desire is dinner, nothing more, not even a trespass.”
“Not a trespass, do you promise?”
“Only if I can trust you.”
Her name is Isabella.
Her black hair falling onto her bare shoulder, the little curl at the corner of her mouth, the copper of her skin, her persuasive spirit, her seductive dance didn’t compare to her name: Isabella.
She already lingered in my mind and danced on my tongue in an orchestra ode to beauty, a connection as strong and resolute as my pounding heart. We walked with one another, talked, touched hands warmed by a familiarity reminiscent and entrenched in evocative slowness, the soon-to-be lovers caress.
We watched the words as they formed on the other’s lips, caught the lamps light in each other’s eyes, took note of the strength and softness of the others’ features. And weighed on every word, every shift of the conversation, every moment.
We enjoyed each other’s company for several hours, until we settled on plans to see one another the following night. She gifted me with three scented candles and a kiss on the cheek.
And with that, she left into the night and the night, now empty, engulfs me…I’m lonely and starved and starving for action.
My thoughts soon went to my mark, my prey. I did not have to look far, for she approached me with nervous chatter. Her body is far too lean, her drug of choices’ attempt to replace the natural appetite of life with its own appetite for ruin.
“What do you…like about this painting?”
“The leaves.”
“Do you have leaves?”
“Yes, I do…”
Just when her eyes were heavy, her vein full of the coca leaves drugging effect – I sank into her. It’s just my nature to draw blood. My gums tighten revealing my truest indignity as my incisors become more prevalent. To live I must turn her, she will not scream for she’s not here, she’s a shell that’s lost its will to fight.
With my back to the column, I watch her fall heavily to the ground – only one shadow is cast along the walls from the nearby lamps and only one being is left - ashamed.
My darkest poetry…
On my walk back to my loft, the silver moon hung high in the night sky and the whippoorwill sang no more.
Maybe we both found love or love found us.
"The Ravens Love" will be published after this final re-write and posted on vnertia.com.
Thanks - Hope you like it.
Chas -
Boy Soldier Series: its 200 pages long, and it's so good i couldn't take my eye away from it. I finished it in 2 days -
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog - Dylan Thomas.
Ben -
I would say "The mortal instruments Trilogy" because allt he action and forbidden love and tales of the supernatural in URBAN America (forgot which part of it) which is hidden from the eyes of humans really was a good mix.
Recently I would say Double Cross by James PAtersson really got me hooked.IT's a thriller involving a serial killer and part of the 'Alex Cross' series.
Add Your Comment
Login to leave a message.
