purplemookiebut said:

BlackAdder7 said:

brilliant

its alot of references to britsh tv shows,sports stars and movies. i have everything with hugh laurie in it,being human and desperate romantics but otherwise these inside jokes are going over my head.....

big diff with american english and uk

sounds like you've done better than most...

Every single Louis L'Amour book I can get my hands on. I'm addicted to them! They are so freaking great.

Right now, I'm reading "The Sky-Liners".

The usual; a lot of Star Trek books and a lot of comic books. But right now I'm also reading a TON of D&D books. Creating a campaign is MUCH harder than I remember.

I just finished Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould. It was a good read, not too technical, but I always find Gould's writing a little tiring after a while. I think his writing worked more effectively in an essay/article format.

I'm now about 50 pages into Mary Roach's Packing for Mars. It's not as morbidly enjoyable as her book about the use of corpses in medical research (what book could be?), but I'm still finding it to be total fun.

[Edited 4/5/11 3:42am]

I'm about a 3rd of the way through The Bride Stripped Bare (by Anonymous)

So far, so good.

Let me know if this has any potential:

http://prince.org/msg/15/356344

My apologies to those that may be offended

RodeoSchro said:

Every single Louis L'Amour book I can get my hands on. I'm addicted to them! They are so freaking great.

Right now, I'm reading "The Sky-Liners".

louis! i gew up reading my older brother's castoff louis l'amour books. long live everthing sackett!

Last December Whoopi Goldberg recommended this book as her current favorite. She said she that it was helping her deal with her multitude of feelings over the death of her mother in August. Trying to cope after the loss of my own mother in September I purchased it. I can't say it's providing me with all the answers, but it most definitely has made me stop feeling like I am losing my mind for not having broken down crying or feeling as if I were have a very weird/bad waking dream. I've since bought copies for my brother and daughters (I've higlighted and written throughout mine or I would've lent it), and recommended it to a few friends and family members who are trying to find their own way through their own grief over losing loved ones.

SagsWay2low said:

SagsWay2low said:

One of the stranger novels I've read in a while.

I'm only on chapter 2 but it's proven to be utterly compelling, strange, and a bit charming.

I've always wanted to write a future-world sci-fi novel that took place in Bangkok.

Apparently, somebody already has, and it was voted the 9th best Sci-Fi book of 2009

by Time magazine.

OK, finished the book today.

This is without a doubt, one of the best sci-fi books I've ever written.

It's also a wonderfully damning look at human nature and globalization and the West's role in it.

Superb, superb....BRILLIANT book.

I can't even begin to describe how insanely good this book is.

RUN TO THE STORE AND GET A COPY....NOW

The Island by Elin Hilderbrand

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HUMAN BODY,LYMPHOID ORGANS.

Still reading this one too

bought this in the ATL airport a couple years ago. It left so much to be desired in a pop fiction romance. If this is all you need to do to get a book deal these days then I might need to consider a career switch. Still, it's so late to the "I wanna be a another Terry McMillian" club, I won't be buying anything else from this author

but I finished this yesterday, at least

and I'm mid-way through my ten week study of the life of John the Apostle. Pretty soon we're about to hit his later life when he moved to Ephesus (Turkey), and later began to record his life as a youth shadowing Jesus, and the Revelation.

purpledoveuk said:

[img:$uid]http://images.betterworldbooks.com/087/The-White-Spider-9780874779400.jpg[/img:$uid] And by god it's hard going . I'm not sure if it because it's translated from German (Bovarian) to English but this guy is arrogant (but then he also said, when Brad Pitt played him in 7 yrs in Tibet that he was better looking than Pitt at his age). I'm glad he's dead Worth it just for the chapter in Toni Kurtz....that's one tough cookie (I'll tell you more if anybody cares)

What's this one about?

PurpleJedi said:

purpledoveuk said:

PurpleJedi said:

What's this one about?

Heinrich Harer was in the team who was first to successfully reach the summit if the Eiger via the North Face in the 1930s. The North Face was considered impossible up until this point and the book is an account of the many attempts previous to his and the fate of the people who carried out (at least it is so far - I haven't finished yet). It's a really interesting insight into human spirit, endurance and the mindset of climbing. The title comes from a massive area in the face where icefields, cliffs and crevasses spread out in all directions like a giant White spider. The Toni Kurtz chapter is about a failed attempt some years earlier by a team of 4 climbers that was doomed to tragedy very early on from the smallest mistake....there's too many details to go into but but bare with me -basically... Having struggled to climb across a smooth rock face for hours they succeeded but undid the rope that had helped them across (because they had no intentions of going back the same way one reaching the summit)...they didn't realise it was impossible to get back the same way without it. Some way from the top one of the party was hit in the head by a falling rock, he tried to carry on but couldn't and the whole team realised they had to go back down...and then they reached the impassible face. The only way down was straight down via ropes, ledge, ropes, ledge etc....but on the way down tragedy struck in the firm of an avalanche. One of the party was washed off the mountain, the other 3 were roped together - Kurtz, in the middle of the 3 found himself dangling over the mountain - below him on the rope his friend was dead having smashed head first into the mountain wall...above him his other friend was dead as the weight of the 2 men below had pulled him tight up against a fixing point and crushed the life out of him ...Kurtz was stranded. Help eventually came but they could not reach him or pass him a rope and Kurtz spend the night dangling off the mountain in freezing conditions losing his hand to frostbite. THIS IS THE GUTWRENCHING BIT.... The only thing Kurtz could do the following day (and this is after everything he's been through) was to cut away his dead friend below, climb one handed back up the rope, cut away his other dead friend, unsplice the rope and tie it back together to lower down so that his rescuers could attach a rope strong enough to hold his weight ....and this was the final nail in his coffin; the single rope wasn't long enough by just a few feet so they tied two together and Kurtz began to climb down, slowly over many hours - he was going to survive.....just a few feet away from rescue he came up against the knot...and it was too big to fit through his climbing harness - after all this and just 15ft from rescue it was impossible for him to proceed - he muttered the words "I'm done" and died on the rope just out of reach but in plain view of his rescuers

Wow. I don't know that I can read a book like that right now.

purpledoveuk said:

Plus Harrer has an ego on him the size if an elephant which makes it a very frustrating read...it's like being introduced to a friend of a friend who, whilst their achievements are impressive, you think is a bit of a dick because they're so smug (the comment about Pitt was not a joke). He doesn't so much as say "I'm great" but he doesn't hold back on quoting people who have told him he's great (in a round about way) and by the very fact he made the summit there's a certain self-appointed authority on retrospectively telling the story of people who failed. I actually hate this man and hes been dead years. Touching the Void is a little more uplifting....although Void is again a little ego stroking from Joe Simpson who, when boiled down, just got lucky after messing up

Big egos really grate on me, so I think this is not my type of book.

Moreso due to the fact that I cannot relate to people who undertake dangerous/suicidal "adventures" and perish. I read "Into The Wild" after my buddy raved about the book and the movie.

While I will admit that the book was interesting, I could NOT relate to the main character and when the moron dies I'm just SO ready to end the book that it's a sigh of relief. I felt bad for his parents, and that's IT.

PurpleJedi said:

purpledoveuk said:

Plus Harrer has an ego on him the size if an elephant which makes it a very frustrating read...it's like being introduced to a friend of a friend who, whilst their achievements are impressive, you think is a bit of a dick because they're so smug (the comment about Pitt was not a joke). He doesn't so much as say "I'm great" but he doesn't hold back on quoting people who have told him he's great (in a round about way) and by the very fact he made the summit there's a certain self-appointed authority on retrospectively telling the story of people who failed. I actually hate this man and hes been dead years. Touching the Void is a little more uplifting....although Void is again a little ego stroking from Joe Simpson who, when boiled down, just got lucky after messing up

Big egos really grate on me, so I think this is not my type of book.

Moreso due to the fact that I cannot relate to people who undertake dangerous/suicidal "adventures" and perish. I read "Into The Wild" after my buddy raved about the book and the movie.

While I will admit that the book was interesting, I could NOT relate to the main character and when the moron dies I'm just SO ready to end the book that it's a sigh of relief. I felt bad for his parents, and that's IT.

I remember being moved by this one. Haven't seen the movie though.

Just finished "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua

Am almost done with "A Beautiful Child" by Mark Birkbeck

Then plan on reading "Cutting for Stone" by Abraham Verghese

PurpleJedi said:

Just read:

[img:$uid]http://rhapsodyinbooks.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/city-of-thieves.jpg[/img:$uid]

Very funny, cruel, sad and exciting at the same time.

Want to read:

[img:$uid]http://wordsandfood.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/murakami.jpeg[/img:$uid]

[img:$uid]http://media2.libri.de/shop/coverscans/862/8621830_2030250_xl.jpg[/img:$uid]

[img:$uid]http://www.produkt-suchmaschine.com/images/products/101_/der-zeitplan-id4587114.jpg[/img:$uid]

[img:$uid]http://conspiracygrimoire.com/wp-content/uploads/jest.jpg[/img:$uid]

Phishanga said:

[img:$uid]http://wordsandfood.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/murakami.jpeg[/img:$uid]

Oh holy shit, he has a new one out?!?!!?

I finished Norwegian Wood about 3 weeks ago and hated it. It was just terrible.

But I loved the other two books I read by him. Kafka on the Shore was one of

my favorite books ever.

Imma have to got to the store and look for that one.

Phishanga said:

[img:$uid]http://conspiracygrimoire.com/wp-content/uploads/jest.jpg[/img:$uid]

I tried this, but....nah

The title seems to sum it up nicely