ive got as i lay dying waiting for me after i finish 1984, any opinions on that one

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1984 has been my favorite book for a long time, i reread it now and again. this book was written in 1949, thats what makes it far out.

im reading classical literature, ancient mythology for the most part now. think im gonna start on some plutarch, roman lives and essays tonite since i finished a mediocre translation of the eddas. also got livy's history of rome and the egyptian book of the dead. there even might be an epic of gilgamesh book around here.

books i want to read

niccolo machievelli-art of war
the snorri translation of the eddas, hopefully oxford or penguin has a good version
the aenid<or however you spell it>the roman national epic
don quixote-spanish national epic
an autobiography on ghengis khan or history of the mongels
any history on ancient seafaring,trireme construction, famous ancient battles at sea
any history that deal with the carthaginians and pheonicians, the punic wars etc.

edit: also any indepth history on the crusades, knights of templar,knights of malta,knights of rhodes, the hospitallers etc.

snorri was the author of the eddas not the translator! get "the sagas of the icelanders" its a collection of all the sagas pertaining mostly to iceland. i read king harald's saga this year and really really dug it. the one i got had an awesome intro that talk about how snorri died and everything. great story

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Last night I finished Camus' "The Stranger". Great book.

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Can anyone recommend some good horror books? As in truly frightening stuff... (I don't get scared easily)

I wish I could know some too...haha your best bet is probably reading true crime...I mean Stephen King is just tame.

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King is shit for a good scare. I've read some good horror books, but none of them really scared me shitless--if that's even possible from a book.

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You're fucking crazy man! I tried reading ACO but that cockney blew my fucking mind. Got to like page 5 then fell into a coma for 20 years.

At the moment I'm reading "Hiroshima Joe" which is cool. It's about a bisexual war vet living in japan after the bomb, stealing old ladies purses to pay for his opium and prosi addictions.

Waiting patiently on the shelf is "the devils" by fyodor dostoyevsky which looks fucking brilliant.

and King is a hack.

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cool, i look those up. what i read was "masks of odin" which was a translation of most of the codex regius, the elder eddas. the author omitted parts of the poem so it could fit into some stupid new-age theory of the cosmos or some shit. and they let you know in the last chapter that you are not infact reading a full translation which i wasnt happy with. i got snorri confused with the monk guy who found the codex regius and made copies and preserved it, but whatever, its cool.

Non Fiction here.

Sagan is the shit!

Carl?

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I'm not a huge fan of King, but he is a good writer and does have some stories that I liked such as Salem's Lot. I like more of the fantasy books that go hand in hand with powermetal. Like the Lord of the Rings series and shit.

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In speaking of fantasy....has anyone read R.A. Salvatore's Icewind Dale Trilogy or the Dark Elf Trilogy? I was reserching these books on the net and they look fairly interesting.

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I've heard good things about that series. I need to check it out.

Right now I'm reading "The Dragonbone Chair" by Tad Williams, book 1 of "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn". The writing style is quite unique, but maybe I'm biased because I'm a Williams fan.

For non-fiction I just finished "Into Thin Air" by John Krakauer, about the ill-fated Everest expedition in 1996. Now I am beginning "The Long Walk" by Slavomir Rawicz, a memoir about a man who escaped from a Siberian prison camp and walked all the way to India. I think the party went without water for 9 days or more in the Gobi Desert.

read those as a kid, when i was into DandD, i strongly advise against it. ra salvatore and possible the whole genre of rpg board game books are the equivalent of supermarket romance trash. unless if you're into a fixed and easily identifiable sense of good and evil, cornball overused plots that are spoonfed, pet characters who are omnipotent, allwise and infallable, books written without any significant moral or philosophical meaning behind them than go for it. in terms of literature these are kids books, superman comics have more relevence in substance and meaning, and that isnt saying much.

read frank herberts "dune" series, its a good example of a fantasy based plot, that encorporates a well researched understanding of ancient religion, ecology,geology,astrophysics,genetics as it was known in the 60's, tyrannical governments, both the latin and arabic language. it took the man years of research to write these books and they are meaningful beyond the genre, hold more depth than just reading about wierd monsters and cool magic weapons and the like.

I thought the Dune series was written by a woman, but that she did research and live parts of hr books just to get authenticism in them. I might be thinking of someone else though. Or is that a pseudonym?

EDIT: I don't know who the heck I'm thinking of, but the books I'm thinking of were popular back in the early to mid 80's. It obviously wasn't Dune though.

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John Saul is pretty good with horror or mystery or something, I recently finished Black Creek Crossing, that was good. Now I'm starting Midnight Voices. I reccomend him, if like you like mystery and horrr.

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Pandemonium - Seriously, check out these books..they are more of a history lesson that a fantasy, losely based off The Wars of Roses between the Yorks and Lancasters.(Stark and Lannister in the novel) I mean dragons and elves are far in the past already in the novel..maybe the other books include them I do not know...however it is a fantastic read, and I would definitely reccomend it, even too people who hate the fantasy genre. The characters are so well thought up and the plots are so tediously suspicious it will keep you reading until your eyes force blood.


Low-Tech - Thanks for the insight..are DandD expansions based on these books? I noticed a video game called "D+D The Icewind Dale", I beleive it was called that...I trust your knowledge, and will read further into these books if I ever purchase them.

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best fantasy books ever were the piers anthony incanrations series and the dragonlance series (theo ne with seasons) raistlin is metal

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Trans...I'm not saying those books aren't good...but the incarnations series have really queer looking covers...


http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/038...458#reader-link

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