Read any good books lately?

Question

looking for things to do over break...preferably non-fiction...

Answer 1

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
A Child Called It, The Lost Boy, A Man named Dave by Dave Pelzer
Angela's Ashes, 'Tis, Teacher Man by Frank McCourt

Answer 2

Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men & Joe’s Boys by L. M. Alcott
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Bronte
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Overcoat, The Nose and Other Short Stories by Nikolai Gogol
1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahaeme
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Lemony Snicket’s series of Unfortunate Events
The Catcher in The Rye
A Clockwork Orange
The Lord of The Flies
Brave New World
The Handmaid's Tale
Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Old Man and The Sea

happy reading :)

Answer 3

I do not read much non-fiction, but I found The Prize (history of the Oil Industry) fascinating. Other than that, I am currently reading "Saving Fish From Drowning" by Amy Tan and "The Piano Tuner". For some reason I have a Burma theme going.

Answer 4

The Husband - Dean Koontz
What would you do for love? Would you die? Would you kill?

We have your wife. You can get her back for two million cash. Landscaper Mitchell Rafferty thinks it must be some kind of joke. He was in the middle of planting impatiens in the yard of one of his clients when his cell phone rang. Now he’s standing in a normal suburban neighborhood on a bright summer day, having a phone conversation out of his darkest nightmare.

Whoever is on the other end of the line is dead serious. He has Mitch’s wife and he’s named the price for her safe return. The caller doesn’t care that Mitch runs a small two-man landscaping operation and has no way of raising such a vast sum. He’s confident that Mitch will find a way.

If he loves his wife enough. . . Mitch does love her enough. He loves her more than life itself. He’s got seventy-two hours to prove it. He has to find the two million by then. But he’ll pay a lot more. He’ll pay anything.

From its tense opening to its shattering climax, The Husband is a thriller that will hold you in its relentless grip for every twist, every shock, every revelation…until it lets you go, unmistakably changed. This is a Dean Koontz novel, after all. And there’s no other experience quite like it.

Next - Michael Crichton
Welcome to our genetic world.
Fast, furious, and out of control.
This is not the world of the future-it's the world right now.
Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes; is that why an adult human being resembles a chimp fetus? And should that worry us? There's a new genetic cure for drug addiction-is it worse than the disease?

We live in a time of momentous scientific leaps; a time when it's possible to sell our eggs and sperm online for thousands of dollars; test our spouses for genetic maladies and even frame someone for a genetic crime.

We live in a time when one fifth of all our genes are owned by someone else, and an unsuspecting person and his family can be pursued cross-country because they happen to have certain valuable genes within their chromosomes. . . .

Devilishly clever, Next blends fact and fiction into a breathless tale of a new world where nothing is what it seems, and a set of new possibilities can open at every turn. Next challenges our sense of reality and notions of morality. Balancing the comic and bizarre with the genuinely frightening and disturbing, Next shatters our assumptions, and reveals shocking new choices where we least expect.

The future is closer than you think. Get used to it.

In the dark of the night - John Saul

It has waited seven years for someone to come back to the rambling lakeside house called Pinecrest, which has stood empty since its last owner went missing. For upscale Chicago couple Dan and Merrill Brewster, the old midwestern manse is an ideal retreat, and for their kids, Eric and Marci, it's the perfect place to spend a lazy summer exploring. Which is how Eric and his teenage friends discover the curious cache of discarded objects stowed in a hidden room of Pinecrest's carriage house. The bladeless hacksaws, shadeless lamps, tables with missing legs, headless axe handle, and other unremarkable items add up to a pile of junk. Yet someone took the trouble to inventory each worthless relic in a cryptic ledger. It has all the makings of a great mystery - whispering, coaxing, demanding to be solved.

But the more the boys devote themselves to restoring the forgotten possessions and piecing together the puzzle behind them, the more their fascination deepens into obsession. Soon their days are consumed with tending the strange, secret collection - while their nights become plagued by ever more ghastly dreams, nightmares that soon seep into reality. And when a horrifying discovery surfaces, so does the chilling truth about the terrifying events that rocked the town seven years before, the mysterious disappearance of Pinecrest's last resident, and a twisted legacy with a malevolent life of its own . . . and a bottomless hunger for new victims.

Answer 5

Goddess of Yesterday by Caroline B. Cooney

Anaxandra, young girl is taken captive but lives a comfortable life on one of the Greek islands near the empire of Sparta. When the island is sacked, she winds up being found by the great king of Sparta, Menalaus, and his beautiful queen Helen. She is thrown into the consequences of Helen's betrayel and must use her tomboyish traits and creative mind to make do in Troy.
I liked the book because it showed the story of Troy from a different point of view, with Helen being almost evil.

Possibly counted as fiction, although has a side-story of the war of Sparta and Troy so... I'll let you decide. Anyhow, I really liked it!
Enjoy your vaca...

Answer 6

I'm reading Summer Knight, a book in the Dresden files book series.It narrates the story of Harry Dresden,chicago's only professional wizard who works as a detective.In this book he deals with the Summer and Winter Courts of the fey.Apparently they are about to go to war.An event which was triggered by the death of the Summer Knight.Queen Mab of the Winter Court hires Harry to find out the true killer.

Answer 7

Judging from the soft rebellious stylish way you identify yourself, I guess you are not the "holier than thou" type but an amicable liberal iconoclast who just needs a good reflective adventure of the mind and spirit during the break from the humdrum of routine.
Get a copy of "Drinking, Smoking and Screwing: Great Writers on Good Times" Edited by Sara Nickles. Get the cheaper soft cover edition which you may later toss to that that shy, mellow and usually indifferent colleague to thumb through in hibernation. The text, I guarantee you, is an "unputdownable" creative non-fiction spiced a few poems by various respected and honorable pathetically human contributors!
It is not a "cheap" hot-boiler as the title may suggest. Not meant to arouse lascivious freelings.
Blurb comment:
"Before the notion of "political correctness" encroached on the ways people spoke, wrote, and conducted themselves in public and private, some of America's best writers embraced unsafe sex, excessive alcohol, and a good cigar. From the classically libidinous Henry Miller to the hilariously contemporary Fran Lebowitz, "Drinking, Smoking and Screwing"...

The boss is human too and may crave a bite of life's favorite little vices!!
. . . enjoy your break.

Answer 8

I have a guilty pleasure in the Fiction Department -- the Terry Pratchett Books on the DiscWorld -- this one was the latest Tiffany Aching Book (Wintersmith).

Answer 9

Try Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Candavers by Mary Roach. Suprisingly funny book about what happens to a human body after death.

Answer 10

The Left Behind series is a great one. It's a great way to get an idea of what happens after the rapture occurs and what goes on for those who have not yet asked Jesus to be their Lord and Savior.