Know any good books?

[Sanctum]

Looking for a really good book. I like books that deal with matters of the mind, like The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka or Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvin Welsh. What kind of book do you guys like.

 

[Decaf]

I can't speak to the super-intellectual taste, but I'm a big fan of complicated stories. For that I think Dune and A Song of Fire & Ice are both great series and both take a long time to read.

 

[ohrtonz]

The Myst books I have read several times. I own each one individually and the Reader which has all three in one, because it was cheap and better condition.

 

[Affinity]

The Fountainhead.

 

[Hammo]

Sherlock Holmes. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Discworld. These are my favourite book series'.
'Genesis' is about AI, and is sort of matter-of-the-mind-esque.

 

[snafupants]

You could do worse than Infinite Jest, The Shock Doctrine, Anatomy of an Epidemic, The Idiot, Humboldt's Gift, or Mr. Sammler's Planet...a lot worse.

 

[Zadigdigs]

May I ask you to consider this:

Zadig and Candide from Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet).

I have that strange idea (Ne?) that these fellows would be INTP's.
And their Master is playfull enough to entertain you a few years.
Several levels of reading (many in fact).
Not an ad, the guy is dead.

 

[Synthetix]

Illusions by Richard Bach

 

[CBadfeather]

If you're interested in religion and like sci-fi. Valis by Phillip K Dick is EPIC.

 

[Pizzabeak]

Confessions of a Crap Artist, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, Radio Free Albemuth by Philip K. Dick, maybe. Also, maybe, this book called Lowboy by John Wray.

 

[Trebuchet]

Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks, the autobiography of a master cryptographer working for Britain during WWII. Very powerful, lots of cryptography and history.

 

[snafupants]

Confessions of a Crap Artist, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, Radio Free Albemuth by Philip K. Dick, maybe. Also, maybe, this book called Lowboy by John Wray.

Apparently Philip K. Dick had these insane visions in 1974 which he later chronicled and fictionalized in his novels. I want to read Exegesis where he talks about those...if only Amazon sold it cheaply. Amazon we had some fun times together but you have betrayed me and, therefore, I must go my own way. Ebay? Up to this point I've only read A Scanner Darkly and VALIS; they were both good.

 

[Pizzabeak]

Interesting. Well, A Scanner & Valis are on my to-read lists (as in I have them, but haven't gotten to them yet.) You might like Radio Free Albemuth, it's supposedly a rough draft of Valis. But check it:

I got the Exegesis off of Amazon for 18 bucks. They were selling it at Barnes n Noble for 40.. Maybe I happened to check Amazon at the right time?

 

[snafupants]

Interesting. Well, A Scanner & Valis are on my to-read lists (as in I have them, but haven't gotten to them yet.) You might like Radio Free Albemuth, it's supposedly a rough draft of Valis. But check it:

I got the Exegesis off of Amazon for 18 bucks. They were selling it at Barnes n Noble for 40.. Maybe I happened to check Amazon at the right time?

Yeah there's one vendor on Ebay selling Exegesis for that same price of eighteen bucks: I might bite tomorrow. How would you rate Exegesis? Is it worth owning? Is it something you read through or would one use it more as a reference for other works? Is it like diffuse notes? Enquiring minds want to know...guess I could find out elsewhere too...

As an aside, I always like to read these types of meta-books and biographies first to get a feel for the authors and their works...slightly nerdy but it's sometimes necessary with stuff that makes personal/esoteric allusions that are fucking incomprehensible otherwise.

Oh crap, I just realized that I read The Cosmic Puppets when I was like fifteen; that was sort of fan fictionesque and loose, not as good as his later stuff (post mental breakdown/epiphany) but still entertaining and, perhaps, worth a rainy afternoon; that one reminded me of Stephen King's bare-bones writing.

Edit: The afterword to A Scanner Darkly was quite touching. From memory what it talked about was the undeserved toll drugs had taken on friends, family, and author. A sweet gesture, in a rueful post-indulgence sort of way.

 

[blarg]

The Ilium/Olympos series by Dan Simmons. Epic and innovative.