Favorite book!

[Larsa]

The title explains it. Just post your favorite book and what it's about. Also it would be nice for you to give a rating for the book and tell who woud like it.

For me I especially like the book called "The Divine Proportion" by H.E. Huntey. It's about the beauty that you can find in Mathematics. It would probably be excruciatingly boring to about 99.9999999999991% of the people on this site because it's talking about how you can learn to love and find beauty in all of mathematics. I would give the book a 10/10.

[Darkpaladin64]

hmmmm,book,.....eh,wai--no hum may--no um does manga count? because if so then i can fill this thread but if not i'm pooped cause i only read manga.

[Larsa]

Well as much as I don't care for Manga I would say no but you can if you talk about the entire colection of the certain series. Not just one volume of the whole series.

[Darkpaladin64]

Hm okay that might be difficult to do so i'll pick Oto na ni nuts!

this is a rly funny manga about some bratty girl who wants to be an adult and as girly as it sounds it is rly good because she is constantly being spied on,or being naged by a female scientist who when gets mad looks like a dude.Natsumi the girl ends up eating nuts that can make her an adult for 8 hours.From then on she has to deal with guys bothering her,and her neighboor,and friend asuma from continuosly giving away her identity to win prizes and go on photoshoots and stuff and it's really funny.

There are 4 books in the seiries i give the seires a 10/10

[The Dude]

Manga may be in print form but it hardly qualifies as a book. It's just another nail in the coffin for literature.

One of my favorites was Letters to the Earth by Mark Twain. I haven't read it in a while but I read it full when I first did. I forget the main purpose but I remember why I liked it so much was how Twain poked fun of religious and self righteous people in it.

My favorite line (Paraphrased) was "He thinks the Lord made him in his image. He thinks the Lord loves him and holds him in high regard. Ain't it a quaint idea indeed."

[Saint]

My favorite book ever is "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee. I've read it five or six times. Seeing Jem and Scout mature and learn about the sometimes frightening world around them is timeless. Atticus Finch is one of the most compelling characters I've ever read, though his words are few.

10/10

[The Dude]

Ah yeah I remember that. For the hell of it, one more, not necessarily a book book but it's literature.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

An absurdist play based off the two characters from Hamlet. It deals with existentialist philosophies about whether or not there is a God and if we really are who we are. My favorite thing about the book isn't really a moment that is in the story but it's in the book is that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are so interchangable that at times you're reading the lines of one and it turns out to be the other.

[Larsa]

Originally Posted by MistaRob

Manga may be in print form but it hardly qualifies as a book. It's just another nail in the coffin for literature.

One of my favorites was Letters to the Earth by Mark Twain. I haven't read it in a while but I read it full when I first did. I forget the main purpose but I remember why I liked it so much was how Twain poked fun of religious and self righteous people in it.

My favorite line (Paraphrased) was "He thinks the Lord made him in his image. He thinks the Lord loves him and holds him in high regard. Ain't it a quaint idea indeed."

I agree. They're just pictues and a vey little bit of words. Everyone who posted manga got lucky because I was very close to saying no Manga.

[Darkpaladin64]

Originally Posted by Larsa

I agree. They're just pictues and a vey little bit of words. Everyone who posted manga got lucky because I was very close to saying no Manga.

Well I do suppose i hav read one book, it wasn't manga it was Dracula the classic by bram stoker I giv it a 7/10 It was good but the journal entries were dull and there were too many unessisary characters

[Seph Stampede]

Any written word is literature, whether you like it or not. To rule out manga as such because it doesn't conform to the classical norms which define literature is, to be frank, ridiculously elitist and narrow minded.

My favourite books are 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, the entire His Dark Materials Trilogy, Interview With the Vampire and the Vampire Lestat... need I go on?

If manga qualifies, I'd wager comic books do as well, in which case I'd also have to say Arkham Asylum.

[Larsa]

Originally Posted by Seph Stampede

Any written word is literature, whether you like it or not. To rule out manga as such because it doesn't conform to the classical norms which define literature is, to be frank, ridiculously elitist and narrow minded.

My favourite books are 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, the entire His Dark Materials Trilogy, Interview With the Vampire and the Vampire Lestat... need I go on?

If manga qualifies, I'd wager comic books do as well, in which case I'd also have to say Arkham Asylum.

You underestimate Dracula.

And I like your choice of books Seph. They're on my top ten.

[Naked Gackt]

Originally Posted by Seph Stampede

Any written word is literature, whether you like it or not. To rule out manga as such because it doesn't conform to the classical norms which define literature is, to be frank, ridiculously elitist and narrow minded.

Even though I hate manga I completely agree.

I'll be honest and say I don't really have a favourite, I haven't read a book properly in a long time, anda s you'll see in my profile: I ain't proud of that fact. There's nothing inspiring me right now but that doesn't mean I'm like "ew, bukz".

[The Dude]

Comic books and Manga are mainly hit or miss on the literature part though. And though it may be elitist to think of them barely as literature, it's how I've been able to single out the quality from the crap and if that's elitism then call me elitist.

Comic book wise, the detective comics were usually my favorite.

[The Man]

My favourite book of any genre is probably Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. People, especially in this country, have been brought up to think that the U.S. government has always taken on this role of benevolent guardian of the people's rights, and in reality it's pretty much the opposite. Most of the liberties we enjoy today are only around because people had the courage to stand up for what they believed in. Zinn gives a pretty good overview of how this happened, and it's a refreshing change from the jingoistic nonsense that fills most history textbooks.

I also need to recommend the works of Noam Chomsky, but that goes without saying. To be more specific, I think the reason America is so despised abroad is because of the actions of its government, and no author does a better job of picking up on the information the leaders of America's governments don't want anyone else to know than Chomsky does. His material is thoroughly sourced, perhaps to the point of excess, and each volume presents mind-boggling amounts of information. I can't really single out individual volumes; he's simply too prolific. As far as I'm concerned. his material should be required reading in schools, especially American ones. (Although, that said, it's not particularly easy, in no smalt because of the aforementioned abundance of sourcing).

I'm also going to single out Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation, not because anything he says is particularly new, but just because he's said it in a more concise and perhaps effective manner than just about anyone who's come before him, and as far as I'm concerned, it needs to be said. Of course, those who dislike having their religious beliefs questioned are likely to be enraged, and I find that quite sad, really.

As far as fiction, my two favourite series still being written are George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series and Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Martin's series takes the premise of traditional fantasy novels - good against evil - and turns it on its head by presenting a war in which all sides view the war as a case of good against evil, and yet none of them really qualifies as good. Even those characters who are likeable are only likeable in spite of significant flaws, and there's none of the nonsense encountered in most ongoing series where all main characters survive until the final book. Martin kills main characters off without remorse, starting in the very first volume. By the fourth book, he also shows quite major concern for how the nobles' war is affecting the poorer people of Westeros (the name of his major continent). In terms of scope this series dwarfs everything else on the market right now, making Goodkind look like the clown he is and highlighting the significant flaws in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I really don't know of anything in modern fiction comparable to this series in terms of scope and sheer moral and political shrewdness; the only other "serious" fantasy authors who even deserve being mentioned in the same breath are R. Scott Bakker, Steven Erikson, and possibly Scott Lynch (it's hard to tell after one book); and for my money none of them is as good.

Be warned with Martin: His series contains plenty of graphic violence, graphic sex scenes, incest, underage sex, and all kinds of other things that might bother squeamish people, but he certainly isn't condoning most of that.

Pratchett's probably well-known to many of you, since before the Harry Potter series came out he was Britain's bestselling living novelist, and he's still #2 on the list I believe. Discworld is an elaborate medieval fantasy setting, but it's all constructed in such a way as to reflect our own world in just about every way possible. As a result, it's probably the most brilliant satire in progress, since Pratchett manages to parody everything from the Chinese Revolution to The Da Vinci Code in a hilarious fashion. He's easily the purely funniest science fiction author since Douglas Adams, and probably the funniest author writing today as well. The fact that his books are also quite morally acute doesn't harm anything either.

I could go on listing favourite books for years, but I'll just mention a few more - Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein crystallized the unconventional way I look at relationships; 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley are largely responsible for making me think critically about society; and the works of Kurt Vonnegut are beyond compare.

Nice picks on To Kill a Mockingbird and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, btw.

[Reynard Struan]

This should come as no surprise, but The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson.

[Larsa]

Originally Posted by Reynard Struan

This should come as no surprise, but The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson.

No that didn't really come to any surprise. The school district that I go to has a required reading of that book and no one liked it. But I really liked the book. Good choice.

[Antikhrist]

Mine's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy by Douglas Adams. They're really the only books I can stand besides the Harry Potter series. Can't wait for The Deathly Hallows by the way.

[Darkpaladin64]

Originally Posted by Larsa

You underestimate Dracula.

maybe it will have hope when i'm older and am not timed to read it by a teacher,so maybe i can enjoy it,and..Manga is in rite??

[Reynard Struan]

Originally Posted by Larsa

No that didn't really come to any surprise. The school district that I go to has a required reading of that book and no one liked it. But I really liked the book. Good choice.

WOAH there! We have got to be talking about a different book here. Donaldson is a fantasy author, and conventional educators turn up their snout at that sort of literature; Furthermore, if they did, they'd start with Lord Foul's Bane; TWL is the first book in the Second Chronicles, but more realistically it's book 4 of the Covenant series.

Secondly, the Covenant series is most definitely not aimed at 13-year-old readers. That isn't to say that 13-year-old readers don't pick up--and enjoy--the book on their own, but rather that no educational institution would seriously consider something as dark as Covenant for required reading at the junior high level. Even in the First Chronicles, when the Land is at its heyday, Covenant is much too grim. Most educational reviewers would reject it before they were more than 1/4 of the way through Lord Foul's Bane due to Covenant's rape of Lena. No self-respecting educator would want to expose students of that age to a rapist as the protagonist, nor could they obtain some abridged version leaving that unpleasant part aside--Covenant's crime in LFB is the single most important way in which he is portrayed as a potential Despiser.

I discovered the Chronicles at a younger age myself, and derived great enjoyment and personal growth out of them, but nobody, including SRD, intended the books for a 12-14-year-old audience.

[Larsa]

Well hey we read Catcher in the Rhye in 8th grade but I've alerady read it and many more advanced books. If I can read and understand Niche than I think that's nothing.