Recommend me books!

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by st_swithin
I'm half with ya, Doc.

I'm a sucker for dinosaurs. I bought Lost World as well.

[Hot Mustard]

In the same vein as "What If?":

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

[Pekka]

Some very good suggestions folks, thanks, keep'em coming! Many books I've never heard, so this is good times.

st_swithin, do you mean, that in the book (original) there was no kids involved? No kids coming to the park?
You know.. now that I think of it.. it even sounds and feels a whole lot of better thing.

I guess they brought those kids so the younger audience would like it, and it wouldn't make the movie too scary?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Pekka
st_swithin, do you mean, that in the book (original) there was no kids involved?

They had the two kids in the book. She just means that she would rather they not have been there.

[Ramo]

Autobiography - Living My Life by Emma Goldman

War memoir of parts of the Spanish Civil War - Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

Movie book - A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

[st_swithin]

Newest Stephen King novel:

"The Outlier" - the 5th book of the Gunslinger series

This is King's greatest work EVER - his opus magnus, if you will. I already know how it ends, and I believe it is FAR AND AWAY the best book of the millenium!

Don't wanna spoil it for ya - go buy a copy, available at any book store or library near you.

The artwork is fvcking AMAZING - the artist on the Lost World vg (formerly Dreamworks Interactive), Sunil Thankamushy, is the MAN.

Of course, I'm a little bit biased, since we did go to college together (GO BRUINS!!!)

There's an art book coming out soon too, but I don't know when it's going to be released. Any estimates yet, Sunil?

Just lmkasap. Thanks! -tsd

[SlowwHand]

Kent Family Chronicles, by John Jakes.

[Mordoch]

Originally posted by Pekka
st_swithin, do you mean, that in the book (original) there was no kids involved? No kids coming to the park?
You know.. now that I think of it.. it even sounds and feels a whole lot of better thing.

I guess they brought those kids so the younger audience would like it, and it wouldn't make the movie too scary?

I'm not sure why st_swithin thinks this, the kids were definately in the original book. The explanation in the book was that an investor in the park was essentially treating it as a vacation spot (the original intention of the park creators) and was bringing along the kids for a few days.

[Zkribbler]

Re: Recommend me books!

Originally posted by Pekka

movie books
And that is when the movie is based on the book, NOT the other way thank you.

The Shipping News --it was a mediocre movie because the plot is not much...a guy's wife is killed, so he takes their two kids, moves to Labrador with his aunt and gets a job with the local paper. But the writing is incredible! I believe it won the Pulizer Prize.

Cold Mountain --the movie hasn't been released but, I'm expecting much from it because again, not much of a plot. A confederate soldier walks home from the war as his fiance struggles to keep of the family farm going. But an astonishing writing style! Winner of the National Book Award.

Oh, and by the way, if you've never read To Kill a Mockingbird and Uncle Tom's Cabin, you should be ashamed of yourself!

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Ramo
War memoir of parts of the Spanish Civil War - Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

I concur.

Movie book - A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Hint: In the back of the book there's a slang-to-English dictionary. It helps you figure out what Burgess is saying in passages like, "The old man ran out of the house waiving his rookers." (Rookers are arms.)

[st_swithin]

Read the "Autobiography of Emperor Joshua Norton," by Mark Twain. "Life on the Mississippi" is good too.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

An autobiography/movie-book two-fer:

"Wise Guys" by Nicholas Pileggi. It's the true story of mafia figure Henry Hill, and thus the basis for Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas." Constructed largely from interviews with Hill and his wife, very well-written and absolutely hilarious.

[Jack_www]

For a movie based on a book I say you should read
Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy. The Movie they made on the book sucked, but the book was great.
Terrorist from Isreal along with a communist from Germany recover a atom bomb from the the war with Syria. They then use it on denver during the super bowl.

[Ramo]

Cold Mountain --the movie hasn't been released but, I'm expecting much from it because again, not much of a plot. A confederate soldier walks home from the war as his fiance struggles to keep of the family farm going. But an astonishing writing style! Winner of the National Book Award.

Agreed. It was much better than I expected it to be.

Hint: In the back of the book there's a slang-to-English dictionary. It helps you figure out what Burgess is saying in passages like, "The old man ran out of the house waiving his rookers." (Rookers are arms.)

It was much more fun trying to figure out Burgess' slang by contextual clues than using the dictionary IMO.

[Sikander]

Some good books I have read:

Vietnam:

"We Were Soldiers Once, and Young"

The book that the movie "We Were Soldiers" was based upon. It is much better than the movie, and tells the story in much the same way SLA Marshall (anything by him is worth reading too) would, from multiple first hand perspectives including the commanding officer who is one of the co-authors. The book covers the period from the inception of the AirCavalry concept (lightly) through two battles (in great detail) on to the "what happened to these guys later" (again lightly).

"Bloods"

An oral history of black soldiers in Vietnam. The authors interviewed 25 (iirc) black veterans of the Vietnam war. An amazing array of perspectives, and most are fascinating as well as touching. Some of these guys won medals for valor, and these stories alone make the book worthwhile. But the stories of the older men who served in the segregated Army in WW2 are utterly fascinating from a social perspective, and if anything even more touching. Highly recommended.

"Fields of Fire"

I rarely read much less endorse historical fiction, but in this case I'll make an exception. Written by James H. Webb who was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and led a platoon of Marines during the Vietnam War, this book is the real deal for atmosphere and language. Google the title and see how Vietnam vets love this book to see what I mean. It is IMO the Vietnam War's Catch-22, in that it immerses you emotionally in the world that the author conveys. Unlike Catch-22, it also manages to teach you a lot about the technical and tactical realities of this part of the Vietnam war.

Korea:

"Pork Chop Hill" by SLA Marshall. Marshall was a veteran of WW1 and in WW2 he was the U.S. Army's official historian. By Korea he had seen an immense amount of combat and written about it. His techniques for interviewing soldiers after action were also very well evolved. This book is the result of his debriefing of the survivors of this battle in 1953, and it is excellent. Rarely have military historians had such immediate and complete access to their subjects, and this combined with Marshall's forensic skills wring every detail from this battle and turn it into a very complete record. Truth is stranger than fiction, and no where is this made more clear than in Marshall's work on the battlefield.

"The River and the Gauntlet" Ibid

Same author and style, but this covers the destruction of the Second Infantry Division by massive attacks of the PLA at the end of 1951, from the advance to the Yalu through the retreat to the 38th parallel. Covers action on a much larger scale than Pork Chop Hill, and interviews were not conducted as immediately. But for all that it contains not only a hundred fascinating individual stories, but a fair amount of operational detail as well.