Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest

Someone recommend me some good books to read

  • 23-10-2009 2:10pm
    #1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,577 ✭✭✭


    Something exciting, interesting and horizon-broadening please.


Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,990 ✭✭✭Cool_CM


    This man should be able to help you out;)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,831 ✭✭✭genericguy


    michael chabon - the yiddish policeman's union.
    James michener - hawaii
    bill bryson - a short history of everything
    the art of war - sun tzu
    a painted house - john grisham

    Any of the jack reacher novels by lee child if you need to switch off for light entertainment.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,743 ✭✭✭funk-you


    You might get a serious answer here OP:

    http://boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=19

    -Funk


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2 stephodile


    I'd definitely recommend 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' by Lionel Shriver. The subject matter is a bit unsettling but if you want something that's incredibly well-written, and will make you think, it's really worth a read.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,674 ✭✭✭Mardy Bum


    Ulysses, thank me later.


  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 454 ✭✭Cadiz


    Uum highly subjective thing isn't it so don't come back to me saying 'why'd you recommend that, I can't believe I lost hours of my life reading it etc.' But for what it's worth:

    Running with Scissors - Augusten Burroughs
    The Secret History - Donna Tartt
    Stuart, a Life Lived Backwards - Alexander Masters
    Attachment - Isabel Fonseca
    Anything by Graham Greene (esp the Quiet American, The Third Man, Brighton Rock, The Bomb Party)


    With agree with previous poster re. We Need To Talk About Kevin..

    There have been some great auto/biographies recently too, none of which I can recall right now but will come back on that..


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 454 ✭✭Cadiz


    Paul Theoroux's travel stuff is great too..


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,380 ✭✭✭O.A.P


    Something exciting, interesting and horizon-broadening please.
    Roots if you have'nt already.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 21,191 ✭✭✭✭Latchy


    The Forensic Science ( fiction ) series of books by Patricia Cornwell .


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,598 ✭✭✭cashback


    Cadiz wrote: »
    Paul Theoroux's travel stuff is great too..

    Was just going to say the same. The Great Railway Bazaar is his most well known maybe and it's one of my favourite books. I've also read Dark Star Safari and Riding The Iron Rooster, also worth a look. Currently reading Ghost Train to The Eastern Star, his sequel to the Bazaar.
    Definitely a rung above most travel writers.


  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,089 ✭✭✭henryporter


    Life: A Users Manual - Georges Perec
    Foucaults Pendulum - Umberto Eco
    Murphy - Samuel Beckett
    Watt - Samuel Beckett
    Anything by Raymond Carver
    Anything by Thomas Pynchon


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 454 ✭✭Cadiz


    cashback wrote: »
    Was just going to say the same. The Great Railway Bazaar is his most well known maybe and it's one of my favourite books. I've also read Dark Star Safari and Riding The Iron Rooster, also worth a look. Currently reading Ghost Train to The Eastern Star, his sequel to the Bazaar.
    Definitely a rung above most travel writers.

    Riding the Iron Rooster +1, it affected the way I thought about writing and travel and life. Read Dark Star Safari at start of the summer and thought long and hard about aid provision and how I viewed Africa for a long while after that..

    Books rock! :)


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,558 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,826 ✭✭✭Anouilh


    "Winterland" by Alan Glynn.

    http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/fiction-reviews/underworld-s-faustian-pact-1.927174

    It's a Noir thriller, set in post-boom Dublin and explores corruption in high places... among land developers and politicians.

    Incredibly well paced and with many surprises.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 108 ✭✭Harpic


    just finished a great book;
    Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Burton, Harris, O'Toole and Reed (Hardcover)

    by Robert Sellers (Author)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 171 ✭✭Seonad


    "The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Díaz

    Simply because it's the latest book I've read but it is very interesting


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,816 ✭✭✭Acacia


    Anything by Tracy Chevalier, but especially ''Girl With A Pearl Earring."


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 53 ✭✭Davao8000


    The Laughing Policeman - Sjöwall and Wahlöö


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 17 PEPPI


    A FINE BALANCE.....A BIT HARD TO GET STARTED, BUT LATER HARD TO LEAVE DOWN .


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,534 ✭✭✭FruitLover


    PEPPI wrote: »
    A FINE BALANCE.....A BIT HARD TO GET STARTED, BUT LATER HARD TO LEAVE DOWN .

    WHAT? SPEAK UP


  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,225 ✭✭✭JCDUB


    Dades wrote: »

    +10000000

    First read about this book on here, brought it on holidays to Thailand and absolutely fell in love with it.
    Best book I've ever read, I've been recommending it to everybody for the last two years!!
    Gonna get "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" from the library tomorrow on above recommendations..:)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 19 rickman


    three great reads

    lustrum - robert harris ( random house)
    here comes robert kingdom - peter mc cluskey (location27books.com)
    life of pi - yann martel (picador)


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 6,488 ✭✭✭Denerick


    This is always an interesting kind of thread, because people tend not to suggest their favourite ever books (Though this often overlaps) but those books which may or may not be technically well written or profound, but which had a massive impact on the way they think and operate.

    In this spirit I'll recommend one book which challenged a lot of my 'popular cynicism' to the very core - Alduous Huxley's 'Eyeless in Gaza'. In this book you go back and forward in time through the life of the protagonist, as early as his schooldays and as late as his dramatic life change to a public life, deep in the inter war period of political extremism. His cynicism is slowly and cleverly unravelled and revealed for the self gratifying vacuousness it is. Can't recommend it highly enough.


Advertisement