The Blue Board

My all time favorite. Crime and Punishment is awesome. Brothers Karamazov.

Love Tolstoy too, but you've got to have some serious time on your hands. War and Peace took me a summer, and I could read on the clock at my summer job for a good hour or two that summer.

If u like politics you should read Doatoyevskys Demons (the possessed) basically predicts Facism
And Stalin in the 1860s. (really weird child molestation scene in it though)

Tolstoys "the Cossacks" and " the death of
hadji Murat" are good shorter intros to Tolstoy.

Russian history is similar to the US when it
Comes to "cowboy and Indians" stuff.

Reading right now in anticipation of the film.

Unbroken, the story of Louis Zamperini. One of the top three books I have ever read.

I've read Demons(and every other Dostoevsky book that my library has). The Idiot I liked as well. Couple radically different themes, with the innocence of children and then his look at political circumstances.

The only Tolstoy I've read is War and Peace and I gave up on Anna Karenina after about 700 pages last summer. I couldn't finish it on my vacation. I have since decided that any vacation book must be able to be completed in a week, I just can't pick it back up when I go back to work.

Anything by John Grisham especially Bleachers as a sports book. Also, Smoke Jumper by Nicholas Evans was really good.

I thought both of the bill o Reilly assassination books were great especially killing Kennedy. The millineum series (girl with the dragon tattoo) was excellent and I also enjoyed the Bourne trilogy. I thought they were better than the movies. Fearless is probably my favorite biography, it's about a navy seal. Lone survivor was another good one as well.

This is the most worthless thread that I have read in a while.

I mean how old are most of you posters? I swear to God that 85% of these damn books are things that you either HAVE to read in HS or college.

I am not killing you guys for it but can we actually get into books that are for entertainment? I'm a huge King, Koontz and Collins fan.

I am looking for books like "The Hunger Games" trilogy. I loved the "Odd Thomas" series by Koontz (not done with it but still love it to this point), and it's been years but The Dark Tower series from Stephen King. Those are the type of books that I am personally looking to read. I did school for about 25 years in my life. I am looking for a book to read for entertainment purposes.

Does anyone have some recommendations along those lines?

Exodus by Leon Uris
Haj by Leon Uris
These two will give you better insight into the middle east

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- I know a lot of people on here will hate on this one, but... I know you are young and a little liberal.... "If you are young and not liberal, then you have no heart; but if you are old and not conservative, then you have no brain," this is falsely attributed to Winston Churchill, but it works quite well. My hope is that books like this accelerate young minds toward conservatism (fiscal - I couldn't care less about your social tendancies).

A History of God by Karen Armstrong
- This one will piss a lot of religious guys/gals off and is a bit dry, but ...

I must admit that I hate to read in general. I don't mind manuals, history related and similar, but I really don't like to read books that make good movies. I'd prefer to save my reading for textbooks/manuals and catch up with the movie. I am an engineer at heart (probably why I went conservative early - logic dominated brain).

It does take something away from a book when you read it and then watch the movie, most times movies dont seem to be anywhere near as good as the book IMO, The books that John Grisham has written that have turned to movies, "The Firm", "The Pelican Brief", "A Time To Kill" are the main one's I that come to mind at the moment have actually become pretty good movies.... As I posted earlier, "The Racketeer" is his newest one, good story and something readable within a few days.... it was hard to get to a stopping point and not finish the whole thing...

The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost, even though I liked his second book better myself (Getting Stoned With Savages). Lost on Planet China is really different because of the setting change but it was also good.

Books I've read semi-recently that I would recommend...

The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis
The Rum Diary - Gonzo
Johannes Cabal: The Necromancer - Jonathan L. Howard (this one was out of the norm for me but I liked it)

I prefer classic literature. Reading something like Dan Brown is the same to me as watching Indiana Jones. Kills time, but I prefer something more substantive. If I just feel like killing a couple brain cells I'll watch Maury